Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2021 July 2

2 July 2021

Commissioner Service (Boy Scouts of America)

Commissioner Service (Boy Scouts of America) (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (article|XfD|restore)

Page currently archived at User:North8000/Commissioner Service (Boy Scouts of America)

I ask that the article be restored. It was a good useful piece with encyclopedic content, good sourcing, and was comprehensive in its coverage. Some issues cited in the original deletion nomination were fixed early in the discussion, and this was discussed with the closing admin. The stated reason for the nomination was the lack of secondary sources. That issue was resolved. There needs to be a consensus in order to delete an article. Reading the discussion, there was not a consensus to delete. Rather than determining whether or not there was a consensus to delete, the closer gave there their own interpretation of the guidelines as the basis for the close. --evrik ^(talk) 17:09, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Overturn as nominator. --evrik ^(talk) 17:09, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Certainly bring it back My first thoughts for this are from the process side. I do respect and thank the closer for their Wikipedia work, but do disagree on a few levels with what happened. Deletion requires a consensus to delete. There certainly was no consensus to delete and the closer closed it citing their own application / interpretation of the guidelines. Another item to factor in is that the article has had sourcing added both during the initial review process, and so comments earlier in that process were based on an article with less sourcing. Also it has more sourcing added since it was userfied.

Regarding the topic in general, the topic is a set of positions that I would estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have served in and for a time period spanning over 100 years. IMO it certainly has the scope, impact, enclyclopedicness, available sourcing to be considered to be wp:notable and merit an article in Wikipedia. Moreover, given that scope, it is a topic that any people would try to look up in Wikipedia and we should certainly have an article on it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:47, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment – This is a tough one, and there are reasonable arguments on both sides. Before I take a firm position, I'd like to hear from evrik: which sources (e.g. WP:THREE) do you believe provide significant and independent coverage? While I'm sympathetic to the WP:SUPERVOTE concern, closing admins do have substantial discretion to discount !votes that have a weak basis in policy, and my brief perusal of the discussion isn't finding any clearly adequate sources. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:50, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I am somewhat hesitant to go down this rabbit hole. If the issue is sourcing, Wikipedia:PRIMARYCARE allows for the use of primary sources on "The organization's own website is an acceptable (although possibly incomplete) primary source for information about what the company says about itself and for most basic facts about its history, products, employees, finances, and facilities." The BSA has three magazines, and 300 plus local councils. The magazines in particular give context and interpretation to the BSA issued documents. However, since you asked:

• Davidson, Lee (2017-06-04). "Top BSA leader, who is LDS, hopes Scouting-Mormon marriage lasts". The Salt Lake Tribune.
• Jordan, Benjamin René (2016). Modern Manhood and the Boy Scouts of America: Citizenship, Race, and the Environment, 1910-1930. UNC Press Books. p. 151. ISBN 9780299094041.
• McKenzie, Joe (2020-10-28). "BSA Scouts looking forward while remembering start in Salina". The Salina Journal.

There are more than 25 references on the page. There are also many secondary sources in this google search

--evrik ^(talk) 22:16, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

There is also the aspect that being a large, decentralized organization, there are many independent sources that can be called a part of it but which shouldn't be written off as being primary. An analogy that carries that further just for clarity, for an article on the human race, we don't automatically write off everything written by a human as being "primary". With many tens of millions of people having been members, any one of them writing something while citing their scouting credentials should not get written off as primary or not independent. And then double that for the fact that is an article about a subset of BSA, and so the superset is not a part of that subset. Both of these would significantly expand that list. North8000 (talk) 22:41, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Overturn No consensus to delete, in fact comments to delete were in the minority. Sweet68camaro (talk) 20:16, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Overturn Commissioner Service is a unique and significant role in Scouting that has served an important role. In addition, I do not believe the guidelines for deletion were properly followed. Cguy9696 (talk) 21:43, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Overturn to merge. I disagree with the comments above: in my view, the closer correctly found a consensus that the provided sources do not meet the GNG. (The nom, the deletes, and the merges all agreed on this.) That's the case both numerically (5–2, by my count), and by strength of argument: the sources listed all either provide trivial mentions (e.g. a passing name-check) or are not independent. A reasonable alternative to deletion (merging) was presented, and none of the deletes displayed any opposition to it. In such a case, the AfD should have been closed as merge. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 22:47, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm more concerned (for reasons described above) that this extremely broad topic receives coverage. To me a separate article is simply the apparent best way to to that. So hearing "merge" doesn't bother me a bit. But in checking back at the proposed merge idea, the proposed target is the council article. But the scope of the subject and content is broader than just local councils so that wouldn't fit. The "lowest" level article that I found that could encompass it is the top level BSA article. But that is already fully loaded highly condensed article covering a diverse multi-million person organization over a 100+ years of history and there is no room for the content there. IMO a seperate article remains as the only viable way that I can conceive of. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

• Endorse, for me there is a narrow but sufficient consensus in that discussion that the article should not have remained, and as per EW above this is both on numbers and strength of argument. I believe assessing the consensus as either 'delete' or 'merge & redirect' was available to the closer based off this consensus, and given they assessed it in this fashion, we must support the closer in doing so by endorsing their close & subsequent deletion. Daniel (talk) 00:03, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Overturn to selective merge (though, frankly, there was rather little consensus). Merge or redirect seem to me better closing options if some sort of definite decision is desired and they would seem to meet the problems identified by those !voting delete at the AfD. Also the AFD nominator at least at one point seems to have accepted merge as a viable outcome.[1] I don't think anyone thought none of this should be covered in Boy Scouts of America or some associated article so it seems churlish to make it deliberately difficult to do this. Thincat (talk) 09:05, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Endorse the AfD and deny re-creation pending a WP:THREE case being made at User talk:North8000/Commissioner Service (Boy Scouts of America). The AfD and here has too many cases of WP:!voters not knowing what informs a notability type decision to delete, and a large number of low quality sources have been thrown into the mix. Only two good sources are required, and bamboozling by throwing up dozens of poor sources is not productive. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:48, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Endorse--the closer got it right. Note that in this review we see the same poor arguments, for instance, "Commissioner Service is a unique and significant role in Scouting", and the same poor sourcing. A few links are provided above, and in this one, for instance, we learn that "The lack of military training and martial emphasis in the evolved BSA also prompted several military men, such as [Verbeck and] Bomus, to quit their positions as BSA National Commissioners", which, for the topic, means exactly nothing. All these sources confirm nothing more than the most mundane of things, like "The unit commissioner is there to support and guide the Scoutmaster and other adult leaders of the troop" or "The bylaws call the national commissioner the chief morale officer"--nothing more. The "more than 25 references" aren't in fact "references" that say anything meaningful about the position; they are mere mentions which at best confirm that the position exists, and that some people had that function. The careful reader will note that none of these articles are about the position: they are about people who happen to occupy the position. And the other sourcing, as I pointed out in the AfD, is stuff like this--a survey commissioned by the BSA--or this--a Facebook post, I kid you not--or [file:///C:/Users/drarb/AppData/Local/Temp/TheCommissionerStory.pdf clearly primary material]. So when the closer said "no really independent reliable sources have been brought forward", they were absolutely correct. Drmies (talk) 11:57, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Overturn to merge I don't fault the closer here for their review of the sources, but I think at the end of the day, closing as delete seems to be a bit strained, with most commenters suggesting retaining the content in some form (as Extraordinary Writ says above). I have no opinion on where the merged content should end up. A relist or further discussion may be informative of where the content should end up. --Enos733 (talk) 12:07, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Overturn to merge (full disclosure: I proposed "Merge/Redirect" in the AfD). By raw !vote tally, 3 were for deletion, 2 for keep, and 2 for merge, i.e., a slight majority favored preservation of the article's content in some form. Having fallen short of GNG, a merge/redirect therefore seemed to be best. Significantly, the AfD nominator, Drmies, said of merge/redirect: "that is just fine with me" — which the closer didn't address.  JGHowes  ^talk 15:33, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I think the problem with these "overturn to merge" arguments is that if there is/were anything worth merging, the article is already userfied and people are free to use it to merge whatever they like. There just isn't really there there, so to say. No one has made much of a case at all that this meets the standard of GNG, and the closer read that correctly. If anyone wants to merge something, have at it. The article is in userspace. If someone wants to redirect it to the BSA page, sure, I guess, but it's not like anyone is going to accidentally stumble on the old title of the article as a search term. There just is no compelling reason to proceed with anything else here. Go Phightins! 18:40, 5 July 2021 (UTC)