Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Legends of Alcatraz (2nd nomination)


 * 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 delete. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:57, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Legends of Alcatraz
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The article is WP:SENSATIONAL WP:FRINGE content: there are multiple citations of the Weekly World News (!!), and the bibliography is full of such academic tomes as "Ghost Hunting: How to Investigate the Paranormal", "Hell House: And Other True Hauntings from Around the World", etc.; a sentence in the lead about Native American legends is sourced to something titled "Famous Ghosts and Haunted Places". The reality-based content is limited, pushed to the margins, and intentionally framed to minimize its impact.

At a minimum, the current article content calls for WP:TNT. Moreover, I think that it is not possible to write a proper encyclopedic article on this topic. Superficially, there is a lot of sourcing, but the book references are pretty much all unusable trash. Omitting WWN, the newspaper references are soft-news puff pieces, many of them published in October (i.e., in the lead-up to Halloween), or book reviews of the kind of trashy books being used as sourcing. Per WP:SENSATIONAL and WP:FRINGE, these sources should all be excluded from any measure of notability in the encyclopedic sense. And at the end that leaves nothing. Probably the content could be trimmed down to one paragraph, to be included in the article Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, and redirected there. JBL (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. JBL (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions. JBL (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mythology-related deletion discussions. JBL (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. JBL (talk) 15:03, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong delete - No evidence that there is an actual subject matter here; just little bits of poorly-sourced crap which relate to Alcatraz but cannot be said to constitute an actual topic. This doesn't even fall under the category of, "We know it's nonsense, but it's notable nonsense." The plural of anecdote, as they say, is not data; the fact that if you scour the bottom of the intellectual bucket roughly enough, bits of crud will rise to the surface, does not mean that the bits of crud piled together will make an actual topic. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  15:19, 20 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom and . Silly-season fluff is not a solid foundation for an encyclopedia article. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 15:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. I fully agree that Alcatraz haunting legends are notable. But there are not enough WP:FRIND independent sources to justify a stand alone article. Once you strip out all the sources (e.g. paranormal themed books) pushing the WP:FRINGE belief that ghosts exist, can be detected by psychics and ghost hunter gadgets, and the sensational "silly season" stuff, plus all the WP:OR "padding" about gruesome deaths, insanity, mistreatment of prisoners, etc. (and Mark Twain's quote that he found the island gloomy and cold falls into this category) -- I doubt if there are enough WP:FRIND independent reliable sources with which to construct an encyclopedic article. The most that could be confirmed to be notable by reliable independent sources is that some people believe Alcatraz is haunted. And that could be accomplished by a line or two at the main Alcatraz article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:37, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - Per nom. The article is a mess of "information" sourced to WP:FRINGE publications, tourist-trap style travel guides, tabloids (as noted by the nom, the Weekly World News is cited multiple times as if it were a reliable source), and WP:SYNTH.  The few respectable looking sources are either being used to support general information on the prison that has nothing to do with the so-called "legends", or being wildly misconstrued.  For example, several of the actual legitimate sources may speak of the prison feeling "haunted" or "sinister" in a metaphorical sense, but it is clear from the context of the actual source that that they are not talking about literal ghosts, which this article intentionally misinterprets to support these "legend" claims.  In some cases, the cited sources appear to be outright lies, as the source they are using does not even mention the information that the article claims it does.  While the topic of legends regarding the iconic location might actually be a legitimate topic that could be discussed somewhere, perhaps as part of the main Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary page, this particular article should not be kept, merged, or preserved in any way, as it fails the most basic tests of WP:VERIFIABILITY in its content.  Rorshacma (talk) 01:17, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete A pleasure to support Orange Mike, a craftsman of the delete discussion. - Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 11:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:FRINGE. I concur, however, with JBL that a couple of paragraphs should be redirected and included in the main article's section dealing with this stuff.---Darius (talk) 20:56, 23 June 2020 (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.