Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Social Policy Association


 * 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. (non-admin closure) Hasan (talk) 07:59, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Social Policy Association

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Does not meet WP:NORG. Sourced entirely to its own website. Searching doesn't turn up any in-depth independent coverage. Almost worthy of a CSD as a G11 or webhost violation if it hadn't been around over ten years. MB 20:53, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. MB 20:53, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * There is quite a lot of coverage of its members, officers and awards. Rathfelder (talk) 21:19, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 21:34, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I disagree with the proposal to delete the article "Social Policy Association". This page refers to the principles, activities and governance structure of an established learned society based in the United Kingdom. Thus, it is understandable that most references would be sourced back to the documentaion and web pages of the association where important historical information is archived. The original article about SPA was set up more than a decade ago and the original information was rather dated, hence the recent substantial update. This update was undertaken by myself, as an authorized member of the SPA's executive committee. The article follows an almost identical format to the one used by other sister learned societies in the UK like, for example: Political_Studies_Association. I, therefore, fail to understand why the particular entry for SPA was recommended for deletion. Nevertheless, the recent update is only a start and the aim to is to enrich the current SPA article with more information and references in the forseeable future.Theo-papadopoulos (talk) 08:21, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. I have added a lot of material to this and given the whole thing a thorough copyedit. There is source material enough here (especially the Exley, Glennerster and Smith articles) to justify its inclusion IMO and I imagine a more thorough search would turn up more. This is a long-established professional association and learned society in the UK, publishes three major journals and has been headed by some very notable people (some of whom it has also given its awards to). I have to say, however, that I can totally see why a non-specialist editor would think this was a pile of puffery and not worth keeping. Theo-papadopoulos: these edits are highly problematic. Firstly, you appear to have copied and pasted a large amount of material from the SPA's website; this is a flagrant breach of our policies on copyright violation. Indeed, someone needs to revdel some of these edits (I don't know what to do with this myself -- is there a place you go to report this?) Aside from that, we don't put citations in headings, we put them inline; we don't use li or p tags, we use wikimarkup (so a bullet point is represented by an asterisk, a new line is represented by a double page break), see Help:Wikitext; putting bare URLs in a reference is discouraged, see Bare URLs; we use inline external links extremely rarely (see WP:ELPOINTS, no. 2). Whilst I appreciate your enthusiasm here, you really need to read up on these guidelines – especially our policies on copyright. —Noswall59 (talk) 10:27, 15 June 2021 (UTC).
 * For the record, the text I used in this update was approved by the SPA's executive committee of which I am a member. For accuracy and economy purposes we used text available in the SPA's website, also approved by the SPA's executive committee (text for which SPA holds the copyright). In any case, any potential violation of the Wikipedia copyright policy was unintentional and thank you for editing this text. Thank you also, for adding the extra material some of which we were going to add in the future, as I mentioned in my previous comment Theo-papadopoulos (talk) 11:02, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for clarifying your position, however unless the text is explicitly licensed in a way which is compatible with Wikipedia's own licensing (that is the "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA) and, except where otherwise noted, the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL)"), you cannot paste it here. I know it might seem strange as you work for the organisation but copyright is one of the few rules we really are strict about here. Also, if you work for the SPA, I should point you towards our conflict of interest policies, which are summarised in a simplified form here. —Noswall59 (talk) 11:22, 15 June 2021 (UTC).
 * I understand your point. I think this is resolved now after the editing. For the record, I do not work for SPA. I am an elected member of its executive committee (volunteer) and my term ends in July 2021. I am also a contributor to the Wikipedia project in two languages. Thanks again Theo-papadopoulos (talk) 11:37, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Significant professional association. Easily enough sourcing to meet WP:GNG. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:08, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Quite enough independent material.  Rathfelder (talk) 21:47, 16 June 2021 (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.