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. Cbrown1023 talk 01:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yemassee (journal)[edit]

I'm not sure about the notability of this college lit journal. Some are quite well known and important but I've never heard of this one. At the least there is a WP:COI problem with someone with the same name as the reviews editor starting the article. Doubt always makes me list it here rather than speedy delete, even if I'm fairly sure of the outcome. Pig^man_dialogue 05:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:V, fails WP:BK. Only 307 Google hits on a directed search [1], and while a number of web sources mention this magazine, that falls under the "trivial mention" clause; they do no more than mention its existence or that Soandso was a co-editor of the magazine back in undergrad student days. RGTraynor 15:58, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do Not Delete. This journal is notable for publishing interviews with Nobel Laureates and Booker Prize winners. Derek Walcott and Kazuo Ishiguro are among the most famous living writers. They do not grant interviews to non notable journals. This article is not original research, its information is verifiable, and it is NPOV. WP:BK does not apply to creative writing journals or scholarly monographs, both of which require far different standards. By any standards, it is a successful and notable creative writing journal. It should not be compared to the New Yorker, but to Switchback (online literary journal), diacritics, The Callaloo Journal, Pearl (literary magazine), and Sewanee Review. NONE of these articles are marked for deletion. Yemassee (journal) compares favorably to them in terms of notability. The journal is also notable as the public face of the flagship university of the State of South Carolina. It is the most important publication of its kind in the Southeast--the literary leader in the region. Creative writers know about this journal, and they know its history and its prestige. Your measure of the importance of the journal based upon its web presence doesn't really mean anything. Just because you can't come up with thousands of hits on google doesn't mean that something is not notable or important. If you can think of another way for me to make it sound more notable, then please make a suggestion, but I contend that the journal is clearly notable.
- Comment Well, first off, if you claim the information is verifiable, verify it; let's see some sources. Secondly, you make a number of unsupported claims about the magazine's notability -- THE public face of the university (I'm sure the school's sports teams would demur)? THE most important such publication in the Southeast? If it is as overwhelmingly highly regarded as all of that, that regard should be based on fact, not supposition; source any such reviews or critical acclaim (I don't consider it a positive sign that the Boston Public Library, a library exceeded in size of collection only by the Library of Congress and Harvard's, doesn't have this literary leader in its collection). Thirdly, while the article drops several names, there is nothing backing that up. If there indeed have been such interviews, issue please? Fourthly, whether the article constitutes original research or is written in NPOV style or not is irrelevant; the merits of this AfD aren't on such grounds. RGTraynor 05:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - It is not irrelevant that the article presents no original research and is written in NPOV. The merits of the journal do not rest on its popularity with Boston Libraries but rather upon the quality of its publications. I will add the issues corresponding to the interviews that are now mentioned in the article. The journal is obviously the literary public face of the university, along with Dr. Kwame Dawes--Distinguished Poet in Residence, Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, and faculty advisor to Yemassee (journal)--and Janette Turner Hospital (acclaimed novelist, Distinguished Professor, and Distinguished Sponsor of Yemassee. The claims of notability made in the article itself, backed up by the journal's website and by the printed publications of the journal, establish the notability clearly. Kwame Dawes, Janette Turner Hospital, and Dr. Matthew Bruccoli (a patron of Yemassee) do not lend their support to literary ventures of no merit. Indeed, their support contributes to the journal's notability. As mentioned above, Derek Walcott and Kazuo Ishiguro and Robert Olen Butler, winners of the Nobel, Booker, and Pulizter prizes do not grant interviews to non-notable publications. Indeed, the presence of their interviews within the pages of Yemassee are alone enough to verify its notability.
    - Fair enough -- then back up your assertions. You are quite incorrect if inferring that the quality of this publication (such as it may be) is at all pertinent here. Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion rests principally on verifiability. As you should know, the publication's own website does not suffice for verification purposes per WP:ATT. Yay for sourcing that namedropping; now all you have to do is come up with some third-party verifiable sources for the mag's reputation, or else edit those out. RGTraynor 01:28, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - At the risk of being contentious, your arguments are a little circular. Notable and famous literary people are interviewed in the journal, ergo the journal is important because famous literary people wouldn't be interviewed in an unnotable journal. What I'm looking for is articles about the journal. I also notice that Yemassee is not indexed by Project Muse. And, yes, while Google hits are not a sole indication of notability, they do provide one marker or indication of possible notability. For example, although I'm not a close follower of literary journals, I have heard of diacritics and Sewanee Review. Should all of the journals you mentioned above have articles on Wikipedia? I don't know. That falls under WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. I'm a little concerned that your argument is one of "fame contagion". On Wikipedia, the wife or husband of a notable person isn't automatically notable because of their relationship. I'm thinking a similar standard here. --Pig^man_dialogue 02:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - RGTraynor, okay. You make some fair points. I'll go to the library. The journal was founded in the same year at James Dickey's 70th birthday. Dickey was the king of the University of South Carolina English Department at the time, so perhaps he was the first faculty advisor. Would that be notable? Otherwise, I'll sort through newspapers.

Pigman, literary journals achieve notability by publishing famous authors. This is not circular. It works in reverse: publications become less notable when they stop publishing famous/notable authors. What you call "fame contagion" is, in fact, the primary principle of notability for a small, tax-exempt, non-profit literary publication. In fact, such a publication cannot do much better than Yemassee has done. It is clear, that you are "not a close follower of literary journals." Another way that small literary publications achieve notability is by publishing texts that are selected for awards. See the article for new info on this front. Notice that it is cited.

Err ... perhaps you are conflating the term "notability." I mean it as it is defined on Wikipedia, not by some subjective non-Wikipedia standard. To quote: "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of secondary sources. Such sources must be reliable, independent of the subject and independent of each other. The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial, or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability ... Notability is not synonymous with "fame" or "importance". It is not measured by Wikipedia editors' own subjective judgements." This is where Yemassee fails completely, so far, and this is why its lack of inclusion in the collection of the United States' largest municipal library is damning. RGTraynor 14:08, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. As it stands, there is no verifiable proof of notability. Need secondary sources backing up claims to notability. --Mus Musculus 22:05, 15 March 2007 (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.