Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sons Aumen Israel


 * 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.  MBisanz  talk 21:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Sons Aumen Israel

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This article has had a number of months to find reliable sources, as noted by the tags, going as far back as October 2008. A quick Google search has revealed none. The single source that it does rely on are two pages in an encyclopedia on Mormonism. In addition, the article is largely self-serving, reading more like promotional material, than a serious entry in an encyclopedia. Drumpler (talk) 16:29, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions.   —Drumpler (talk) 16:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions.   —Drumpler (talk) 16:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

There are also a number of redirects that lead here which might be notable for deletion. See. Drumpler (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Odd. Normally for a topic meriting inclusion in a paper encyclopedia it is also trivial to demonstrate that it merits inclusion here.  I haven't been able to do that using Google tools (web, news, scholar, book).  All I found was a website by a former member that has been previously discussed on the talk page.  That site says that a former spelling of the group's name was "Sons Ahmen Israel.  I also checked that spelling and came up dry.  Between the article history, the date of the source, and the former member's website, I believe that the group was largest in the 80s and 90s and is probably smaller today.  This would hardly be an unusual membership curve for a splinter group.  But the timing of that curve does make it hard to evaluate the true availability of sources via a google search, so I really don't know what to do.  GRBerry 17:34, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I researched their other name, Order of Nazorean Essenes, according to their website linked in the article, and also nothing worth note. The article history has demonstrated that this article has existed since 2006 and nothing of note has really been added. Would it be correct to presume that perhaps it isn't notable? Drumpler (talk) 17:47, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete -- This appears to be an obscure heretical sect. It does not sound notable to me.  Do we have any idea what the membership is/was?  There is none on their website.  Peterkingiron (talk) 19:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * On the article talk page, one of the editors said that their understanding was that only groups with a membership in excess of 1,000 were included in the print encyclopedia. It would be useful if someone found the print encyclopedia source and looked at it, both for this question and for general assessment.  The former member's website reveals that in 1999 the group leader claimed "We have a little over a thousand people involved with us, but only a tiny handful are now located in Arizona."Question 1.7 GRBerry 20:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have access to the print encyclopedia (see my comments below), and I see no indication that the 1000-member limit is a requirement for inclusion. Not even close—I see many sects listed that say things like, "55 members, 6 ministers"; "less than 100 members"; "membership unreported, but 100 addresses on mailing list", etc. If anyone else is wondering about anything else in the source, I could hopefully respond to inquiries about it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I found a statement of inclusionary criteria in the introduction to Melton's encyclopedia. They are:
 * the group seeks the chief religious loyalty of its members;
 * the group promotes its particular view; and
 * the group satisfies one of the following conditions of size: (a) the group is organized into congregations, has two or more congregations, or has one congregation with more than 2,000 members who make a measurable impact on the country through mass media; OR (b) if not organized into congregations, membership is drawn from more than one state and from beyond a single metropolitan area


 * Hopefully this info helps. — Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:05, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment/keepish. I have briefly worked on this article in the past—have tried in vain to find more sources, but pretty much all I have been able to find that is reliable is the Melton reference, which I added months ago (which is not an encyclopedia about Mormonism, but rather an encyclopedia about American religions). The Melton reference says, "In 1995 SAI had three centers in the United States with a combined membership of less than 100." But it also says it has memberships in "England, Switzerland, Norway, Japan and the Netherlands" (membership totals not specified). It sounds pretty small but at the same time relatively widely dispersed—but I haven't been able to find any more recent information on it or its membership statistics. I'm not sure what to do, but because it's at least notable enough to be in Melton's print encyclopedia, I would say on balance it's worth keeping. It's not a situation where we lack references completely, which would be an entirely different story. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It might be notable enough for Melton's encyclopedia, but if he's the only one who has it, how can it lead to a good article? Just because its notable enough for one encyclopedia does not mean its notable for this. Perhaps notable for a list of Mormon break-offs, but I can't see a justifiable reason to include it here without more references. Drumpler (talk) 00:06, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Do we know that Melton is the only available source? I'm doubting that Melton's is the only one. There may be nothing on the internet, but that doesn't mean that nothing is out there, since there is a substantial body of works on the Latter Day Saint movement that are not on the internet or on google books yet. I imagine that in cases like this the it's entirely reasonable to maintain "sources needed" tags on the article for longer than 3 or 4 months. Ideally, as someone who edits a number of pages in the Latter Day Saint movement, I think we should wait and see what it says about the sect (if anything) in Steven Shields's new edition of Divergent Paths of the Restoration, which has usually been seen as an authoritative source on Latter Day Saint sects. I'm not sure when the new edition will be published, but it sounds like soon. Or, because the date the book will be released is still unknown, ideally it could be deleted without prejudice to re-creation if the Shields book contains more information on it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I just read J. Gordon Melton's Wikipedia entry. While I know it isn't a reliable source in and of itself, from the article, the man seems to carry a counter-cult agenda and his inclusion of the group in his encyclopaedia seems to be with that in mind. Aside from a few articles in Encyclopedia Britannica, I have some considerable questions as to whether his own encyclopedia has been peer reviewed. I can't seem to find the particular policy, but I remember a debate on here some time ago saying that sources from countercult agencies (such as Rick Ross) weren't exactly permitted as sources on articles. Likewise, his own page at J. Gordon Melton seems to violate WP:V. Drumpler (talk) 00:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That encyclopedia is clearly a reliable source. The publisher of the 7th edition, for example, is Gale (Cengage) (after renaming and coporate M&A activity) which does research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and business. (This book is definitely not aimed at businesses.)  A trivial attempt to find reviews for it finds good reviews and plenty of scholarly citations.  I see it is in at more than 15 different university libraries located within 5 miles of me, from obvious expectations like the Harvard Divinity School (and also another one of the Harvard libraries) to places like MIT and the New England Conservatory of Music that don't have any significant religious studies.  GRBerry 04:39, 12 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete I tried and failed to find any evidence of this group that meets WP:RS standards. Pastor Theo (talk) 01:42, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete - fails verifiability by reliable sources. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  18:29, 16 February 2009 (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.