Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keep Portland Weird


 * 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. causa sui (talk) 17:14, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Keep Portland Weird

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Procedural nomination per outcome of DRV at Deletion review/Log/2011 August 8.  So Why  11:30, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 11:47, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

*Delete non-notable organization. One reliable ref from outside the area would help a good deal, but so far nobody has been able to find one. I don't see it justifies a redirect to the city.Possibly to the original event in Austin, which is certainly notable.  DGG ( talk ) 17:50, 17 August 2011 (UTC) see revised opinion lower down.  DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Portland, Oregon. Merge only if it is worth a mention.  Seems to be no more than a neologism.  There are many ghits, but I see none that are independent and with direct coverage of the slogan.  The coverage is concerned with the people of Portland, not with the slogan.  If mention of the slogan belongs anywhere, it belongs first at Portland, Oregon, and currently there is no mention.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * What the hell does "outside the area" have to do with anything?!?! Notability is determined by MULTIPLE, INDEPENDENTLY PRODUCED, SUBSTANTIAL, PUBLISHED pieces of coverage. They can be from three sources located on one street, no prohibition against that is specified anywhere in policy nor is it followed in practice. We don't require articles about things in New York City to be published outside New York City! We don't require articles about aspects of San Francisco to be published outside of San Francisco! This is complete ad libbing of actual Wikipedia notability guidelines here... Carrite (talk) 21:36, 17 August 2011 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 21:38, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The "independent" criterion is considered by many editors to mean that topics of solely local interest are not notable, because the otherwise reliable sources' inclusion criteria are not necessarily unbiased. Bongo  matic  13:07, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - This is a fairly ubiquitous slogan here in Oregon and it's my sense that an article similar to Keep Austin Weird can and will emerge from this over time. HERE'S SUBSTANTIAL COVERAGE IN THE PORTLAND TRIBUNE, a former print paper that went electronic only a couple years ago. It's definitely a so-called "Reliable Source" in Wikispeak (even though I loathe that entire concept). KATU-TV IS DOING STORIES on "Keeping Portland Weird," which it correctly characterizes as "more than a bumper sticker, it's a way of life." OREGONLIVE.COM is the website of The Oregonian, the largest newspaper in the largest city in the state of Oregon and the second largest paper in the Pacific Northwest, and they have a whole index of pieces tagged "Keep Portland Weird." The exact phrase generates nearly 100,000 Google hits, which is a pretty good indicator that  this is a cultural phenomenon far bigger than a bumper sticker. Incidentally, the slogan preceded the existence of the sticker, it wasn't caused by the sticker or the Dot-Com cite that capitalized on an already existing slogan. And have you seen the TV show Portlandia produced by Lorne Michaels? That's the Keep Portland Weird concept in a very tangible nutshell...  Carrite (talk) 21:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 21:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:LOCAL. The justification for LOCAL is that local newspapers are not very discriminate about local events. The show you mention was reviewed by the LA Times and Variety--probably the two major news sources for the genre nationally. your very example shows the difference and proves my point. There are various ways of realizing a concept--some may be notable, others not.  DGG ( talk ) 00:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:LOCAL is an WP:ESSAY: "Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors, for which widespread consensus has not been established. They do not speak for the entire community and may be created and written without approval." Please don't site essay acronyms as if they mean anything at all here, because they don't. Carrite (talk) 15:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Carrite, things usually go best around here when we keep things civil. In my opinion that would generally mean avoiding all-caps in a discussion, and outright dismissal of somebody's opinion.


 * In this case, an essay like WP:LOCAL means plenty; see WP:ESSAYS. True, it doesn't mean as much as a guideline or a policy; but David never said it did. -Pete (talk) 15:23, 25 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Here's a cite from the print version of The Oregonian (paywalled):"So, how weird are we?". The Oregonian. August 27, 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-13. This is a cite from the footnotes of Keep Austin Weird. Carrite (talk) 21:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Redirect/move content to Portland, Oregon - we are not here to make bumper sticker slogans notable by adding them to Wikipedia on there own page.Moxy (talk) 12:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 13:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete: little indication that this campaign has garnered more than passing mention outside Portland itself. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 13:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * There it is again. That's completely irrelevant to the question of notability, which is based on an article topic being the subject of multiple, independently produced, substantial published sources. There is no geographic requirement for notability, aside from the fact that the Portland metropolitan area is the biggest on the west coast between Seattle and San Francisco... This is not Ephrata, Washington we're talking about here and dissing for lack of "non-local" coverage. Carrite (talk) 14:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * A PR campaign is a type of WP:EVENT, and therefore WP:GEOSCOPE would appear relevant. Yes, news media in Portland report on a campaign to promote Portland to Portlanders. That does not, on its own, make the campaign notable. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 15:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Snooting at the small but respectable city of Ephrata, although there is no geographic requirement for notability, while admiring the city of Portland so much that even a self-promotion campaign merits a separate Wikipedia page, seems a strange contribution to this discussion. How does it relate to the topic? Ornithikos (talk) 07:14, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Redirect or keep. Sources exist, but it may be a while until they are added..  A GA could be made of this, with enough effort. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 20:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll point out that we should be discussing the topic, not the article... Hobit (talk) 15:59, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge coverage to new section in the article Portland, Oregon and redirect to that section. This topic is not notable enough to have its own article but notable enough to be included in the article Portland, Oregon. Jsayre64   (talk)  22:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Could you provide a guideline/policy-based reason? Hobit (talk) 16:00, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, now that the article has been greatly improved with references to reliable sources, I am changing my opinion to keep. I think that the article now passes the WP:GNG guideline. Jsayre64   (talk)  00:08, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Merge into the Portland article if that will bring happiness to Portland, and don't keep a Redirect page. One could scrape up countless local slogans that haven't a particle of significance outside their locales.  If any deserves its own article, they all do.  If we don't take the Notabiity guidelines on this type of article seriously, Wikipedia will become hard to tell from Trivial Pursuit. Ornithikos (talk) 01:34, 19 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Out of curiosity, did you look for sources? I've listed a few below.  This is pretty clearly well past WP:N... Hobit (talk) 16:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Expecting nothing, I Googled list slogans. The result was astounding!  Hundreds of sites exist that do nothing but collect slogans.  Every imaginable category of slogan has multiple collections on multiple sites, and multiple dedicated sites.  Thousands upon thousands of slogans appear; even trying to count them would be mind-boggling.  Commercial slogans are especially plentiful, probably because marketing departments work ceaselessly to create more of them.  The collected slogans include countless well-documented examples that would be much more meaningful to many more people than Keep Portland Weird.


 * If Keep Portland Weird deserves a separate page, despite the existing page about Portland, every well-documented commercial slogan in the world equally deserves a page, regardless of any existing page about the topic of the slogan. I could use Google and the lists of slogans to run a slogan-page factory so prolific that the only escape would be a new provision: Wikipedia is not a collection of slogans!  No argument for merging the slogan pages into their parent topics (which I would support) could fail to require a similar merge for Keep Portland Weird, unless we decided to give Portland a special dispensation just because we like it (which I do).


 * I think that the underlying problem arises from a tension between reflecting notability, which we should, and purveying advertising, which we should not. In the Portland case, mentioning its slogan on the Portland page would reflect the notability of Portland, which no one disputes, while giving the slogan a page of its own would merely toot Portland's horn, which is Portland's job, not Wikipedia's.  Merging the slogan page into the topic page would preserve the current information and reflect Portland's notability, but avoid an incursion into marketing whose wider expression would add little but waste and hype. Ornithikos (talk) 17:55, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep I'm not seeing a strong argument that the massive number of sources in the news archive search should be discarded for some reason . There is a chapter of a book with this as a title  and there is more coverage in any number of other books. .  This clearly (and easily) meets WP:N.  The IAR !votes are, well, a bit odd. Hobit (talk) 15:59, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * When I looked through some sources, it seemed to me that they were coverage of the people of Portland, not coverage of the slogan, and that "Keep Portland Weird" was little more than mentioned. So I think it is a neologism worthy of mention, but not worthy of a stand alone article.  To the extent that the subject is an organisation, I found nothing independent covering the organisation.  But perhaps I didn't read enough sources?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:36, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd agree they were mostly about the people with respect to the slogan and not the organization. Based on the sources found, I'd think this article should be about the slogan and it's marketing successes (being used by other cities, etc.) and only briefly mention the organization. Hobit (talk) 12:31, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I looked at the the first two reliable sources that come up in a general google search for "keep portland weird". They're both reliable and nontrivial, but they are about whether or not Portland is weird, as opposed to the slogan.  So, there's a notable article to be written, and it's at the correct name maybe, but it may be about the slogan, but also more about Portland's weirdness, or wanting to think it's weirder than normal. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:34, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * And I can't edit it to ad sources. That's annoying. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I have requested unprotection. I'd like to see your intended edits.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:55, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
 * And Ron promptly unprotected it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the unprotection. I made a slap dash edit based on one of the two refs I mentioned earlier.  If someone else also improves the article, drop a note on my talk page and I'll add another improvement.  I don't want to do this alone, but I'll go one for one. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:25, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep In addition the refs added by others, I've added more from national and local publications, such as travel guides from Frommer's. This is a very public and notable part of Portland culture, and clearly meets the WP:GNG. Steven Walling &bull; talk   05:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Existing sources match my personal experience with the topic, viewing of bumper stickers, etc. The Portland/Vancouver metro area is probably the fifth most significant on the U.S. West Coast, and has more population and cultural influence than many smaller nations.  This is not an article about a county fair hog-raising contest; these sources are major regional newspapers. When the GNG is met with entirely different RSes, LOCAL is inapplicable. Jclemens (talk) 15:47, 21 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The Portland/Vancouver metro area is surely as you say, but the topic here is "a small group of small businesses in Portland" whose purpose is "to encourage consumers to spend their money locally". This is called boosterism, and a county fair is a good example.  Every boosting campaign will claim that it is noteworthy, even unto Wikipedia, but one such campaign gains little merit from disparaging other such campaigns. Ornithikos (talk) 22:23, 22 August 2011 (UTC)


 *  keep There now does seem to be material from outside the area.   DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. While I'm against silly phrases-as-boosterism being on Wikipedia, this is a topic that is common outside of the marketing/neologism term. It's even the city's "unofficial motto" according to a handful of sources that were trivial to find. It's a kneejerk reaction to hide behind "it's local" or "I haven't heard of it". tedder (talk) 23:45, 22 August 2011 (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.