Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion

The Grey School of Wizardry

This article is really misleading and doesn't tell the truth. It had some source to Star of Mysore which is run by one guy in India who has a "hocus pocus" and "abrakadrabra" section, but I could not find it in any archive and the entire site is garbage. And the one source you'd think that be objective is just running Potter-fever.[1] The entire article is like some April fools joke with lines like "There he lives with Morning Glory, and a small bearded dragon who lives on his shoulder all day. He drinks a herbal drink he calls a 'Pengalactic garglegaster'." This is not a school so much as an attempt to cash in on Harry Potter and push new-age religious beliefs on children for the low price of 17 euros. This "school" is fake and will not teach its students magic. Zewai (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

We do cover hoaxes and frauds, so long as they're notable by coverage in sources (see WP:N and WP:RS). It's quite likely these two articles (a merge with Grey School of Wizardry is clearly needed) should remain, although obviously we can't give credit to the incredible. I suggest AfDing both, now that you've started one, because we should demonstrate merge consensus anyway and it's as good a place as anywhere to garner some eyeballs. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:17, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

They are actually one in the same with almost the exact same content. The sources are the same and the claims are. It is the same neopagans who run it and articles are some endorsement or pitch to students. At least three of the sources do not back there lofty claims, but for 17 Euro and a purely "online" presence I do not see how 450 classes are really done and given "enrollment" its 2 students per class if that. It is a sales pitch and a scam. Zewai (talk) 14:33, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I've completed formatting on the nomination and added the duplicate article. Zewai, you need to post a detailed rationale at the AFD, or someone will close it on procedural grounds. The statement you started with here isn't quite sufficient, as it doesn't cite a policy basis for deletion. "It's a hoax" is insufficient, given that there are sources - your task is to show that the sources aren't enough to prove the subject notable. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 15:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

This school is NOT a hoax, and the many notable authors and religious leaders involved with it would not lend their names to it if it were. Among them are: Raymond Buckland, Raven Grimassi, Donald Michael Kraig, Nicki Scully, Robert Lee "Skip" Ellison, Patricia Telesco, Sam Webster, Trina Robbins, Ronald Hutton, Amber K, Jesse Wolf Hardin, Ellen Evert Hopman, Jeff McBride and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. Zewai may be something of a hoax, though. I see no previous contributions for him, no talk on his talk page, and a definite attitude to his posts here. I hate not to extend AGF, but I suspect an agenda. The headmaster of this school, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, has been a respected leader of the neo-Pagan community for over forty years, and the members of the Grey Council are among the most respected authors in that community. The articles should definitely be merged and/or the less complete one eliminated, but the subject is certainly notable due not only to the notability of the faculty, but all the news media and other coverage of the subject.Rosencomet (talk) 18:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

In answer to Zewai (talk) 14:10, 26 November 2013 (UTC), and 14:33, 26 November 2013 (UTC), I created one of the articles, "The Grey School of Wizardry". A little digging will tell you that I am a university lecturer and am registered in the Wikipedia Education Program. I am a fairly novice Wikipedian with only a little over a year's experience at editing and creating articles, but I am independent of the source. I currently teach Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Sydney, have no connection with the Grey School, am an atheist, and did not create the article to "promote", "pitch" for sales, or any other such activity. I have degrees in Archaeology and Religious Studies (which focuses on ALL religions and is not theological), my PhD is on eschatology of Dante's Divine Comedy, and I hold a degree in teaching in higher education. My students come from various academic disciplines, learning writing and research and I, again, stress that I have no connection with the Grey School of Wizardry. I edit and create articles where I see a need, to extend on or improve articles my students are working on, or when my interest has been awakened. I created this one after conversations with a student, tutor, and a colleague at my University about the Grey School which is not a hoax. Finally, after consulting with editors/administrators from Wikimedia AU, I created the a stub and began to add source material. The claim that the article was a "hoax" was the first block I stumbled on when I requested that the article be created and I clearly satisfied the administrator at that time that it was not. The interest for me intensified with each ensuing obstacle, and I went on to add more "credible", "secondary" sources and evidence to the topic's notability, community benefit, etc as requested by successive administrators until the article was finally approved and went live. I do hope you can look back over the article's history and see that the tests you are suggesting the article be put through again have already been satisfactorily passed. I do agree that the information on the second article should be merged with this one.

Beast Quake

Article does not provide enough useful material beyond the seed article and merely references a single play from the game referenced in the seed article. Article creator keeps removing the delete tag and is the only source of any material on the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.58.168.83 (talk) 19:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

 Done Ansh666 11:16, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Noone participated in the discussion

What happed if someone not participated in the in the discussion? The article will be deleted? Xaris333 (talk) 20:47, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

It usually gets relisted for another week, possibly another two, like what happens when only a few people participate and there's no clear consensus. I think it's tremendously unlikely that nobody will participate in an AfD once it's been relisted a couple times. But supposing nobody participated at all, and there's a consensus the AfD should be closed rather than relisted, I think you could make arguments for (1) closing as no consensus, or (2) (providing this hadn't come up before) deleting it as though it had been put up for PROD. Keep in mind that this past weekend was a major holiday weekend for many Wikipedia users, so traffic is probably a bit lower among editors, even in a high traffic area like AfDs. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 00:34, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Could someone complete the deletion process for Topological computing

Could a registered user do this please? In my assessment, it is a crank article with no independent citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.45.223.38 (talk) 05:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Topological computing. Ansh666 09:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

AfDs that reach a merge conclusion

It says at the top of this page and elsewhere that AfD is for deleting articles not for merging. Apparently not all nominators are aware of this. It is also fairly common, regardless of the nominator's proposal, for AfD commenters to support Merge as a proposed resolution. I don't think and I don't think the policy intends that merges be discussed at AfD. Merges should be discussed on article talk pages where editors who are more familiar with the articles in question can make a better decision. AfD is a good process for removing articles that don't belong in the encyclopedia. It is not such a good process for determining how best to organize information in the encyclopedia. I'd like to see two changes to how AfD is run. ~KvnG 15:46, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

1. Promptly close as invalid any AfD where the nominator proposes Merge as a possible resolution. On AfD, nominators and others supporting AfD proposals must make a case for outright deletion.
2. Remove Merge as a valid AfD result. Resolve these as No consensus instead. Anyone who supports a merge is welcome to put up banners and start a merge discussion at any time.

Oppose at least in part. A current consensus of "merge" would map to delete not no consensus, as the meaning of the result is "this should not exist as its own article". DMacks (talk) 15:55, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

My proposal to resolve these as No consensus is to allow time for merge discussion and merge to take place. If that is unsuccessful, someone may renominate the article. The failed merge attempt would satisfy WP:BEFORE requirement to consider a merge and allow the nominator to make a stronger argument for deletion. ~KvnG 16:11, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose, for different reasons:
  • Oppose first point - if someone thinks that a merge is a possible solution, that someone should open a merge discussion, not a deletion discussion. This I agree with. However in case this happens, the article still can be judged on its merits, and not merely on the nomination's merits. If someone, after nomination, makes a valuable case for not merging, or for outright deletion, then AfD discussion deserves to continue.
  • Oppose second point - Yes, AfD is not primarily meant to discuss merges, but it can easily come out that editors decide, in this venue, that a merge is the correct result, and the closer takes such consensus into account. It is quite useless to increase our already terrible bureaucracy by disallowing assessment of consensus as "merge".--cyclopia^speak! 16:21, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you think AfD is the best place to have these discussions? IME it is not. I've been involved in a couple cases recently where a merge conclusion was reached but when I attempted to do the merge, it became clear that the context was not given adequate consideration. I think merge discussion is better handled on article talk pages with editors more familiar with the material and the timescale is more conducive to reaching good decisions on what can be complicated questions. ~KvnG 17:09, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you think AfD is the best place to have these discussions? - No, it is not necessarily the best place, but it is a place where such discussion happen very regularly and it usually causes no trouble at all to do so. I am also puzzled by your argument about talk pages: did not talk page regulars take part in the AfD discussion? --cyclopia^speak! 17:49, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

No, for two reasons I don't believe participation in these AfD discussions is adequate. These are not theoretical concerns. If you need examples, let me know. ~KvnG 19:50, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

1. Many articles have sporadic editor participation and slow timeframes. It is not unusual for it to take 6 months to get good input on a merge discussion.
2. There is not a reliable mechanism to alert editors of the target page when a merge is being discussed as part of AfD of another article

• Oppose both. About the first, where the nominator proposes only a merge, it's closed as invalid, but a "maybe delete but possible merge" is just as valid as straight "delete"; generally this happens when the nominator is not sure about either the sourcing or the suitability of certain content. About the second, there are templates for merging as a result of AfDs: see the dab at Template:Afd-merge; the normal Template:Merge can also accept parameters that will point the discuss link to the AfD in question. I've carried out a couple merges myself, albeit smaller ones (which they usually are); there is little controversy over the majority of them. I suspect that the examples you have are edge cases, which would make this a typical WP case of creating a solution in search of a problem. Ansh666 20:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand why it is OK to nominate an article for deletion if you are unsure if it should be deleted or merged. Nominators should consider merging WP:BEFORE nominating. If the nominator is unsure whether a merge is a good idea, he should put up merge banners and/or start a discussion on a talk page.

One problem I'd like to solve is AfD workload. If you don't think this is an issue, I'll be happy to start a separate discussion thread to discuss that. I propose we need more of this work done WP:BOLDly with merges, WP:PROD and WP:BLAR. ~KvnG 20:51, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. On the first point, when a nominator sees the possibility of merging it is often conditional on things like the content being verified. When the deletion option is on the table the AFD should run its course. On the second point, disallowing a merge consensus from an AFD discussion is an impedement to reasonable compromises, is too inflexible, and a talkpage discussion would in most cases yield the same result anyway. On the fairly rare occasion that a consensus to merge is wrong on the merits, where those who work with the articles in question find that merging them together is inadvisable, a talkpage discussion may be opened to revisit the issue. Sjakkalle (Check!) 20:19, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

If an AfD Merge result is simply a recommendation to article editors then I'm fine. There are cases where the outcome is Merge and redirect and the nominator or administrator takes this as an authoritative edict to WP:BLAR and I'm not fine with that. ~KvnG 20:51, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose. In addition to the valid points already raised, I will add that I do not agree with the notion that a consensus reached by the wider audience found at AfD should be dismissed in favor of decisionmaking by a more narrow group of editors on a talk page. Sometimes it's valuable and productive to get the broader view. --Arxiloxos (talk) 20:56, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support point 2 I can't really support point 1 per WP:BURO. But I've seen, in my time, other editors basically abuse AfD to force a merge, and then when the merge happens, turn right around and insist on deleting encyclopedic content per WP:UNDUE, despite our WP:PRESERVE policy. I'm reminded of an old Burr Shafer cartoon featuring Augustine of Hippo meeting a man in the woods in the middle of the night who is handing him a large sack of money. "Augustine," the man says, "There are a few things I'd like you to leave out of your Confessions." Unfortunately, there are editors among us who don't want our readers to have all the facts. (I wish and pray that someday we'll have a WP:PRESERVE noticeboard.) We have a perfectly valid system for doing proper merges. Bringing the issue before the hoi polloi at AfD seems largely like a way to WP:GAME the system, imo. -- Kendrick7^talk 03:10, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Is your WP:BURO objection the same as what Cyclopia described above? ~KvnG 03:47, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, indeed, he's gotten at the gist of it! -- Kendrick7^talk 01:02, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Merges should leave behind redircts - or if we have a merge-and-delete, a history merge should take place - and that means that the remove of merged material is not losing previous contributions. --MASEM (t) 04:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect were recognized as fully valid AfD outcomes at WT:Articles for deletion/Archive 61#RfC: Merge, redirect (January–February 2011). I think that AfD does a passable job of determining whether a standalone article should exist. Notifying potential merge targets' editors should be improved. Flatscan (talk) 05:14, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
  • As mentioned by others, WP:Speedy keep 1 covers nominations where "The nominator withdraws the nomination or fails to advance an argument for deletion—perhaps only proposing a non-deletion action such as moving or merging, and no one other than the nominator recommends that the page be deleted." Flatscan (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Kerry Sayers

Not sure if this sportcaster is notable enough to warrant her own Wikipedia page. Most of the information posted appears to be nothing more than a rehash of her CV. No mention is given of any notable events she may have covered or of any notable interviews she may have conducted.

Moreover, no improvements at all have been made since March 2013 (when originally requested) and the only source appears to be a local media blog site. I am posting here because I am new to the Wikipedia process and not sure if deletion is even warranted in this case, so if I am way off base, please do not hesitate in slapping some sense into me.

Thank you. Marchjuly (talk) 06:56, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

@Marchjuly: This isn't the place to nominate an article for deletion. Please follow the instructions at WP:AFDHOWTO. Ansh666 07:36, 10 December 2013 (UTC) (Moved from top of page)

Colares UFO flap

Request that someone completes deletion of Colares UFO flap. Reason: No reliable sources, none added since March 2013. 78.73.162.169 (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

 Done Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colares UFO flap Ansh666 23:41, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Amber Naslund

I don't think this person meets the requirements for relevance to have their own page. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.183.30.96 (talk) 02:05, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

 Good enough, I've opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amber Naslund, please comment there. Thanks, Ansh666 04:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Deletion instructions

The deletion instructions that appear during step II are very usefull. Still the last steps can be improved:

• Suggest to open the articles for deletion log page in a new browser tab or window ( there are two unfinished edits)
• The last step should say: First go back to THIS (Preloaded debate) edit page and save; after that, save the edit on the articles for deletion log page.
  

After all the order does not matter, so you can also simply instruct to save both edits. --Wickey-nl (talk) 14:05, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

request to complete deletion process Don K. Preston

Hi, as explained on the page on how to nominate an article for deletion, I'm requesting that someone complete the process for Don K. Preston. Here is my rationale: I searched both google news and the google news archive and found no press coverage of him at all. [2] I also searched for references to him in google books and found only his self-published books [3]. Google scholar similarly did not turn up any coverage in academic journals. [4] Therefore, I think this person does not meet Wikipedia's basic notability criteria "the subject of multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." The article has had the notability tag on it for two and a half years. Thanks. 184.147.136.249 (talk) 17:15, 15 December 2013 (UTC)