Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Canadian Pointer

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. Mkativerata (talk) 19:41, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian Pointer

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Unreferenced article about a breed of dog that is not officially recognised, no evidence of notability. Peter E. James (talk) 23:52, 27 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organisms-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:10, 28 October 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, Steven Zhang ^{The clock is ticking....} 00:15, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Most Ghits are mirrors of or sourced by this WP article. The few that might not be are blogs or other non-WP:RS sources. Gbook hits are false positives, or are one of those recent WP-based slapped-together things. I've removed from the article the claim of recognition by the American Rare Breed Association, which is contradicted by their website. Given the lack of evidence, I suppose that this could be a hoax, but I suspect that it's just a non-notable, failed attempt to create a new breed. Fails WP:GNG. --Hobbes Goodyear (talk) 04:58, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure? - I am not any sort of expert on this, but a straight Google search gives:

Chicago Tribune - Jan 26, 1957 -"A Canadian pointer owned by Richard Papa of Toronto won the national amateur shooting dog championship today. Tyson's Sky lull Flash. a 6 year old, ..." (google cache text)

and a whole lot more entries in newspapers from 1957 (The Baltimore Sun), 1920 (Schenectady Gazette) "Dogs, Birds Poultry . of genuine Saskatchewan Canadian pointer pups, natural mothers for fox or rabbit.", ... these certainly can't be from Wikipedia, and they certainly aren't newly-invented. Whether "Canadian Pointer" is a generic description or a known breed is beyond my knowledge, but we can't dismiss it so hastily. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I am sure that neither the article, nor this AfD, nor my own web searches have unearthed the substantial coverage from reliable sources needed to satisfy the notability requirement for an encyclopedia article in WP. A couple of points:

There are plenty of false positives in the Gnews searches. One of the biggest causes seems to be bad OCR misidentifying articles containing "Canadian painter", e.g., here and here.
The real breed of dog, while often referred as the English Pointer, is actually called just "pointer"--see Pointer_(dog_breed)#Name. The effect of this is that there will be plenty of false or ambiguous hits that reference a pointer that happens to be from Canada. Take your first example, from the Chicago Tribune. The NY Times item on the same story calls the dog a "Toronto pointer". The Sports Illustrated version identifies the dog as just "pointer" and the owner from "Toronto".
I can't actually find the 1957 Baltimore Sun item that you mention. I will concede that the Schenectady Gazette link is likely to be a real hit, however (a) it is a solitary classified ad--hardly substantial or WP:RS, and (b) the phrase "cheap to introduce the breed" and its date, 1920, is perfectly in line with the picture painted by the Canadian Pointer article itself--that a small group of enthusiasts attempted to develop a new breed "in the late 19th century", with their attempt ending in failure when the "American Kennel Club...refused to recognize the Canadian Pointer" in 1937, and forever afterwards, or so it (mythically?) says.
If anyone can find substantial coverage from reliable sources, I will be happy to look again. --Hobbes Goodyear (talk) 02:43, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Merge I think this should be merged under Pointer (dog_breed), I do believe this article does have its place on wikipedia, despite the lack of sources. Jab843 (talk) 22:46, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: The only hint of a reference (here) does not appear to be reliable. The site, along with the article, are the only two mentions I can find concerning " Canadian Pointer Club of America" which might indicate some information was used from the site. Following a link, [1] leads to a Kennel site with the title; "ENGLISH" POINTERS. A link here mentions "Canadian Pointers" but refers to Pointers from Canada and not a breed. A suggestion to merge the article to Pointer (dog_breed) would do nothing but degrade an article that already struggles from multiple problems including a very short lead, advertisement (here), lack of citations (tagged), and other problems. The end result would be a bigger problematic article with a section that totally fails notability. The main problem is that I read somewhere that if an article (or section) does not have a source or reference it does not have a place on Wikipedia. I can look this up but I am sure it is known. I keep running into articles on Wikipedia that do not have any references, some created as far back as 2001, with many that have antiquated reference tags, and can't help but wonder if policies are an intended criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia or just a suggestion that is negated by the policy to ignore all rules. Otr500 (talk) 12:54, 13 November 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.