Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Miss Grays Harbor


 * 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. JForget 01:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Miss Grays Harbor

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Prod-ed this a few days ago, author did not remove prod but is new to Wikipedia and it is clear he'd like to contest the prod. He has added some references since that time and I'm assuming will continue to do so but I'm still not sure that it meets notability criteria. Rather than decide on my own I decided to bring it here for community debate. See also comments on the article's talk page, and his assertions here that he is using the page as advertising (that notwithstanding though, if the subject is deemed notable it should stand, right?). PageantUpdater talk • contribs  23:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Extra note by nominator: please see author's comments on my talk page re this afd. Cheers. PageantUpdater talk • contribs  00:21, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete No possible justification for extending the notability of these contests as far as this.    DGG ( talk ) 00:02, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep Historical documents pertaining to article are still being populated, yet references are abundant despite the Google sources cited herein. Wikipedia style methods and references to be adjusted according to Wikipedia standards. How do I go about finding out which changes need to be adjusted to be in accordance to Wikipedia standards? AlistairBooya (talk) 02:16, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment The issue is that this is likely a subject that no matter how much work you do on it there is no way to make it meet the notability criteria. Its been a while since I was involved in this sort of thing but from what I've done in the past I know you need evidence of significant news coverage, preferably more than just local coverage.  Nothing I've seen so far shows that this local has reached that threshold.  I accept that I might be wrong in that opinion (and hope for your sake that I am considering the amount of work you've put in) hence I brought it here to be discussed by the community.  Not everything justifies a Wikipedia article no matter how much you may want it to, and the discussion here will give certainty to the matter.  It sucks, I know.  I also know that the Miss America's Outstanding Teen state (not local) articles were considered non-notable after I'd gone through and created an article for each state pageant. Eventually all the articles were merged into a single one. It sucked, but these things happen.  Its just Wikipedia. PageantUpdater  talk • contribs  05:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment I can see how this could become an issue if every local pageant were to put their program up for review. Not all of them would have sufficient coverage. I can only hope that more users will comment to Keep this at least for the time being so that the AfD gets removed, if not just for another month to see what the response may be and to continue populating. I hope to continue populating the regional pageant information as to garner more interest for these scholarship programs. Might as well keep updating for another 5 days.AlistairBooya (talk) 05:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep The talk page declares that Miss Grays Harbor "pulls up 23 results in a Google news archive search going back to the 1940s," yet ignores the fact that this same contest pulls up 11,100 hits at www.google.com itself. In the newspaper of record for this contest in Grays Harbor, Wash. there are 193 articles going back for the past decade on this contest alone. I would suspect hundreds more going back since 1949 that have not been digitized. Obviously Google is not connected to the deep archive of the daily newspaper of record, The Daily World (www.thedailyworld.com). Could this item use some editing? Yes. Is it worth deleting? No. Reportersteven (talk) 09:50, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Remove "wiki" "facebook" "twitter" "myspace" and "hydroplane" from your google search and you'll be left with about 150 results. Read through those and you'll see that almost all are not the sort of thing that counts as significant coverage in reliable sources.  Many are from other Miss Washington local pageants or the Miss Washington website itself, others are mirror sites.  I think very few of them are suitable for establishing notability.  I think it pertinent to mention as well that your comments on this afd are your first edits on Wikipedia since July 2009 and you are obviously an acquaintance of the author's on twitter (quote "@AlistairBooyah Put the same info on the official Web site, which will serve as your officiasl source, and then use citations based on Web ").  I don't have a vendetta against your or your organization as it might appear, I just think that Wikipedia's notability should be robustly defended. PageantUpdater  talk • contribs  00:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Wow, PageantUpdater, your stalkerish nature is both creepy and disturbing to think you would track me down and find how I was connected to AlistairBooya. Well, for the record since you "outed me," he is one of 120 people I follow on Twitter. Since you tracked down my Twitter account, you now know I'm a reporter (my user name kind of gave that away, huh?), you know my real name, and, thus, am a pretty unbiased guy by my very nature. I am in no way affiliated with his organization nor is he my best bud. I saw a Tweet he gave out, offered him a bit of advice and then decided to weigh your arguments against his and chime in. I haven't been using wikipedia lately because I use the Internet features on my cell phone a lot and am not happy with the mobile version of Wikipedia. Now let's get to the root of this posting: You crossed a very creepy line, deciding to get very personal in your posting when you should have just stuck to the issues. Instead of relying on the information you had, you decided to go the extra mile and find out personal information about me. I suggest you read Wikipedia's Privacy policy very carefully because you just violated it. I will be contacting Wikipedia and hope this serves as a lesson for you. Reportersteven (talk) 08:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * For the record, in googling "Miss Grays Harbor" as you suggested I found Alistair Booya's twitter. In reading it, I saw your post.  No stalking whatsoever.  I think those tweets are pertinent to the issue.  I cannot wait for more independent Wikipedian's to hit this.  I'm happy to be called wrong, I just think we need independent comment.  PageantUpdater  talk • contribs  00:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I think we all believe in the sanctity of Wikipedia staying fact based and topical. I'm in journalism, and I can only assume Reportersteven is as well. Nothing in this entry is opinion based, and if percieved as such I urge the Wikipedia community to conform it to standards. Obviously I am fairly bias in this dispute, but I do believe that I have provided far more information than many entries on the site, and see no reason it should not be included. AlistairBooya (talk) 04:12, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

In regards to the recent addition regarding Vote Counting on this AfD. I fully agree with this notice. I stand behind this addition to Wikipedia for historical and social impact. I, nor anyone involved, wishes to make this a popularity contest. In regards to the Consensus, I am still not completely aware of how this AfD is decided. I am new to Wikipedia and this is my first large post creation. The facts are accurate, but does my short history and requests in various mediums for advice on the subject make my opinion less respected? AlistairBooya (talk) 06:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Disclaimer I was asked by the nominator to have a look at this discussion. PhilKnight (talk) 00:55, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete Based on the google results, I can see plenty of mentions, but not enough for significant coverage. PhilKnight (talk) 00:55, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

From the looks of this discussion nothing has been accomplished. Both PageantUpdater and I are unable to be counted as we both have personal reasons as to why it should or should not be included. Reportersteven and PhilKnight are attached to the discussion in one way or another whether asked specifically or influenced via another site asking for advice, and  DGG is clearly anti-pageant despite the facts. I do not mean to beat a dead horse, but no reasonable complaint has been made towards this articles deletion beyond deeply concise Google searches aimed toward specific news organizations and meant to exclude results. Once again I request an official judgement from a Wikipedia moderator with ample reasoning as to why it should not belong, including the amount of resources and specific organizations needing to be cited from, or this AfD should be removed for invalid placement. AlistairBooya (talk) 04:55, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, BOTH are opinions count, you show once again that you have no understanding of Wikipedia and that is why I appealed to a couple of Wikipedians I was last in contact with more than a year ago to comment on this case. Their opinions should not be counted as prejudiced in any way, you can see for yourself that I clearly said that I was happy to be found wrong.  DGG is not anti-pageant he is simply following Wikipedia's notability rules, and I am hoping that as this discussion comes to a close in a few days other independent Wikipedian's will also comment.  You simply continue to show a lack of understanding for Wikipedia's inclusion/notability policies and I am sick of trying to explain them to you.  I'm just darn frustrated!   PageantUpdater  talk • contribs  05:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I thoroughly appreciate your interest in maintaining the standards as set by Wikipedia, and have not contested that I am not aware of the  inner workings of Wikipedia. All I hope for in this review process is  justifiable evidence as to why this entry is invalid despite numerous  references cited. All of this not to be influenced by personal opinion  of area affected, importance of such events, nor personal history. I  have no personal opinion toward you nor am I discounting your  statements. I merely feel as if the evidence is provided and the  citations have been made albeit without finalized formatting.AlistairBooya (talk) 06:34, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete No significant coverage in media. Jarkeld (talk) 06:09, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete nothing in gnews . LibStar (talk) 06:30, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * This topic has previously been discussed. Please view Google News under official title. AlistairBooya (talk) 06:37, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * my argument still stands. that gnews search does not look like indepth coverage to me. LibStar (talk) 06:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * In regards to an argument I received outside of this venue, Miss Grays Harbor is a blanket term for each of these individual contestants, all of which have their own Google Search entries. In the same vein as the argument put forward PageantUpdater regarding his entries of the Miss America's Outstanding Teen entries being consolidated into one page, so be it this information. At this moment there are only a handful of Miss Grays Harbor contestants worthy of their own Wikipedia entry, but as a whole they provide far more entries than alleged. Just something to think about as we await an official verdict. AlistairBooya (talk) 08:02, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete No evidence for notability. I have looked at the Google news search linked above. It consists mostly of very brief mentions, run-of-the-mill coverage in local news coverage, etc. For example, we have items about other contests in which it is mentioned that Miss Grays Harbor was a runner up, and that is all. Many of the 23 hits are mirrors of one another: thus we have 5 copies of one article, complete with the misprint "daugh ter" in all 5. Exactly similar remarks apply to the citations given in the article. Among the arguments for "keep" above we have "I hope to continue populating the regional pageant information as to garner more interest for these scholarship programs": this is an announcement that the purpose is to use Wikipedia for promotion, not an explanation of why the article meets Wikipedia's notability criteria. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:43, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Truly sorry, because I hate to remove something that so much work has been put into, but it looks like this is a very minor contest. A side note, the articles for the contestants that aren't red links are mostly mislinked, with humorous effect:
 * Surely Kristin Nelson, 1992, didn't win the award at the age of 47, and being a mother of 4 ... and yet she's the most likely one.
 * Megan Parker, 1988, seems to be a fictional character.
 * However Connie Murphy, 1980, probably... wins the tiara... among those who pretty clearly didn't win the tiara... First, he's a man. Or rather, was a man. Because, second, in 1980, he was dead for 35 years. --GRuban (talk) 14:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * LOL, GRuban! I wondered about those links but didn't follow them - I can see I missed a good laugh! --MelanieN (talk) 15:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I hadn't realized they were linked out to persons other than themselves. That's almost even amusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AlistairBooya (talk • contribs) 19:53, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete No significant coverage in reliable sources as required to demonstrate notability. ukexpat (talk) 15:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete This local pageant doesn't even come close to being notable enough for Wikipedia. Here's a different approach: instead of arguing about obscure Google archives, take a look at what articles actualy exist on Wikipedia. I could find NO articles about any pageant below the state level. None. There is no article for Miss Chicago, or Miss San Francisco, or Miss Los Angeles, or Miss Miami - basically nothing below the state level qualifies as notable by Wikipedia standards. That should make it crystal clear that this small local pageant does not belong here, despite all the author's hard work. Sorry. --MelanieN (talk) 15:55, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. I was asked by the nominator to participate in this debate.  I am impressed with the amount of work put into the article.  It's quality just five days after creation is genuinely impressive and the main contributor, AlistairBooya deserves significant kudos for his/her efforts.  Unfortunately, I have to support the article's deletion.  As far as I can tell, there is no consensus on specific guidelines on notability of beauty contests, so we have to apply the general notability guidelines of WP:NOTABILITY.  In the summary there we read that a topic is notable if it "has been noticed by the world at large".  To do demonstrate that this is the case, such a topic needs to have "received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject."  In researching this nomination, I have not been able to find evidence of "significant coverage".  The event is mentioned only a few times in online news searchs and, even then, often only in passing (i.e. mentioned in an article that is substantially about something else).  The notability guideline says that it is the topic and not the article's content that determines notability.  Often, in debating deletion, we are dealing with an article that is poorly written, underdeveloped or unreferenced and the temptation is to lean towards delete because of the lack of development in the article.  This is a rare case of the author's creator putting in a lot of good work, which makes arguing deletion rather painful.  Accordingly, I have given this one extra thought, but in the end, we have to abide by consensus policy and, if I apply the policy ojectively, I cannot but support the nomination.  Wikipeterproject (talk) 21:21, 17 February 2010 (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.