Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Witness accounts of the Roswell UFO incident


 * 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. Stifle (talk) 19:52, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Witness accounts of the Roswell UFO incident
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We've got an article on the UFO incident already. Having an endless series of witness accounts is rather excessive for this encyclopedia, and should remain the domain of true believers. Biruitorul (talk) 16:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Lacking any issue of notability or verifiability, this is a judgment call on whether these details represent an inappropriate POV or a useless collection of information. As far as POV, that can be dealt with by interested editors, and for that matter seems reasonably neutral as is (with a few exceptions in phrasing).  So I'm left with whether it's a useless collection.  I have to say it's not, simply because of the unique notability of the underlying subject and because essentially there's no difference between this article and, say, a list of episodes of a television show linked from the article on that show.  It's a split off link of detail work for those who are interested in the subject, and it appears a well-cited bit of detail work at that.  -Markeer 17:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete - This is unencyclopedic. We're supposed to gather information from secondary sources. --Damiens .rf 17:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm not attached to the article, but it has 13 secondary references and 85 footnotes to secondary sources. -Markeer 17:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * No. The refereces are simply repeating the accounts, which are primary sources. --Damiens .rf 17:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. We already have a rather long article on the Roswell UFO incident.  Anything beyond that is unencyclopedic and gives undue weight to a marginal topic.  KleenupKrew (talk) 21:32, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. Unencyclopedic, undue weight, no balanced rebuttals. If anything is eligible for Wikisource (doubtful), transwiki. --Dhartung | Talk 22:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete as Wikipedia is not a dumping ground for primary sources. And it's certainly not a place to give undue weight to fringe beliefs in a POV article. As Kleenup says, the proper place for this is the Roswell article. B figura  (talk) 22:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep/Move after some review, I have to agree that there's probably not a POV problem here. I still have some issues with the fact that this seems to primarily be an aggregation of quotes from witnesses, but those could be settled by a move to List of Witness accounts of the Roswell UFO incident. -- B figura (talk) 00:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Well-sourced, and connected to a notable topic. The fact some people are referring to this as a "marginal topic" is a POV judgement call. We aren't allowed to base our decisions on WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Using that criteria it could be argued that there are too many articles about 911, too. I wouldn't be voting to keep if this wasn't very well sourced. And as people keep telling me, the sources are the key. However I would recommend a new title for the article. "UFO incident" is itself a POV violation as it's generally referred to as the Roswell Incident or the Roswell Crash. To state an opinion that it was a UFO goes a bit beyond our job here. Let the witnesses make that claim. 23skidoo (talk) 15:57, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but where's the encyclopedic article? 98% of this is just quotes - no analysis, no thesis, no secondary content. Good for Wikisource, maybe, but just because something exists in a published source does not confer encyclopedic status on it. Biruitorul (talk) 17:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete as per nominator, Bfigura, transwiki -- not encyclopediac, no way to make it NPOV either, so way undue weight. --Doug Weller (talk) 17:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep An article with 85 footnotes is a rare commodity on Wikipedia, and the article identifies persons who claim to have been witnesses. This is a legitimate subset of an already lenghty Roswell article.  I agree with the persons who observe that this looks like a serious case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT.   As for criticism that there is "no analysis" and "no thesis", that's a good thing, see WP:OR.   Mandsford (talk) 23:58, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per UNDUE. Dahn (talk) 08:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per just about every keep nom above (and some sadly mistaken deletes) flaminglawyerc 04:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge some of the salient points (if any especially salient points are indeed to be found) into the main Roswell incident article, delete the rest. As it is it's a bloated collection of marginally encyclopedic raw material. K. Lásztocska talk 03:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: Well-sourced article, notable topic.  Otolemur crassicaudatus  (talk) 08:45, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * How exactly is this an article, though? It's just a series of quotes with no indication to the reader of what secondary sources have said about them. Biruitorul (talk) 14:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge: I'm with Lastochka; this is just a reiteration of numerous sources that if they're deemed reliable, should be in the main article in the first place.   RGTraynor  17:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: Useful page with NPOV. User:Anotherwikifan 09:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: If NPOV and well-sourced, it's a good article. Lawyer2b (talk) 13:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * First, it's quite arguably not NPOV - it gives undue weight to one side of the topic, and is not counterbalanced by more sceptical views. Second, per WP:N, "a subject that is presumed to be notable may still not be suitable for inclusion. For example, it may violate what Wikipedia is not" - not, for instance, an indiscriminate list of quotes. Third, again, how is this an article? It's a bunch of quotes lifted from some books. Biruitorul (talk) 15:22, 10 May 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.