Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of 2012 adherents

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. NW (Talk) 02:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of 2012 adherents

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List with unsourced claims that certain people support a certain theory. WP:OR, WP:BLP plus the fact that it is highly questionable if this list has sustained notability needed should the world not come to and end in 2012. And if is does - well I guess that's mute point as Wikipedia would no longer exist anyway. Travelbird (talk) 10:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Part way through this debate, user Zenji changed his username name to Accurate Nuanced Clear. See [1].

.......................................

Response from page-starter:

Notability of article increases massively if predicted 'changes' DO NOT occur. Because list will then be a publicly referencable list of people who made claims that turned out to be false. And if they DO occur, then notability is obvious.

These claims are now a major part of public discourse and are having widespread psychological effects.

Is this page more notable than these other wikipedia lists?:

Banned video games
Child prodigies
Cocktails
Conspiracy theories
Emerging technologies
Hoaxes
Massacres
Martial arts
Paraphilias
Psilocybin mushrooms
Unusual deaths

(See more arcane lists here: http://briancray.com/2009/03/31/ultimate-list-of-awesome-wikipedia-lists/)

I feel your trite statement about the 'mute point' (sic) about wikipedia not existing if "the world came to an end" may indicate a personal distaste for the subject that may have more to do with your desire to delete the page, than any logical reasons.

Zenji (talk) - (made more concise feb 2)

Comment: In addition to reviewing Wikipedia's policies on notability you should take a good look at Wikipedia:No personal attacks Travelbird (talk) 13:00, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - So wrong on so many levels. Organizing people based on an opinion of a future event seems to be a very weak method of categorization. Second, there is no 3rd party, reliable source provided that identifies these people as "2012 adherents" anyways, just the personal research/opinion of the article creator, which is not permissible per original research concerns. Finally, only 2 of the people on the list seem to be notable in their own right (Jenkins and Melchizedek), have Wikipedia articles at all. This is just a flawed premise all-around. Tarc (talk) 14:16, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete After reading in this week's Newsweek about George Lucas supposedly being a notable person who believes that the world is going to end in '12, I was expecting a list of adherents. This is just a list of people who have written books to capitalize on the 2012 fad, and I imagine they're socking away their earnings into IRAs and high-yield investments that won't mature for five or more years. Mandsford 15:14, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Unencyclopedic. Not notable. Original research. Kittybrewster ☎ 22:53, 30 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - I saw this at WP:RfF, and agreed with another editor there that at the very least this article ought to have more inline cites to support inclusion in the list. That wasn't done, and anyway it wouldn't have helped any with the bigger problem of meeting notability requirements. There just aren't enough noteworthy people on this list for it to be of much encyclopedic interest. (And I must say that I am if anything counter-swayed by the tone and content of the argument presented by the article's creator on this page). WikiDao ☯ 03:58, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This is Original Research, based on Primary Sources, to lump together different people with different beliefs, based on their books, and then label them all as "Adherents". Adherents of what? It seems that they are all talking about different things: pole shifts, orion prophecy, awakening, etc. Any of these folks that are notable should have their various views presented at 2012 phenomenon, if at all. First Light (talk) 04:33, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Retain: on notability and referencing

ARTICLE IS ONLY A STARTER: It needs people to add names to it. Isn't that the way wikipedia works?

NOTABLE ENOUGH FOR THE REST OF WIKIPEDIA: Most of the names on the list are considered notable enough to be put in bibliography of "The 2012 phenomenon". It also has OTHER names apart from these.

LIST NOT CREATED TO PROMOTE ANY AGENDA. I am a science major at a university that's part of the Australian equivalent of the 'Ivy League'. I did NOT put this list up here because I believe in their views.. I've only heard snippets of the claims and I'm agnostic' on it. But I know it is notable because it is having a major effect on the publlic consciousness:

NOTABILITY and related: This phenomenon is starting to have major psychological consequences on people. Take a look at the 6th paragraph of this post on a 'new age' site. 'Getting angry and disillusioned that certain aspects of this 'prophecy' is not coming true, a young teenager who believes in the phenomenon says:"I feel a strong urge to smash somebodies face right now... Hopefully it will hit the right person."'

Such a list will allow the public to check back on the claims of these people after the event

Suggested improvements and essence of my keep-argument

Somebody suggested to enhance the referencing by adding a quote from each 'adherant' that sums up their views, with an inline citation that refers to the page numbers in the book (or other source).

However frankly I don't have the interest to develop the article any further right now.
I only added it as a public service - because I can see the affect that belief in this phenomenon is having on people. This makes it notable.
If you delete it, I won't be back back to recreate an improved version - I just don't care enough, frankly.
And to be honest, the amount of energy people seem to be willing to put into destroying something rather than creating something - as well as the timed I've wasted defending something I think is obviously 'notable' - is a bit disillusioning.
If you do keep it, I may add the references referred to above later - but I can't promise anything..

However I do think it's notable enough to be improved, rather than deleted.

Bottom line. if you care about the accountability of public information, vote to keep it:
it's in the public interest for a transparent list of people making these claims
to be created while it's still easy to create such a list.
Such a list can then be referred to LATER, WHEN IT MIGHT NOT BE SO EASY TO FIND REFERENCES TO THEIR STATEMENTS.

Zenji (talk) 031 January-2 Feb 2011 (UTC)

Acknowledgment You may be right, my contempt for the Y2K/2012/Chicken Little authors may be affecting things. I think it's fair to say, too, that we may be complaining about the title of the article which and our disappointment at finding something other than what we were expecting. For my part, this carries over to an needlessly sarcastic description of your work, and for that, I apologize. I don't want to discourage a new contributor. I understand a little bit better what you are aiming for, and I can see the encyclopedic value. We know vaguely that some people believe, or are claiming that they believe, that something bad is going to happen in 2012, though we laugh it off and don't take the time to ask what they say it's supposed to be. In the U.S., it ranges from Obama being re-elected to the election of President Palin. You might want to do what they call "userfying" your work until it has the appearance that you would want it to have. The way you would do it would be to create an article entitled User:Zenji/List of 2012 adherents and working on it in your own time, without anyone hitting the delete button. Generally, posting an incomplete article or a work in progress is a risky proposition. There was a time when one person would start an idea and others would happen upon it and edit it to add their own information, but Wikipedia became a victim of its own success-- people began taking it seriously, and the standards for high concept articles became higher, and it's no longer the bulletin board that it once was. Try the userfy thing; it's the way most of us create new articles, simply because we've had our own bad experiences here. Mandsford 14:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to 2012 phenomenon to the extent any of the material really belongs there (and if it doesn't belong there, it doesn't belong anywhere). The article's creator is wasting everyone's time. EEng (talk) 20:10, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@Eeng that is a personal attack of the exact sort that prevents people returning to contribute to wikipedia. Accurate Nuanced Clear (talk) 16:58, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Part way through this debate, user Zenji changed his username name to Accurate Nuanced Clear. See [2].

No, it was a carefully considered statement about your behavior, not about you. Your creation of the article may have been naive, but by now you've had plenty of time to review relevant policies and guidelines, yet continue to assert arguments which make no sense in light of them, such are your idea [3] that WP should act as a repository of various people's publiic positions for later reference. See WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, and read (or re-read) WP:N and WP:ATA before adding more comments to this or any other deletion debate. EEng (talk) 20:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC) P.S. This is not Twitter so cut it out with the silly @ stuff.[reply]

Comment I agree that the names and authors of the books mentioned in the article (by Caruson, Crowther, Geryl, Jenkins's three additional books, Melchizedek, Peterson, and Ratinck) can be added to 2012 phenomenon#References, and this can be accomplished without a merger discussion. The 2012 phenomenon article is excellent, although, at 69KB busting at the seams. There are other topics that have not yet been covered, such as persons who are followers (which would be my definition of "adherents") rather than leaders of the 2012 thing. What I'm inferring here is something along the lines of observing specifics about what bestselling authors are predicting, on or around December 23, 2012, some of whom are identifying other specific dates in the manner of The Amazing Criswell. As I've said earlier, it's better to craft and perfect new articles in userspace. For my part, I try to avoid the "L word" in titles. Mandsford 14:09, 2 February 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.