Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Williams Record (second 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 merge and redirect to Williams College. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Williams Record

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Contested prod, contested merger, and most recently, someone contested even the tag. Fallacious reason cited for removing the notability tag was that it survived an AfD back in October 2005, which in fact ended in a non-consensus keep, pending improvement of the article. One year and a half on, it's still an unsourced stub about a low circulation journal not known outside the university and whose notability appears to hinge exclusively on its age. Ohconfucius 06:47, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge into Williams College article, perhaps expand?. It is well known among the local community there, but it's not otherwise notable enough to merit its own article. –-  kungming·  2 (Talk)  07:16, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete, as there's no mention of notability. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 08:33, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep, it's an independent newspaper that receives no college funding. Furthermore, your afd currently links to the old discussion. (fixed for you) I'm cutting and pasting this discussion here to further debate. SERSeanCrane 13:37, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, I would highly protest a merger with Williams College. It is an independent newspaper seperate of the school and to do so would be inapproriate. If need be, delete the article, but please do not merge.


 * Merge and Redirect. The Williams College article certainly won't be buried by the two sentences of information presented in this stub about a student newspaper relatively insignificant even by those standards.  RGTraynor 15:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Redirect seems sufficient. Arkyan 16:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: there are 2 issues I must deal with - Firstly the assertion that we should keep this article or delete all college newspapers is but a variant of "other crap exists", and is not a valid argument to keeping or deleting everything in a given category. There is a pretty big difference between "all college journals are not notable" and "not all college journals are notable". Secondly, while the independence of the journal may give it the right to a separate article, continued existence on wiki is still contingent on editors establishing its notability, and furnishing sufficient references from reliable sources to support same. Right now, the article fails to do it in a pretty big way. I would agree that if it is a truly independent journal, the article should be deleted, otherwise, a merger would still be possible. Ohconfucius 05:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. The Record is regularly mentioned in other published sources, mainly local papers like the Eagle and Transcript but, occasionally, by larger newspapers like The Boston Globe. Therefore, the Record is notable. David.Kane 13:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Could you source that, please? A Google search of "Williams Record" on the Boston Globe website turns up exactly one hit.  A similar search on the Berkshire Eagle website turns up exactly two hits.  That's desperately underwhelming.  RGTraynor 18:08, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * With all respect, the web does not index all data sources (by far),  the web tools of the Eagle and Glob[e] do not reach all their content from the covered periods,  and web data itself restricts us to the past decade or so (at best).  The Record is mentioned in at least a few front-page NYT articles in the 1960s ('Vassar Co-ed...' 1962).  A web-based view of the world is both "underwhelming" and inherently prejudicial to the questions here.  Most of the comments here are purely subjective,  while "Notability is not subjective:"
 * Subjective evaluations are not relevant for determining whether a topic warrants inclusion in Wikipedia. Notability criteria do not equate to personal or biased considerations, such as: "never heard of this", "an interesting article", "topic deserves attention", "not famous enough", "very important issue", "popular", "I like it", "only of interest to [some group]", etc. KenThomas 00:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete in the absence of significant references, and Redirect (despite financial independence) to avoid later confusion/recreation. Notability is extremely limited despite the occasional local newspaper mention. CapeCodEph 17:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * See below for "non-local mentions."


 * Keep. At least one volume of editorials published in the Record during the 1920s-40s has been published,  with commentary linking to political and other issues.  This makes deletion inappropriate.  Merging with Williams College is entirely inappropriate.   KenThomas 00:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * COMMENT. Why is the Berkeley Daily Cal seen as more notable?  This presumption of non-notability in this discussion reveals nothing but "the personal prejudices of the editors,"  which is a prima facie reason for non-action.KenThomas 00:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Great ... so source it.  WP:ATT is not a passing fancy, it's the fundamental requirement for inclusion on Wikipedia.  You can't just wave it off by claiming that there are no web sources, search engines don't go back that far, etc etc etc.  As it happens, the Globe's search engines go back 28 years, but in any event, it's not our job to prove the absence of verification, it's your job to prove that it exists.  Presuming we could read those linked sources (which I can't, anyway), are they about the Williams Record in any meaningful way, or are they "trivial sources" per WP:ATT?  (And what does the Berkeley Daily Cal have to do with this discussion?)  RGTraynor 04:51, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:ATT however, like everything here,  is not a procedural rule,  and it is being approached as such here.  This is supposed to be an attempt at consensus based on genuine attempt to arrive at a truthful determination,  not a no-holds-barred-prove-your-position fight.  YOU assert triviality,  despite the fact that you can't even read a good part of the,  ahem,  "record."  It's up to YOU to show that your perspective is valid with concrete reasons,  not to shove the burden of research and evidence on others.
 * The historical record is much, much larger than what the Wikipedia readership can easily access-- pure and simple.  And that is one good reason for exercising a soft hand with deletion and such discussions,  rather than having a procedurally focused 'thought police' (yes that's perjorative!) who scour the Wikipedia-space looking to remove articles that don't fit their particular subjective perspective on what is notable.  The 'notability' criterion,  to have significance,  must be applied objectively.  Practically,  this means that as contributors and editors,  the responsibility lies on each of us to make good faith efforts to determine the "truth of things"-- whether a particular article is 'notable,'  etc,  based on evidence we can find-- and to consider the limitations of our own subjective perspective.
 * That said, RGTraynor's particular arguments thus seem in violation of the Wikipedia ethics:  to gloss another FAQ,  its not up to the community to educate users,  its up to users to read the governance FAQs and documentation,  educate themselves,  act in accordance with the semi-consensus model,  and not "grind axes!"
 * Somewhat OT, the publication requirement has IMHO also reached the limitations of its 'scope' in a case like this;  we're asking a higher standard of "volunteer" editors that than the NYT asks of reporters.  Yes,  I can cite examples;  the point is,  I don't have to!
 * Finally, "PS,"  there's a direct historical connection between the Williams Record and the Daily Cal, and if we delete the Record,  we will risk "falling down a slippery slope" where we have to delete the Daily Cal--  which seems to (but may not) meet the 'notability' requirement.   In such a case,  there are two options (forks):  delete both,  or revise our sense of 'notability.'  I beleive the community will have to do the latter.
 * Footnote: Note most of the evidently 'independent' references to the Daily Cal in other media are the result of Daily Cal personnel moving to other publications and making those references-- this is also true of the Williams Record (historically).  And from my (subjective) POV it is trivial to assert that the Record is more 'notable' than the Daily Cal (argument truncated for now).
 * Footnote comment: There is currently no Wikipedia article for the Russellville,  KY publication 'News-Democrat,'  which,  from a presentist perspective,  is less notable than the Williams Record.  The fact that the archives of the ND are only accessible in microfiche in Russellville should not obscure the fact that the ND published early articles from William Jennings Bryant and Robert Penn-Warren;  just the opposite.  A "stub" should not be deleted simply because of the lack of the Wikipedia community's research or the difficult of "verifiability:"  it should be preserved to remind us of the tasks to be accomplished,  else we succumb to the perspective limitations our media.  (Again,  this challenges the scope definitions and limitations of the {POV} policy (as expressed),  which is itself a historical construction with it own self-referential "{POV}" problems.  In short:  the {POV} policy derives from the Wikipedia encounter with physics "kooks" and has scope applicability problems when applied outside that defined context. KenThomas 23:16, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * "Presuming we could read those linked sources" ... We? Okay...well even if you can't access proquest (most schools have a subscription), these are published works than can be verified. Check with Reference_desk if you need help confirming. SERSeanCrane 09:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Here are some articles that mention and/or use The Record as a source (accessed via ProQuest):
 * Great, there are a number of links which we can't access. Are any of them about the Record, as is required, as opposed to so-called "trivial mentions" of it?  No one is disputing that the paper exists, but heck, I'm sure I could come up with otherwise non-notable community leaders that have been quoted by local newspapers more than seven times in thirty years.  RGTraynor 15:56, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * First of all, by we you mean you. I'm sure a large number of wiki readers accessing from a decent school can access the articles. Second, a large number of these articles use The Record as a primary source for their article and as such, give it proper attribution. If the argument is that this is "a low circulation journal not known outside the college," these repeated mentions in the New York Times and Boston Globe are evidence to the contrary. SERSeanCrane 23:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Merge Non-notable. References seem sketchy and terse. WP:Local seems the best reference for this:
 * If enough attributable information exists about the subject to write a full and comprehensive article about it, it may make sense for the subject to have its own article. If some source material is available, but is insufficient for a comprehensive article, it is better to mention the subject under the article for its parent locality. If no source material, or only directory-type information (location, function, name, address) can be provided, the subject may not merit mention yet at all.:

So basically, we have some newspapers that may reference it but there isn't enough info to merit a full article. I say merge and start a Publications header in Williams College like in Swarthmore College (where they also mention independent publications of the school so I don't see the objection about merging). Chevinki 04:09, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * CommentSERSeanCrane implies that it may qualify as a reliable source, and is thus notable. However, one does not follow on from the other. Journalists look to all sorts of places to source their stories, including picking people off pavements for comments, and notability cannot be so inferred. WP:N states that the subject of an article needs to have been "the subject of non-trivial published works by multiple separate sources that are independent of that subject". Ohconfucius 06:20, 21 March 2007 (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.