Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Relations Lecture Series


 * 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 Draftify. Consensus is to draftify. Article will be moved to Draft:International Relations Lecture Series for further work. Note that at least one of the "draftify" !voters has indicated a willingness to review the updated article before it is moved back to mainspace. ST47 (talk) 19:15, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

International Relations Lecture Series

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This seems like a notice-board announcement of a series of lectures. The only reference is not independent and I could find no substantial coverage in reliable independent sources. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:03, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

A primary source citation has been added to the article, so there is now an independent reference. The article is not a notice board post--it purposes to document this speaker series and to present the results of research into its 90-year history. I prefer to build the article in a sandbox, but I'm already working on a major edit of the Deb Lavender/living person/MO State Representative wiki page in my sandbox and do not know how to fork a sandbox so I can work on two articles at once. More boxes of MO Historical Society records are being shipped to UMSL for me to dig through next week. I believe the article should be expanded, not deleted, because it defines and explains an historical St. Louis women's event.PatriciaBishop (talk) 15:50, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Missouri-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 13:05, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 13:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 13:06, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello, thank you for your message. As soon as possible I will add reference sources and facts to further build this article--what I really need is to move it to a sandbox until I can complete it, but I don't know how to do this. On notable coverage by local news sources: Last year local St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger mentioned this speaker series in one of his articles because Dr. Jeffrey Winters was one of the visiting speakers. Dr. Winters is an internationally renowned expert on income inequality and professor at Northwestern University, department chair. Dr. Winters' work has been cited in Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland (who is also internationally famous as a business reporter, member of the Canadian parliament, and because she was the point person for her government explaining to President Trump why there is no trade imbalance) and Dark Money by Jane Mayer. Further, the article is a part of women's history in St. Louis. The event series has been the work of two women's groups for almost 90 years, which is notable for many reasons I won't go into within this format. PatriciaBishop (talk) 00:26, 14 September 2019 (UTC)The series has never been for-profit. PatriciaBishop (talk) 16:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC) This article now has a recent source citation from the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Tony interviewed one of the Series speakers because the speaker, Dr. Jeffrey Winters, is a world-renowned expert in international finance and how it relates to power and government. Dr. Winters traveled from Chicago to speak at the Series.PatriciaBishop (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2019 (UTC) This article is being held to an unreasonable standard. It is difficult to present women's history that is well documented. This subject matter happens to be very well documented in the mainstream press and in Missouri Historical Society records. That this Series ever happened at all--and has endured--is amazing. Women in history were usually birthing, child rearing, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and working on farms & in factories with absolutely nothing notable happening to get them into history books. Everyone seems to want to know what the white men were doing and record their work for history--or give the white men credit for the work others actually performed. This article is about women interested in solving world problems, in seeing and understanding multiple points of view on tough issues. This is far, far more interesting and impressive than Imo's Pizza, HOK, Oldani's, and many other popular subjects that are even less notable--yet somehow are approved for Wikipedia. If this article is deleted, articles Imo's Pizza, HOK architects, Oldani's, and many more must be deleted. Not all history is popular; this should not be a popularity contest. I hope to continue expanding this article with cross-references to historical influences across the decades as these series were being held. I understand the impulse to derisively dismiss this subject matter as unimportant, but I disagree.PatriciaBishop (talk) 13:20, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment It's a lecture series which has apparently been running since 1929 so it doesn't seem like they need Wikipedia's help in terms of promotion. Mccapra (talk) 15:45, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak keep The article is just blatant advertising at the moment and will need a complete re-write to be acceptable and as for the comment above, it is irrelevant that a "Pulitzer Prize winning reporter" interviewed one of the speakers. Theroadislong (talk) 15:13, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * - see Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions and Other stuff exists - Epinoia (talk) 02:57, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Theroadislong Hi, I see a point in re-ordering the information, putting an historical overview in the first paragraph. Maybe I should leave out the current day event details; they really aren't necessary. I put the details there originally because I only had the website as a source as I waited for documents to be transferred to St. Louis from Historical Society's main storage in Columbia, MO. Thursday of this week I'll have a chance to dig into the records again, so the results of that dig will change the direction/organization of the article, I'm sure.PatriciaBishop (talk) 13:20, 17 September 2019 (UTC) I put Tony Messenger's interview of one of the speakers in the article because in the Wiki notability guidelines, there's mention of significant news coverage. The other place I'm going with this is that historically the Series has attracted expert speakers who are giants in their fields, and this is part of what makes the Series notable. And, I still maintain if the Series had been produced by white men since 1929--it would already be a Wikipedia page. Women's history tends to get a short shrift.PatriciaBishop (talk) 21:27, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Draftify to allow time for sources to be found per WP:DRAFTIFY - as it stands, I couldn't find any significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources, not newspapers, books on women's history, etc. - the only guideline that may save this article is WP:SUSTAINED, that the lecture series has attracted attention over a sufficiently significant period of time, but there are no obvious sources, possibly because the series pre-dates the internet, but there may be newspaper archives, etc., that provide writeups on the lecture series from the past - the notability of individual lecturers has no bearing as notability cannot be inherited, the lecture series itself must be notable as evidenced by significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources - Epinoia (talk) 02:57, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment - another approach would be WP:PRESERVE to allow time for the article to be improved and sources found (but in the absence of sources the article could be up for deletion again in the future) - or finally, Ignore all rules; if there is consensus that a lecture series that has been running since 1929 is inherently notable then it could possibly be kept under common sense editing - however, WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS says, "Wikipedia policy requires that articles and information comply with core content policies (verifiability, no original research or synthesis, neutral point of view, copyright, and biographies of living persons) as applicable. These policies are not negotiable, and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by editors' consensus", so there's that - Epinoia (talk) 01:53, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jovanmilic97 (talk) 10:46, 21 September 2019 (UTC) Hello, Thank you for your comment and suggesting more time for research. I'm going back to Missouri Historical Society at UMSL in St. Louis to piece more of the history together, and have found newspaper articles in St. Louis Post-Dispatch archives, but need to pull together these items now into a cohesive article. I'm also struggling with the idea that a lecture series is quintessentially the speakers it is able to attract and the intellectual purpose & vision its organizers have had to invite certain speakers. Also the presentation topics are weighty, and have tended to be prescient. So I'm kind of going in this direction to establish notability--yet the struggle comes in because, logical as this approach is, it doesn't fit exactly with Wikipedia notability guidelines.PatriciaBishop (talk) 21:18, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment Further research reveals this lecture series was chaired at least twice by Edna Gellhorn, the famous St. Louis suffragette who organized the Golden Lane demonstration at the 1916 Democratic National Convention, and later went on to co-found the National League of Women Voters. This discovery speaks to two issues. First, the notability of the Lecture Series is boosted by the fact that historically important people have been associated with it. Secondly, it furthers my previous argument about how difficult it is to document women's history. Facts and events don't make it into recorded history unless, at the time, someone thinks these things were important. Women's activities were not generally considered important. Gellhorn was a particularly good publicist. See her Wiki page.PatriciaBishop (talk) 15:05, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Draftify the editor who created this has said that they are prepared to do extensive further work on it and it sounds as though further sources can be found to improve it. Mccapra (talk) 02:44, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Draftify per Mccapra.4meter4 (talk) 03:09, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment I nominated this article for deletion. I am happy for it to be draftified, but that will not actually solve the problem of whether the lecture series is notable or not. Having well-known speakers does not of itself demonstrate notability. The creator needs to find sufficient reliable, independent sources to demonstrate notability. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:43, 29 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment if this goes to draft and you want help reviewing it before sending it back to mainspace, contact me on my talk page. Mccapra (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2019 (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.