Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bloom Brothers Department Stores

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 no consensus. The article has been fairly decisively improved and sourced over the course of the AfD; resolving to some extent the concerns of the delete proponents - though style and formatting problems do still remain. There does not appear to be a clear consensus to delete the article here, though there is equally no strong consensus to keep it - no prejudice against a renomination in the intermediate future if concerns remain. ~ mazca ^talk 00:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bloom Brothers Department Stores

Possible Vanispamcruftertisement. See also Special:Contributions/Rbbloom, admission of COI [1], and unanimous delete consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D. Dudley Bloom. Cirt (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

COI issues and a consensus at another AFD are not really reasons to delete this article. This article cites a lot of sources. Some of them are clearly invalid for an encyclopedia article (real estate records, personal interviews, high school yearbooks, etc.) but it does extensively cite six newspapers that seem to actually have existed at some point. However, having done microfilm research on department stores though I wouldn't be shocked if most of these are advertisements. There's also the problem of the apparent lack of any coverage in books or newspapers outside of the immediate area, and no coverage at all since the 1970s (one reference gives only the newspaper name and the year 1984 - not very helpful). ~~I'd lean toward deleting.~~ --Chiliad22 (talk) 00:21, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Abstain for now. The article seems to be able to support itself without the unpublished primary sources, but I'm still slightly dubious about an article based entirely on ancient local newspaper articles (or reprints of them in books). They are still essentially primary sources... albeit more reliable ones. --Chiliad22 (talk) 03:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think this debate should hinge on whether the subject is notable. COI and poor referencing can be resolved if it is a subject the encyclopedia should cover. ike9898 (talk) 00:51, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response: Agreed, was merely noting it here as it's likely a form of spam/advertising and not notable. Cirt (talk) 00:54, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why would someone advertise a department store that's been out of business for over 60 years? Instead of belittling people's motives I think we should just look at whether the sourcing shows this business was notable or not. --Chiliad22 (talk) 00:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Cirt (talk) 00:57, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 01:34, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per above reasoning, unless somebody can dig up some hard references that establish notability Corpx (talk) 02:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete there are references, and they might establish notability. They're extremely difficult to verify (the websites in particular are useless as references) and the article is written such that making it encyclopedic would require a nearly complete rewrite. For me it fails wp:duck as a vanity page or pet project. I'd change in a heartbeat if any sources can actually be verified, but I find no hits on the usual google sources.--Talain (talk) 03:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm undecided on it. References are indeed inadequate and the whole story is OR in need of major cleanup, reduction in length etc. But it's a good story! p.s. it appears that there were three unrelated Bloom Brothers companies operating in 20th century (Google books) so take care with those refs. NVO (talk) 04:43, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Admittedly, most of the article's sources are offline so I can't check them. But if I'm reading the article correctly, this department store never had more than two locations at any given time, both of which were in two nearby relatively small cities, so it's unlikely that the stores' fame extended much beyond their local area. The stores may have been notable to their local areas but I don't think that clearly justifies having an article about them in a worldwide encyclopedia. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 08:16, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Sufficiently notable in their region, though the article needs to be trimmed substantially.DGG (talk) 08:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Author response: It's a far better story than you think....

This article was not written as advertising. No one from this family lives in the area any more. It was written for the local historians--the "old timers"--in the area, of whom there are many, who need to feel connected with the virtual world: there's not much else to do in Chambersburg. I'd been asked to talk about the first department stores in Franklin County, and this came out of it. And of course, many of the sources are ads, although several--that means 5-8 or so--are articles. ALL sources are checkable, but you'll have to go to Harrisburg, the state capital, or the local library and read microfiche, as I did over a period of nine years! Fat chance that'll happen. But just because you don't have a budget for it doesn't mean the articles aren't there. Is Wikipedia a democratic encyclopedia or not? If it's not, you've just lost your raison d'etre. Richard B. Bloom 12:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbbloom (talk • contribs) 12:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It might be a fantastic topic for a historian of some sort. I'm not saying your sources are invalid - in fact they're exactly the sort of thing a good historian would seek out - many of them just are not valid for an encyclopedia article. An encyclopedia is not really the place to put this kind of original, primary-source based history - writing entirely from primary sources is a difficult task both for you and people who need to verify your work, it's beyond the scope of what we do at Wikipedia. 10 years ago, if you were trying to get this material to see the light of day, you wouldn't have sent it off to Encyclopedia Britannica then been shocked when they didn't want it - you'd have found a nice local or state level historical publication, and that's still the kind of place to get this sort of work published for the first time. Wikipedia, like any other encyclopedia, documents stuff that's already been written about in secondary sources (and given the age of these newspaper articles and the fact that we don't even know if they're ads or not, I don't think there's a very strong case that they're secondary sources). --Chiliad22 (talk) 13:01, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your answer was quicker than I thought it would be. I OWN all the sources I used and can email them to you if you like. OF COURSE I wouldn't send this off to Britannica. Wikipedia is a different kind of encyclopedia, full of popular culture, which is what this is, too. Richard B. Bloom 13:06, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I suppose the international nature of this business is lost on the reader unless I make the connections I've noted above overt in the article, which would be difficult to prove unless I could interview the dead. I just had a different impression of Wikipedia. It's not meant to be Encarta--it's people-written. But if you want to limit it to secondary sources, well then "Bloom Brothers" has to go. I agree. Richard B. Bloom 13:11, 28 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbbloom (talk • contribs)

You can see Wikipedia's policy here at Wikipedia:Primary_sources#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources. It's not that primary sources are absolutely off-limits, but unpublished ones are (even if you can e-mail them, unfortunately), and there are serious restrictions on what you can do with primary sources. The wording of that policy also reinforces the importance of at least some secondary sources in any encyclopedia article. While it's unfortunate that following policy sometimes means deleting articles people have put a lot of good faith effort into, as in this case, the only thing to do is live and learn. And of course this debate will be closed based on consensus, so my opinion is just one of many that can be offered. However, perhaps this article would be a good jumping off point for a submission to a publication that is looking for original works of history. --Chiliad22 (talk) 13:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - There's a nice little (and notable) article hiding in there. - 15:33, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Summary of my recent edits: I've cut the article in half and added secondary sources--a 3-volume compendium of local history--following Wikipedia guidelines more closely. Unsure whether you think the pictures of the stores and principals should stay or not. I think they add immediacy and historical color to the article but am willing to cut some or all to reduce the article's size. Richard B. Bloom 18:20, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Considerably improved--now that the author has seen the need to write an encyclopedia article, not family history. DGG (talk) 00:27, 29 June 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.