Jump to content

User:Tmtoulouse/Schlafly afd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The article Andrew Schlafly was nominated for deletion a little less than a month ago Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Schlafly. I have been trying to find sources for the article, and encouraging others to do likewise all this time. Nothing has come up, I was going to wait till a whole month had passed but have been encouraged to go ahead and put this in now.

One of the fundamental criteria for articles at wikipedia is verifiability. This is a core principle. Another core principle is Neutral point of view. If these two criteria can not be met then no amount of "notability" or "really wanting an article about something/someone" matters. I intend to show that this article can not meet the criteria for verifiability and can not meet a neutral point of view. These are the primary issues. I am not questioning his notability, his "worthiness" of an article, but rather the fact that no matter how much some of us would like a well researched article about this person it is impossible to build one meeting core wikipedia guidelines.

Article fails verifiability:

Below are all the sources that have been found the whole time we have been working on this article, and a month after a call was put out to find the best sources we can. These are not sources that can construct an article.

These articles focus totally on Conservapedia and offer only passing mention of Andrew Schlafly

Nunan, Tim (2007-03-08). Conservapedia Demystified. Nassau Weekly. Retrieved on 2007-04-23. [1]
Cotey, John (2007-04-03). Online Conservapedia pitched as conservative alternative to Wikipedia. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 2007-04-21. [2]
Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes. Metro (2007-03-19). Retrieved on 2007-04-23.[3]

These are primary sources

Eagle Forum University, Instructor ID. www.eagleforum.org. Retrieved on 22 April 2007.[4]
PoliticalMoneyline. cspan.politicalmoneyline.com. Retrieved on 22 April 2007.[5]

Sources that are referenced to address claims in the article but do not mention Schlafly

FDA Press Release [6]
HPV FAQ from the CDC [7]
Beral V, Bull D, Doll R, Peto R, Reeves G (2004). "Breast cancer and abortion: collaborative reanalysis of data from 53 epidemiological studies, including 83?000 women with breast cancer from 16 countries". Lancet 363 (9414): 1007-16. PMID 15051280.
Abortion and Breast cancer from National Cancer Institute [8]

Secondary sources that mention Schlafly not related to conservapedia

The Discernment Ministries: British-Israelism. Watch Unto Prayer. Retrieved on 22 April 2007. [9]
This source mentions Andrew Schlafly only once and only includes birth date and birth location, not really a great WP:ATT source either.
Catherine Kosarek, Medical Student, Marries Andrew L. Schlafly, Engineer - New York Times. www.nytimes.com. Retrieved on 22 April 2007.[10]
A Wedding announcement, thats it.
MSN Video of discussion on HPV Vaccine.[11]
Features Schlafly but tells us nothing about him other than he dislikes the HPV vaccine
Study of abortion-cancer link 'meaningless': Expert says surveyed group didn't include those typically hurt, WorldNetDaily May 4th 2007 [12]
Probably fails WP:ATT offers very little information about Schlafly.

This is it, there are no non-trivial secondary sources that we can use to build this article. Therefore, it fails WP:Verifiability.

Article can not be written with a NPOV

A review of the article history will show that it has been difficult to keep out inadequately sourced criticism. This is particularly worrisome for a WP:BLP article. The other angle though is most of the criticism is valid. There are things to say about this man that are not the most flattering. But there are no sources for it. There are no sources for the things that we can say good about him. The only thing we can put in this article are basic skeleton facts. Born, raised, married, children, ect. This is not an interesting article, and more importantly it is not an article that reflects a neutral tone when weighed against the extensive criticism that has been leveled against him and his actions.

This at first might seem like a contradiction, how can someone have extensive criticism and not have sources per verifiability? The problem is that the criticism is located in sources that fail WP:ATT.

Summary

Based on the above reasons and evidence I urge this community to reevaluate its previous decision to keep this article. Anything that needs to be said about Andrew Schlafly can be said in the conservapedia article since all the sources relate to that anyway.

Tmtoulouse 18:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)