Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Faith in Place

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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 no consensus. MBisanz talk 00:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Faith in Place

Faith in Place (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Appears to fail WP:N. SchuminWeb (Talk) 04:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz talk 03:22, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete (1) I have looked at a few dozen of the hits from the Google News search referred to above. They do not seem to me to establish notability. I am not willing to spend the time it would take to give a detailed analysis of what is there and why it doesn't establish notability, but much of it looks likely to be based on press releases from Faith in Place, or published by organisations which would wish to publicise Faith in Place, etc. (2) It seems to me very parochial. Even if it is locally well known, does that give it notability in Wikipedia's sense? (3) If it is to remain it will need rewriting pretty well from scratch. Apart from the question of possible copyright violation, it has several other faults which make it unsuitable for Wikipedia. For example, it is riddled with point of view statements (e.g. "gives religious people the tools they need to become good stewards of the earth", etc). JamesBWatson (talk) 11:08, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Poorly written but concerns a notable organization. I found a coupel of references and will try to add. Yet another example of church folks who are rather stuck in their own universe. I'll see if I can sort this out a bit. -- Banjeboi 20:37, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I went through all the sources provided and they're either not very reliable or they make only a trivial mention of the organisation.--Sloane (talk) 23:44, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sloane, I'm sorry but that's simply not true. I'm aware you don't care for the rescue tag and you certainly seem to be casting delete votes on every article tagged for rescue. That just doesn't seem like it's the best thing for either you or Wikipedia. I'll also point out that I have the article under construction but as of your comment there was at least four interviews with the principals of the group about their group's work. In any case I'm going to keep working and perhaps those who are a bit more objective will weigh in. -- Banjeboi 00:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Article rewritten. I wasn't able to access many of the articles on Google news because they require subscriptions. It may be worth hunting down someone who does to see them. -- Banjeboi 01:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC) -- Banjeboi 01:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. WikiProject Chicago, WikiProject Environment, WikiProject Religion and WikiProject Illinois have been notified of this discussion. -- Banjeboi 01:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Sourcing now seems to meet WP:N in the article. Hobit (talk) 15:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I think at this point there are sufficient citations for notability.' Appropriate use of the rescue template. DGG (talk) 17:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. It would be nice if "article rescuers" would make an effort to evaluate the relevance of the "sources" they cite instead of uncritically dumping apparently unviewed search results into articles. Note 9 in the current version of the article, for instance, references "'Health, Fitness, and Food. What We Need to Know.' Radio Islam: Daily Muslim Talk Radio Chicago, by Aysha Shalabey, October 29, 2008," linking to this page, which nowhere mentions Faith in Place (and certainly not in the October 29, 2008, entry). And that's not the only one that appears not to support the material it supposedly references. Among the mass of references added to the artice, I'm not seeing anything that isn't (1) clearly traceable to the organization itself or (2) the sorts of passing mentions that I found when I used Google myself. Without multiple relevant, independent, and substantive sources to support notability, this fails WP:ORG. Deor (talk) 18:07, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, that particular source does mention the "Taqwa Eco-Food" project, founded by Faith in Place. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 18:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Did you listen to the whole hour-long show or find a transcript of it? Otherwise, how can you tell what was said on that day? Hobit (talk) 18:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't add the ref to the article; Benjiboi did. I think the relevant question is, Did he listen to the show or read a transcript of it? There's nothing on the linked page that supports anything other than the existence of "Shireen Pishdad, Founder of Taqwa Eco Food," while it appears to be cited as a source for much more material in the article than that. If Benjiboi meant to refer to the contents of the actual radio broadcast, and he hadn't first made himself familiar with those contents, that would be dishonest scholarship. Deor (talk) 18:52, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It may be that he did, or perhaps found an (unreliable) transcript or perhaps something else. Asking him would probably be a better start to this discussion. Hobit (talk) 19:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for assuming good faith here. You'll note the link you cite has a "listen" link which you can click, I didn't listen to the entire show but I did listen to a portion. I also only wrote a fews sentences about each of their projects. Any of them could be expanded quite a bit but I only was going for the description overview. -- Banjeboi 11:13, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to beat the problems with this one reference into the ground; but I did listen to the whole show this morning (one has to go about 22 minutes into it before the interview with Ms. Pishdad begins), and aside from the interviewer's introducing her as "founder of Taqwa Eco Food," the only mention of that organization is right at the end, where Ms. Pishdad says that she is no longer involved with it. Faith in Place is nowhere mentioned. I didn't hear anything that would serve to support the notability of either Taqwa Eco Food or Faith in Place. I'd simply encourage anyone reviewing this article to avoid the "Wow, look at all the references" trap and actually examine those references before accepting their relevance to this discussion. Deor (talk) 13:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Despite the rewrite I still think delete. I agree with Deor: there are references that either come from the organisation itself, do not in fact refer to the statement to which they are attached, or make only incidental passing reference to it. We need secondary sources (as required byWikipedia:Notability) from reliable sources which directly address the question of whether "Faith in Place" is notable, not incidentally mention tangentially related issues. However, even if we take the view that a few of the references do not suffer from these drawbacks, we still have to assess whether those few establish notability, and, frankly they don't. They paint a picture of a rather parochial organisation taken note of only by a limited range of enthusiastic people in a limited area. The rewrite may or may not have solved the copyright problems (I have not investigated) but simply giving strings of citations has not established notability. As for the article's content, does that indicate notability? Well, it tells us that in one city in the world a group of religious people would like to encourage people to take ecology and economy seriously, that it teaches about worm composting and bee-keeping, and has set up local businesses to sell food produced by means that it approves of. There seems to be no agreement on Wikipedia as to what exactly constitutes notability, but if I were to write articles on every local group, organisation, or project in my neighbourhood that I think is as newsworthy as that, and everyone were to do the same for their neighbourhoods, Wikipedia would soon be overwhelmed. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:42, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You may want to strike out the boldface "Delete" in the comment above, JBW, since you've already registered a delete !vote elsewhere in this discussion. Deor (talk) 20:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thank you for pointing that out: my mistake.
If your neighborhood was the size of Illinois you may have a point. This is a Chicago-based statewide-plus organization that works on environmental issues from a religious/spiritual perspective interdenominationally, to any religious group from the main world religions. I can't say whether or not they will or won't cater to any religious group. The worm-composting and beekeeping is a minute fraction of what they do and belittles the impact they've had. They have been interviewed many many times albeit mostly to religious media which certainly remain reliable sources. I also found mainstream sources, the two major Chicago dailies, that also wrote about them. Several books also mention them so we are well beyond a small group with a limited range and scope. Characterizing all, or even most of these sources as passing is rather misleading. There were plenty of passing mentions available which I did not feel useable. I suppose I'll have to dig up even more. -- Banjeboi 11:07, 9 March 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.
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