Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oxford Round Table (re-nomination)

Oxford Round Table

Oxford Round Table (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

This is a procedural renomination of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oxford Round Table so that any closing administrator may be more able to determine the consensus. Personally, I would delete per Guy's original nomination, seen below. Will ^(talk) 16:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Oxford Round Table (ORT) is a minor business venture that involves a conference organised by an American company but convened in an Oxford college. Some Oxonians are incensed by this, and there has been a small amount of brouhaha on forums as a result, but the sources do not indicate that this is actually notable or significant, only that it exists. A short piece in the TES, for example, but that does not establish the supposed notability of the company. Most of the sources are either primary (business registration data) or not independent (the company's own website); much of the article reads as orignial research (e.g. the linking of the for-profit and non-profit companies, and the statement that they are members of the same family, which has no source; it's not an especially uncommon surname); and most of the substantive edits, including initial creation, have been made by single purpose accounts on one side or other of the external dispute, most of them heavily conflicted. Add to this a new twist: a complaint to the Foundation, discussing legal action being taken against one of the activists pushing in the direction of criticism and negative material. In my opinion, this article is more trouble than it is worth, given the marginal notability of the subject and the fact that the article itself exists, per present evidence, almost exclusively as a battleground for an off-wiki dispute. Guy (Help!) 21:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

• delete non-notable conference. PouponOnToast (talk) 16:17, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per WP:NOT#NEWS. Per Guy, the only clearly independent source that has been shown is the TES article (last reference) that talks about the controversy, which is a fundamentally online forum kind of controversy. Still, it got reported in a reliable source, but just once, and there's no evidence to suggest that the issue has any deeper coverage. I don't think the user behavior issue should have any impact on whether to delete the article or not, as long as we don't mistake the large numbers of participants for evidence that the subject has lasting notability. (However, if the article is kept, I think we should place it on Article probation.) Mangojuice^talk 16:21, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Seems to get enough coverage in mainstream media. If people are edit-warring over the article, this is hardly unusual. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep per WP:DR. The AfD was inappropriate because the problem is a content dispute. One side of that dispute is now advocating deletion, and is using sockpuppets. One outside editor, Tony Sidaway, has already created a good new start on the "controversy" section, and this article can clearly be improved (perhaps through the dispute resolution process) but certainly does not need to be deleted. The dispute thread at the Chronicle website has now been going on for over a year with over 1000 posts, the overwhelming majority of whom are academics, showing it is clearly noteworthy and controversial in academia. If you look at the archived AfD page, removing all the sockpuppets and SPAs (including me), there does not appear to be a consensus either way.Academic38 (talk) 17:17, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

  Struck as an SPA identified on ANI. Any other SPA votes will be treated accordingly. Will ^(talk) 18:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Strong Keep There are an overwhelming amount of metions of this in reliable sources.[1][2][3][4][5] Edits wars and POV issues are not a valid reason for deletion. This should never be used as a way to try and win an edit war. Consider using the talk page and other dispute resolutions. --neonwhite user page talk 17:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. I don't have much patience for this reprocessing in the first place. Instead of flipping a coin, I decided to do a brief analysis using alexa:

3 month average Percent of global Internet users

• oxfordroundtable.com = 0.000085%
• theskulls.net = -----------0.00002% -- (online site of the 2000 feature film, the skulls, featuring Joshua Jackson and Craig T. Nelson, about a secret society.)
• wikipedia.org = ----------8.558% -- (includes all languages)

8.558% divided by 2,218,000 english language articles = 0.00000385% "(figure does not include all languages)

The average english language article is visited by less than half of 0.00000385% of global internet users

0.000085% /

0.00000385%

= 22.078

conclusions

• The oxford round table article is worth 4 times more than an article about a major motion picture.
  
• The oxford round table article is worth ~22(x2) times more than the average english wikipedia article.
  

This may sound unbelievable, but it's worth thinking about.

For the record, I believe that this did not deserve a second nomination. DGG, and a few others made significant good arguments for this article. --BETA 18:31, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Is it really popular, or is it a bunch of people repeatedly clicking refresh? Alexa doesn't mean shit in AfDs, neither does Google results. Will ^(talk) 18:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)