Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/University of the Philippines Astronomical Society


 * 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 all. Sources indicating notability or verifiability were not provided. Participants in this debate are reminded that civility and brevity make for more effective rhetoric. Chick Bowen 05:39, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

University of the Philippines Astronomical Society

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Non-notable school organization, which I'm quite sure has very little reliable sources to make it into a full-fledged article (I studied in UP and UP AstroSoc is only one of the mid-popular organizations in the university). seav (talk) 14:48, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm adding the other non-notable UP organizations that I can find:



There are over 400 student organizations in the Diliman campus of the university alone. Practically every one of them is non-notable and would have very little reliable third-party sources to extract information from. Possibly the only notable organization in the university is the Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity, whose alumni are notable in politics, particularly Ferdinand Marcos and Benigno Aquino, Jr., that numerous articles have been written about this fraternity. --seav (talk) 15:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all for lack of notability outside the University. Hey Seav, I think UP Sigma Rho is notable enough to deserve an article here. -- Lenticel ( talk ) 15:43, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
 * If there is something like a "List of student organizations of the University of the Philippines", merge it there. Otherwise, delete all. I am willing to change my vote on specific organizations if editors of the articles point out independent sources that talk about the organization. --Polaron | Talk 03:28, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all There will possibly be a few articles for the most famous clubs at the most famous universities, but it would be very rare that such an article--or one on a local fraternity chapter--could be notable. if we need a specific guideline on fraternity chapters to prevent them, we can adopt one. Or we can do it here by practical consensus--I think it would take more than just notable alumni, but references to the chapter itself in significant non-university and non-fraternity sources. But whatever we think of them, for clubs like this, existing policy is quite sufficient to delete them. DGG (talk) 03:41, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep -- or at least merge. This opinion is for the titled article only. Somebody put quite a bit of work into this article. If the information in the article is correct, I'd be surprised if there is not published information in Tagalog or other language, which would be reliable source for us if it were available in English, possibly establishing general notability, though there would be the more complex question of what is notable for en.wikipedia. I see that the principal author was notified on user Talk. However, the timing of this AfD is unfortunate. Students at UP may easily be away from school at this time, and quite possibly completely away from computer access, so even attempting to notify the creator of the article before this AfD closes may be unsuccessful. Deleting the article before there is time for the creator to argue for inclusion, rescue the content for himself or herself, satisfy source requirements, and/or merge it to a more general article on UP organizations, seems rude. For what it's worth, User:Poldoga has not enabled e-mail. University of the Philippines Diliman, according to the WP article, has over 21,000 students, a "mid-popular" organization might have quite a few members. --Abd (talk) 04:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Object to the multiple article consideration in one AfD, it can create a very substantial research burden, and, as mentioned, the reliable sources may be in another language, I don't know how we would know, without help, if there are significant references or not, Google may not cut it unless we search in the appropriate language(s). I'd say that much more time should be allowed, this AfD should be immediately dismissed without prejudice. Not all authors who edited the articles have been notified. I'm willing to volunteer to make extra efforts to contact those with interest in these topics (the authors or club contacts) so that they can prepare for another AfD when, I'd expect, it will come. There are six articles included here. Can I vote separately on each? If not, why not? Surely my opinion might vary from article to article. And I would ask those who have already voted, did you research each of the articles to confirm that there was no notability? Or did you assume that the information provided by the nominator was correct without confirmation? The nominator did not explain what research was done such that he or she could properly assert that the article "has very little reliable sources." How many does it take? DGG, if there is a general policy covering university clubs, where is it? --Abd (talk) 04:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment Thanks for the concern for the articles Abd but I think we should delete them. First of all, the nom and I were students from UP Diliman so if the organizations were notable outside the University, we would have already saved the articles ourselves. Second, if there were any sources in Tagalog that covers the articles, chances are it is on the University's newspapers. In my opinion, only AstroSoc and the sorority have the strongest claims to notability. However, Astrosoc is usually mentioned on newspapers but only in passing as they provide astronomical instruments for people whenever an interesting phenomena occurs such as eclipses or approaching comets and the University is a good spot for stargazing as it has wide open spaces. The sorority is a very old organization but without any evidence of significant alumni or contributions outside the University, I think it should be deleted regardless of age. Although they didn't meet our notability criteria, they could be transwikied to the GFDL-licensed WikiPilipinas where the information would be preserved.

By the way, I think this is the list that Polaron wants the articles be merged to.-- Lenticel ( talk ) 11:45, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete articles, list their names (if haven't) to List of UP Diliman student organizations. If there were any U.P. student orgs that should have separate articles, it might be the different frats and their school paper, plus few more (like their theater guild), for these orgs, none of them is notable. -- Howard  the   Duck  11:37, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Keilana talk(recall) 01:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete Student clubs at a single school are virtually never notable enough for an article, and I see no exceptions here. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  03:27, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete. Unless the student organizations has reached fame or notoriety on the same level as, sa, yhe Oxford Union or the Hasty Pudding Club (at least, on the national/Philippine level, if not internationally), these student orgs don't deserve their own Wikipedia article...for now. --- Tito Pao (talk) 04:54, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'd suggest a different solution than deletion. Deletion makes the content inaccessible to any but admins. If, instead, the content of each article is deleted and the article redirected to the list, that content is still in history, Talk is preserved, and anyone can then retrieve content and re-use it where appropriate, whether on Wikipedia or elsewhere. These were not frivolous articles. If this AfD closes, and the closing admin deletes the articles, who, then, can help with retrieving whatever content might be worth saving, including making sure that those clubs are listed in the campus org article, with links? If redirection is used, instead, anyone could do that, at leisure, by looking at article History. The fact of redirection would be noted in the closing statement here, and thus some member of the Astronomy club who realizes the article has disappeared may be able to find it. If the decision is delete, here, I'd personally appreciate notice to allow at least a few days to help preserve content; if the closing admin decides on redirection as a solution, I'd be willing to do the work. And, frankly, what would have happened if those proposing this AfD had simply done what I'm suggesting. Far more efficient than debating it! --Abd (talk) 05:24, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * If the contents get deleted eventually, any member of the UP AstoSoc can later contact an admin to have the contents retrieved for their perusal. As for this AfD debate, what is being discussed here is whether or not these student organizations deserve their own Wikipedia articles under the notability guidelines, not whether the members of these organizations will be able to access the contents of the articles subject under this AfD debate. --- Tito Pao (talk) 06:20, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment My concern is efficiency and fairness. Redirection of the articles could have been done by the nominator, avoiding this entire discussion unless someone was watching the articles and objected. That's efficient. What we are doing here is debating what may be an entirely moot point. If they are redirected and nobody objects, we are home free, unless someone removes the redirection, in which case the one who did the redirection would routinely have the article watchlisted and could then deal with it one-on-one, requesting reliable source to establish notability, or with wider discussion (RFC), or with AfD (or beyond, if there is a serious dispute). This process here has wasted serious time. I've seen some admins start to suggest redirection in AfDs, which avoids the whole deletionist/inclusionist/notability debate. Disk space is not an issue. Admin time and editor time is an issue. Think an article isn't notable? Redirect it. You just might be done. It takes less time than filing an AfD, and you don't have to notify anyone. Notification to the author is (normally) automatic, through watchlist. --Abd (talk) 15:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * AFDs exist for reason. If you don't want AFDs and just allow people to redirect like hell, place an MFD tag on AFD (oh, the irony! LOL). -- Howard  the   Duck  15:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm willing to use my userspace as a temporary home (like for a month) if this article is deleted for UPAS members to retrieve info relevant to them. -- Howard  the   Duck  14:45, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment There is not just one article here, and that so many seem to be focused on the one article is a piece of evidence for my point that combining articles for AfD muddies the waters. Someone might respond, "But we are establishing a precedent, i.e., if the Astronomy club isn't notable, neither are the others. No. AfDs establish no precedent or effective guideline whatever, the guidelines are clear about that. There is too much participation bias. Want to establish precedent, work on the policies and guidelines, or take something to arbitration, if ArbComm will accept it. --Abd (talk) 15:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Then place it one page, it's not that hard, if no one from the org wants to retrieve it after a month, it can be speedily deleted. If they do appear after a month, they can ask the help of an admin. It's really not that hard, especially if they really came from that org since they have a valid reason. -- Howard  the   Duck  15:35, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment I would have simply blanked and redirected the pages myself, but the AfD notice asks that pages not be blanked pending the AfD outcome. What I would have done is to explain what I was doing in the Talk on the original pages, replace the content with a redirect, and then also place an explanation (one for the entire lot of articles) on Talk for the target page, showing a permanent reference to History of the last rev for each page before redirect. Same thing here, I'd put the ref. This would effectively delete the article, but leave it accessible for someone who is actively looking for it, and making it easy to either recover content or challenge the notability decision. And none of this requires administrator intervention, any user can do this, and any user can undo it; if users were sufficiently motivated to restore the article, presumably they would also be prepared to defend the article with some knowledge in a real Afd, i.e., one contested by knowledgeable parties, including, say, having ability to find notability proof in Tagalog, if it exists. Some of those voting here are UP Dilman students, but this does not necessarily qualify them to make ad hoc notability decisions, "I never heard of it," or "It wasn't important to me," are arguments to be avoided in notability decisions. Anyway, if admin closing this permits, I'd do the work, it's actually less work than dealing with an AfD.--Abd (talk) 17:03, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You see, if you think an article doesn't satisfy the notability criteria, it's perfectly legal, and encouraged, to use the AFD system. We have the system already, so why not use it?
 * "I never heard of it" is a perfectly valid reason for AFD since it'll give you an idea of it's notability, especially if the person saying it actually lives in the place of the subject -- in case, the Philippines.
 * Now, if these 5 orgs get mainstream media sources (try Google News), then they can be saved. But if they won't, then it's off the AFD. Blanking and redirecting may not be helpful either, especially if the article you're redirecting to is remotely related to the blanked article. I'd rather have a red-link than make me think "Why does this redirect here?" -- Howard  the   Duck  17:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It's legal to use AfD and often a huge waste of time and no real benefit to the project. It should remain legal, but admins are perfectly free to close premature AfDs. Why debate something with no real opposition? (I'm opposed to precipitate deletion of articles that *might* be able to be reliably sourced, and nothing here, so far, rules that out. It would be ruled out if those with access to the reasonable sources were participating and failed. I have no specific opinion on whether or not clubs like this should have their own articles; it's at the edge of notability from my point of view).
 * )As to "I never heard of it," see WP:IDONTKNOWIT. This particular argument is so bad that I'm astonished it was advanced. UP Dilman is a huge campus, and a club could, in fact, be quite notable (on or off-campus) with a majority of students not knowing about it, not to mention one or two. "Living in the Philippines?" Let's see, I live in the U.S., is my personal lack of knowledge of a topic's notability evidence of anything? U.S. population, 304 million, Philippines, 87 million. Is this difference significant?
 * As to Google News, I found reference to the organization from a Philippines English source. Not currently googleable because the news archive was gone. I found it in the Wayback Machine and corrected the link in the article. That alone would not establish notability, but my point is that there may be quite a bit about this organization that would satisfy WP:RS, but not so easy to find if one does not know what to look for, even in English (the Wayback Machine is not yet searchable for text), but I'm even more concerned that there may be newspaper accounts in Tagalog that someone in Dilman could find, accounts that, if in a U.S. newspaper, would satisfy us as to notability. I am *not* claiming that these clubs are notable, only that we need better and more leisurely process to determine it. What's the rush? Why should we waste time on an AfD when the basic work could have been done with no fuss at all, and fuss later *only* if someone actually disagreed. The blank and redirect (or just redirect, why blank?) option in this case, for all these articles, is easy, it would be a redirect to a list of UP Dilman campus organizations (and I'd have a note on the Talk page briefly noting that this specific series of articles were redirected to that list based on apparent lack of notability, with an explanation of what to do if one disagreed). I'm thinking ahead to the encyclopedia truly being an encyclopedia for the world, in English, which is increasingly an international language, and current process will not come even close to cutting that particular mustard. It's far too inefficient and requires too much admin time (or, on the other hand, encourages snap judgments by overworked administrators).--Abd (talk) 20:36, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. There are over a hundred student organizations in UP Diliman, and not every organization is well known outside the University, even on the level of Metro Manila (i.e. the National Capital Region). AFAIK, some of these have existed even before Wikipedia came to being (I remember being asked to join the Tomo-Kai in the late 90s), so I don't know how many years do you intend to wait for one such newspaper report in Tagalog to come up (unless it's a press release from a racy tabloid that is more liberal in accepting paid press releases). Keep, no. Merge, yes or' no. Delete, yes, unless each org gets a more substantial footing. --- Tito Pao (talk) 22:14, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * comment Our country has both Filipino and English as offical languages. If there are reliable sources for these articles, they would be printed in leading broadsheets which are in English. These papers also have online archives. I'm in Diliman and the only papers that in Tagalog here are tabloids and one of our University papers. Tabloids do not entertain info about clubs unless you pay them in the classified ads or as Titopao said, press releases and Univ. papers are not independent sources. I'm also slightly offended on your comment that the majority of UP students don't know their own organizations. We might be a developing country but our communication facilities are not primitive. If there are any events inside UP, at least two Univ. papers (not counting the college based ones)are there to report it. The students also have online access both free and non-free inside the campus. Every semester there is a day that are dedicated to these clubs where they held events and seminars. Last time I checked students are required to attend these events. As I said earlier if you bothered reading my first comment, there's WikiPilipinas which deals in everything Filipino. How many UP students do you want to tell you that these clubs are not notable? The articles could be saved there but they have no place in Wikipedia. As for the redirects, it is a fuss. chances are these redirects would be orphaned and would bloat RfD and create stress for the overworked admins. It will also set a bad precedence in redirects for Univeristy related clubs. Should all clubs redirect to their school article? If not what makes UP special? Should we create dab page for these redirects when they pertain to multiple Universities?

Actually you're the only one who bloated this discussion and most of the people here are simply countering your comments-- Lenticel ( talk ) 00:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Exactly, very well said. --- Tito Pao (talk) 00:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment. Hmph! Be that way. Look, if you think my comments out of place, why bother countering them? Surely the closing admin will see through it. However, I do think I've raised substantial issues. It's a bit frustrating that commenters who seem to be "countering" my comments -- aren't we trying to cooperate in building the project? -- don't seem to be dealing with the facts of this situation. The article authors are absent; those who actually care about the topic are quite possibly away from internet access at this point. With a little effort, I found one newspaper mention of the Astronomy club, just because it happened to have been Wayback archived, and I fixed the link in the article. If the authors or other interested persons can't establish notability, it's fine to delete the articles, but it looks to me like these articles were created in good faith (at least the Astronomy club one, I haven't looked in detail at the others). What's the hurry? Running out of disk space? AfDs do *not* set precedent, participation is far too spotty for that. In this case the redirect would be to a list of clubs on that campus, and, yes, it seems reasonable to me to have a subpage of an article on a University to have a list of campus organizations with links. The details don't generally need to be on Wikipedia *unless* a club becomes notable, and, right now, we have no way to determine that. If in a reasonable time -- which is not merely a week or two -- and after notability is challenged, no notability appears, then it becomes reasonable to delete the articles.
 * However, I'm suggesting that it is far more efficient to simply redirect all these articles. It could have been done by anyone, the nominator could have spared all of us this conversation by just doing it, and, if nobody appeared to defend the articles, it would have been done. If there were no appropriate place to redirect the articles, a page could be created in WP space that says "The topic of the article from which this was redirected was considered not sufficiently notable by an editor for Wikipedia to remain. The original article may be accessed (process description) and recovered; however, an editor recovering the article should be prepared to defend notability, see (Policies and Guidelines). I'm finding that merge is increasingly being done with AfDs. It's far less drastic than deletion, which wastes, and continues to waste, admin time. And anyone can do it.
 * You know what wastes time? A person who insists on saving an article he doesn't even have a clue what it is, plus not to mention what I did a few minutes ago undoing unnecessary addition of a copyrighted logo for decorative purposes. Admins are selected for several reasons, and one of those is the handle deletion discussions. If they don't want to do janitorial work, 1) don't be an admin, or 2) everyone should be able to delete articles. If you hate AFD, don't comment on AFDs. If you question the wisdom of AFD, why bother participating? You don't speak for everybody, and not everyone wants to redirect and create a bigger mess. Imagine the mess if the redirect article turns out not to be related to the article it is redirecting. What should we do? Of course a deletion discussion, which would've been done earlier. Now that's wasting time. -- Howard  the   Duck  13:15, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment I find it out of place for a high school student to comment on college-level club politics, although I think this now necessary seeing how much controversy this is generating. The question here hinges on two things: one, the level of notability of the organization and two, the question of whether or not that notability satisfies Wikipedia's guidelines on such.  If notability guidelines (emphasizing the word guidelines) are by their nature subjective, then it is up to said editor to establish that notability for the sake of that article.  Articles are established many times because of an editor's belief that topic is sufficiently notable for the sake of Wikipedia, and many times these "conflicts of interest" from other editors who do not believe that these articles are notable enough (whether empirically or otherwise) degenerate into AFDs like this one.  Conceded that it would be very hard to make a concrete standard for notability as different people have different standards for it, but it should be the responsibility of editors to establish notability where others cannot, rather than harp on the non-notability of the article in question in an AFD like this one.  -- Sky Harbor  02:38, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment There is no substantial controversy over the notability of these clubs; someone who thinks there is hasn't been watching closely. What is in controversy is process; that is, those who *might* have the information needed to establish notability are not participating and probably don't even know this is happening. Yes, it is up to the original editors -- or anyone who steps up to the plate -- to establish notability; however, it's common to allow some substantial time for that to take place. What's the rush? If these articles were about blatantly non-notable subjects, fine, though it would then not be necessary to AfD. Blatantly non-notable material can be deleted on sight. If the articles in question were redirected, the *effect* of deletion would be accomplished, but these edits would show up on the watchlists of any prior editor who happened to look, and an explanation of what happened to the pages could be placed in Talk for the redirected pages, it would likewise show up on watchlists. Why are we spending energy debating the deletion of marginal topics? I can say why I'm here, I'm concerned with process and I dislike trashing someone's work without giving them a fair chance to establish its value to the project, to the "sum of all human knowledge." I have a *small* evidence of notability for the Astronomy Club, I found with a little search, but that was only in English. (I fixed the link in the article.) I certainly can't search in Tagalog or Chinese. The club itself might have a collection of newspaper clippings. Or not. But, enough. --Abd (talk) 03:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually I think the text in the articles came from the orgs themselves, ergo, they'll have a copy of it. It looks like a generic "About us" section in a website. Again, if they'll need inquiry, they can ask an admin or actually anyone for access on deleted history. It's not that hard. -- Howard  the   Duck  16:10, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Not everyone follows through on that process, and perhaps they are unaware of how to do it in the first place. We can't presume everyone is a trained Wikipedian right off the bat.  -- Sky Harbor  01:35, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * They can re-create the article then someone will speedily-delete it, then there'll be communication between the parties, then it can be explained about the deletion discussions. -- Howard  the   Duck  03:04, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment. As an alumni of the said university and as one who compiled a list of student organizations before (see ), I will stand by my assertion that almost all of these 400+ organizations are not notable enough for Wikipedia and that finding WP:RS enough to create a full-fledged article (as opposed to a list entry) is not feasible. So my reason for nominating is simply not because I think they are not notable enough but also because they won't have enough reliable sources. --seav (talk) 02:51, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per DGG. Doctorfluffy (talk) 06:13, 4 January 2008 (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.