Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Friend (LDS magazine)


 * 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. Eddie891 Talk Work 20:06, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

The Friend (LDS magazine)

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Couldn’t find much in-depth coverage. Dubiously notable on its own. Dronebogus (talk) 16:29, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep. It is no less notable than any of the other periodicals in the Latter Day Saint Movement. Epachamo (talk) 16:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Epachamo: between the article's state and your statement, we could assume that none of those LDS periodicals meet Wikipedia's notability. Please say how it meets notability rather than make such a general statement or consider naming some of those publications so we can see what you mean by comparing the scope of coverage, etc. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 20:11, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Leaning delete Article doesn't demonstrate significant independent coverage of the subject. I tried to see it possibly meeting the criteria for media "significant publications in ethnic and other non-trivial niche markets", but a children's magazine specific to one church is more obscure than niche, IMO. Happy to change vote if someone can show non-Utah/LDS-based coverage or significant indepdent coverage in LDS world. I could see merging it with its similarly named predecessor, The Children's Friend, as an alternative to deletion. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 20:11, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * In the state it is in, I would be fine with merging the two. Obscurity is NOT a valid reason for deletion (See WP:OBTOP). This is a magazine that has a circulation of probably around 1 million every single month. Just because a source is Utah or LDS-based, does not mean it is not a valid source. The Salt Lake Tribune is definitely a totally valid source and is independent of the LDS Church. Others sources independent from the LDS Church could also be found. Rather than overzealous deletion (WP:OZD), this article could easily be improved.  Give me a couple days, and I can find a couple and add to it. Epachamo (talk) 02:21, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You misread and misconstrue. Please reread and reread again. I said I would change my vote if significant independent LDS coverage was found. It's being a magazine for children of one religious denomination is simply how it isn't meeting the criteria I provided; I never said the article should be deleted for that reason. The article as it is today should be deleted for its lack of notability, including its sig coverage. You quote the policy on obscure topics, so remember: "The key thing to look for is high-quality reliable sources." So far, I haven't been able to add anything high-quality, though. Maybe you will find something in a few days, but for now, with two deletes and one keep (which you might want to edit to align to policy), its notability is obscured at best. What we're seeing for a relatively modern publication is little sig coverage in reliable independent secondary sources. Not one of the articles cited focuses entirely on The Friend. The feminism article gives it several sentences. The interactive games article has a few paragraphs about it but also gives significant weight to other players; while that could still count towards notability, it is weak and it is only one. Where are you getting your figure of perhaps one million readers per month? Even if that signified, and I don't know that circ does, I only saw here: [1] that the combined circ of several titles for children and adults was 1.3 million per month 9 years back. The best coverage I've found is tertiary: an entry in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. It's mentioned in directories like Writer's Market or some such, and while those can verify info so we can remove pesky CN tags, that's all. I mentioned coverage outside of Utah to show coverage beyond the geographic area of publication that already isn't cutting the mustard, but maybe there are more newspapers there that have covered it, and then by all means, add away. I mentioned non-LDS publications being beneficial because the sources have to be independent--perhaps the LDS church is like the Catholic church in that it has many nearly completely independently functioning organizations that write about similar topics, but as the magazine's homepage is at churchofjesuschrist.org/friend, coverage from the parent organization, sister publications, or other LDS bodies would lack an amount of independence. Look for significant coverage in academic journals that cover religion or children's publications, etc. Good luck! I'm an inclusionist and always like to see weak cases improved so that nomination concerns are addressed and so Wikipedia isn't a directory of everything being published. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 03:17, 15 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment the two articles for these magazines were so weak regarding notability and there was no reason to have two articles, so I went ahead and copied the content from the older title's article into the new and redirected in hopes that that would make the case for demonstrating notability easier. Maybe it will. It looks better and is more complete. Not changing my vote at present because I still don't see it passing notability. There is currently nothing about The Children's Friend from its founding through its renaming nearly 70 years later, and what there is in the past 48 years for The Friend shows that it existed and little else. More independent sources needed if it is indeed notable. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 12:03, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the help adding to and editing the article. This deletion nomination reminds me of the WP:CFBWEST conversation. Look at that article and the sources used to justify its existence. I would argue that the growing list of sources in the Friend article are more independent and stronger than anything in that article, and the same reasoning for keeping that article would apply here. At this point sources come from The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah Historic Quarterly, Dialogue, Daily Herald, KSL, and KUTV. Also, the policy WP:NOTTEMPORARY, which establishes that notability is not temporary. If an article would have been notable in 1902, the fact that there wasn't much to say for 48 years does not change the fact that it was notable at one time. Epachamo (talk) 02:51, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Epachamo, I looked at the Walter J. West sources. Between that and your earlier comment about The Friend being just as notable as other LDS publications, it would behoove you to read WP:WAX. If you're going to compare it with other publications, and you shouldn't, consider Highlights or... what do kids read these days? No one said notability was temporary. What makes you think it was notable in 1902? The article's text doesn't back that up. I am usually a champion of old-time subjects, but this "growing list of sources" includes:
 * Stories about various LDS magazines, of which The Friend is but one, consolidating and publishing in more languages in the near future, is not significant coverage of this one magazine. Furthermore, it's coverage that spawned from a news release vs. coverage of something that has happened, though it is still secondary coverage.
 * Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought verifies the year the magazine changed names and that's it. We can find that elsewhere. That's not significant coverage, but more of a namecheck.
 * Omann's article in Utah Historical Quarterly is reliable, secondary, and independent, but it's about Louie B. Felt and May Anderson; they are already subjects of articles. The paragraph that most covers The Children's Friend says "The magazine was successful, financially and otherwise, and continues today as the Friend with nearly 200,000 subscribers in many different countries far from its Utah birthplace."
 * The Benson article is by and far the best source, as it mentions The Children's Friend more than just in passing, but it is just one piece of independent, reliable, significant secondary coverage. Benson's sources may have more; I can't comment on that because I haven't studied the scope of her article and how independent her sources are.
 * Also consider that much of the Origin section is already covered in the article on Primary and the founders of The Children's Friend; it has borderline WP:UNDUE weight on other parties. So focus on The Children's Friend rather than its founders or origins. Good luck! --DiamondRemley39 (talk) 16:06, 17 September 2020 (UTC)


 * . My point with the WP:CFBWEST is that the reasoning for determining notability with that particular article are similar to this one.  It was not a "..because we have Pokemon articles we can have anything" type argument.  I disagree with the analysis of your sources. Particularly the Utah Historical Quarterly, which has much more than trivial, giving background information over several paragraphs for the need for a magazine. Benson's article is good, and cites a couple other books, that I am waiting for from Amazon. The best approach to this article is to improve vice delete.  At the very least, it should be merged, but still, not deleted. Epachamo (talk) 20:25, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "Look at that article and the sources used to justify its existence" is what I did. Referencing the West precedence here is a leap, so if you want to continue to discuss that, you may comment on my talk page or ping me on yours; there is no reason to clutter up this AfD with such a digression. I never said the Utah Historical Quarterly article was trivial. I will point out where my words are mischaracterized. Again, focus on this article, not all the other LDS magazine articles or other AfDs. I see someone else has added relevant information to the article. It is improving. That's good. It sounds like you need more time to develop an article that will pass AfD, which is fine of course. But what do you mean "improve vice delete"-- improve versus delete"? and what do you mean by "should be merged"? Merge suggestions need targets. What could it be merged to? Primary? --DiamondRemley39 (talk) 22:42, 17 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep I just added some sources on this publication being about to shift to an international, 48 language at least bi-monthly, publication. I believe there is also a substantial article in The Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History which could be used to add some substantial sourcing and information to this article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:10, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The encyclopedia would have information (and there is another encyclopedia linked in the article in the external links), but encyclopedias are tertiary, not secondary, coverage. The three articles you provided about new languages are about the consolidation/new international focus of various LDS magazines; The Friend is mentioned as one of these but is not written about in particular except for a quote from a press release. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 14:58, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have added material gleaned from the Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History article on The Friend. One should not assume too much from a name. In many ways This Encyclopedia is built directly on the primary sources, and it cities its sources quite a bit, so I am less than convinced that it is truly a tertiary source.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:58, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's typical of encyclopedias. See WP:TERTIARY. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 22:52, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Reliable tertiary sources are fully acceptable as per your link and WP:N, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep Meets WP:NMEDIA. KidAd   talk  06:41, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep With the additions from recent editors, the page passes notability guidelines. Its cultural significance is large enough that Peggy Fletcher Stack criticized a specific article in The Salt Lake Tribune. Full-paragraph mentions in Dialogue, Utah Historical Quarterly, and local newspapers can fulfill notability guidelines if we accept that as "substantial". There already exists a dearth of critical material for popular children's media, so I think those paragraphs are sufficient. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:59, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Recent additions of sources show that WP:NEXIST (I refer here to some seemingly good sources are cited in the cited material but not directly in the article), so I have stricken my above vote and change to Keep. Good work, everyone. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 23:10, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep, given the improvements that have been made in direct response to issues raised earlier on in this discussion. Also, given this announcement that indicates that, as of next year, the Friend will be one of three magazines, standardized to be specifically for children worldwide. Presently, the Friend contains content for children, but the Liahona contains language-specific children's content in many languages currently, which will no longer be the case in 2021. Therefore, the article is relevant now, but will be moreso as of January of next year when it replaces the children's content typically found in the current Liahona for most foreign languages. There are other arguments I might have been tempted to make on this proposal before now, but given what has already been discussed above, these are the more relevant points I feel to make in offering my vote to keep the article as it is. Thanks. --Jgstokes (talk) 03:49, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep: Good diversity of supporting information. Fullrabb (talk) 22:41, 19 September 2020 (UTC)FullRabb


 * 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.