Jump to content

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JJJ999 (talk | contribs) at 03:03, 8 March 2010 (Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs· FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Non-Notable student debating competition - on a Google search top 2 hits are WP. No GNews hits, one minor Google Books hit, no Google Scholar hits. Seems that there is not much coverage outside specialist debate sites and blogs; does not seem to have it's own website. Not sure that the page meets WP:V as all the post 2002 information is un-sourced and given the lack of third party coverage also think it fails WP:GNG along with WP:ORG and WP:CLUB guidelines. Codf1977 (talk) 14:42, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - well, there are a couple of hits in Google new archives. Here's one that says they are "One of the world's largest debating tournaments, the Australs are second only in size to the World Universities Debating Championship". Gatoclass (talk) 17:44, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree with the claim of losts - if you do a google.com.au lookup for "easters debating tournament" (with the quotes) - you get 4 hits - two from Macquarie University Debating Society, one from a live journal and the last from a site that looks like it scraps WP content judging by the "Note: Some content may be licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License" message at the bottom Codf1977 (talk) 11:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And again, I'm pretty sure your use of terminology is getting in the way of your searches. a search of Easters "debating tournament" comes up with far more hits: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=easters+%22debating+tournament%22&start=270&sa=N or http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Easter+%22novice+debaters%22&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= comes up with 64. Using quotes in this case is just splitting up hundreds (possibly thousands) of website hits because of inconsistent use of vocab (the tournament has no real consistent name, and is mostly referred to as "Easters" which is obviously problematic for a google search with quotes, which is why my initial one doesn't use one). I don't have time to search over the internet right now, indeed it may not even be on the internet. But my gut feeling is a national competition with over 400 participants each year (not including organisers or adjudicators) is probably notable, and if effort is put in sources will invariably be found... I tried to look at the Monash debating website to grab some newspaper links I remembered seeing, but (as chance would have it) it seems to be down right now. There's certainly enough doubt that this should be kept and given time to improve at any rate.JJJ999 (talk) 23:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
my terminology was trying to filter out the 'noise' - to find sources that cover the event. Most of the page hits on the above searches are from Uni debate clubs or Uni's themselves; nothing that you could say is independent and nothing significant. There is a big difference from being probably notable to actually being notable - an event may want to be notable, but if know one outside the event is writing or talking about it, it fails WP:GNG. Codf1977 (talk) 09:35, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm merely showing that your proof of it's lack of notability is not useful. Even the 2 searches above I used fail because they limit the search to people who refer to it as a "debating tournament" rather than say a "debating Intervarsity" or "debating IV" or "debating weekend" or "Easters IV" or "Easters tournament" or maybe (as it is actually refered to) "Easters" and then the word "debating" somewhere on the page. There is no proof being presented one way or the other, and no effort has been made by anyone with time to really explore the issue. Based on having some knowledge of the event, I think it probably is notable and has some coverage somewhere (not that it necessarily needs to in order to be notable under wikipedia guidelines). With that in mind, it should be kept, and effort made to improve it, since the premise of the opening post (that there is nothing on google) is wrong.JJJ999 (talk) 10:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I totally disagree that he premise of nom is wrong. It seems to me that if you have to hunt for coverage in the way you are proposing; ie by changing the search term to "Easters tournament" (neither of those words appears in the article title) then you are admitting that finding "verifiable objective evidence that the subject has received significant attention by the world at large, to support a claim of notability." (from WP:NRVE) is going to be hard if not impossible and that being the case it fails the WP:GNG. The easiest way to deal with this is to find the coverage rather than debate (no pun intended) how to find it. Codf1977 (talk) 13:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's just an argument for changing the name of the title. I explained why "Easters tournament (which does return quite a few ghits- not the be all or end all btw) is a misleading measureJJJ999 (talk) 15:59, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that sources can be found to establish the notability of the Australian Intervarsity Debating Championships (or any other name that may be more appropriate) I would not have a problem with moving the article to the Article Incubator, however as far as I can see what coverage does exist is limited to specialist debate sites and blogs and significant independent coverage of the tournament may just not exist. Codf1977 (talk) 21:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well gee, thanks for your permission. What we have here is an article which nobody has made a real effort to find sources on (both of us included), about an event that is of sufficient size that you would imagine sources to exist, and which no other editors on this discussion have expressed a firm opinion. In that light, the answer is not to send it to editing hell, but to leave it for the natural process, perhaps tag it so sources are added, and come back a year from now and see where things stand (perhaps wait for more opinions). You can't start an AfD based on a faulty search as your only evidence it should be deleted, and then when that search is proven unhelpful to turn around and say "prove it's notable then, or have it deleted". Wikipedia doesn't work that way. I don't have time to go searching right now, and nobody else is paying attention to this AfD, so it seems clear the solution is to just tag it (maybe) and let organic change happen.JJJ999 (talk) 03:02, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]