Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Harold Hoehner

Some questions for those !voting "keep"

 * 1) If Dallas Theological Seminary counts as a "major institution of higher education and research" how small do you have to be to become a "minor" one?
 * 2) Size isn't the issue. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary is basically the same size, but I can't call it major.  The Yale Divinity School is significantly smaller, but does some serious work and may still count as major, while the Harvard Divinity School is about the same size as the Yale one but is basically irrelevant to Christianity today.
 * 3) The articles on Harold Hoehner, John D. Hannah & J. Dwight Pentecost, all have one thing in common -- not a SINGLE third party reference in the article. How is an interpretation of WP:ACADEMIC criteria #5 that admits them as notable consistent with WP:GNG or with the statement in WP:V that "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it"?
 * Given that a set of trivial Google searches turned up a number of reliable sources, it's clear that plenty can be found, so the question is moot. Jclemens (talk) 16:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Funny how there're always "plenty" of RSes asserted at AfDs, but specific sources are almost never mentioned, and they never seem to show up in the articles when the day is done. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The key wording is "can be found". This is intentionally different from "have already been used and are cited", which is your erroneous interpretation.  While in many areas the encyclopedia is nearing completion, coverage of religion is not one of these, and stubs are completely acceptable  The Christianity project alone is aware of more than 10,000 articles marked as stubs, 2,500 unrated articles, and there are more articles marked for related projects but not for the Christianity project.  My personal estimate is that there are probably no less than 2,500 more existing articles (like this one!) that aren't marked for the project (or any related project) at all, and at least another 45,000 or so articles that we should have but that haven't been started or are just a redirect.  There are a lot of years of fruitful work ahead of us in building out the topic area.  17:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've already thrown in the towel on this AfD, but two questions before leaving this: (i) Is the number of these stubs growing or shrinking? (ii) What proportion of these stubs would provide more useful and/or reliable information than simply entering the topic into Google, checking 'I feel lucky' & taking the (top hit that) results? HrafnTalkStalk(P) 18:13, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's no particular secret that you and I disagree on a lot of things, but that is a fascinating way to pose the question of stub creation and retention, and really deserves a wider audience. I'd honestly not thought of it that way before. Jclemens (talk) 18:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) How is classing an institution, whose "Distinguished Professors" have articles which ubiquitously fail to garner third-party references, as "major" warranted? HrafnTalkStalk(P) 11:29, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not really sure. Perhaps major includes the top 25% of the institutions of a specific type?  For institutions that aren't heavily engaged in research, such as seminaries, culinary institutes, etc.  perhaps WP:CREATIVE, WP:ENTERTAINER, or simply the GNG would be a better test to apply. Jclemens (talk) 16:14, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * And does Harold Hoehner provably pass any of these alternate standards? HrafnTalkStalk(P) 16:38, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Question for the nominator
Since there is no deadline, why bother nominating for deletion? Given that WP:N says "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." (emphasis in original), why nominate something which clearly has RS, when WP:BEFORE says "When nominating an article for deletion due to sourcing concerns, make a good-faith attempt to confirm that such sources aren't likely to exist"? If you read WP:DEL, which of the thirteen deletion criteria listed (e.g. "Articles for which all attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed" and "Articles whose subject fails to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP and so forth)") is satisfied by the Hoehner article?


 * This was the state that the article was in when I nominated it -- no articulation of notability and only trivial content. What was I meant to be looking for? You state that it "clearly has RS" -- yet you have presented not one either here or in the article. RSes are easy to assert, when you don't actually have to pony up with them. Did I mention "sourcing concerns" in my nomination? No I did not. I quite clearly made the nomination for failure to (i) meet WP:ACADEMIC #5 & (ii) make any alternate articulation of notability. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Hrafn, the fundamental issue with your nomination is that it isn't done for a valid reason. Non-notability is only a reason for deletion if and when a reasonable set of good-faith efforts to find and include appropriate sources have failed. In fact, your entire nomination argument appears to already be covered in WP:ATA as WP:JNN, with maybe a dash of WP:NOTCLEANUP thrown in. Jclemens (talk) 16:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * See above. No articulation of notability = nothing specific to investigate, or find "appropriate sources" for. In fact, your alphabet soup completely mischaracterises my very specific nomination. I would note that the article still does not articulate any claim, beyond the DTS position, that even potentially meets any of the criteria under WP:ACADEMIC. HrafnTalkStalk(P) 17:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Nonsense. When you found it it said "Distinguished professor" and gave the name of the seminary.  "Distinguished professor" is all by itself an claim of notability.  And if you knew the field, you'd have known that DTS is major. Not knowing the field is not a big deal; nobody can know every field.  But your prod was removed by someone with an edit summary including "First look for references & wht he may have published" you should have looked before nominating for AFD, as another editor had already said that it was worth doing the work.  If you didn't want to do the work, you didn't have to nominate it here.  GRBerry 17:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)