- Westboro Baptist Church (Ottawa) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)
- Citywide Church (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)
I'll just repost what I said on the deletor's talk page: I don't see how you can consider that church (which incidentally predates three provinces and two territories) as not notable. The article notes the role it had in the development of Westboro village and bringing in and supporting the Ottawa Baptist community, it has a larger congregation than the eponymous US church and its name has brought it much infamous attention. It and All Saint's Anglican are the two big main churches in the area and it's also has the only Montessori programme in the immediate area. I always planed to add more info (and noticed the deletion because I was going to) but I thought it already had enough info to allay any notability concerns. Moreover, churches with less history, less importance and less information remain here on the Wiki, but this one was deleted? You should have put in a notability tag on the article or contacted me with any concerns or at the very least put it up for a deletion vote, especially considering your unfamiliarity on the topic, instead of unilaterally deciding it didn't have importance and speedy deleting it. Regardless, it is an important church today and had an important impact on the development of Ottawa, please restore the article.
What I find really questionable is the capricious and spurious nature of the speedy deletion especially considering the nescience of the deletor in regards to the topic, the confusing explanation of "Doesn't indicate importance or significance" despite the historical section demonstrating its significance in the early development of the Ottawa region and the complete lack of anyone else having had issue with the content or quality of the article. And given his unfamiliarity on the topic, why didn't the deletor first attempt to either put a tag or post on the article's talk page or send me a note to inform me of his notability concerns or at the most, nominate it for deletion? D'Iberville (talk) 22:48, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- There really wasn't anything there that asserted imporance much, I'd have to agree, but I still will argue to overturn because I'm loath to give A7 ground over churches. I'd much rather see an AfD for this, though I do believe it isn't likely it'll be kept. Cheers. lifebaka (talk - contribs) 23:23, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- The faux outrage here is irritating. I made perfectly clear that I was happy to reverse my deletion if a reliable source demonstrating importance could be presented. To take this as some sort of tyranny on my part and to go storming to DRV instead of the far simpler act of showing me a source makes me deeply unamused. Phil Sandifer (talk) 23:41, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- So you're just going to create a straw man with some ad hominems of "faux outrage" and "storming down here", "saying you have a tyrannical behaviour" and attempt to avoid the principal point that your deletion was overzealous and in error; you didn't attempt to warn someone or post on the page that you questioned the notability, you didn't even nominate it for deletion— you didn't do anything to allow me or anyone else to attempt to improve the article and allay any concerns, you just flat out deleted it. This is the problem I have and since I believe you were wrong in your original deletion, rather than attempt to appease you to restore the article, we should make it clear that you were wrong since it will not only restore this article but you'll probably think twice before speedy deleting other articles without prior warning or discussion.--D'Iberville (talk) 00:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- No, I'm going to say "Look, you can get this undeleted easily and without drama. Please, by all means, do so." And yet instead of taking this easy out we're here. Phil Sandifer (talk) 01:30, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Again, you completely avoid the point. You shouldn't have unilaterally deleted it in the first place. If you had bothered to write a quick note "this article needs more X or it'll be deleted" or "I'm nominating for deletion because of Y", I or someone else could have listened to those concerns, attempt to mollify them and either succeed leading to a better article or failed leading to a community consensus of removal. But I am not going to attempt provide any incentive to convince you to reverse your action since that original action was wrong from the get go.--D'Iberville (talk) 02:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- It had no assertion of notability, and was a valid speedy target. I'm happy to reverse the speedy if you provide even a modicum of a reason for me to do so, and find your pontificating to be convincing evidence that you don't have a case. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:49, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I would have to question why, if it indeed had "no assertion of notability", why as I noted previously, other articles about churches with even less history and less information found within Wikipedia remain whole. To reiterate yet again, you were wrong in deleting it as evidenced by the fact that if only a "modicum of reason" was needed for it not to be deleted then implicitly the speedy deletion of the article was a dubious decision and it remains inexplicable why you simply did not ask for any modica before acting. As I already noted at the start, I discovered the deletion due to my wanting to add additional information to the article but I will not validate your erroneous action by providing you any reason to reverse your mistake which might give the perception that you were originally correct in deleting it and moreover, no one should be required to provide a reason to undelete something that shouldn't have been speedy deleted in the first place.--D'Iberville (talk) 03:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- They exist because nobody has gotten around to deleting them. Their existence is not evidence that they are in compliance with our rules. It is merely evidence that nobody has deleted them. Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:23, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Deja vu. If only you'd listen to me and find some reliable sources to support your claim. <Editor comes back with a source.> Phil: That's not a reliable source -- Allowing it is more than my job's worth. <Editor finds information supporting the reliability of the source.> Phil: Well, it might be reliable, but it isn't reliable enough.
I've seen the Lucy and the football routine before from this admin. My dim view of that technique continues unabated. --SSBohio 03:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. After looking over the deleted article, the filer's complaints and assertions don't seem to hold. The article did nothing to explain the church's role in the development of Westboro village nor did it illustrate the church's role in Ottawa's Baptist community. There is no indication that the name has brought the church any sort of "infamous attention", except by self-reference to an archived old version of the church's website explaining the lack of affiliation. That information was also presented with commentary unsupported by the source. The "commentary" was also grossly inaccurate (characterizing the position as more progressive than the general Baptist community, while it is firmly in the center-conservative portion of the mainstream Baptist spectrum). The rationale provided for overturning the deletion by the nom misrepresents the article content and additionally relies on long discounted rationales (such as "other less noteworthy articles exist" and "it's important"). I'm also concerned by the first overturn comment, as there's no substantive reason to treat churches differently from other topics in relation to inclusion. Vassyana (talk) 03:24, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Wikipedia editors collectively are a bit divided on what a church is. Some think that it is a building, and thus we get all sorts of articles about the buildings that ignore the people who use(d) it. Under this interpretation, such an article is not eligible for A7 speedy deletion. Others think it is a congregation of believers, and we get articles on congregations that barely mention or don't mention the building. I'm in the second group, and since a congregation of believers is a group of people, I consider churches eligible for A7. In this case, I'd looked at this specific article last month when sorting all articles in Category:Unassessed-Class Christianity articles and decided it was a reasonable stub. Absent some evidence that independent and reliable sources have written about the church, it won't survive an AFD, so why should we list it there in the absence of such evidence. If you live in the same locality as the church, the local historical society would be a good place to look that many editors might not consider - though in a national capitol even that might not be very fruitful. GRBerry 03:37, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Well that's the thing, I wanted to add some more information (including incidentally a line about the building itself) which should reduce a bit some notability concerns (and there is a book in the Ottawa Room of the Central Ottawa Library that has substantive information about it but it can't be taken out of that room and honestly I have a big list of other priorities I have to do before spending an afternoon reading it). Again, my beef is not with whether or not the article should be deleted, it has to do with the manner in which it was deleted. I, nor anyone else, was given the opportunity to try and fix the article as we weren't even told there were problems with the article. And a quick comment to Vassyana's comment. If you check the webpage right now, you'll see a large message stating that they aren't affiliated with Phelps and the article, from what I remember notes this so it isn't just "an archived old version of the church's website". It is a big problem for them since people still keep thinking they're somehow a Canadian chapter. Also, if the article stated that the Church was "slightly more progressive than mainstream Baptism" and in actuality it's "mainstream Baptism", I would not consider the whole of the commentary to be "grossly inaccurate". Ideally, I'd like the chance to improve the article and if nothing else, this whole conversation will help me to do so, but not I, nor anyone else was were told that there was a problem or even given the chance to improve it.--D'Iberville (talk) 03:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- As GRBerry has well explained, there are different interpretations on how to deal with church articles, and depending on interpretation, this article may or may not have been a valid speedy deletion. However, looking at the deleted article, two things are clear: (1) There was no indication of why the subject is important or significant (2) without such an indication, sourced to reliable sources, it is exceedingly unlikely that this article would survive an AfD discussion. If D'Iberville or some other editor is confident that they can establish notability, I'd be willing to undelete the article for them to do so, but without some reference being provided, it just seems like it would be a waste of time. --Stormie (talk) 03:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse speedy-deletion. I concur with the assessments above. There was nothing in the deleted content which asserted the notability of this church. (The sole comment that included the phrase "well-known" referred to the Topeka church. Notability is not inherited. One does not gain independent notability merely by being named the same as a notable person or organization.) On the question of whether WP:CORP (and by extension, CSD A7) apply to churches, I think in this case it is clear. There is no assertion in the article or in this nomination that the church is at all notable for its architecture or for any of the other factors that sometimes distinguish churches from other organizations. (Neither did the picture of the church show any distinctive architecture.) Unless someone can come up with independently sourced evidence why this church is special, it should be subject to Westfield's generally accepted inclusion criteria as an organization. Rossami (talk) 14:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- From the logs, one can see a deleted redirect as a previous article was moved to Citywide Church and then deleted per AfD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Citywide Church as it seems that the church itself was briefly named Citywide Church and then named back. So whether or not the latest version asserts enough importance to avoid a speedy deletion per A7, it would certainly fall short of providing grounds to overturn previous consensus, so endorse. --Tikiwont (talk) 14:44, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn Because this was a speedy deletion, what we have to go on is one editor's view of the article -- a situation where there appears to be an assertion of notability, however poorly sourced. Relist at articles for deletion if necessary, but don't allow this speedy deletion to stand as long as there is a good-faith disagreement over whether it asserts notability. THat's not what CSD A7 is for. --SSBohio 03:36, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - I just wanted to highlight the following: Wikipedia:Give an article a chance, Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built and Wikipedia:Potential, not just current state. From the second link:A man tries to build a house. (...) Soon, a building inspector comes by. (...) "And look!" the inspector cries, "There is no ceiling! The owners of this house will be angry indeed when they get rained on." "They won't!" the builder retorts, "Because when it's done there will be a ceiling!" The inspector ignores him. "This house is no good, builder. It must be torn down." The next day he sends someone to demolish the house.
- As you can see by the dates of my contributions, editing Wikipedia is not something I do on a regular basis. Though I do go to this site several times I day, I only edit when I see something that needs editing. When I created the article, I believed there was enough content in it to satisfy it's inclusion and planned to add more information at the usual leisurely pace to which I contribute. However I did put the article on my watch page and periodically verified it to see if any problems or concerns reared up. None did. Now one person came upon this article and didn't believe it merited inclusion. That's fine (and the comments here clearly demonstrated that the article does need a decent amount of improvement). But instead of voicing his concerns or giving advanced warning, he immediately removed it. And I only find out when I come to add additional information, proverbially improving on this unfinished house. But the difference in this case is that the building inspector did not tell me that there were problems with my house nor warned me that he was going to demolish it.--D'Iberville (talk) 18:50, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- (ec) I understand where you coming from and am sorry for this being a frustrating experience. One suggestion we have in such cases is to let things grow as drafts in user pace. My own issue is mostly that there has already been a deletion discussion which I now have linked at the top as well, albeit under a different title and seemingly unknown both to you and the deleting admin. So there has already a house been built by another editor in the past and it was decided by community consensus to take it down. that doesn't mean that there should never ever be such a house but rather that it needs a better plan than what we've seen so far even if we restored it. It already had a chance and its potential has already be evaluated once. So if you really think there is sufficient potential to address also the previous concerns, building it calmly in userspace and reviewing it here, might be the way to move forward.--Tikiwont (talk) 19:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn Westbury--not a speedy, and that's all there is to it. Makes a claim to being an historic church. Whether it is sufficiently historic to be notable is for an afd. Tota;lly wrong for admins to delete as A7 on theb asis of their opinion of whether or not something is notable. That's for the community if challenged. I cannot see further why any admin would turn down any reasonable request to undelete and send to afd . DGG (talk) 19:15, 31 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse Citywide Church, as there was a valid AFD. Overturn Westboro, as I don't think A7 applies there. Stifle (talk) 09:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I notice that Westboro had been moved to Citywide, but the article content seems to be different, so a G4 isn't valid. I stick with my original opinion, in so far as it makes sense. Stifle (talk) 09:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- List at AfD for the speedy. The nominator here is asserting notability. CSD#A7s should be listed without drama on the basis of a good faith request. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:07, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn Westboro, A7 doesn't cover buildings and churches are organisations but predominantly they are buildings. RMHED (talk) 17:54, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn - there is more than enough evidence that this shouldn't be a speedy. There is no cache available, so we need to do an AfD on this, or else most people can't see the article. Nfitz (talk) 19:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. What on earth is the point of undeleting these and sending them to AfD just because you disagree that a church can be interpreted as an organisation per CSD A7? The articles gave absolutely no indication of notability, no independent sources and were generic directory entries at best. Sending to AfD is needless process wonkery. A church is an organisation (and that, friends, comes from the Bible itself) so these are legitimately covered by A7 even if the organisation has chosen to build a building around itself. That, plus the WP:COATRACK issues with the Citywide article in particular, makes for a problem that was rightly solved by nuking the articles. Feel free to try a sourced, neutral, non-coatrack rewrite in userspace. Guy (Help!) 13:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I have no idea what was in the Citywide article and didn't even know of its existence until someone mentioned it above and this deletion review has nothing to do with the Citywide article which was removed because it was really an attack piece (though I add, it was removed after an AfD so there was fair warning to those who did contribute to it) and there is no issue of an agenda with the creation of this one. Also, there is clearly there is a debate whether a church is a building or the people within the building as seen in this discussion. Regardless of your position on this particular topic, the purpose of the article was to give basic current information about the church and indicate the role that that particular church had in the past eight decades in the development of Westboro. There are a couple of rare books in the special Ottawa Room of the Central Library of the OPL which do the latter however, whenever I do have free time, reading those books is not the first thing I think of and as I noted earlier, editing Wikipedia is not something I do on a daily basis. As a corollary of this, I do not know the ins and outs of every requirement, bureaucratic rule or essay considered as policy but I do know that one of the cornerstones of this site is supposed to be that the community helps in the creation of an article by improving it themselves (which is admittedly somewhat difficult with this article unless you live around Ottawa) or indicating the problems and shortcomings of the article. I thought I had inserted enough information to give it enough credence to survive but I still checked every day the two weeks after I created it and a couple of times a week afterwards to make sure that there weren't any problems. Now I came back here of my own accord to improve the article by adding more info and it's gone. No template on the article, no warning on any talk page and no AfD. Now whether or not you believe this article should be deleted is not the issue at hand, the issue is that it was unilaterally removed by one person who did not attempt in any way to advise anyone that the article was wanting in anyway. Now, though I admit I am somewhat ignorant of the law of Wikipedia, this action, to me, seem to violate the spirit of Wikipedia.--D'Iberville (talk) 02:02, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Guy, you are in a position to judge for yourself that the articles gave absolutely no indication of notability, but the rest of us aren't. You have come to your conclusion, but your conclusion is not the only one reached in good faith regarding the article. Speedy deletion is not a justification for deleting an article when whether the article meets the criterion cited is a matter of dispute. If you are convinced of the absolute lack of assertion of notability in this article, then undelete it and AfD it; That way, we'll all see what you see. Until then, your arguments are being advanced without any factual foundation while you exercise a tremendous advantage through your access to the content in dispute. I call on you to level the playing field and allow the community to determine what should happen to this article. --SSBohio 17:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse deletion. Whether or not A7 was properly applied in this case, the article should be deleted and will certainly be deleted inder whatever process the closer of the DRv adopts. under the principal of WP:SNOW, I suggest that it simply stay deleted rather than being undeleted for a pro forma five days just to chastise Phil. Send him a trout if you want but there is no good reason to overturn what is clearly the correct ultimate decision. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:36, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- The point of going through the motions of listing for discussion and then deleting after five days is not to chastise Phil, but to respect the right of process for the newcomer DRV nominator. There is the chance that the AfD will be a valuable learning experiences, as opposed to the crushingly empty speedy deletion of a good faith attempt to contribute. There is even the chance that the article can be improved to the minimum threshold (suitable sources found) during the five day discussion. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Eluchil404, per your Snowball link: "If an issue is run through some process and the resulting decision is unanimous, then it might have been a candidate for the snowball clause." This discussion clearly demonstrates that there is no unanimous decision. Moreover, again from your own source: "What the snowball clause is not: An uphill battle is extremely difficult but potentially winnable. In cases of genuine contention in the Wikipedia community, it is best to settle the dispute through discussion and debate." From the very start I stated that I created the article with what I thought was enough information to satisfy notability with the idea that I would add much more information at the unhurried pace that I usually edit. Since the editing of this article was never a priority with me and since no one brought forth any concerns, there was no reason to go to the library to get the information required to meet the notability standard. Now given the esoteric topic at hand, I have difficulty seeing how anyone here can assume with any certainty that notability can not be met, especially when considering that those of us who would be more familiar with the topic and have access to specific local information on the topic weren't given any warning: there wasn't an AfD, there wasn't a message on the talk page, there wasn't even a tag warning about notability. So given the topic at hand and given that we had no warnings nor chance to ameliorate the article, how can anyone here state with any certainty that the article is doomed from the get-go?--D'Iberville (talk) 02:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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