Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carey Baptist Church

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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 keep. However, the sourcing is underwhelming. Sources 1 and 2 have identical material and clearly reprint a publicity release by the Church; I have removed one since having both is simply padding. I have removed reference 4 since it was a circular lift from Wkikipedia. Many of the other sources are of a directory nature or deal with incidental aspects of the Church's activities. Having said this there is validity in Carrite's point that "a verifiable and neutrally-written article has been constructed". The consensus is that the key points should be kept in some form but whether as a standalone page or merged as part of the locality article is moot. The next step should be to take the discussion to the talk page in order to agree which form is best. TerriersFan (talk) 01:54, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Carey Baptist Church

Carey Baptist Church (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This is not a notable church. The building is not particularly special, and having the street named after the church is no big deal. The former minister, Jonathan Stephen, is probably notable as a college principal, but this notability is not inherited by the church. StAnselm (talk) 22:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:34, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:35, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is fairly early for a Baptist congregation to have erected a building on that scale in Britain. And churchs that survive for 150 years often acquire notibility along the way.I.Casaubon (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But the article is useful even as it stands, and surely it is more efficient to keep it and tag it for improvement, than to remove it merely because it needs improvement and make some future editor replicate all of the sourcing and the image that the page already has.I.Casaubon (talk) 18:01, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is a large, active church with a wonderful Ruskinian gothic building. I am improving the article and sourcing accordingly.I.Casaubon (talk) 17:25, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Further thoughts What makes a congregation WP:notable? Having a recent pastor who is WP:notable. Being a large enough church to support two pastors. Being housed in an architecturally notable building. Supporting missionaries in India. The fact that a missionary they sponsor was among the many Christian missionaries in recent years arrested on trmped-up charges in a country where many people resent Christian missionaries? The hiring or departure of a pastor meriting an article in the local paper. I believe that any or all of these add up to WP:notability for a congregation.I.Casaubon (talk) 17:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • None of those would make a church notable. If we said those things make a church notable, we would have articles on most of the churches in the U.S. BelloWello (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      In order for the church to have been notable, it needs to have been written about in independent reliable third-party sources with significant coverage. Articles in local papers can count towards notability, but it would need to be a lot more than one article in a local paper when a pastor arrives and another when he leaves. If you can find this coverage (and GNews and GBooks doesn't pick up everything), there can be an article. If not, it can be merged to the article on Reading quite easily. Should someone find more information that demonstrates the church's notability later, it's a simple matter to restore the old article and add the new information. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 18:53, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete notability is not inherited, nothing about this church makes it any more notable than the 5000 member baptist church down the road from my house that I am forced to see every sunday. BelloWello (talk) 18:30, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
see[1]I.Casaubon (talk) 16:21, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't matter. See WP:ADHOM. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 16:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • foreign missions It takes a pretty significant congregation to send missionaries to India and Peru. You many or may not like missionaries, but it is not the scale of enterprise that ordinary churches undertake.I.Casaubon (talk) 17:57, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In my view, the "localhuman interest" article makes the church notable almost all by itself because it is about this church funding a local man on a four-year long mission to Peru. Relatively few churches play in this league. The church also bought a neighboring church when that congregation departed (disbanded?), so it runs a significant campus, not a single building, and it has had two apparently full-time pastors for years. In my opinion, this is more than plenty. And their last pastor Jonathan Stephen now heads a good-sized Seminary. But, as I said, we all judge differently.I.Casaubon (talk) 21:45, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Funding a missionary, owning multiple buildings, and having two pastors are not notability criteria, and your reference to Stephen, who doesn't appear to be notable either, is an attempt to invoke WP:INHERITED, which is an argument to avoid. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 22:58, 11 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, speaking as someone who has served on a few hiring committees and been a member of a few congregations, I can tell you that ordinary churches hire ordinary pastors because that is who they can get. Hiring, in his second congregation, the kind of hot young preacher who is soon hired away form you to head a seminary is an indication that this congregation is something above the ordinary. I leave others to judge whether this meets Wikipedia's standards of notability. For my part, I fail to see the point of working to delete reasonably well-sourced and well-written articles. Wouldnt it be better to spend our time improving them?I.Casaubon (talk) 00:25, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, because there are millions on articles on Wikipedia as it is and it's the same pool of volunteers who end up working on all of them. When you have too many articles and not enough volunteers (as has happened in the past), articles end up having libellous things inserted into them which don't get spotted. Besides, you are mixing up notability and claims of importance. Anyone can claim their club/business/product is notable through subjective claims of importance, which is why notability for Wikipedia purposes is defined as significant coverage from independent reliable third-party sources. Find stuff that has been written about the church (that's the church itself, not just people associated with it, and it needs to be more than passing mentions in local papers), and Carey Baptist Church gets an article. Ignore the notability guidelines and it probably won't. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 07:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"not enough volunteers" is a serious problem. I submit that if Wilipedia maintained a less combative environment, and if editors were able to spend less of their time on AFD debates and more on working together to improve articles, more people would be willing to edit. When all of this time is spent debating whether a perfectly respectable church like Carer or College Church can or cannot have a page, working here becomes less than appealing.I.Casaubon (talk) 11:10, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid you are are underestimating how much bigger Wikipedia would be if there were no rules on inclusion. About half of new articles are posted by single-purpose accounts intent on publicising themselves, their band, their business or something else they're connected with. In general, users who join with the intention of improving the encyclopaedia as a whole over a wide subject area - even those who break rules and have to be corrected by other editors - have a good chance of staying, whilst those whose main agenda is to push a single article/product/viewpoint tend to make no further contributions, whether or not their intended article gets deleted. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 12:49, 13 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Let's just forget all the hidden ILIKEIT and IDONTLIKEIT agendas and stick to the essence: there are multiple, independent, non-trivial articles out there, from which a verifiable and neutrally-written article has been constructed. This more than century-old church is inclusion-worthy. The end. Carrite (talk) 17:52, 16 May 2011 (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.
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