Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shootout on Juneau Wharf

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. Any discussions on merging or redirecting can happen outside of AfD. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:34, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Shootout on Juneau Wharf

Shootout on Juneau Wharf (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Multiple. COI, with the usual effects, and essentially a reduplication of the Soapy Smith article. Qwirkle (talk) 01:25, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

While it has its flaws, it seems to me a lot more detailed than the Soapy Smith article. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 10:06, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Washington, D.C.-related deletion discussions. Hhkohh (talk) 02:16, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Alaska-related deletion discussions. ‐‐1997kB (talk) 04:39, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. Tyw7  (🗣️ Talk to me • ✍️ Contributions) 07:35, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment At the very least, this should be redirected to Soapy Smith rather than deleted. Undecided on notability for now, but would be opposed to outright deletion. Smartyllama (talk) 10:59, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • See !vote below. Smartyllama (talk) 13:16, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep Further proving that it's a waste of time to come here to build an encyclopedia when others are only interested in tearing it down. Per Piledhigheranddeeper, this is a perfectly legitimate example of content forking. There's quite a few contemporary sources present in the article, plus a decent number of respectable retrospective sources. As referred to in the talk page, Stan Patty's book Fearless Men and Fabulous Women, published in 2004, devotes a chapter to this episode in history. Patty spent 34 years at the Seattle Times as their resident Alaska expert. What little has been published about Tanner's life suggests that he was highly respected as a figure in law enforcement and as a community leader in Skagway, including serving as a United States Marshal, based largely on his reputation from this incident. The nominator does not elaborate on the COI they refer to, despite how obvious it is to me. Perhaps WP:COIN would be a better forum-shopping venue? Wikipedia has sadly become a dumping ground for whatever people find lying around the web today. A lack of interest in real research and real sources is the cause of the state of the references found in the article at present. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 01:05, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per RadioKAOS. This was a fairly significant gunfight, involving a fairly well-known scoundrel. Too much to merge back into Soapy's article. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:50, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep After reviewing the evidence, the shootout is clearly notable and it's too much to be merged back. I'm also not seeing a COI - the article creator seems to be pretty interested in Soapy Smith, but that alone does not constitute a COI seeing as we all edit articles about subjects we're interested in. That's not the sense of the word that "interest" is being used in the phrase "Conflict of Interest." And in any case, the article has plenty of other editors too. Smartyllama (talk) 13:16, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I had seen this as so obvious as not to need reiteration, but the articles creator, primary writer, and primary source is a blood relation who sells essentially self-published books on the subject, and has inserted his own judgement over that of disinterested authors. With that sort of thing removed, this might make an extra few sentences in “Soapy Smith” or ”Skagway”. This isn’t an encyclopedia article, it is advertisement for an author, not otherwise published, who has a book about his family...from a publisher with three, count ‘em, three books, two of which are out-of-copyright reprints. If you think this really worth a stand-alone article , then let’s blow up the existing mess that’s in its place. Qwirkle (talk) 14:32, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I count 17 sources in the article from people other than this so-called relative. And Jeff Smith is one of the most common names in America, so I'm not even seeing proof they're all related unless there's something they've explicitly said. Smartyllama (talk) 14:52, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, less than half the sources don’t lead back to COI spam, and you think that is a positive sign?

Given that you have not read the article creator’s talk page, I don’T see how you can have such a strong opinion here about whether there is a COI. Qwirkle (talk) 16:56, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

17 sources is more than enough to establish GNG. There are plenty of editors who edited the page besides this so-called relative. And most importantly, AFD is not cleanup. So whether someone's related to the subject somehow is really irrelevant to this discussion. Smartyllama (talk) 17:19, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

17 good sources central to the subject might establish notability , but we don’t have that here now. GNG does not, in itself, establish the need for a stand alone article. Finally, “AFD is not cleanup” explicitly notes tht a substantial portion or writers believe that a realllllly bad article, like this one, should simply be deleted. Qwirkle (talk) 18:15, 10 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In other words, it appears that you're attempting to play the same tired old bullshit game often played at AFD of judging the content and sources solely by what's present in the article at this moment and ignoring the advice given at WP:BEFORE. If Wikipedia truly was the collaborative environment it claimed to be, we could have avoided the COI and sourcing issues, not to mention this discussion, a long time ago. Stan Patty was a highly credentialed journalist, with a book published by a reputable publisher (Epicenter Press), which in part discussed this episode well over a century after it happened. The fact that he grew up in Alaska and went on to write extensively about Alaska for many decades may mean that he wasn't a "disinterested author" in the eyes of some, but that's quite a stretch when one considers his credentials. Many of the clearly reliable sources present in the article probably aren't geographically far enough removed for the crowd that are fond of making that argument. You know, the "It's not the New York Times" types. Well, a search of the NYT website shows a piece from 1928 which discusses this episode as part of the greater context of Smith's time in Skagway. Which brings me back to the first part of this particular argument: if reliable sources are still discussing this incident well over a century later, then just how many reliable sources have been published in between which are being ignored here? There are some people who don't wish to acknowledge those sort of sources because they wish to push Wikipedia in the direction of being a compendium of trending topics on the web from one particular day or another within the 21st century. So much for "the sum total of all human knowledge". RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 21:42, 10 July 2018 (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.