Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zahm Hall (University of Notre Dame)

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 DELETE. Notability not established. All arguments for keeping are textbook Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions: other residence hall articles exist; people want to find residence hall information here; keeping the article does no harm; or residence halls are important. Provide reliable secondary sources to establish that it is important. postdlf (talk) 02:03, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Zahm Hall (University of Notre Dame)

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This article about a residence hall of Notre Dame does not provide any evidence that the Hall meets the general notability guidelines. A search through news archives produces a number of hits, but, outside of non-independent university publications (the Observer Online), mentions are always insignificant (usually of the form "X lived at Zahm Hall while at Notre Dame"). Notability cannot be inherited from the university itself. Unless we can establish that this hall is notable outside of Notre Dame itself, it should not have it's own article (there's already a general List of residence halls at the University of Notre Dame article). Qwyrxian (talk) 00:50, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. —• Gene93k (talk) 02:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Indiana-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete wikipedia is not for listing dormitories. No claim of notability. Being a place where people who go to notable educational establishment live is not a claim of notability. MLA (talk) 22:41, 15 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep If this article is deleted, all articles, including Fisher Hall (which is not a candidate for deletion), should be as well. Dormitories are essential parts that make up the University of Notre Dame and are thus are notable, much more than dormitories at other institutions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zahmhouse (talk • contribs) 00:18, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do actually intend to look at the rest of the dormitory articles individually and see if they also meet our notability guidelines, after this AfD closes. Note that it is possible that some of them are notable while others are not; the primary determiner is whether or not they have been covered in detail in multiple, reliable, independent sources. The relationships between the dorms and the university are irrelevant to this discussion; Wikipedia measures notability according to whether or not the subject "has been noted" by the wider world. If you do know of outside sources that have discussed this dorm (not just mentioned that such and such person lived there, but in fact discussed the dorm, dorm life, etc. in detail), then please add them. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:54, 17 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete this individual dorm does not show any notability. Reywas92^Talk 23:35, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:30, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

""Keep"" As a Masters in Fine Arts student at University of New Orleans, I came to this page for information that had been here a month ago and which had been vital background for a fiction piece and was horrified to find it purged. I was forced to waste a good portion of time searching to regain the information from a variety of other sources. The dormitories at Notre Dame in many ways act as replacement fraternities and sororities to the campus, and have distinctly individualized reputations, traditions, history, and as part of a Catholic campus, a religious affiliation. When pages exist for every fraternity and sorority on the map, even for fictional ones, I find it incredibly difficult to see how, comparatively, this topic 'lacks note'. This Wikipedia page is also likely to be the first place any incoming student or parents with a student assigned to Zahm will turn to for a sense of what it is like, which the Notre Dame site will not provide (i.e., Zahm's infamous reputation.)

Furthermore, Wikipedia's guidelines state that deletion should be a *last resort* for articles of unclear notability. Sources indicate this dorm cannot be said to have no notability-- at its worst, the informational value is merely unclear, leading me to suggest what harm can it do to leave it alone particularly when you may be underestimating its worth to others (for instance, a non-affiliated grad student frustrated enough to bother creating a Wikipedia account in order to state this at 3 in the morning!) (Furthermore, in regards to the description above of the Observer as "non-independent", a cursory look determined that it is, in fact, considered independent, even referring to itself as so in its byline, also serves St. Mary's, and is affiliated with the College Media Network, resulting in its articles being cross-posted to sites such as UWire, as apparent: http://uwire.com/2010/09/08/council-discusses-recent-arrests/ ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nessieo (talk • contribs) 08:19, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Residence halls at the University of Notre Dame are unique among universities, with most students remaining in the same hall for their entire tenure at Notre Dame. As such, they function much more like fraternities or sororities than a typical residence hall at a state school for example. All of the halls at Notre Dame have a unique culture and history that makes them notable and unique, unlike most residential halls at other Universities. For this reason the article should be kept: it is a notable source of information for prospective students of the University, alumni of the University, and those who are simply curious about the unique residence hall system at Notre Dame, and until recently contained information that could not be found on the University's website. To delete the article would set a precedent to delete all of the residence hall articles about Notre Dame, depriving those seeking information about the dorms of what they would like to know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Farnk20 (talk • contribs) 05:48, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I haven't looked at the "External Links" added, which may be enough to establish notability. However, I do want to comment that it is absolutely irrelevant that prospective students, parents would come here looking for information about the dorm, because that isn't Wikipedia's purpose. We provide enyclopedic information about notable subjects, not about every possible subject in existence. By the logic that this should be kept because some people might find it useful, we should never delete nearly anything, even pages about any garage band who ever played a single show, people with no notability at all, etc. We have to draw the line somewhere; we've chosen to do so by checking to see if other, independent, reliable sources have discussed the subject in detail. That's the question we need to determine the answer to. As for precedent, well, yes, it may well turn out that we should go and delete more things--that's part of the work that has to be done on Wikipedia. I'm actually inclined to believe that, most likely, we should have one single page collecting the majority of these halls, with brief information about each, and only those with clear, reliable sources should have their own page. Zahm hall may be one of those--I'll try to look at those links in the next few days. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:23, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Qwryxian sounds like some kind of friendless virgin loser if you ask me. "Delete" him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.53.176.56 (talk) 04:16, 16 July 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.