Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Independent Gay Forum


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was No Consensus defaulting to keep. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 01:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Independent Gay Forum

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Does not appear to meet WP:WEB. There are no secondary sources pertaining to the subject within the article, and I haven't found anything on the web that is non-trivial. The only assertion of notability that actually pertains to the subject appears to be "The IGF became the major online gathering of writers who wanted to think and write beyond queer or beyond the left-liberal orthodoxy that they felt dominated gay identity and politics". I cannot find any evidence to support that claim. --- RockMFR 17:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:OR. CyberAnth 05:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. I expected this to be easy to source considering how often Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch blather about it. But as the nom said, not so easy. It appears their popularity has tapered as of late, and much of the direct sources of notability have been sucked away by media companies who don't like to host their own content after three months. However, using WP:WEB criterion 3, "The content is distributed via a medium which is both well known and independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper or magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster", we have reliable sources that attest this has occurred. First, the New York Press tells us that "The WSJ’s online Opinion Journal went even further, pulling in a piece by gay writer Paul Varnell on the gay conservative site Independent Gay Forum." I don't see an explicit date on that piece, but it says "Pim Fortuyn, who was brutally assassinated last week", so that gives us an idea. Second, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance are using a citation to a piece from the Independent Gay Forum titled "Punishing gays under Islam" which, according to their citation, was published in the Chicago Free Press on 21 October 2001. Chicago Free Press doesn't have their own Wikipedia article, but they do get their content republished by Lynn Conway at the University of Michigan, so they would pass WP:WEB themselves (although it is never a requirement for any source to be WP:N enough to have its own article to nevertheless be used as a WP:RS). So that's two instances of satisfying WP:WEB criterion 3, and either one of those instances alone would be enough. So, yeah, notable, barely, but definitively. — coe l acan t a lk  — 11:32, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per Coelacan. Artw 15:16, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * delete The WSJ may be notable, but not their blog. The other item is A reprinted from B who took it from C, and at least one of these is RS, which doesnt sound like a convincing chain of evidence. Anyway, 2 are the minimum. The entire article is laden with opinion, and most of it is discussing various controversies, not the organization. DGG 00:07, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OpinionJournal.com is not a blog, it is the WSJ's online Editorial Page, which has a dedicated URL. And you misunderstand the second item. It's A reprinted from B, which is exactly what WP:WEB criterion 3 is asking for, and we have reliable source C that confirms they saw A reprint it from B. Do you think source C, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, are lying? Do you think they are not a reliable source? Unless you are proposing that they are presenting false information, then we can safely say that A reprinted from B: Chicago Free Press reprinted a piece from the Independent Gay Forum, which is no more and no less than precisely what WP:WEB is asking us to find proof of. And if you reread criterion 3, it does not require two as a minimum. You are thinking of criterion 1. Criterion 3 says clearly: "The content is distributed via a medium which is both well known and independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper or magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster". Just one: a medium. So either of these instances would stand alone. I am not defending the contents of the article, just the notability. Go ahead and tag it npov and fact to Hell Michigan and back; I agree that would be an improvement. Stubify it if you like. But WP:AFD specifically says: "The argument "non-neutral point of view" (violates WP:NPOV) is often used, but often such articles can be salvaged, so this is not a very strong reason for deletion either." The fact that the article is full of opinion has nothing to do with whether WP:N is being fulfilled. — coe l acan t a lk  — 03:16, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. The sources provided by Coelacan show WP:WEB criterion 3 is met here. It maybe that we need a tougher notability guideline for such material, but as WP:WEB stands this article just passes the hurdle. WJBscribe 17:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.