Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Simon Fraser University 1997 harassment controversy (Xth 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 keep. --Bongwarrior (talk) 03:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Simon Fraser University 1997 harassment controversy
DRVs and AfDs for this article: DRV1 Articles for deletion/Marsden-Donnelly harassment case DRV2 Articles for deletion/Simon Fraser University 1997 harassment controversy
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Seeing as the parent article got deleted per Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff (massive BLP concerns), I've got major concerns about this article. What makes it worse is that there are no sources younger than ten years, which, in respect to BLPs, I feel violates WP:NOT. Will (talk) 12:44, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, speedy close Bad faith nomination per the arguments and overwhelming consensus to keep this at the last AfD. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 13:55, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The last AfD was eleven months ago. A lot can happen in that time - NOT#NEWS was introduced five months after the first AfD in response to the badlydrawnjeff case. Will (talk) 14:25, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Nothing has changed other than the BLP mafia has gotten ever more brazen in their attempts to censor Wikipedia. WP:BLP and WP:NOT clearly ask for articles based on secondary sources covering the event rather than the biographies of the involved parties. The case reappears in Canadian media up until today. All your feeble arguments to delete this article have been debunked 11 months ago. This is disruption, pure and simple. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 14:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Remain civil. If it continues until today, then why can't I see any sources from this century? Add some information on its continued impact with sources ranging from 1997 to 2007, then I'll withdraw this AfD. Will (talk) 14:41, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Because there is absolutely no requirement to. I have no problems locating contemporary sources, but I don't see why they should be added to the article or why the absence of such gives you license to ignore the prior keep consensus. I still see nothing that would make consider this a good faith nomination. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 15:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep This article has been speedy deleted, overturned at deletion review, kept at AFD, speedy deleted, overturned at deletion review with a rewrite and unanimously kept at AFD. The nominator appears ignorant of the rewrite, given the false claim as to what the parent article is. The rewrite changed the parent article to History of Simon Fraser University, which is the reason that this incident is encyclopedically notable, as amply demonstrated in all the prior discussions.  Nor does this article have any BLP problems since the rewrite.  Nor is it a biography, it is an article about a specific incident that happened at a specific point in time.  I really doubt that the nominator even bothered to glance at the article before nominating it for deletion - the nomination certainly evidences that he/she did not.  GRBerry 14:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The history article isn't linked from any page in mainspace, and doesn't mention this case at all. Will (talk) 14:30, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Both of these are correct and surprising. I have linked the history od SFU to the university article. I am however still unclear about he role of the history article in all this. --Bduke (talk) 07:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The new parent article is in fact Simon Fraser University, not History of Simon Fraser University, which looks like an abandoned attempt to branch out the history section from the SFU article. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 13:32, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Catchpole (talk) 14:40, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep/Comment GRBerry seems, as usual, to have it quite right. I would observe, largely unrelatedly but for the sake of clarity, that Rachel Marsden was not, to be sure, deleted pursuant to any specific ArbCom action (the ArbCom, after all, do not make policy or take editorial decisions, and I cannot imagine that the ArbCom would ever mandate the deletion of any specific article or even set forth an interpretation of policy that would arrogate absolutely the community's right to determine the policy-guided disposition of articles), but, instead, consistent with (an interpretation of) WP:BLP; the link to the Bdj RfAr in the deletion summary means only to suggest that undeletion in the absence of a consensus for the restoration of Rachel Marsden as, for instance, a redirect to the instant page, is to be disfavored.  Requests for arbitration/Rachel Marsden is, one supposes, a bit more on point, but there is, of course, nothing there that should concern us with respect to the present version of the instant article, nor, for that matter, to our recreating Rachel Marsden as a redirect to the underlying page, something that I might propose at DRV. Joe 05:21, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. I see no reason to delete this article. It outlines an incident that clearly had a real influence on the University. I would not however be opposed to an appropriate merge of the content to the University article or the History of SFU article, but not if this was an excuse to delete most of the content. --Bduke (talk) 07:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Multiple participants in the last AfD had been participating in the Wikipedia talk:Notability (news) discussion at around that time and took its principles into account (this is a classic example of written policy lagging behind de facto policy). To the nominator: If you can't find in-depth clearly non-news sources on the topic, you missed the third item in the External Links section. If you don't know that this was still being heavily discussed in at least one reliable source halfway across the country two and a half years after the story broke, you didn't read the second DRV or AfD. If you can't find reliable sources referring to this incident in 2007, you didn't do a Google News search for Rachel Marsden, heck you didn't do a Google search for Rachel Marsden. If you don't know that a 2004 book by a criminology professor was partially inspired by the event, you didn't read the article Talk page.  Oh, and the event is on Google Scholar too, as noted in the second DRV. I recommend withdrawal of a very poorly researched nomination. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 10:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Consensus can change, but notability can only increase. –Pomte 11:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Article provides noteworthy information about Canadian university system. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:41, 5 January 2008 (UTC).
 * *Delete Notability certainly can decrease over time and this entry proves it. 209.217.75.171 (talk) 13:49, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Struck post of self-declared banned user: Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 17:50, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per Kla’quot, the Google scholar results are particularly convincing. RFerreira (talk) 06:21, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete or include every other university sexual harassment scandal. 64.230.106.232 (talk) 16:44, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:SOFIXIT. We're not going to delete this article simply because we don't have articles relating to every similar topic. John254 17:03, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Above is the third edit of . Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 17:42, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep, as the references cited in Simon_Fraser_University_1997_harassment_controversy provide evidence of sufficient coverage of this topic in third-party reliable sources as to establish a presumption of its notability per the general notability guideline. John254 17:03, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Merge to Simon Fraser University.  What is the "Simon Fraser harassment controversy?"  This article says that the harassment controversy is that a student filed a claim of harassment, the coach was fired, got a new lawyer, and was reinstated.  The fact that the University appointed an independent body to review its harassment procedures, that 11 other cases were overturned, and that the President resigned, are presented as mere Aftermath.  I beg to differ; the controversy is that the University found its procedures for dealing with sexual harassment were woefully flawed and reinstated 11 former defendants.  The initiating case is important, but is not the crux of the matter.  Ordinarily, the decision of how to frame an article is a matter of editorial discretion, with differing views discussed until a consenus forms.  Here, the matter becomes one of BLP concerns, since this article is being used as a COATRACK to attack Rachel Marsden.  Merge to Simon Fraser University and refocus on the larger issue, not the initiating case. Thatcher 18:04, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * If the article focuses excessively on Rachel Marsden, the solution would be to edit it to place the events in context, not to merge the content to Simon Fraser University, where it won't easily fit. Sometimes WP:BLP problems need to be resolved editorially -- deletion isn't an acceptable cure for everything that ails Wikipedia articles. John254 18:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Article reference 14 "Simon Fraser cites mismanagement, reopens harassment cases", Canadian Press Newswire, October 25, 1997" is quite good and strikes the right balance, mentioning Marsden but focusing on the fact that the Sexual Harassment director improperly picked the hearing board members and her choices were approved by the Univ President, who later resigned. Why not merge; as this was a university-wide event, and we have an article on the university that is not excessively long, what is the reason to maintain it as a fork?  (AFAIK, the reason it was started as a fork is to hold content that was removed from Rachel Marsden after arbitration.) Thatcher 18:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It was started in February 2006, some months before the arbitration case opened. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 18:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right. Unfortunately the editor who started it was cautioned in the RM arbitration case, so my opinion that this is a Coatrack does not change. Thatcher 18:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, if we merge too much of this content to Simon Fraser University, it might constitute undue weight with respect to our coverage of the university -- we don't want to make it appear as though a significant portion of the students at this institution are being harassed. John254 18:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Excuse me? Where the information is would seem to me to be irrelevant.  If having two paragraphs on this incident is undue weight in the SFU article, then surely it gives it even more weight to place it in a separate article.  And you seem to miss the point of the article--it is not that large numbers of students were harassed, it is that eleven harassment cases were overturned because the university used shoddy procedures to investigate and adjudicate them.  Having a separate article seems to be Coatrack Fork (not quite the same as a POV fork, but similarly problematic.) Thatcher 18:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not undue weight to have an article dedicated to this specific controversy, any more than our article devoted to cats gives felines undue weight in the world of mammals. However, just as an extensive discussion of cats in the mammal article might constitute undue weight, an extensive discussion of this incident in the article concerning the university at which it occurred would likewise be problematic from an NPOV perspective. John254 19:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You have a point but there is also some tension between your argument and the idea that we don't do unnecessary forks. Keeping separate or merging is not a terribly great distinction. Thatcher 21:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. Like I mentioned in the talk page of Rachel Marsden before it got deleted, I don't know the entire history of all this repeated deletion-recreation-stubification-rewrite-deletion cycle of Rachel Marsden but she is notable and deserves an article. If there are BLP issues with this article, find a version in history that doesn't have BLP issues and revert to that version and if necessary use oversight. Please do the same with Rachel Marsden rather than leaving it salted. She is far beyond even borderline notable and deserves an article. Perhaps this article could be merged with a recreated Rachel Marsden article but let's cross that bridge when we get to it. Pocopocopocopoco (talk) 02:46, 8 January 2008 (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.