Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Conferences on Creationism


 * 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. WP:FRINGE has no relation to this debate btw - this is not an article about the theories, but rather about the organization/event. -- Y not? 23:45, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

International Conferences on Creationism

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Non-notable creationist (and thus WP:FRINGE) series of conferences. Third party sourcing is currently exclusively to sources that are devoted to tracking creationist or general WP:FRINGE activity (National Center for Science Education, Panda's Thumb (blog), North Texas Skeptics), and/or low-prominence sources (blogs and newsletters). Find reveals little coverage -- almost exclusively from unreliable creationist sources. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 07:00, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep: marginal but just notable. The theories are WP:FRINGE, however the issue here is the notability of the conference, not the views it promotes.  Springnuts (talk) 08:05, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Lets not confuse the notability of the conference with a normative judgment as to whether the views expressed at the conference are accurate Francium12 (talk) 08:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: both of these 'keep' votes appear to be ignoring the fact that the coverage that these conferences have generated has been very low-key (blogs & newsletters) and largely WP:PRIMARY accounts, mitigating against a claim that they are notable. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 09:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Undecided. Hrafn is correct, this specific conference's relevance is not proved by the sources presented - at the moment. I'm waiting to see more (and more relevant) sources. McMarcoP (talk) 09:59, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep One of the "blogs" which devoted a news story to the conference was a part of Discover Magazine, not a fringe source. I agree that WP has way too much coverage of Creationism, however this conference does seem to be fairly important since the sources all (most of them) remark on it being one of the largest, if not the largest, such meeting. Steve Dufour (talk) 11:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment: it is only one of seven blogs listed as being associated with the magazine -- which means that it confers considerably less notability than coverage in the magazine itself would. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 12:03, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * On closer examination, this Discover Magazine Reality Base blog post appears to be a fairly superficial rehash of Rosenhouse's blogged accounts combined with info cribbed from the conference's own website. Little depth at all. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:19, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I would also note that it is one of the two sources cited for the bare existence of the conferences (out of the pitiful handful of sources given), supporting the conclusion of lack of depth. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak Delete - The sources don't seem to qualify under WP:RS, though they do argue strongly for notability if true. It would be nice to find just one single reliable source to verify them. --Lithorien (talk) 11:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The only people really interested are creationists and those who take an interest in the topic. If a mainstream news outlet covered the conferences it would just be a human interest story. I do still think that Discover counts as a reliable source, even if it is a blog sponsored by the magazine. Steve Dufour (talk) 11:52, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Trust me, I'd love to keep this article. I'm not even a creationist and it seems like valuable information. I just can't see how a blog sponsored by the magazine, or newsletters, can really pass the caution given by WP:PRIMARY when there doesn't seem to be a WP:RS secondary/tetriary source to verify them. --Lithorien (talk) 12:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This question has come up before. Sorry I don't know where to find the discussion but some WPers have argued that a "blog" hosted by a reliable publication and the "blogger" a reporter for the publication should be considered reliable as well. That makes sense to me but I don't know what official WP policy decided on this. Steve Dufour (talk) 12:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment I just changed the title from "Conferences" to "Conference" since this is the name used by them and the media, even though there are yearly conferences. This caused more hits in Google. (I also added a reference to a Philadelphia Inquirer story on the 1990 conference. It's pay-for-view but the opening paragraph can be seen free.)Steve Dufour (talk) 12:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * So we now have two references for the bare existence of these conferences. Can we say refspam? This is no substitute for "significant coverage"! HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete no real sources on the subject. Only sources are from places that specifically cover such subjects. And if it has been going since 1998 as it states then why are the sources so limited? It could be a redirect or merge.--Otterathome (talk) 12:28, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong delete. Conservapedia is thataway >.  We don't give undue weight to fringe theories on Wikipedia.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  19:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd like to see 50-90% of all WP's articles on creationism etc. deleted. However this one seems fairly notable since it has been reported on as perhaps the largest creationist meeting.Steve Dufour (talk)
 * That position is unsupported by the facts Steve -- the vast majority of creationism articles have better sourcing, and thus better claim to notability, than this one. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 05:51, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment: I did some quick checking and wasn't all that impressed with coverage of the group but I'm not sure I would label the statements as being "fringe" based on stated popularity either now or even a few decades ago or historically. Creationism is covered in popular press quite often and variants of it have been quite popular. However, wikipedia doesn't cover every athletic or scientific or political organization unless notability can be established. It may not make sense to some, may not be consistent with other data you may have, have a bad reputation to many, attract people lacking credibility by some criteria ( I just voted against another techno-babble article ), etc, but by most colloquial understandings it has been non-fringe. Certainly lack of daily coverage on CNN suggests it isn't everyone's immediate interest but there are many topics like that that are not fringe. I'm not sure that passing mention as being "largest in a non-notable catagory" alone would help much but I guess the above source may be something to consider. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 22:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Creationism is basically a US-specific issue. I think it's uncontroversial to say that virtually nowhere else in the world suffers creationists gladly; and I think a fringe theory specific to (say) India would have near-zero coverage on Wikipedia.  I'm of the view that including more than a very few articles on creationism is systemic bias.— S Marshall   Talk / Cont  23:09, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, as I said above. I think that most people kind of know that humans and dinosaurs didn't hang out with each other, even without WP having a thousand articles saying so. Steve Dufour (talk) 07:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This is the same argument you get for sexually explicit material ( " I think most people kind of know what humans look like") which seems to be related to POV or moralizing and has nothing to do with the present or historical popularity of a topic or other wikipedia inclusion criteria. Since wikipedia doesn't kill trees or fit on a bookshelf, there would seem to be fewer reasons to make POV related editorial decisions. If it gets to the point where wikipedia starts to return "useless" or "distracting" pages to google queries, then of course wikipedia is just adding clutter and wasting readers' time ( just as if they got 1000's of sexual images from everything they typed into google). From a merit standpoint, however, I don't know how "most people" would even know what happened during that time period other than just taking on faith words from people they glibbly trust. But, again, there are articles on spontaneous generation and other "failed" theories that had been notable at some point and we aren't here to decide on merit but add to a documentary on state of human thinking. History is not testable in any case, the best we can hope for in terms of resolution is new data. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:23, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment Another option is to write an article on the Creation Science Fellowship, which sponsors the conferences, and merge this article into that. Steve Dufour (talk) 16:27, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
 * "Write an article" saying what? reveals little in the way of coverage of it. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:46, 27 August 2009 (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.