Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/First Interstate Center (Missoula)

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. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:23, 25 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

First Interstate Center (Missoula)

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No indication of notability is given. All available sources merely confirm the building's existence, which is not the same as notability. JonRidinger (talk) 20:49, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am also nominating the following related pages because they also lack any sources that indicate notability; they simply have sources that indicate their existence and have no notable features or other characteristics:

--JonRidinger (talk) 20:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all and close - Too many topics of possibly varying degrees of notability which leads to far too many "keep"-"delete" combinations. Curious that the nom claims sources only state "existence." Just a quick look at Millennium Building, the tallest in Missoula, brings up this in-depth piece. --Oakshade (talk) 04:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One or even a few "in-depth" articles in the local news outlet(s) do not establish notability. We can find multiple local reliable sources for any semi-major building in every city in the US, but that doesn't mean they have notability. Being the tallest building in downtown Missoula is also not notable (the tallest in town is a dorm on the University of Montana campus). All of these buildings are relatively new buildings, so there's going to be sources on them, but so far nothing outside Missoula, Montana. Is there local significance? Obviously, but that doesn't translate to notability, particularly with buildings, which are generally notable for architectural features, height, age, history, and/or occupants. My own hometown (a college town similar in many ways to Missoula) has had several buildings covered in multiple "in-depth" pieces (some in multiple local news outlets) recently because of downtown developments, but do they meet notability? Nope. So basically, we have sources that verify these buildings do exist in Missoula and verify some of the details about them. None of them, however, indicate nor establish notability. --JonRidinger (talk) 05:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually we have notability guidelines such as WP:GNG, which at least the Millennium Building easily passes, so we don't have personal subjective opinions as to what is notable. Wikipedia is not paper. If thousands of topics in cities around the world pass our standards, then we can have thousands of articles. How do you know nobody outside of Missoula finds buildings it contains encyclopedic? To questions like that we can't answer (personally I can since I do find buildings like this interesting), we have notability guidelines like WP:GNG to help us decide. --Oakshade (talk) 06:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very much aware of the notability guidelines; that's why I nominated all of these. We do have fairly straightforward guidelines and standards for notability. None of the buildings have significant coverage other an article or two when they were built or a press release from the company that built or occupies them. Has anything been written since any of them opened? Has anyone outside of Missoula done articles on these buildings? Remember too, notability is also not temporary. And yes, it's not paper, but Wikipedia is also not an encylcopedia of everything. Simply being a building in Missoula, Montana that had an article or two written about it does not make it notable. The fact that people will find it interesting does not mean it's notable either: "...merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia." All sources are local and all sources I have found are related to the building being opened or simply have some statistics available about it, showing that the buildings have no significance outside Missoula and very little significance inside it. --JonRidinger (talk) 18:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The most appropriate place to mention these buildings would be in the Missoula article itself, either the history section of the cityscape/architecture section if they're mentioned at all. --JonRidinger (talk) 18:35, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Since you're familiar with WP:GNG, then you know that significant coverage is defined as "sources address the subject directly in detail." You might not think that the 800 word Missoulian piece completely and specifically about the Millennium Building does not "address the subject directly in detail" but that is opposite of reality. That WP:WHIM guideline you linked to is about topics that do not pass our notability guidelines that at least one of these topics do.--Oakshade (talk) 01:51, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, none of these are even close to meeting Notability requirements. How does one 800-word article in the local newspaper qualify for "significant" coverage? That doesn't even qualify for significant local coverage. The only other source is a building directory, which inclusion in is hardly a guarantee of notability (many listings are transmission towers among many other non-notable buildings). And how does this not fail WP:NTEMP? I can find multiple detailed articles about buildings all over the country in their respective towns' local newspapers. That does not equal notability for every one of them. No one is arguing that there isn't a detailed article on the Millennium Building. Significant for Missoula? Absolutely, but this isn't the Missoula Wikipedia. Please also note: "We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger article or relevant list." None of the articles nominated have sources that can answer the "significant coverage" and "not temporary" aspects of Notability, so there really isn't much more than can be written about any of the buildings. As I said earlier, these buildings can easily be worked into the main Missoula article in existing sections like history. None of them, however, have significance outside of Missoula. Also, footnote 5: "Moreover, not all coverage in reliable sources constitutes evidence of notability for the purposes of article creation; for example, directories and databases, advertisements, announcements columns, and minor news stories are all examples of coverage that may not actually support notability when examined, despite their existence as reliable sources." --JonRidinger (talk) 02:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but it could be a 400 word article and still be "significant coverage" as long as the "sources address the subject directly in detail." If you want to re-write WP:GNG to say "significant coverage means that there must be 10,000 words" or whatever, you need to make your case on the WP:GNG talk page, not invent your own definition on specific AfD.--Oakshade (talk) 03:04, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It could be a 10,000 word article and still not be "significant coverage". Significant isn't a measure of words as much as it is variety of sources, especially secondary sources, in this case both inside and outside of Missoula. And yes, I did read the article. It's not just describing the building, it's also describing the people behind it and the company that's moving in along with other things going on in downtown Missoula at the time. That's fairly typical for small city newspapers to do when a large building is built. That doesn't equate to notability in itself even if it would be considered notable within Missoula. Bottom line is there is little or nothing more that can be written about these buildings because there is no significant coverage or notability. I'm in no way "inventing my own definition" anymore than you apparently are as I have quoted quite a bit of relevant policy from the Notability article to justify why I think the way I do and why I nominated these articles in the first place. I've taken similar articles through AfD that have just as little coverage (many that have more), among them was the List of tallest buildings in Missoula, which was redirected for basically the same reason: lack of notability not only for the list topic (tallest buildings in Missoula) but the items on the list. The only buildings with established notability are the ones on the National Register of Historic Places. --JonRidinger (talk) 03:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions. JonRidinger (talk) 03:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Montana-related deletion discussions. —JonRidinger (talk) 03:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't think the Missoulian article Missoula's new Millenium Building: Designed for the ages is significant coverage, that's fine but it's opposite of reality. Simply repeating "There is not significant coverage" won't change that. And it could be one 400 word article giving significant coverage to a topic to pass WP:GNG. If you want WP:GNG to define "significant coverage" as sources not addressing the subject in detail, then you must make your case at the WP:GNG talk page. You can't pretend "significant coverage" means something else. And since you keep bringing up WP:TEMP, the entire first paragraph of WP:TEMP states "Notability is not temporary: once a topic has been the subject of "significant coverage" in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage." Your subjective opinion that nobody outside Missoula cares is noted, but that's just your subjective opinion. --Oakshade (talk) 04:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Simply repeating that it is significant doesn't change it either. And no, one article in the space of time this building has been planned and built is not significant, even more so because it's a local source. Still not sure how you can read one article and feel that it meets "significant coverage". GNG may not give a number (since it can't; it varies), but I have already used quotes from the footnotes to explain why I feel it fails significant coverage both in who has covered it (only local) and how much (one article). It was covered when it first opened. That's it. It hasn't been covered since then, but to be honest, it wasn't significant the one time it was covered anyway, so the temporary thing isn't even the main issue. Because of that, what is currently in the article is basically all that can be written on the subject. And no, I never said "no one" cares, but just because some do does not equal notability. There's a lot of things I "care" about both in and out of my own hometown (I'm a member of the local historical society) that I know others do as well. That still doesn't equal notability in the greater Wikipedia scale. And there are other places online for the people "who care" to find that information. Wikipedia is not a directory of everything and just because something makes the local newspaper or is listed on a building directory (which I already know has errors) doesn't make it notable, nor does people having a passion for a subject. In the end, it doesn't seem either of us is going to convince each other. The best thing is to get additional opinions instead of repeating our arguments back and forth. --JonRidinger (talk) 05:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep I agree with Oakshade that these shouldn't have been nominated together. That being said, the coverage from The Missoulian is significant in my mind: the important place that these buildings (especially the Garlington) are now occupying in Missoula, one of Montana's first cities, means that they're going to get substantial coverage. We generally permit articles that are dependent on local information for their sources, if the local source is of importance outside the immediate area. Given the importance of Missoula and The Missoulian's circulation, it seems reasonable to see it as being sufficiently important that we shouldn't call it a local-only source; it's definitely not the local newspaper that publications such as the Record-Courier are. Nyttend (talk) 06:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Missoulian is one of the primary newspapers of Montana. As for myself, that's neither here nor there — the question isn't whether a source is local, regional, national, or international, which is more or less a matter of trivia — but whether a topic is the subject of multiple instances of substantial independent published coverage. The story cited in the Missoulian about the Millenium Building goes a large part of the way towards documenting the encyclopedia-worthiness of that topic. Carrite (talk) 15:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just FYI for everyone, let's keep The Missoulian in perspective. It's the third largest circulation in the state, but its circulation is around 26,000. The Record-Courier Nyttend mentions (which is actually my local newspaper) has a circulation of around 17,000 in an area that overlaps with the Cleveland Plain Dealer (circulation over 200,000) and Akron Beacon Journal (circulation over 90,000). I have always looked at Missoula compared with other cities of similar size (~66,000, metro 109,000), not in comparison to other cities in a similar ranking (like 2nd largest in a state). --JonRidinger (talk) 15:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's no requirement in WP:GNG that the reliable sources must have some gigantic circulation on par with the New York Times or the like. According to WP:RELIABLE, as long as the source is independent of the subject and has editorial control over its content, which obviously the Missoulian does, it is considered a reliable source.--Oakshade (talk) 16:06, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't clear: I'm not saying the circulation number matters for significant coverage on its own, but if you're going to discount a newspaper like the Record-Courier as being "local" (meaning a source from it wouldn't be considered significant coverage) you can't really argue that The Missoulian has a much greater reach when you actually compare circulation rates. Even if this building had been in New York and had an article aboutn its opening in the New York Times I wouldn't consider that "significant coverage" even with the high circulation of Times. If the consensus is that this is sufficient for "significant coverage", I guess I can start writing several articles on local buildings that have been covered here for various reasons. --JonRidinger (talk) 16:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My point was not circulation rates, but regional importance: Missoula is a much bigger regional center than Ravenna, and thus its newspaper is likely to be regionally more important. Nothing against Portage County; it's simply that a comparable newspaper in the region would likely be either the Beacon Journal or the Plain Dealer. Nyttend (talk) 19:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds like relative prominence rather than notability. Portage County is certainly not as prominent in Northeast Ohio as Missoula is in western Montana, but in terms of notability, Portage County is as notable as, if not more so, than Missoula because it has more people and is in a much larger area population-wise, so it gets coverage from more many media outlets. Simply being relatively prominent doesn't mean everything in the city is as notable as another city that is prominent in its own region. It's not about equality with notability. Heck, Akron, Ohio and Tacoma, Washington aren't exactly the most prominent cities in their respective regions, but they are a lot more notable than Missoula simply because they're much larger cities. But even then, I still don't think there is even enough to support the "significant coverage" requirement at a local level for these buildings and certainly nothing outside the region. By this logic, we could include anything in The Missoulian (or any "regional" paper) that gets a detailed article, like someone's bio, a crime, obituary, etc. It may function as a regional paper, but it is also the only regular local daily, so not everything in it is of regional importance nor is everything of regional importance notable.

Since it seems there is a developing consensus that a source in The Missoulian constitutes "significant" coverage due to the paper being regionally important (regardless of the size of the region), I want to make sure that when I decide to write similar articles, that I'm not wasting my time. I still haven't seen how these articles can actually be expanded much beyond the stubs they are, though, which is also part of having significant coverage (I quoted something from this in an earlier post above). Even if all 4 articles were combined they'd still be a stub or they'd be a small paragraph within the Missoula and/or Downtown Missoula articles. --JonRidinger (talk) 00:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep the Millenium Building, since it has a clear claim to notability as the tallest building in Missoula. No opinion with respect to the other three, other than to say that every town has dozens or scores of buildings and lines do need to be drawn someplace. Carrite (talk) 15:12, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So can every tallest building in a particular city have an article simply because it's tallest? Also, according to the Emporis citation in the Millennium Building article, Jesse Hall and Aber Hall at the University of Montana are both taller (11 stories estimated 157 feet vs 9 stories and 128 feet for Millennium) than the Millennium building. The Millennium is the tallest building in downtown Missoula. I think at the very least these should be included in the Missoula article and/or the Downtown Missoula article, but not stand-alone articles at this point. And that's not just because they're small now it's because the info available at present doesn't lend itself to expanding the article much further than what would be prudent to mention within the context of the Downtown and Missoula articles. --JonRidinger (talk) 15:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion would be that every significant town's largest building has a good chance to be notable; the defintion of 'significant town', of course, is debatable, but Missoula, as the second largest city in Montana, is reasonable enough to be signficant. That said, many of these modern "lowscrapers" aren't especially notable; that said, WP:NOTPAPER allows us to cover a lot of stuff that doesn't seem too significant, or only gets a few hits a month, because Wikipedia is, as Jimbo says, the sum total of all human knowledge. The WP:GNG applies however (like it or not); looking the non-highest buildings over, (and recalling all comments are based on the online sources I can find); the First Interstate Center seems to have no significant notability; the First Security Bank does have a few gBooks hits that may confer notability (listing in the 1984 Rand McNally Bankers' Blue Book, for instance) but they seem to be in-passing or directory entries; the Garlington Building at first looks bad (nothing gBooks), but gets a few news hits ([1], another seems to refer to the old Garlington Building). Meanwhile the Millenium Building...has at least two buildings larger in Missoula (Aber Hall and Jesse Hall) but is still a moderatly significant building. So in summary, my suggestions are to

Weak keep Millennium Building and Garlington Building (Missoula, Montana) (and if kept move to Garlington Building)
Merge and redirect First Interstate Center (Missoula) and First Security Bank (Downtown Missoula) to Downtown Missoula. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 18:49, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I do not see how these articles, as currently formulated, meet WP:NN, which states in part that they should have evidence from reliable independent sources such as published journals, books, and newspapers. Except for the Millennium Building, which cites one newspaper article, I do not see any sources here that seem to me to meet WP:RS. Even the Millennium Building only has one such article, and to meet WP:NN it should have multiple reliable sources (one mention does not make a building notable). I think that the buildings could be mentioned in an article on (downtown) Missoula, but do not see how they meet WP:NN now (if there are more sources, please add them to the articles). Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:02, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NN does not and has never required "multiple" reliable sources to pass WP:NN and specifically WP:GNG.--Oakshade (talk) 03:17, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GNG always refers to "sources" (in the plural) and says "Multiple sources are generally expected." with a note that says in part Lack of multiple sources suggests that the topic may be more suitable for inclusion in an article on a broader topic. This is what I suggested above. Even if one source is sufficient, only one of the four articles nominated here has anything like even one RS cited. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:25, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The plural is simply an grammatical affectation as to not appear to restrict the amount of sources. There is no requirement. --Oakshade (talk) 03:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And in the this case, there are plural reliable sources giving significant coverage (addressing "the subject directly in detail") as another one has been found by Carrite below. [2] --Oakshade (talk) 02:47, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. I can see no great notability in any of these buildings. They're just ordinary buildings in an ordinary smallish city. Most towns have buildings like this. They're simply not notable unless they're of particular architectural or historical merit. These do not seem to be. Coverage in local media is not sufficient to establish notability, as all buildings of any size are likely to get some coverage in local media. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Question Is the Millennium Building really the tallest building in Missoula? It has 9 floors, which is roughly 90 feet (27 m) tall (if you use the 10 feet (3.0 m) per story rule of thumb). The University of Montana has Aber Hall, which is 11 stories tall (again should be about 110 feet (34 m) tall).[3] Just curious about the relative heights. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - if there are better / more sources for these buildings, now is the time to add them to the articles and let us know. If there are sufficient reliable soruces to establish notability, I am willing to reconsider my !vote. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Well, shit, let's just do this the old fashioned way. THIS ARTICLE IN THE MISSOULA INDEPENDENT calls the Millennium Building "the closest thing Missoula will ever have to a skyscraper." Carrite (talk) 07:35, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The website Neighborhoods of Missoula lists the Millennium Building among EIGHT OF THE CITY'S MOST RECOGNIZED LANDMARKS. Carrite (talk) 07:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Add my voice to the KEEPS on the First Interstate Bank Building as well, per THIS PIECE IN THE MISSOULIAN. Carrite (talk) 07:40, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 November 17. Snotbot t • c » 19:19, 17 November 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.