Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Motorized recliner incident

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. v/r - TP 02:08, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Motorized recliner incident

Motorized recliner incident (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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This article discussess a single incident and has no enduring enduring historical significance or a significant lasting effect. Coverage is not in-depth or of relevance outside where it occured. Incident was widely reported internationally as light news trivia. See also Wikipedia:EVENT and Wikipedia:WIDESPREAD#Don.27t_create_an_article_on_a_news_story_covered_in_109_newspapers Clovis Sangrail (talk) 01:13, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• Keep It had coverage in newspapers in countries all over the world, January through November of 2009. It went beyond a watercooler story which numerous paper covered in one news cycle. It is comparable to the story of Larry Walters flying to great heights in a lawnchair lifted by weather balloons. Edison (talk) 02:02, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

comment There's no question of coverage, but enduring significance / notability is another issue. There is equivalent coverage on many similar incidents (google 'motorised drink driving') - including bar stools, beer coolers and wheelchairs. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 02:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

If articles were determined to be non-notable because similar subjects with equivalent coverage in RS exist, we wouldn't have many left. Besides, nearly a year of international coverage in RS is enduring, by any reasonable definition of the term. Which of your similar incidents have achieved this level of notoriety'? Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 04:02, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

While coverage appears to have lasted Nov-april, international coverage was limited to mentioning the incident. The article itself refers to an almost identical case (Kile Wygle). More noteworthy cases could (in terms of media and as legal test cases) can be found at [[1]] (note title 'another') and [[2]] Clovis Sangrail (talk) 04:39, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• Keep per Edison. Also, this incident was described in a law review article [3]. Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 02:07, 22 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete - WP:NOTNEWS, WP:ONEEVENT WP:EVENT twaddle, a stupid human-interest story one finds at the end of their local news alongside heartwarming stories of the dog that can bark Ode to Joy or the 90 year old farmer still on the job. Tarc (talk) 05:36, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

  Comment Maybe we should have articles on the other two topics you mentioned. Good suggestions. Edison (talk) 16:25, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

  Thankfully (for the project's sake) I made them up. Tarc (talk) 16:41, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

  You're effectively arguing that the article should be deleted because you find it to be "twaddle" and "a stupid human-interest story". This is a classic WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument, festooned with irrelevant policies. Invoking WP:ONEEVENT is silly, since the article is about the event, not one of the participants. WP:NOTNEWS is a deprecated redirect, designed to draw attention to just this sort of misuse of a "potentially misleading shortcut". The actual policy title is "Wikipedia is not a newspaper". It allows "development of stand-alone articles on significant current events" but doesn't permit "routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities". Incidents receiving major international attention are seldom routine news reporting. Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 17:25, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

  Just because you have a bug up your backside against my position at WT:NOT doesn't mean you get to carry your snideness to other venues, so dial it back a bit, will you? As for WP:ONEEVENT, that was a mistake on my part, I meant to link to the main event notability guideline at WP:EVENT. There is not lasting effect of this incident, no wide-reaching effect. It is just one very ridiculous story that poppped into the news for a few days, everyone has a chuckle over it, and then it is swiftly forgotten. We get hundreds of these AfDs a year because some yahoo sees a funny headline and scrambles here to write an article about it, whether it is the woman who fell into a shopping mall fountain while texting or a news reporter seems to have a stroke while on-air. These sorts of things are always judged by WP:NOTNEWS standards and quickly deleted. My call to delete is based on a sound argument used many, many times in the past. If you disagree, fine, but try to contain your responses to the realm of the rational. Tarc (talk) 17:51, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

  So, your "sound argument" is to take a subject with months of coverage, as described by Edison, and counterfactually describe it as having "poppped into the news for a few days"? Your imploring me "to contain your responses to the realm of the rational" is deeply ironic. This AFD may ultimately involve a philosophically profound discussion of the nature of reality: is the chronological length of coverage an objective fact, or can it be transmuted according to one's desires, just by imagining it to be so? Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 22:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

  Amazing how many words you can use and not actually address what someone says. Recap; guy hooks up an engine to a la-z-boy, guy gets arrested, everyone enjoys the lulz. End of story. No lasting significance, no continued coverage. Just a dumb news blip and it is gone. Similarly trivial news-of-the-day junk has received far, far more coverage than this shit, and has been easily deleted. This one should be a no-brainer, but in the end it all depends on who shows up to weigh in. Tarc (talk) 23:00, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 12:24, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Minnesota-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 12:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 12:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

• Keep, good amount of secondary source coverage for an article to be retained on Wikipedia on this subject matter and its topic. — Cirt (talk) 04:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

  Comment There is no question in relation to RS. The reason for listing is notability. eg from WP:Event: 'Routine kinds of news events (including most crimes, accidents, deaths, celebrity or political news, "shock" news, stories lacking lasting value such as "water cooler stories," and viral phenomena) - whether or not tragic or widely reported at the time - are usually not notable unless something further gives them additional enduring significance.' Clovis Sangrail (talk) 05:38, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

• Keep - good sourcing. and secondary coverage.--BabbaQ (talk) 22:23, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete. Per nom (WP:109PAPERS) and lacking enduring significance and notability. - DonCalo (talk) 11:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:30, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

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• Delete. I am not unsympathetic to the inclusionist position here, but I do not feel it is consistent with the notability guideline at hand. Because Edison mentioned Larry Walters in support of keeping this article, I think it's valuable to contrast the two situations. In both cases, someone converted a chair into something else (aircraft, car), got arrested, and had the story reported in a zillion newspapers. Walters' flight was "a precedent or catalyst for something else of lasting significance" -- several plays, poems, songs, TV episodes, and a major studio motion picture were based off the event; the event under discussion has not been such a catalyst. Interest in and reporting on Walters' action was diverse and sustained, including requests for late-night talk show appearances, efforts by the Smithsonian to acquire his chair, an advertising campaign with Rolex, and follow-up reports years later including coverage of his eventual suicide in People; in contrast, coverage on this event has been much narrower -- the event happened, the chair was auctioned off, and La-Z-Boy objected to copyright dilution in the media. It is conceivable that this event will in time meet the expectations in the guidelines, but at this time it is more akin to one of the "and finally" stories deemed likely not notable by the guideline. As a separate response to one other supporting claim, the FindLaw Blotter blog entry linked by Alessandra Napolitano might be a reliable source (although I am uncertain), but it is certainly not what is normally contemplated as a law review article. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete I am extremely unsympathetic to the inclusionist position here. Fleeting coverage, classic not a newspaper stuff. Nwlaw63 (talk) 20:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
• Delete This incident may have been newsworthy a couple of years ago, but it is not sufficiently notable to be a suitable encyclopedia topic. Peacock (talk) 21:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)
• Keep The deletion argument here is blatant WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Claims that topics have to have lasting historical significance are hand-waving prejudice because many/most topics are just not that important. Clicking random article a few times we have Travis Lee (wrestler), Oxnard Elementary School District, Izzy Lang. It's only after getting through mundane stuff like that that we come to a timeless topic like structural rigidity and such topics are a fraction of our content. So, to pick on the recliner incident just because it seems wacky is contrary to core policy. The incident has had international coverage and has made it into at least one book. Notability does not expire and so this topic passes the notability guideline. Warden (talk) 23:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS (and that none of those listed articles have the same difficulties with the terms of the event notability guideline) aside, the linked book is published by well-known print-on-demand publisher PublishAmerica and thus does not constitute a reliable source for Wikipedia's purposes. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 23:56, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

"Other stuff exists" refers to the argument that because there are some articles that are equally problematic as the one at AFD, the latter should be retained. If accepted, this line of reasoning would obstruct the AFD process, since there are always bad articles that we haven't gotten around to disposing of yet. However, when someone proposes to delete an article in part for reasons that, if accepted, would eliminate about 95% of Wikipedia articles (no great historical significance), that's a problem, since any attempt to start a massive article burning would quickly be quashed by overwhelming consensus. The enduring significance test in WP:NOTNEWSPAPER may be crystal balling going forward, but it's an objective metric when evaluated retrospectively - either coverage of the event died out quickly, or it didn't. When reliable sources are still covering an event months later, we have enduring significance. Thus it is for the motorized recliner incident: significant coverage in reliable sources started in January 2009, and ended December 2009. Establishing notability has never required coverage of events to continue indefinitely. Arguments to the effect of "this is trivial crap, fsck it" aren't sufficient to show non-notability; AFD is not a venue in which to evaluate subjects against our own tastes. Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 02:56, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• WP:Other stuff exists states that "a logical rationalization of "Other Stuff Exists" may be used in a perfectly valid manner in discussions of what articles to create, delete, or retain.". Historical significance is not a logical test for recent events because we are unable to predict what will be thought historically significant in years to come. Warden (talk) 10:29, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
• The metrics I'm applying here don't apply to 95% of articles, nor my personal tastes, only to those discussed in WP:EVENT, under the Inclusion Criteria, where "lasting, historical significance" is cited explicitly as one of the criteria that should be evaluated to distinguish news stories from encyclopedic topics. As a matter of personal policy, I cleave especially tightly to the guideline's inclusion factors when considering events involving a single primary actor whose biographical article would be discourged by WP:BLP1E. On the subject of dates, I haven't had the chance to look into the conflict, but the October 2009 date given in the article lede seems in conflict with January 2009 sourcing. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 14:47, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• I think that was a transcription error in that source: 23/01 rather than 23/10. It seems that the event occurred in August 2008. The story broke in October 2009 when the matter came to trial. It was still being reported the following April 2010 when police were trying to auction off the recliner again. It fetched $3700.

  It's moving me to address this issue over and over and I really would like this issue to be over with, because I have other things to take care of in the community

  — Chief Walter Wobig of the Proctor Police Department

  . Sounds like the chief felt that this matter dragged on for some time. Warden (talk) 15:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• Keep – This topic passes WP:GNG, coverage in numerous third-party reliable sources. Northamerica1000^(talk) 12:32, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
• Keep hardly a routine event, lots of valid sources. CallawayRox (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment There is nothing which makes this case stand out from the many other routine dui non-vehicle cases. Please see [[4]] for a collection of ~50 similar incidents, including beds, boats, beercoolers and barstools. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 04:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Gets media coverage, and this is already mentioned in lawyer publications, it a notable legal case. Dream Focus 21:12, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Delete. NOTNEWS. I' not sure wha tthe rest of you are reading, but I never heard of this prior to this AFD. MSJapan (talk) 21:05, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

• As mentioned in WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, it is possible for an event to be notable; it has been explained above why many editors believe that this one is. You propose to delete all articles concerning events about which you have no prior knowledge? Just, wow... Alessandra Napolitano (talk) 02:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Because I like it! Great story and fun to read, don't cha know. Gandydancer (talk) 20:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

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.