Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Browncoats' Backup Bash

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.

Browncoats' Backup Bash[edit]

The result was deletion, as unsourced. RyanG e rbil10(Упражнение В!) 19:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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Contested speedy. Neutral. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-12-17 06:03Z

Delete as non-notable event. A search yields some hits, but mostly just blogs, fora, and few if any reliable sources for an article. A sci-fi fan gathering attended by a couple of hundred people is hardly encyclopedic. --Kinu ^t/_c 06:46, 17 December 2006 *(UTC)
Delete per above. MER-C 06:48, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Non-notable event, without actual independent news sources, just self-produced blogs and postings. I was a fan of Firefly, but such material is best kept to fan sites. While events like this may be important to particular group of fans, they are not appropriate for an encyclopaedia. As noted at WP:CORP, "The club, society, or organization has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the club, society, or organization itself." Even the still-under-discussion proposed notability guideline for Fandom states, "Generally, a regional convention would only be considered a major convention if it had 1000 or more members each year" This one claims (without any verification) attendance of "approx 375". The best bet would be to merge some portion to Browncoats. --Leflyman^Talk 07:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Leflyman & nom. SkierRMH,08:42, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - I was just looking at that article yesterday thinking it needed to be nominated... Otto4711 13:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Regretful Delete Even as a Browncoat myself, I must admit this event lacks sufficient sourcing.-- danntm ^T _C 18:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Send this out in to the black - this shindig wasn't notable. I attended Serenity^3, which had over 600 attendees and that wasn't notable enough for an entry on WP. WP:BIO refers. (aeropagitica) 21:25, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or Merge Disclaimer and disclosure: I was at the event. In the main it's curious to me that the criteria I see most often for deletion on this item is size, with second place seeming to go to a lack of mainstream media coverage. I can't control consensus, but notability shouldn't be restricted to the size of an event. That a planned event of 500 people gets cancelled at the last possible moment and is replaced by a fan-organized substitute, also at the last moment, seems notable from an everyday standpoint. Serenity^3 wasn't notable in that sense because it was a planned event which happened as planned. The B3 was different, and therefore notable. As for verifiability, my complaint there is probably more as to flaws in that policy overall than with the concept -- e.g., if the mainstream doesn't notice something, there should be a way to still consider it verifiable, such as the existence of dozens of first-hand reports from attendees, who aren't at fault if no acceptbly-mainstream source has bothered to verify an event. Theonetruebix 23:14, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please note:— Theonetruebix (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. --Leflyman^Talk 00:34, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I also agree that this event can be considered notable due to the uniqueness in it's organizing. I've added to the article the links to CNET and WIRED which discussed the event. Earth2Kim 05:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: Being blogged about at Wired != Wired article. --Kinu ^t/_c 07:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This event is notable for the unique manner in which occured. Interestingstuffadder 06:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, the unique nature of this event coupled with continuing media coverage in two major publications in addition to the major blogs already listed compell me to vote keep. Meets WP:BIO in my opinion. JohnnyBGood t c VIVA! 15:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: "Unique" is not a criterion for inclusion. Also, where is the media coverage? The only sources I can find are the two blogs mentioned in the article, which hardly meet WP:RS. And WP:BIO really does not apply to events. --Kinu ^t/_c 15:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually uniqueness implies notability which is at the heart of WP:BIO. Also WP:CORP is being applied by some users but it is not relevant to this kind of event.JohnnyBGood t c VIVA! 05:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: WP:BIO is about the notability of biographies of individuals; it does not deal with events or activities of non-notable fans. "Uniqueness" is not a notability factor-- recognition in published reliable sources is. I imagine we could all make a claim for being "unique". --Leflyman^Talk 21:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or Merge into Firefly fandom. While it sounds like it was a great party replacing what would have been yet another fan convention, what's notable about it is how it came to be, as a self-organizing event, and as that it should be remembered. People doing good things is usually not considered to be newsworthy, btw; the cancellation would have gotten press (probably did, in fact) but that was lost in the success of the Backup Bash. While it's surely not policy to "reward" good behavior, deleting the article, rather than merging it, is surely punishing it. htom 20:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I'm a Browncoat; I was there; I don't think this belongs on Wikipedia. Nightsky 04:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per lefly. You can't take the WP:RS from meeee. -- Jeandré, 2006-12-19t20:11z
Keep, per JohhnyBGood. The Wookieepedian 21:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete, I don't really think the event itself was notable enough to earn its own article. Within the fandom, it's notable, and I think the mention in the Browncoats article is probably more appropriate. --- The Bethling ^(Talk) 02:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete, non-notable. CRGreathouse (t | c) 03:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, very notable event. No other convention in the history of scifi has been organized that fast and that completely. SFBayHome 18:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: Based on policies and guidelines, how has notability been asserted? --Kinu ^t/_c 21:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Marsia Powers Dec 24, 2006

This was an historical event within Fandom.

Regarding media, here's two links to media, CNET and Dattona Beach News

http://news.com.com/2061-10802_3-6142354.html?part=rss&tag=2327-10784-0&subj=news&tag=cnetfd.blog http://blogs.news-journalonline.com/247/2006/12/why_we_love_the_fireflyserenit.html And a news Video http://blog.quantummechanix.com/?p=16 And here's how I explained the event to a friend....

Imagine you prepared for a group trip to Europe. You paid for your air, hotel and entertainment. Depending on what your itinerary, you pre-paid anywhere from $1000 to $5,000 up front. The trip is sold out, which means the organizer (who has a good reputation and has put together this type of event many times before) has been paid for everything. You get on the plane and when you land, you find out that other than the air and hotel that you are paying for directly, nothing on the itinerary has been paid for. You and a group of 500 people are milling around the hotel lobby not knowing what to do. There is no one there to help you and from what you understand, the company that booked the itinerary does not have the money to refund you.

There was a fan convention where 500 people from around the world paid for a weekend of socializing with actors, directors, writers, musicians and other Industry folk connected with the series Firefly/Serenity at the Burbank Hilton. People spent anywhere from $1000 to $5,000 including air, hotel and the convention itself. At the last minute, actually in the afternoon prior to Day One, while most people who were coming from outside of Southern California were in the air or in their cars driving down, the convention was canceled, with no refunds in sight. Seems even the studio people and the Hilton were left in the lurch, w/o being paid thousands of dollars.

The California Browncoats put together a Booster Backup Bash (the company's name was Booster Events) and entertained the attendees from Friday through Sunday on a shoestring. Most of the Industry folk came to hang out with the fans for free, Clare Kramer (Glory in season 5 of Buffy) and her husband opened their new Hollywood Blvd restaurant (La Cantina) 2 weeks early so we could have a party (again where the Industry people joined us), people and companies helped us with getting locations to have the daytime events (the Hilton would not/could not release their convention rooms to us) and paid for tour buses so we could move over 350 people (some people didn't come at all, others arrived and left -boy were they pissed they left). Cash donations totaling $6500 came in from Browncoats around the world to help pay for the non-convention. In other words, we made lemons out of lemonade.

So now imagine that same group trip I wrote about at the beginning. While the tourists are in the lobby crying about their ruined trip and how they saved for this special event, strangers start to show up in the lobby. They help you with contacting friends and family. They tell you they will, out of the goodness of their heart, make a substitute itinerary for you for the weekend, keep your group busy seeing the sites, meeting people, playing games, transporting you around, even hosting a major party in a fancy restaurant at no cost to you since you're already out thousands of dollars. And other strangers donate money to a site to help towards paying for the new itinerary and transportation. Strangers. And after you have a weekend that although wasn't what you paid for ended up being more fun during, those strangers wait around until the last person is on their way back home.

Do you think strangers would do that for strangers? As a cohesive group? Of course not. The Browncoats did.

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.