Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Raëlian Church membership estimates

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 delete. Courcelles 00:30, 6 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Raëlian Church membership estimates[edit]

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Not a notable topic. The information could be given in one or two sentences in the article on the group. (For instance: "There have been various published estimates of the number of members, ranging from 80,000 down to only 24. ~~This seems to be due to the Raelians' desire for publicity and the negligence of the news media in fact checking.~~") I struck out the second sentence due to OR concerns expressed, as well as possible BLP concerns. Steve Dufour (talk) 13:32, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. You proposed the following as a replacement sentence, "There have been various published estimates of the number of members, ranging from 80,000 down to only 24 170." What value is gained by deleting all the references? Also 24 referred to the reported number of Raelians in South Florida. With an error in representation such as that, can you be regarded as qualified to judge the notability of the topic?Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 14:01, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. My mistake. The low estimate for world-wide membership was 170, not 24. -Steve Dufour (talk) 14:32, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In 2004 or 1974? Do you even spend 10 seconds to carefully read the article?Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 14:36, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You are right. I see now what the article is saying. I am withdrawing the nomination since this is a bad AfD, although I still think the article is not needed. It's more about the sources than about the only important fact, which is the estimated number of members. Steve Dufour (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Unencyclopedic and WP:OR Catfish Jim & the soapdish 14:19, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How is it original research? It simply says it's what the media reported. No interpretation or reading in between the lines is necessary to generate this list.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 14:39, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

2) Do you want to see real original research? Try the above recommended statement by Steve Dufour: "There have been various published estimates of the number of members, ranging from 80,000 down to only 24. This seems to be due to the Raelians' desire for publicity and the negligence of the news media in fact checking." How do you go from "There have been various published estimates of the number of members, ranging from 80,000 down to only 24." to "This seems to be due to the Raelians' desire for publicity and the negligence of the news media in fact checking."? Compare that to what the article currently states: "Various news media have reported Raëlian Church membership estimates, and these statistics, often provided to the news outlets by the Church itself (see the sources below), claims a long-term term trend of past growth. However, despite the media's efforts to provide coverage on the Raëlians, the estimates taken within a given year can vary by tens of thousands. Outliers appear when charting the dates of membership estimates." "In addition to the media, Susan J. Palmer, a Canadian sociologist who has studied new religious movements has given several estimates of the size of the movement in different years, and a member of the University of Virginia has given estimates as well. Claude Vorilhon the founder of the Raëlian Church gave the earliest estimates of the movement's size in his 1970's Raëlian books. Most, if not all of the estimates below originate from numbers given to journalists by representatives of the Raëlian Movement during media interviews etc. Occasionally journalists will quote outdated information which would account for what appears to be a decline of thousands of members in a short period of time." None of that is original research.

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination withdrawn I actually did act too fast in nominating this article for deletion. I see that what it is saying is that sources put the number at around 40,000 to 80,000. That's not an unreasonable range. I still think that it would be better to just put that information in one sentence in the main article with 2 or 3 of the best sources cited. -Steve Dufour (talk) 18:33, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note- Well, if that's what you think, Steve, the best thing is not to withdraw the nomination but to do what I'm about to suggest which is to:
Delete and merge to Raëlism in the form of a sentence or two. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 07:08, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, agree with Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk · contribs) and Steven J. Anderson (talk · contribs). -- Cirt (talk) 16:09, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and merge relevant content to Raëlism. Most of the information in this page likely violates WP:TRIVIA. John Carter (talk) 16:17, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do any of you know if an article about "membership estimates" can be made to be encyclopedic? What are the criteria? Can it be something other than a large country or organization? Is it simply a matter of third parties or some academic writer giving a damn about what the sources estimate some membership to be? Also, how is it going to be incorporated? And does a third party have to actually measure the membership for it to be included in the article?Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 22:04, 1 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and merge with Raëlism as applicable. For the most part this is pure trivia.Griswaldo (talk) 15:41, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, putting a one-sentence summary into Raëlism. Not even remotely notable. Do not merge since more than a sentence or two makes no sense, and don't leave a redirect, because this is an unlikely title. Hans Adler 16:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Prety much as above.Slatersteven (talk) 14:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete very bad sourcing; many of the source articles no longer exist, of those that do, many are behind pay walls or cite the Raelist church's own membership estimates(no third party verification). If we remove unsourced or badly source material there isn't anything left to merge to Raëlism let alone justify keeping this article. Voiceofreason01 (talk) 13:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment There is nothing remarkable about various estimates being a little different from each other, and each source giving their estimate as if it was somehow definite. You would find the same thing about any group that is the subject of media attention, for instance the Tea Party, the New Black Panther Party, and many more. Actually the fact that the range is only 100% (40,000 to 80,000) is fairly good. Steve Dufour (talk) 14:03, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. It might be good if every article that uses daily news media reports as sources included a disclaimer that they are not very trustworthy on details since there is a deadline and readers want definite facts, not estimates. Steve Dufour (talk) 14:07, 4 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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.