Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/St. Patrick's Hall


 * 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. As with Articles for deletion/Wessex Hall, anyone wanting to merge this somewhere can leave me a message. Stifle (talk) 10:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

St. Patrick's Hall
AfDs for this article: 
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Non-notable university hall, there's no reason for a separate article, any usable material could appear on the University of Reading page (and there won't be a need for much of that). The article here has suffered recently from addition of a great deal of unsourced information, not an improvement to the encyclopedia. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 09:37, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment from Rahrahsmile101: I don't know what you have against Reading University but please do not interfere with articles you clearly do not know much about. St Patrick's Hall is a notable as it is the 2nd oldest hall in Reading (and according to some the 2nd oldest purposed built hall in the UK after Wantage) and it has a lot of history and means a lot to many people. This article is also of great value to prospective students because there is little helpful information about the halls on the Universities website. I would have thought that the fact that many of the halls wikipedia pages have been reformed since they were last deleted is evidence that people do want these pages. The point of an encyclopedia is after all to contain as much information as possible not as little as possible! As for the article's accuracy I am a recent Reading graduate and so I know that it is completely accurate however I will be adding more references very soon. I also hope to improve the pages for the other Reading halls if no one else gets round to it before I do as most are inadequate apart from Wantage and Wessex. As you probably know wikipedia has a University project at the moment aiming to improve coverage of all Universities and I think this is an important part of that. Thanks (former University of Reading student).
 * Comment. Please don't act like you WP:OWN the article. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 17:40, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. Basically the same as for Wessex Hall. This isn't just a block of student flats but something more akin to an Oxbridge college. Due to the age of the institution I think reliable sources are likely to be found, if a little difficult from a google search. However, The University of Reading: the first fifty years which is found on google looks like it will contain decent info. Quantpole (talk) 13:28, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I agree with Quantpole - both Wessex and St Patrick's are more like Oxbridge Colleges (in terms of structure, traditions and facilities) than a block of student flats or UPP (University Partnership Project) halls. They are a very significant part of the University's history and the town's as well and not just where students sleep but where they play sport, practice music, have society meetings, eat, study etc too.--Rahrahsmile101 (talk) 14:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC) — Rahrahsmile101 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Comment you are both offering opinions instead of evidence of notability. As it happens those opinions are also incorrect -- Reading does not operate a college structure the way Oxford and Cambridge do.  In any event the way to have an article kept is to show notability through reliable sources.  I nominated it for deletion because after searching I don't think such sources are available (using links to facebook groups certainly isn't going to do it).  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Nomoskedasticity if you're going to criticize others as much as you seem to like doing then at least get your facts right yourself! I never said that Reading was collegiate nor implied it and from first-hand experience I am very well aware of the differences between Oxford and Cambridge and Reading as I know all three of these Universities very well. I only said that there are some similarities between a Reading hall and a college of a collegiate University. Perhaps Durham would have been a better example - their colleges are not teaching bodies and are very similar to Reading halls (and the older halls at Bristol & one or two at Leeds and Nottingham). As for the sources there are plenty available but I don't happen to live in a library and do have other things to do with my time! If you're so concerned why not find the references yourself rather than just criticizing the hard work of others? I think you'll find publications such as: J.C. Holt 'The University of Reading: the first 50 years', W.M. Childs 'Making a University: an account of the University movement at Reading' and Dr Sidney Smith and Michael Bott 'One hundred years of University education in Reading: a pictorial history' will be of use. I think these books should be used in conjunction with modern website links as the books can tell readers about the hall's history and the modern websites about what it's actually like to be a student there today. --Rahrahsmile101 (talk) 19:06, 10 September 2009 (UTC) — Rahrahsmile101 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Comment: Related AfD going on right now: Articles_for_deletion/Wessex_Hall. As I noted there, I don't know anything about this subject, but a similar sounding AfD recently concluded as a keep: Articles_for_deletion/Dunmore_Lang_College --Milowent (talk) 16:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - Dunmore_Lang_College is a different type of body. It is an autonomous college that employs its own resident tutors to provide teaching within the college. TerriersFan (talk) 00:42, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete In all cases where the residence hall is not of special note in some manner, or actually historic, or has significant wider functions. I see nothing to indicate it has the teaching In all cases where the residence hall is not of special note in some manner, or actually historic, or has significant wider functions. I see nothing to indicate it has the teaching function of an Oxbridge college. All residence halls have commons rooms; may have eating facilities, study rooms and so on.   What the article talks about is a full list of the dishes served at the dining hall, which is about as unencyclopedic as possible. The place for these is on the university web site. The other AfD was I think a strange extension of the notability criteria, especially considering there were no 3rd party sources at all--except sources on the person the hall was named after. Here there isn't even that. I should be very surprised if a book about the university gave it more than a passing mention, but if it does, cite the pages.    DGG ( talk ) 19:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep As someone who is neither a student nor member of staff at Reading I enjoy reading these articles when curiosity gets the better of me as the history of our Universities is a big part of the past hundred years and more of Britain's history and the halls are important as they are the places where the students actually live and spend most of their time and consequently have the most memories of when they leave. Student activities after all say more about a University than the exact number of books in its libraries or the number of professors it employs - its the very essence of the place. The other beneficial element about having such articles on wikipedia is that it aids members of the public like myself because everything is in one place - if this page did not exist then I would have had to scan numerous webpages (many on the University's website and many others), get hold of some books and find a former student to grill. More students should be invited to contribute to such pages as they're the ones who can really tell us what goes on in the University (something that cannot be learned from reading the sometimes biased accounts in the University's own literature which is a form of propaganda. So please leave this article (and add more to it if possible!) for the benefit of the many people who use wikipedia to find the answers to all kinds of questions they may have. Its real asset is in the breadth of topics on its pages. Thanks. --Funtimes101 (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2009 (UTC) — Funtimes101 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 12:51, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 12:51, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge any encyclopaedic information into University of Reading, unless someone wants to create an article about Reading halls. There might be scope for an encyclopaedic article, but Wikipedia is not repository for university prospectuses. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 17:45, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge. My preference would be to create a new article University of Reading Halls of Residence along the lines of University of Exeter Halls of Residence. An alternative plan would be to merge the content into the page on the the campus; this really needs an editorial discussion to establish a strategy. Either way the content should be heavily edited but not deleted. The comparison with Oxbridge colleges is, of course, fallacious. In addition to the reasoning of DGG, Oxbridge colleges control their own admission - you apply to the college whereas at Reading you apply to the University. TerriersFan (talk) 00:36, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions.  —TerriersFan (talk) 00:49, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. There are other St. Patrick's Halls, including one Australia that was the first house of Victoria's parliment . There are far too many dorms in the world and articles on dorms on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not FaceBook. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abductive (talk • contribs) 22:49, 18 September 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.