Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)


 * 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.  The Nordic Goddess Kristen  Worship her 00:05, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

OK, where shall I begin.

Basically, approximately one half of the article is blatant copyright infringement, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Compare the section labeled "committees" with the pages linked from http://www.usgif.org/About_Committees.aspx Also, note the layout similarities between this article and the javascript menus on the website. The section labeled "Board of Directors" is also a direct copy/paste of http://www.usgif.org/About_Board.aspx, although I am not 100% sure if that is copyrightable, as it seems to lack an expression of creativity.

The rest of the article is so obviously copied from somewhere that it galls me to no end that I cannot find where the original is. My guess is that it is somewhere inaccessible to Google's spider, possibly in a "members only" section or something. Regardless, this makes little difference, as the text is still blatantly biased, and would have to be completely rewritten at a fundamental level to become remotely encyclopedic.

And if, after reading this article and noting its style and diction, there is still any doubt that it was directly copied, in it's entirety, from another source, look at the last level-2 header: "V. Supporting Education". That is a roman numeral from an outline.

The only reason I am filing this AFD rather than speedy deleting it is because the article has been deleted and restored twice already. I don't dare to wheel-war, even for something like this. So please, just vote delete so we can get rid of this. J.delanoy gabs adds 04:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete because in addition to (some of) the problems listed above the club also generates no hits (except maybe the first one, in Forbes--but it's inaccessible or broken) on Google News that aren't press releases. Drmies (talk) 05:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm the admin that restored the article (twice). I don't have any strong belief that the article should be kept or deleted; I was mainly concerned about the out-of-process deletions for spurious, unjustified reasons. I also don't think it's a valid G11; despite its biased language, I don't think it's promotional. If this article is deleted it should be because the USGIF isn't notable, which requires careful consideration in a public forum. (The Roman numerals used to be on all the sections - but the fact that an editor isn't familiar with our style conventions is not by itself proof of copyright violation.) Dcoetzee 10:24, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep because I accept Dcoetzee's point about the copyvio, and subtracting the copyvio, the nomination doesn't cite any valid reasons to delete the article. All it provides are reasons to improve it.  -- Comment. Also, this is the worst AFD nomination I've ever read.  Just be factual and succinct.-- S Marshall   Talk / Cont  11:09, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep - but cut back anything that can be supported through a publicly available reliable source. Racepacket (talk) 12:46, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep and Rewrite - the subject is noteworthy enough, but needs to be rewritten to an enyclopedic tone and standard. KaySL (talk) 14:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep and rewrite--Sources are available to establish the notability of the subject, 1. You can improve the article by editing and removing the "crap". --J.Mundo (talk) 14:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * How are those articles strong enough as secondary sources? They're from GEO World, PR Newswire, and other press release conduits. I looked through pages and pages of "hits," and I can't find a single magazine or newspaper article, which, really, one should expect. Restate: I went through all of them, and didn't see a single article that I think satisfies. Just linking to search results isn't enough; please look carefully at what those results are. Drmies (talk) 22:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep at this point, I think, though I thought it very iffy when I arrived. :) There was indeed substantial text copied from the official site--see my edit summaries for locations of some of those. Mixed in with what seems to be original text, it could have been a proper candidate for WP:CP to be sure! I've done some cleaning of duplicated text as well as promotional text and have poked about a bit to see if there's any real notability underneath the puffery. I've added a few WP:RS and evaluated some of the sources already used. I believe, though good sources may be buried in a glut of press, that this organization may have a legitimate claim to notability in its GEOINT Symposium and to a lesser extent perhaps in its Geospatial Intelligence Certificate Program. I'm out of time to search for more sourcing. :/ There is an inaccessible reference to the latter in this book (I know it says, "Recently, the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) decided to develop an accreditation program for courses or degrees focused on" but that's as much as I can see.) Maybe somebody with more time can poke further to see if there's anything else substantial out there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 23:04, 22 January 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.