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18 May 2021

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  • Forest Lake Resort – Clear consensus below that this AfD needs to be redone in some capacity. Two options presented were either to relist, or to do-over with a new AfD. I find the arguments presented by the "new AfD" camp to be the more persuasive of the two (and potentially stronger in number, for whatever that is worth), and therefore the closure of AfD #1 is vacated and the article sent to a new AfD. I will revert the redirect and procedurally create the discussion shortly. Daniel (talk) 06:11, 27 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Forest Lake Resort (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Forest Lake Resort was a minor summer vacation resort that operated between the 1930s and 1960s. Four editors contributed to the AfD. Their votes and summary of arguments:

  1. Keep, the topic is notable because at least two books discuss it in some depth
  2. Delete, the resort was completely unimportant and no longer exists, or at best make it a footnote in the Boggs Mountain article
  3. Comment: "unimportant" is not a reason to delete
  4. Merge into Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest since the main sources are published by the state forest manager and discuss the resort only in context of the history of the state forest.

A comment after the Merge vote pointed out that the main source was not published by the state forest manager and does not even mention the state forest. The merge vote was based on false information. Despite this, the AfD closer decided there was consensus to merge into Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest, and went ahead with the merger, leading to a bizarre result. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:29, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Two important considerations are not noted above:
  1. The article was originally titled Forest Lake, California; Aymatth2 renamed it mid-discussion to Forest Lake Resort, meaning that the discussion was no longer about a populated place but about a specific business. Aymatth2 also moved the deletion discussion from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forest Lake, California to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forest Lake Resort. While not strictly prohibited, I have never heard of this being done before. It certainly confuses matters.
  2. In the discussion imitated by Aymatth2 on my talk page, I proposed that if they believe the merge target to be wrong, they could and should boldly change it to a different merge target. The fact that a proposed merge target in the discussion was disagreeable to them does not convert that into a "keep" !vote; the editor proposing the merge clearly outlined a basis for not having a separate article on this topic due to lack of independent sourcing. BD2412 T 17:50, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Therefore, if this outcome is overturned, it should be overturned to delete. I gather from the summary provided by Aymatth2 that they are also ignoring the argument of the nominator, Mangoe, which also counts as a opinion favoring deletion. BD2412 T 17:50, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A few points:
  • The move was done to clarify that this was not a discussion about a once-populated place, where WP:GEOLAND could be relevant, but just about the resort, which had to meet the more stringent WP:GNG criteria.
  • The editor proposing the merge had got the facts wrong. The sources are independent, and the resort was unrelated to the proposed merge target of Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest. If they had looked again after these errors were pointed out, they might have voted to keep or to delete, or maybe to merge to some other target. We can only guess.
  • As SportingFlyer pointed out, the nominator proposed to delete the original stub, and took no further part in the discussion after the article was WP:HEYed.
  • Determining consensus is not just a matter of counting votes, but of weighing the arguments. The "not important" argument by the nominator and the one "delete" voter can of course be ignored.
Aymatth2 (talk) 18:54, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't really see a consensus for merging there, or anything else. The article was completely rewritten halfway through the discussion, so anything written before then isn't particularly relevant. (Before this point the article was actively misleading the reader and should definitely have been deleted.) There was quite a bit of discussion after the rewrite but there weren't many participants and there wasn't much agreement amongst them. There can definitely be a discussion about whether this should be covered in a standalone article or merged somewhere else (and importance is relevant to deciding this), but the AfD isn't very helpful to deciding that. Hut 8.5 19:32, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Hut 8.5: I cannot tell a lie. There is a connection between Forest Lake Resort and the Boggs Mountain Demonstration State Forest. The former brewer Jim McCauley who started the resort also owned forest land on nearby Boggs Mountain, a tonic water company and other properties. He died in 1942 and his property was split between his family. The resort remained a private enterprise into the 1960s and was later owned by a Pepsi subsidiary. The forest land was purchased by the state in 1949 and became the state forest. So there is a tenuous connection. But the resort is not part of the history of the state forest, as was pointed out in the discussion, and should not have been merged there. Anyone reading the state forest article will wonder why on earth it breaks into a description of the resort part way through with no context or explanation. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment to User:BD2412 and others - It is "interesting" to compare the language on the AFD notice on an article that is tagged for deletion with the MFD notice on a draft that is tagged for deletion. The notice on an MFD says not to remove the tag, and not to blank, merge, or move the page. The notice on an AFD says not to remove the tag, and not to blank the page. The notice on an AFD should be tweaked to add an instruction not to move the page. Moving the article while deletion is being discussed causes confusion, as we are seeing. The template should be edited. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:50, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Moving the article is not so bad compared to moving the deletion discussion itself. It creates the impression that this was the topic of discussion all along. BD2412 T 22:56, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • There's been a couple instances very recently where I've been a part of AfDs which have been moved during the AfD. One was a result of a WP:HEY and wasn't a problem at all, I don't remember the other one apart from the fact it wasn't controversial. I'd discourage it, but there's no reason we need to create a rule on moving pages under an AfD. SportingFlyer T·C 23:04, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
        • I apologize if I caused confusion. The discussion seemed to be caught up in whether "Forest Lake, California" was notable as a populated place. Despite the name still being shown on a GNIS map, it certainly is not. The article was all about the resort, and the focus should be on whether it was notable in its own right per WP:GNG. Having moved the page, it seemed right to move the discussion page to match. Anyone watching either would see the move. I had no idea this was unusual. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:32, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • In my long experience the only time when it causes confusion is when one doesn't adjust the discussion heading to follow the page move and to note the original title. Otherwise, in many years I've never encountered a problem doing it. The idea that it is disruptive, or that we should prohibit this practice, is simply wrong. It has been acceptable practice since I first wrote the Project:Guide to deletion. Uncle G (talk) 22:06, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vacate the Close and Relist - The action in moving the article, and especially in moving/renaming the deletion discussion, was sufficiently disruptive, although meant well, that consensus cannot be assumed to have been achieved. There is no implication of error by the closer. The good-faith error was by the mover. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:26, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Relist The arguments were that it was defunct, which is irrelevant, that it was subject to Geoland, which it is not, it an organization subject to NORG, and there were no independent sources, which does not seem to have been the case. DGG ( talk ) 00:17, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Relist seems like there were a lot of issues. Now that they are hopefully sorted, let's try again. Hobit (talk) 01:59, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vacate and send to new AfD I didn't bold my first comment, so here's my solution. Per the agreement of BD2412 and Aymatth2 above from Robert McClenon's close, overturn the AfD and send the new page to a new AfD. I don't think a relist is helpful here, but rather an entirely new, fresh discussion. SportingFlyer T·C 17:56, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vacate and send to a new AfD. The weaknesses in the delete rationale of Alexandermcnabb were made at length and on solid policy and encyclopedia-building grounds by non-!voting participants, to the extent that the delete rationale could be regarded as refuted. I simply don't think AfDs in the state that one was in, particularly in view of the move, should be closed: I recommend the would-be closer weighs in if they have formed an opinion or relists, with a note on the unclosability of the discussion. SportingFlyer suggests a fresh AfD: I think this idea deals nicely with the issue of the move. I agree with Robert McClenon about the additional instruction on the AfD notice. — Charles Stewart (talk) 03:27, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What's this weakness in MY delete rationale? I stand by my assertion, made in the delete discussion, that this former resort was not a populated place and therefor failed WP:GEOLAND. That was a discussion about the article before it was moved and was perfectly valid. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 06:40, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vacate and send to a new AfD As the original nominator, I did see the change to an article on the resort, and didn't participate after that because the notability of the place wasn't all that clear to me and because the discussion got rather muddled. In retrospect I'm still not convinced that as a resort it's notable, but the merger to the state forest article came out of the blue to me, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. A new discussion on the article as it stood after the move would be a reasonable approach. Mangoe (talk) 14:19, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Vacate and new AFD Many issues with the AFD, such that the best approach is a redo.Jackattack1597 (talk) 23:13, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Happiest Minds (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Sandstein closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Happiest Minds as "delete". Based on the strengths of the arguments in the discussion, there was no consensus to delete. The "delete" participants did not explain how the analyst reports I provided were "routine". The AfD nominator discussed how American companies and American CEO articles were being kept "even though they are entirely common and non-notable" and said this was Wikipedia:Systemic bias but did not explain how this applied to Happiest Minds, a company founded and based in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

The AfD nominator wrote "the list above is another collection of routine coverage that completely ignores WP:NCORP, like it doesn't exist, and makes a mockery of notability and the five pillars. I'll see what Arbcom says about it" but did not explain how the analyst reports were routine. The AfD nominator did not address the fact that the WP:LISTED section of WP:NCORP says analyst reports can be used to establish notability.

The second "delete" comment was made about the existing sources in the article and before the analyst reports were provided. The third "delete" editor wrote "Run-of-the-mill company in its run-of-the-mill sector", which did not explain why the sources were inadequate. The fourth "delete" editor said "per the second delete editor" and did not explain why the sources were inadequate.

The closing statement said, "Although analyst reports are mentioned as possible sources in WP:NCORP, that guideline also excludes 'standard notices, brief announcements, and routine coverage', so excluding routine analyst reports is guideline-compliant." The closing admin responded, "While you made a reasonable argument in favor of keeping the article, you were the only one in favor of keeping it. As I explained, I cannot discount the 'delete' opinions, because the relevant guideline instructs us to disregard routine reporting, which is the argument they invoked. And whether something is routine coverage or not is a matter of editorial judgment, for which I must defer to local consensus in the discussion."

The AfD discussion included analyst reports published in 2015, 2019, and 2020. None of the "delete" opinions explained how the analyst reports were routine. None of the "delete" opinions explained what analyst reports would be considered non-routine. The closing admin erred by not discounting arguments that did not explain why the sources were routine or inadequate.

Overturn to no consensus.

Cunard (talk) 08:49, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • I endorse my own closure per my reply to Cunard quoted above. While they made a good argument for keeping the article, as closer I cannot overlook that everybody else in the discussion discounted the analyst reports cited by Cunard as routine, and NCORP instructs us to disregard routine coverage. What is "routine" is a matter of individual judgment. I cannot substitute my own (or Cunard's) editorial judgment for that of the discussion's consensus. Sandstein 09:40, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • temp undeleted for DRV WilyD 10:29, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse Not only were the !voters not swayed by the sources after they were voted, the !voters came out fairly strongly against those sources, even though they didn't necessarily specifically mention them (which is not a requirement.) I agree that routine is often in the eye of the beholder. Looking at the temp-undelete, I'm also not sure a mistake was made by deleting this. SportingFlyer T·C 10:43, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse per the argument the closer brought up in reply, the executed close seem to be only thinkable one. CommanderWaterford (talk) 12:59, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse and trout for nominator. Could not possibly have been closed any other way, and this listing is a waste of DRV's time. Stifle (talk) 14:10, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse - No error by the closer, and the close appears correct. Robert McClenon (talk) 14:53, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse No error from the closer as local consensus about whether a source is routine should be respected. --Enos733 (talk) 15:49, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse it was reasonable for the participants to judge that those sources represent routine coverage, and the closer should respect that judgement. Calling systemic bias in itself isn't a great argument for keeping something. If it was coupled with some argument that the best sources might not be easily accessible then that might carry some weight, but for a tech company that mainly operates in English-speaking countries I would expect the available sources to be on the internet and in English. Hut 8.5 19:46, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn with no evidence that any of the delete !voters considered the evidence presented in the AfD. The delete !votes are textbook WP:JNN responses and should clearly be assigned zero weight, in comparison to the detailed work done by Cunard. Jclemens (talk) 19:48, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse No error by the close and it appears to be the correct course. scope_creepTalk 20:39, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cunard put in some proper source-finding work there, and I'm disappointed to see that there was no attempt whatsoever to analyse the sources he provided or engage with the arguments he presented. AfDs should be about sources and that one wasn't. So I think that what we're dealing with here is a good close of a deficient discussion. I would agree that the text in the history is incredibly promotional and I presume that this is what the debate participants were analyzing. On balance, I think the version in the history was properly deleted, but I do not see a consensus to disallow a freshly-written article based on Cunard's sources. I think the remedy DRV should apply is to endorse Sandstein's close, but if Cunard should choose to write a fresh version based on his sources, then such an article ought to be immune from G4.—S Marshall T/C 00:03, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, that wasn't the case at all and you're not assuming WP:AGF by denigrating other editors who were on the Afd. There was a clear consensus for delete. The analyst report made no headway due to WP:NCORP specifically WP:CORPDEPTH because they are routine coverage. The crux of the argument isn't the case the analyst reports donate notability. They don't. Any company that goes through an IPO, gets analyzed by groups who are looking to invest or investment houses that offer those types of services to their clients. It is an automatic response. All that does increase the number of people that are looking at a company. So reports cannot donate notability. The company itself must be notable in a special way. But there was no effort to look at the company or justify why it is notable here. Its mere presence was enough to make it notable. But trying to save a company that is exactly the same as dozens of others, is a joke It becomes an automatic response to save it if it shows up, pushing Wikipedia to become directory-like and pushing it further and further from the original vision. Mediocrity becomes the standard. Inclusions for inclusion's sake. NCORP might work here, but in the last two years, NCORP has been comprehensively hobbled, essentially ignored by a large number of editors who want these articles at any cost and it's becoming less and less effective. scope_creepTalk 00:50, 19 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I do assume good faith; good faith users can be careless and inattentive, and we've all seen examples. I've noticed that some users display a tendency to disregard long comments. Some users even think it's rude to post more than a couple of sentences, as if a long source analysis were a disruptive waste of their time; and I think Cunard might have been the victim of those paleolithic attitudes here.—S Marshall T/C 10:16, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you say we say we have paleolithic attitudes? scope_creepTalk 11:20, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Overturn and relist - The case for closing as delete seems to turn on accepting scope_creep's argument that there is a tendency not to delete a certain class of weakly sourced articles about corporations, in that the later delete opinions seem to be agreeing with this argument. This isn't an argument I've seen before at AfD and Cunard's counterargument was not responded to. I regard the discussion as inconclusive, turning on an argument the merits of which I have not made up my mind. I think it would be good for AfD to reopen this discussion. — Charles Stewart (talk) 03:37, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You don't spend a lot of time at Afd, and you don't have any idea of the scale of the problem, nor do I think you understand what has happened in the internet in the last 10 years and its effects on here. scope_creepTalk 10:41, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Arg. If it hadn't been relisted so much, a relist would 100% have been the right way forward. But given it had been relisted twice already, I can see why the closer closed it rather than relisted. That said, the keep arguments were not addressed and they are 100% on point, directly quoting from WP:CORP indicating that the sources count toward inclusion. overturn to relist. It needs more discussion, and with the wider audience found in this DRV, it should get that now. Hobit (talk) 16:50, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Endorse: In my comment sandwiched between the 1st and 2nd relists, I distinguished verifiable evidence of a company going about its business from clear evidence that it is notable, perhaps unhelpfully posing this as an open question. I did review the subsequent discussion as it evolved, and saw nothing there, including the DRV nominator's list of articles, that would take me from leaning-delete to a keep position. When it comes down to it, what could be said if asked for a one-sentence summary of this company: "It is an IT services company" or maybe "It is an IT services company founded by people whose former venture was MindTree, another IT company"? - noting the indefinite article. Or maybe "It is an IT company about whose future financial prospects some analysts have written reports"? Rather than replay the financial reports which are churned out as the daily bread-and-butter labour by analysts, I really think we need to adhere to a need for demonstrable notable achievements regarding pages about companies, and I fail to see what this company has achieved that is of encyclopaedic note. In the absence of such, endorsing the close seems appropriate. AllyD (talk) 05:53, 24 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Martok (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

PMC closed this discussion with no justification and no indication they read the discussion. While a simple vote tally does give keeps a majority (10 keeps, 3 deletes incl. my nom, 2 redirects 1 merge) IMHO only a single keep vote is policy-based. Except for Daranios, the other votes were mainly WP:ITSIMPORTANT (Ched, Avt tor, castorbailey), WP:KEEPPER (Starspotter, Ched), and two keep votes very even the most useless WP:NOTAVOTE, with Dbutler and NorthWoodsHawatha not providing any rationale. Further, the discussion was ongoing and just yesterday, we obtained one paywalled source that earlier appeared to have potential and was described as one of the best sources to use, sadly (see here), it does not seem to contain any SIGCOV discussion of the subject, further weakening the keep arguments. Bottom line, AFD is not a vote, and most of the keep votes were just that - votes. I commend Daranios for trying to find sources, but the ongoing discussion suggests they are not good enough, so the keep side has a debunked 'there are sources' (no they aren't argument), plus a bunch of 'it's important' assertions and 'just votes'. If PMC disagrees with my analysis of the arguments of the keep side, they should have presented their own, as IMHO there is a very big disparity between votes on one side (policy based) and the other (much less so). The discussion could be relisted, so that more participants could look at the sources, but a close based on a simple tally is not correct.

PS. Upon further investigation, which the closer should have undertaken given the suspicious nature of so many weak keep votes, most of which appeared in quick succession of one another, I will note that there are major concerns over WP:CANVASSING resulting in a flood of keep votes. Most of the low-quality keep votes occurred in few hours after the notification here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Star_Trek#Martok, and while this is a public forum and making a notification there is IMHO fine, I find it strange that votes also came in from editors who have been inactive for weeks or months(! Dbutler1986 for example haven't edited since November last year and even had to ask for help "how to vote"). While I don't think off-wiki canvassing took place, it is clear that User:Starspotter has sent individual talk page messages about this AfD to over 50 editors (most of them members of the Star Trek WikiProject, starting with [1]). There was also more inappropriate canvassing on other unrelated foras like the WikiProject Anatomy which even led to a warning from User:Praxidicae (User_talk:Starspotter#WP:CANVAS). Such canvassing will obviously skew the simple vote tally, as happened here. The closer should've accounted for that, which there is no evidence of having been done. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:59, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
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