Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dr Prabhat Das Foundation

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. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 11:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dr Prabhat Das Foundation[edit]

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Per discussion at the conflict of interest noticeboard it was established that this article was created by an editor with a conflict of interest with the intent to promote the organization. As to the subject itself, it fails WP:CORP as it does cannot establish notability with reliable sources. All references in the article are to the company's web site, and while it claims notability by showing scans of newspapers, nobody has yet been able to translate such photos and in the past web sites have been known to alter scanned images of publications as evidence of their notability (see this AfD for a recent example). Absent real sources this organization does not merit inclusion (and a number of searches have failed to find any). -- Atama頭 06:54, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. -- Atama頭 06:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. -- Atama頭 06:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete blatant self promotion. nothing in gnews [1]. LibStar (talk) 07:13, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete failing some shocking revelation about the sources, fails WP:CORPs. --Cameron Scott (talk) 07:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete No sources apart from own web site. Fails WP:ORG. Johnuniq (talk) 09:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete for the lack of notability and reliable sources. Salih (talk) 09:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete no signs that the charity meets WP:CORP, no gnews hits and only ~3000 google hits. Smartse (talk) 10:49, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete seems to fail WP:ORG. No mention in reliable sources, and only sources cited are self promotional references. Bfigura ^(talk) 17:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: I can't find significant coverage for this organization. Joe Chill (talk) 23:13, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Google did not return sufficient results to prove notability. COI editors/promotional. NN. Netalarmtalk 01:04, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Some Facts related to the article Dr Prabhat Das Foundation:
I am surprised to see that some editors are pushing for a hasty deletion of this article. Before deleting we must do some research to find whether this topic is notable & the information is reliable or not. I have done some research & these are the findings:-

1) Notability: I am a native of Bihar, India, living in USA. My mother tongue is Hindi & I read Hindi newspapers daily. Though I am a fan of Wikipedia, this is my first contribution. I can well remember dozens of third party & reliable references related to this organization. Majority of natives of Bihar (with population of 50 million) are at least familiar with the name of this charity organization. This organization very well meets the notability criteria of Wikipedia.

Also, when I was going through this article I noted that some of important facts (that are supported by reliable, secondary sources) were deleted (why?) by the editor Cameron Scott. This organization has volunteers more than ten thousand (there is reference to an American newspaper front page article with this heading ), and this whole fact with its reference was deleted by this editor (later brought back by a contibutor). This seems inapropriate haste in deletion! Similarly he deleted the mention of the fact that more than 300 libraries-community centers are run by this organization! Cameron Scott should have put a ‘citation needed’ tag & should not have removed these important facts that are some proofs of its notability.

I have also visited the website of this organization & found that there are hundreds of reliable, secondary sources (mainly in Indian languages -Hindi , Urdu & Maithili- newspapers, perodicals, magazines etc. As a daily Hindi newspapers reader I could recognise several of them and they are real, reliable & from reputed (Hindi) publications.

2) Conflict of interest: One editor Atama, who is hastily pushing for its deletion, has posted some information regarding this article that are not correct. For example, to quote him, “per discussion at the conflict of interest noticeboard it was established that this article was created by an editor with a conflict of interest with the intent to promote the organization.” I have reviewd the whole discussion & links with neutrality. This mentioned editor has noted “I, Prakashkanth (this is also my real name) …..am actively involved in this organization; but there is absolutely no conflict of interest as all the information added by me are facts, well referenced in this article & objectively verifiable by reliable, secondary sources.” This is not a proof of conflict of interest, especially when this contributor is not hiding any thing (not even his name!) & has no financial relation with this organization. The only thing is that probably he knows about this organization more than we know & is contributing this information to Wikipedia. For example, as citizen of India, if I contibute to the aricle related to India, it will not automatically prove that I have conflict of interest. In fact majority of the articles in Wikipedia are contibuted by people who are well familier with those topics. Reviewing all these facts I don’t think that this contibutor has any real conflict of interest.

3) Reliable, secondary sources: The English speaking editors of the Wikipedia should know that majority of people on our planet do not speak english. The mother tongue of about 500 million people is Hindi. If a source is in Hindi it does not make it less reliable! Comments by one editor who seems in very haste to delete this article ( Atama ) is surprizing “…scans of newspapers, nobody has yet been able to translate such photos and in the past web sites have been known to alter scanned images…” He is stating that nobody can translate & understand Hindi! He is also implying that fraud is involved because he himself can not read Hindi. These statements by this editor questions his intention.

After checking the website of this organization I found that this is essentially an Indian organization NGO, though the founders are in USA, and it is also registered in USA. In fact this was very clear in this article till Cameron Scott deleted this basic information, (again, why?).

One of the editor who has written about this article just couple of days ago; -“But considering how long the article has been around, and how many editors have worked on it, I have the feeling that it would be rejected because the article can be "cleaned up".”—is now suddenly pushing for its deletion! (why?)

Wikipedia, though very popular in English speaking world is rarely used by Hindi speaking peoples. But that does not mean that Hindi or other non-English citations should be disregarded. And, if you search on google (the English language search engine) to find Hindi article you will certainly find none! I think that editors of Wikipedia should not have bias against non-English languages.

--Barnabas2009 (talk) 17:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC) — Barnabas2009 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
A newspaper clipping is still a newspaper clipping even if it's scanned onto the subject's home page. The crux of the matter is that this article will be kept or not based on the quality of the available Hindi sources, as there aren't any English ones. There's also the matter of all the associated images: ideally they want to be on Commons in any case, assuming that we can verify the author. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 17:49, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ummm, while I'm at it, while GNews doesn't seem to have anything (possibly because it only searches a finite set of English sources?), Gsearch itself has a few. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:12, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I understand that a clipping is as good as an online source, but I just wanted to point out that we have been "tricked" in the past. Personally, I believe that a charity is far less likely to post altered self-promotional images than a fringe science author who is using Wikipedia for advertising, but I thought it important to bring up the possibility. -- Atama頭 18:21, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. And on that same note, it is quite possible that even when articles are getting subject to canvassing, meatpuppetry et cetera it's important to remain objective. In this case I think it's a bit less open-and-shut than this AfD appears at first glance. Had I any faith at all in the process in question I'd be tempted to stick a {{rescue}} tag on the article, but sadly that's basically just for articles on Pokemon or soap opera characters these days. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:30, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – This is a tough one, as the article is promotional and there is a COI issue. But the main question as far as deletion is concerned is whether this foundation is notable. Again, it's tough, because the sources are not easily accessible to most of us. And yes, we've been scammed before, but I'd like to assume good faith and not conclude it's a scam until I've seen some evidence. There seems to be this idea on Wikipedia that a source is not verifiable unless you can bring it up on your computer screen. I'd like to think that libraries and newspapers still have a place in the repository of human knowledge. So I'm going to give considerable weight to Barnabas2009's assertion that these are in fact reliable, verifiable (to him at least), secondary sources. I'd still like to see more confirmation, but until someone shows me evidence that these scans are manipulated, or that the scanned articles are coming from other than mainstream, reliable sources, I'm going to have to say that they do demonstrate notability. Rees11 (talk) 20:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Can you read the scans? Do they cover the subject in a significant manner, per WP:N? Even if we assume that the articles are genuine, if they are only bare mentions of the foundation or puff-pieces then they still don't show notability. For example, look at this reference, do you see where only small portions of the article are highlighted? That could be due to those portions of the article being particularly significant, but those could also be because those are the only places where the foundation is mentioned. If we can't verify the content of the articles then how can we say that notability is established? Remember, we don't assume a subject is notable until proven otherwise, rather the opposite. I posted this AfD in the Indian deletion sorting list in the hope that someone who can actually read those articles might provide that identification to help make this a more informed deletion discussion, so I'm not biased against non-English sources. If those articles were online I could use Google Translate or some other software to do the verification. But I can't. Also, we don't even know what these newspapers are in most cases, the reference I linked is referred to in the article as "Hindi newspapers". Imagine if it was a source in English, and the reference in the article was only called "English newspaper". -- Atama頭 21:41, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I'll say, also, that among the English language articles being used, the NewsIndiaTimes paper does seem to be a reliable source, a story written in a legitimate magazine by a journalist that significantly covers the organization. The India Tribune "article" is clearly a press release, not a reliable source. One reference alone generally isn't sufficient for establishing notability. More articles like the NewsIndiaTimes article would do it though. -- Atama頭 21:50, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty much in agreement with you on those points, I just don't want the article deleted simply because the sources are not all in English or published in the NYT. I'd very much like to hear more opinion from people who can read the sources and comment on their reliability. Rees11 (talk) 22:44, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have a general question. The foundation's web site is showing scans of newspaper and magazine articles, presumably works that have copyrights to them (as published works). I doubt that the organization has received permission to do so. Does linking to such material violate WP:COPYLINK? I don't ask this in an attempt to "shut down" the references, but as a legitimate concern. I'm not an expert on our copyright rules so it may not be a problem. -- Atama頭 23:37, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I'm going with keep now for a few reasons (although not a strong keep). This appears to be a contentious AfD, so I'll provide a more elaborate rationale:
- Ref #1 shows that the organization is not large enough to have done anything notable yet.
- Ref #2 & #3 show existence
- Ref #4 is more of a PR exercise in a local Indian-American website, so that's sub-local website (direct link to article)
- Ref #5 Press release
- Ref #6 Again press release in a sub-local website. See banner language on homepage. Even if it the article isn't a press release, it's clearly not RS.
- Ref #7 is coverage regarding a program in a news magazine. The magazine website is here, I'm unable to find much info about the magazine itself, other than that it's a state wide publication.
- Ref #8 Not a reference
- Ref #9 same notes as ref #7
- Ref #10 has three different clippings of non-trivial coverage. One of them is from Dainik Jagran, a reputable Hindi publication.
- Ref #11 includes both trivial and non-trivial coverage in newspapers. I can't say which newspapers though.
- Ref #12 includes clips from this publication. IMO, it should be treated as a primary source.
In addition, there's also this from Yahoo! News that I found. It's not about the organization, but it goes beyond trivial. Given all this, I think the org passes our notability criteria. -SpacemanSpiff 00:03, 16 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A reporter for ref #7 was shot and killed for investigating government corruption, so I'm guessing it's a reliable source, or at least not fluff.[2] Rees11 (talk) 23:43, 18 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep I have gone through this organization's website. This organization seems quite notable at least in the Bihar region of India. There are clippings of several articles / newses that are from regional & national, reputable Hindi publications. I think Hindi speaking contibutors can improve the list of references in this article a lot.--LionTiger999 (talk) 12:47, 16 October 2009 (UTC) — LionTiger999 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. }[reply]

Keep per SpacemanSpiff. I'm assuming good faith on the scanned articles, and hoping that someday reliable mainstream non-English sources are given as much or more weight than a low number of oft-trivial "G-hits". Priyanath ^talk 20:39, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

weak Keep if there is solid documentation for the number of voluneeers, preferably not based on a press release. DGG ( talk ) 23:54, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - the organization is hard to reference by virtue of its location (with language and technological limitations), but that doesn't make it deletion-worthy. Several outside sources are referenced, even though they are hosted on the organization's own website. By my investiagtion, none of those sources have websites of their own that could possibly host the articles otherwise. - Draeco (talk) 00:44, 20 October 2009 (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.