Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Indiana University School of Informatics


 * 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 keep. Liz Read! Talk! 22:37, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Indiana University School of Informatics
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Subject does not appear to be independently notable Invinciblewalnut (talk) 01:52, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following articles for the same reason:

Invinciblewalnut (talk) 01:59, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 18:45, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete all except the nursing school as that article has sufficient independent references to pass WP:GNG. (Full disclosure: I am an alumnus of the school of education.) ElKevbo (talk) 02:33, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete all I do not believe even in the nursing school case we have enough indepdent sourcing to require a free standing article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:16, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete all except Herron School of Art and Design. No question that there are substantial issues with the article in its current state, but I am confident that I can bring the article up to minimum standards with sufficient independent sourcing over the next several days. IndyTaylor (talk) 15:44, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep all. Nom does not appear to have followed WP:BEFORE, and above !votes appear to conflate the current degree of sourcing with the potential for sourcing, which is evident on even cursory Googling. The school of dentistry in particular has an extensive history independent of IU, having been established in 1879 as the Indiana Dental College. At least one graduate thesis has been written about its pre-IU history alone. The school of education is also the subject of multiple peer-reviewed papers, to say nothing of other cromulent media coverage over its >100 years of existence. The school of informatics likewise is the subject of multiple academic papers that appear in the first page of Google Scholar results; example. I could go on, but it seems pointless; the claim that any of these institutions would not have received significant secondary coverage is extraordinary and entirely unsupported in the nom. Not even under the most draconian interpretation of notability should any of these articles be deleted. -- Visviva (talk) 07:28, 17 July 2022 (UTC)
 * In view of the importance that has lately been improperly placed on "policy-based rationales" for inclusion, I will elaborate on my above comment as follows:
 * Per WP:PRESERVE and WP:EDIT of which it is a part, deletion is a last resort, because it interferes with the process of small, incremental improvements on which the project depends.
 * Per the WP:GNG, articles are presumed notable if (but not "only if") they have received significant coverage in independent reliable sources. All of these schools meet this requirement in spades. I don't appreciate being expected to do the nom's WP:BEFORE work. This is an all-volunteer project, and "do what I want or the article gets it" is not acceptable behavior. But since that unacceptable behavior is often tolerated on AFD, here are some sources:
 * Nursing:, ,
 * Dentistry:, (as above, the dental school has existed since 1879, the first 45 years being independent of IU)
 * Informatics: ,
 * Art:,  (the art school has existed under various names and locations since 1902, much of that history being independent of IU)
 * Liberal arts: ,
 * Honors college: ,
 * SPEA: ,
 * These are simply a random sampling of the sources that are available, which are abundant -- and which even a moment's reflection would have shown would obviously be abundant. There are dozens more for each school (without even taking a look in actual print media where I would expect to find the best ones), and I'm certainly not going to be sifting through all of them. I have already devoted at least an order of magnitude more effort to addressing this nom than the nominator did in making it.
 * Even if it were for some reason inappropriate to have a free-standing article on each of these schools, per WP:N, the appropriate remedy would be merging (to Indiana University or some other appropriate target). Merging can and should be done through the regular wiki process. Resorting to AFD for a matter for which "merge" and "keep" are the only plausible outcomes gives the distinct impression of forum shopping.
 * Although Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, the procedural flaws in this nomination, the most glaring of which is the nominator's omission of any edit summary when applying the AFD template or thereafter (here's one example, and another), thus concealing the nomination from all but the most diligent watchers, would be sufficient grounds to reject it.
 * More generally: all Wikipedia policies are a means to an end, and must be set aside whenever they cease to serve that end. Here, the content of these articles is plainly encyclopedic and provides a service to the reader. Readers would be disserved by deleting that content, and editors would be disserved by having to repeat the work that has gone into creating and maintaining these articles, rudimentary though some of them may be. Readers and editors would also be deprived of the ecosystem services that these articles provide as link targets. Therefore, even if some interpretation of guidelines or policies would appear to support deletion here (which seems unlikely), such an interpretation is ipso facto incorrect and should be disregarded.
 * According to a currently popular interpretation of WP:DETCON (to which I do not subscribe), only "policy-based rationales" should be taken into account in determining consensus. Under that principle, as the nom makes no policy-based argument for deletion, and the !votes are based on a profound misreading of the GNG, they should all be given zero weight.
 * In conclusion, improper nominations like this are not only an embarrassment to the project, they are also profoundly detrimental to it. If they succeed, they deprive the project of its most essential nutrient by deleting encyclopedic contributions so that they can no longer be iteratively improved on. Yet even if they fail, they have the same effect, since they force other contributors to devote time to addressing the nom's spurious "concerns" instead of making encyclopedic contributions that can be iteratively improved on. (I have no connection to these articles or IU, and had been trying to stay away from AFD's toxic fumes for a while, but I came across this AFD while doing other work, which I am now not doing.) A frivolous AFD is more damaging than vandalism -- and a frivolous mass AFD like this one is more damaging than mass vandalism.
 * Having said my piece, per my usual practice, I will now be removing this discussion from my watchlist. If any further input from me is desired, the favor of a ping is requested. -- Visviva (talk) 01:58, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Education, Schools,  and Indiana.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 19:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep all per Visviva's comment and the list of sources they found. If the listed sources are added to their respective article, as well as some from the aforementioned abundancy of others, they should pass WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV. Waddles 🗩 🖉 22:01, 23 July 2022 (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.