Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nelson H. Barbour


 * 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. Eddie891 Talk Work 15:47, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Nelson H. Barbour

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This author doesn't seem notable. All the references in the article are primary except for a basic obituary listing. I couldn't find anything even slightly resembling multiple in-depth reliable sources about him either. While it looks like he's written two books, there's no evidence either one is notable at all. Let alone enough for him to notable for writing them. So, this article fails both WP:GNG and WP:NBIO. Adamant1 (talk) 13:09, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. - hako9 (talk) 21:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. - hako9 (talk) 21:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. - hako9 (talk) 21:28, 1 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep -Couldn't disagree more. Barbour has long been recognized as very influential in the field of religious studies, especially in the history of the Adventist movement and the Bible Students (one group of which became the Jehovah's Witnesses). Just some works that highlight this: Dr. George Chryssides (Jehovah's Witnesses:Continuity and Change 2016 Ashgate Publishing); Dr. Zoe Knox (Jehovah's Witnesses and the Secular World 2018 Palgrave Macmillan); and Dr. M. James Penton (Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses 1985, 3rd Edition 2015 University of Toronto Press). And those are only the books I literally have on my desk at this moment, all by respected scholars in the fields of religious studies and history. There are more. While the article certainly needs work, and I will dedicate what time I have atm to improving it, he is noteworthy enough to have an article. Definitely passes WP:GNG and WP:NBIO.Vyselink (talk) 00:16, 3 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep - As indicated by Vyselink, subject is notable in the scope of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Bible Student movement, and (to a lesser degree) Adventism generally. The Find sources template readily indicates that there are sources both by and about Barbour.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 07:42, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep - plenty of sources are available (such as ) which are significant. – SD0001  (talk) 21:37, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep as has reliable sources coverage as identified in this discussion that show a pass of WP:GNG so that deletion is unnecessary imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:28, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment My guess is that all the sources provided in the first vote are just passing mentions. Since they are about Jehovah's Witnesses and the only connection he seems to have to them is that he published a magazine that later became the Watcher Tower. So, it's extremely unlikely they involve in-depth coverage of him, because zero to do with the Jehovah's Witnesses church outside of that. None of the sources are specifically about him either. There isn't anything in-depth on him anywhere else that I could find either. Despite the second voter self righteously harping on me about using the Find sources feature. Which I did and only came up with trivial crap. Him writing stuff doesn't mean jack squat to this despite the completely false claim that it does and there are no sources "about him" anywhere. Nor does the role he played in the church Seventh-day Adventist church matter. Likely it was squat, because the sources being provided aren't from or about the Seventh-day Adventists. Yet that's supposedly where his claim to fame comes from. I never said he wasn't mentioned anywhere anyway, that's not the standard for notability though. Multiple reliable in-depth reliable sources about him is and I don't see them existing anywhere. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:02, 7 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I guess I'm the 'second voter' (with my whole two sentences supposedly constituting 'self-righteous harping' 🤦‍♂️), but neither I nor anyone else mentioned Seventh-day Adventists, which is a more specific topic than Adventism generally. No one claimed Barbour was significant to the SDAs in particular.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 08:07, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I would call mentioning the find sources template as if I didn't use it when I did the AfD a little self-righteous. Anyone with a basic understanding of the AfD process knows it's not just about "sources." Otherwise, we could all use Twitter as one and call it a day. As far as Barbour being significant to the SDAs, his connection to them is mostly what the article is about, it's the first thing mentioned in the introduction, and the article is part of a series on Adventism. Last time I checked JWs aren't an Adventist domination. If he's not significant to SDAs in any way though as your claiming, great. All the more reason to delete the article. Since it's apparently mostly making false claims by saying he is important to SDAs and giving his connection to them undue (or really any) weight. I think TNT would apply in that case. --Adamant1 (talk) 09:37, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Please back away from the dead horse. It seems that the editor is (still) unaware that Adventist does not mean the same thing as Seventh-day Adventist (a significant subsection). Neither anyone at this AfD nor the article about Barbour claims he was a Seventh-day Adventist. The Adventist origins of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Bible Student movement, including Russell's association with Barbour, George Storrs and others, are well established.-- Jeffro 77 (talk) 10:42, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:BASIC:, , . AleatoryPonderings (talk) 03:29, 7 September 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.