Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Temple Anshe Amunim (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) (2nd 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.  MBisanz  talk 01:20, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Temple Anshe Amunim (Pittsfield, Massachusetts)
AfDs for this article: 
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 * Try and refine by adding "Pittsfield" for better results. -- do  ncr  am  18:00, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Try and refine by adding "Pittsfield" for better results. -- do  ncr  am  18:00, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Article fails WP:GNG with zero independent sources. It was nominated for deletion in 2014 and kept despite having no independent sources at that time. None have presented themselves in the three years since that discussion. TM 00:42, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep, as I "!voted" in the previous AFD in 2014, in agreement with User:DGG for one (perhaps all the participants then should be notified?). Again, there's assertion in the article that this is the fourth Reform Jewish congregation to be formed in the U.S. (it was founded in 1869), and there is strong likelihood that substantial off-line coverage of the historic congregation exists and can be used to develop the article eventually.  It doesn't matter than no local person happened to do that development since the last AFD....there are tons of notable historic topics in Wikipedia that languish for a decade waiting for the interested and informed person to come along, which is fine.
 * Searching more broadly yields coverage in Berkshire Eagle, e.g. Howard Dean speaks there and there's some material about the "England Brothers" which could add to the article in this (including that "Moses England helped found Congregation Anshe Amunim of Pittsfield in 1869, and allowed religious services to be held in a building that he owned on Fenn and North streets until the congregation purchased its first building in 1927. / 'For the first 60 years we couldn't have survived without Moses and his family,' said Anshe's Rabbi Emeritus Harold I. Salzmann." More about the England Brothers is relevant to the article.)  (watch out, you get just five free Berkshire Eagle views)
 * This is not a big deal, but notable rabbi Perry Nussbaum came to Anshe Amunim per this book The Quiet Voices: Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights, 1880s to 1990s and (that can be mentioned in this article), while the Congregation Beth Israel (Jackson, Mississippi) article fails to say that, in fact says otherwise.
 * -- do ncr  am  18:00, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (e.g. that Wikipedia has other articles that are improperly sourced and likely not notable either) is not a valid rationale for keeping an article. None of the articles you cite here are about the Temple Anshe Amunim in substance. That notable people visited a certain place is also not a claim to notability on Wikipedia. Lastly, the age of something is also not a claim to notability. It should be clear, given three years of time and despite spurious claims to the contrary, that multiple, independent, in-depth sources establishing notability do not exist for this topic. That's the benchmark with which we must judge this and all articles.--TM 20:29, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Umm, sorry if my wording mislead you, but Nussbaum didn't merely "visit"; he came to be the rabbi, although he apparently didn't stay long. It's worth mentioning in the article.  Some other points:
 * The synagogue and its rabbi are social/political leaders. Josh Breindel is speaking out, is taking in Syrian refugees, etc., etc. you see in the Google hits.  The synagogue itself is a social center, it is the site of community meetings.
 * The congregation has included, and probably still does include, powerful families and persons. Numerous New York Times obituaries and wedding announcements, scoffed at in the previous AFD, are actually evidence of that.  One of the obituaries was for Armand V. Feigenbaum (died in 2014).  I bet the "alumni" of this congregation would stack up pretty well against the alumni lists in many university's wikipedia articles.
 * The synagogue has an endowed speaker series, funded by the Temple Anshe Amunim Feigenbaum Lecture Endowment. That brought Howard Dean (former presidential candidate, former chair of the Democratic National Committee) to speak to an "overflow crowd" in August 2016.  A speaker in 2014 was Michael Kopiec (currently a redlink on Wikipedia, apparently this writer), on the Holocaust.
 * The synagogue building itself received some architectural awards, per a synagogue webpage, which I don't doubt to be true.
 * It is the fourth-oldest congregation of its denomination in the United States. I think we can afford to have an article about the first five in every denomination.
 * This is not your average place of worship. Does yours bring national- or world-level speakers on a regular basis, and serve as hub for political and social discussion?
 * I happen to have contributed to Wikipedia articles on several thousand obscure churches, one-room schoolhouses, fraternal halls, etc. across the United States, many many of which are deemed notable (and achieved recognition in the National Register of Historic Places) in part because they were locally important community centers. I have zero doubt whether this synagogue could achieve NRHP listing if they cared to, for the combination of its history, the building architecture, the social/community centeredness.
 * The deletion nominator over-uses "OTHERSTUFFEXISTS" to dismiss stuff. IMO, that argument is outdated.  At this point in Wikipedia, the fact that other articles are similar to one at AFD becomes more and more and more relevant.  We should be working to make Wikipedia more consistent, not saying that everything is haphazard so nothing else is relevant. -- do  ncr  am  21:08, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Lepricavark (talk) 23:05, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. Lepricavark (talk) 23:05, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete: Reading Doncram's laundry list, I'm struck by an important fact: he doesn't mention a single notability criterion this temple meets. Having an endowed speaker series, however much a couple important people have spoken, does not qualify an institution for an article.  Receiving some (non-notable) architecture awards does not make a subject notable ... that, and Doncram should know far too bloody well that a primary source can never be used to buttress notability.  Being the (allegedly) fourth-oldest congregation of a denomination in a country is not notable, else we'd be presuming notability to some Bahai temple in Bhutan with 11 worshipers.  (This quite aside from that the article asserts, without a source, that it's the fourth-oldest Reform congregation in New England, not the United States.)  Being a (so-called) "hub for political and social discussion" is not, in of itself, notable.  And, above and beyond the rest, Doncram's personal opinion as to whether a subject could achieve NRHP status is the height of irrelevancy; the fact on the ground is that it hasn't. 0+0+0+0+0=0.  What qualifies a subject for a Wikipedia article isn't a "I think it's important" argument; it's meeting the relevant notability criteria. That being said, WP:V is clear: if reliable sources discussing the subject in significant detail are not produced, an article on the subject cannot be sustained.  It does matter, in point of fact, that no one has come forward -- for that matter, what's stopping Doncram? -- to source the article.  The way Wikipedia works, and a key reason deletion policy exists, is not that we let unsourced articles languish indefinitely.  It's that we delete them until and unless they're properly sourced.  For my part, I've no objection to userfying the article to Doncram's user pages until such time as he can source it properly, if he believes it can be.   Ravenswing   01:53, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep: For me, it isn't about what one user said or neglected to say - it's about the question at hand, i.e. notability. Once notable, notability doesn't go away, ever. Therefore, for this institution not to be notable, we'd have to assume it did not receive any reliable coverage throughout its 148 years of serving the community. The other alternative is that the reliable coverage is difficult to source due to the fact that the internet has been around for a very short period of time comparing to this long history. While the former might be true, the latter is much more likely, and I'd give it the benefit of the doubt and a few more years until someone spends the necessary time in the dark cellars of the MA archives to scan century old documents. Unsourced material has to be removed immediately only if it's contentious BLP material (WP:FAILEDVERIFICATION). The rest is left for the common sense of the editors... -- IsaacSt (talk) 04:05, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
 * If proof of sources exist someday, then you can recreate the article. However, that sources might exist in the dark recesses of a local newspaper somewhere is not legitimate rationale for keeping the article.--TM 16:49, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, I've found, and a few others, and updated the article accordingly. Hadassah Magazine is certainly a national-level, independent, reliable source (with half a million readers). Even if you somehow still believe everything presented so far doesn't establish notability, don't start the entire discussion about that again, since my point above (about common sense) still applies. If nothing else, the sources surge the likelihood that the notability is verifiable to the sky. -- IsaacSt (talk) 18:55, 21 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Obviously a 147-year-old temple is notable. I have added reliable sources to back up most information. The temple links were all non-working for me, so I deleted the bit of information credited to them. Yoninah (talk) 23:20, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - Passes WP:V, coverage in WP:RS. If the coverage so far found isn't in-depth, that doesn't imply historic importance isn't clear (as in WP:NGEO). Smmurphy(Talk) 19:12, 23 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - can pass WP:GNG guidelines now, based on the addition of references to independent reliable sources after it was nominated for AFD. — Cactus Writer (talk) 23:41, 27 March 2017 (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.