Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Orange County Science Fiction Club

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 keep. The Bushranger _{One ping only} 06:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Orange County Science Fiction Club[edit]

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Not clear how this orphaned article meets notability guidelines. Lacks significant coverage in 3rd party sources. Google searches (news and book) bring up no results on the title. Discussion of notability on the talk page has centered around notability of individual members, or guest speakers which doesn't necessarily extend to the club itself. Contested prod. RadioFan (talk) 03:35, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - If I'm not mistaken it's an uncommonly large and long-lived SF association, it's able to regularly engage notable authors to appear at its meetings, and it's hosted the World Science Fiction Convention on more than one occasion along with various smaller national and state level conventions. Its founder ran for the state assembly in 2004. Third party coverage in the OC Register (here). The Orange County public library maintains a collection of their publications for historical reasons (here). The following index of results from paywall sites suggests further coverage in reliable sources. (here). - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:44, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Actually, this article does not say that the OCSFC hosted the World Science Fiction Convention, just that they assisted with it (nor does the source cited, or OCSFC's website, claim that this club hosted the Worldcon). There have been three Worldcons held in Anaheim, California, which is in Orange County, but they were all sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests (SCIFI, Inc.) [1]. No doubt there is some overlap of membership between the two organizations, but it is not the OCSFC that can take credit for the Worldcon. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:15, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

- - Weak keep. I thought that SCIFI was a shell company created by OCSFC to be the legal host of their first WorldCon, and kept around for such uses. No references, and could well be wrong. htom (talk) 02:22, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Keep Maybe it needs improvement, but not deletion. BTW, SCIFI (http://www.scifiinc.org/), to any extent that it's a "shell corporation" (which it is not), is more closely associated with LASFS than OCSFC. The parallel case sometimes cited is between NESFA and MCFI, but even there the overlap isn't 100%. Kevin Standlee (talk) 16:25, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - My bad. I was using shell company in the context of a legal assistant and barrier, not as a criminal enterprise. htom (talk) 00:57, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:48, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:48, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:ORG. The lone source linked above is more about WorldCon than this, and even if that weren't the case a mention in the local news isn't enough. There's also some pretty clear WP:COI/SPAM issues here too. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 21:04, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as subject appears to cross both the verifiability and notability thresholds. I have added additional sources to this article and cleaned it up a bit as well. The group's 30-year history and participation in Worldcon organization help offset the relative thinness of the available articles. With the Los Angeles Times behind an intense paywall and most regional sources not online at all, searches in Google News only prove that FUTON bias is a real-world issue. - Dravecky (talk) 22:14, 25 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I removed the reference to a blog, not a reliable source. The other references are unclear, partly because they are LA Times articles which have only a brief abstract to go on, online, and partly because some of these sources appear to be insignificant mentions of the organization in "whats up" or "community calendar" type items in the newspaper. Even the Orange County Register article mentions the club only in passing, the article is about the convention. Perhaps an article about the convention would be more easily sourced.--RadioFan (talk) 02:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - The blog entry you deleted as a reference would have been a fine reference for verifying the event it mentioned, an appearance by the blog author (who is a published sf author) at an event sponsored by the club. There was no cause to delete it, though I agree it was not a reference that should be pointed to in order to establish notability. The LA times article references, however, you should not discount simply because you do not have access to them. That would be like asserting that a book is not a decent reference because it was not posted online. Wikipedia would be substantially less useful if it was only used to document material that was already well documented in online sources. Netmouse (talk) 04:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep - I think it's been fixed up enough to keep, but just barely. Meets general notability for having multiple news stories about its activites, including a WorldCon that I missed. Bearian (talk) 18:39, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm not seeing those articles as being about the club or even about the clubs activities. They are about notable events that the club participates in and that notability doesn't necessarily transfer to each participating club. Still not seeing coverage in reliable sources where the club is the subject of the article, only brief mentions of the club.--RadioFan (talk) 23:08, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Even though I am a member of the club and a major contributor to the page, I have done my best to be non biased. Many problems have been pointed out to me over the last few days and I have been working to correct them. I have updated the reference section so that it is better than before. I have removed the links to news articles and have replaced them with links to other clubs or people who at least mention the OCSFC. I, and others, are working hard to make sure that we present the best possible article on Wikipedia. I believe our club deserves the Wikipedia page and hope that you will allow it to continue. Wesomniman (talk) 05:56, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm not seeing significant change in the article. Only the Orange County Register reference mentions the club and that is only in passing in an article about a related topic but not about the club itself. All of the LA Times articles fail verification, mostly because of the WP:PAYWALL. That could be overlooked in deference to avoiding WP:FUTON but the abstracts provided for the article and the headlines dont give much confidence that the article will help establish the notability of this subject. The article still reads fairly promotional as well.--RadioFan (talk) 17:14, 27 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - WP:PAYWALL says the opposite of what you are suggesting; specifically "The principle of verifiability implies nothing about ease of access to sources: some online sources may require payment." You can't reject online sources just because you personally haven't paid to read them, any more than you can reject print sources because you don't own the relevant book. - DustFormsWords (talk) 04:22, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I understand what paywall says. I'm not saying the references are invalid because of the difficulty in verifying them, only noting that it is a challenge. I'm expressing concerns in the references based on what is available online. It doesn't inspire confidence that whats behind the paywall will provide much help in demonstrating the notability of this subject. I'm assuming good faith that the editors in question have read these references and would like to hear more about them.--RadioFan (talk) 04:51, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I must apologize because for some reason all my edits have disappeared and what you are seeing is basically the old page. I don't know what happened to my edits, but I will try and replace them later. I hope that you will stand by until I can fix what was lost and figure out why it was lost. Thank you. Wesomniman (talk) 01:59, 1 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep but needs better sourcing. Some folks are missing the distinction we make here between mere mentions (even in notable and reliable sources), and substantial coverage of an organization. Also: notability is not contagious; you don't achieve notability by have famous speakers or even famous member(s). --Orange Mike | Talk 16:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - any argument for having articles about community organizations must acknowledge that most news coverage about them will be about their activities and not about the organizations themselves. I think this sort of 'behind the scenes' article is very useful, and this appears to be a very active, well-established group. Netmouse (talk) 04:15, 1 March 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.