Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/McLurg's Law


 * 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. We have 4 delete/1 merge/1 keep/1 comment which has arguments for the retention, so this is in discretion area. I am calling this a delete decision, although evidence is sufficient to show that it is not a neologism invented here on Wikipedia, there is no evidence that this law or phrase has any widespread or popular use. As such, I cannot see that sufficient evidence for the term's notability has been provided. Sjakkalle (Check!)  12:39, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

McLurg's Law
The second of three phrase nominations I'm doing today. This is a 'law' referring to the bias of the UK media towards London, which gets 26 Ghits. There is an article to be made about media bias in the United Kingdom; this isn't it. Nydas 09:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. While I agree that a page on media bias regarding main centres (and not just in the UK) is a good idea, this article seems to be either a neologism or a term in extremely limited use and as such it doesn't really belong here. Grutness...wha?  10:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Sure looks like a troll to me, but I have no familiarity with Journalism. Google shows only mirrored wiki content.  /Blaxthos 12:03, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Half those hits are just Wiki mirrors. -Patstuart 12:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Merge with news values. I've heard the "law" mentioned here in Australia in a journalism context, though not as "McLurg's Law", and with different proportions to those mentioned. "McLurg" might just be a journalism student who started the article. Or perhaps it was an editor who decided to convince some new underlings that he was particularly insightful. The concept may well deserve an article, but the name doesn't seem to be justified in recording. matturn 13:04, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It's unlikely that the name of the law has anything at all to do with Wikipedia editors, given that the documents mentioning the law, cited in the references section of the article, pre-date the very existence of Wikipedia by several years. Uncle G 15:31, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
 * True, the name does seem to appear in an independent article. On the other hand, there's not anything to indicate that the article cited is actually from 1994, other than the fact that the author put that in the references section. Dekimasu 10:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * ... and the other citations of that same article in various places on the World Wide Web that give the date as 1994, such as this. Whilst the article itself isn't dated, one can deduce that it must logically pre-date its addition to the catalogue in 1998 on the University's web site, which is still several years before the existence of Wikipedia. Uncle G 15:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep with modifications if necessary. At least for a while. This is a touchy area, particularly for indexing. At least three index labels seem to apply to the entire area with plenty of conflict between "trade" and "academic" applications.
 * News Values From a journalist or editors prospective - sifting through potential news stories and rejecting most based on low news value. Selecting only stories that offer high “news values” improves circulation/audience. Since the profit to the media comes from monetizing that circulation/audience base there is a strong motivation to select content that maximizes News Value.
 * Gatekeeping - perhaps a broader, more academic topic.
 * Journalism – Objectivity This an index entry applied to the main academic article used to create http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_value. Again, this may be broader in the “objectivity” sense but more narrow or more “professional/trade” in the “journalism” sense.
 * To further complicate maters most of the content on the News Values page is from cognitive psychology/perception/mind-brain research, etc. The "street smart" application of which is called, in the news trade, "news value."Rick 16:24, 11 October 2006 (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.