Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leonard Sweet

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. While article has an informal tone, the !keep rationales clearly show he passes WP:PROF. (non-admin closure) Onel5969 ^{TT me} 12:46, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Leonard Sweet[edit]

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The article contains quite some claims of notability, but not the reliable sources to back up those claims. The only two sources that aren't Sweet's own website or his book are this self-published piece which in turn refers to this, which for all I can tell is, despite the self-description, neither in Russian nor particularly reliable, and this publication by a ministry. The majority of our article's content is not confirmed by either of these weak sources, and removing unsourced and unreliably sourced content would amount to blanking it. My own sources have brought up passing mentions in international newspapers such as The Hindu, but not any significant coverage. Articles by columnists about Sweet, which wouldn't be reliable sources anyway, disagree wildly, from calling him a best-selling author to claiming that not many people read the works of Leonard Sweet. In summary, this is a rather promotional piece not supported by the given references, and better references that would allow us to rewrite the article do not seem to exist. Huon (talk) 15:55, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete looks like it's a promotion. VanEman (talk) 19:14, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:34, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:34, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:34, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep It's a terrible article, reads like promotion which it may very well be. Appropriate to tag it for improvement, tightening, sourcing, etc. However, he passes WP:GNG. The distinguished professorships he has held (which may have been term-limited) may be enough to carry him past WP:PROFESSOR and his books seem to get reviewed widely enough to carry him past WP:AUTHOR (see: [1]; [2]). But the main thing is that there is secondary source coverage of him that is both in-depth and broad. See news search: [3] and note articles like this: [4] Plus over 500 hits in my quick proquest search, many on the first page appeared significant. One headline cued me in to the fact that he was President of United Theological Seminary, which puts him over the notability bar. In short, when confronted with terrible promotional article like this, we need to remember that politicians, creative artists, political activists and, yes, preachers and/or their fans have a regrettable tendency to create lousy self-promotional articles, but the tone of the article may mask real notability. As it does here.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:50, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Scholarly source discussing his position within Evangelical momemnet (Sweeney, Douglas A.. 1991. “The Essential Evangelicalism Dialectic: The Historiography of the Early Neo-evangelical Movement and the Observer-participant Dilemma”. Church History 60 (1). [American Society of Church History, Cambridge University Press]: 70–84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3168523.)E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:05, 15 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as I originally thought of Keeping but was uncertain, keep and improve as needed. Delete perhaps at best as my searches have not found anything better and Draft at best if needed. Notifying DGG for his analysis. SwisterTwister talk 05:24, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. meets quite a few WP:PROF criteria; named professorship at major school (Drew is ma a major school in Theology), important honors--5 honorary doctorates, including from Oberlin; President of an important graduate school. Any one of these would be sufficient. Multiple books by reputable publishers, reviews available -- this meets both WP:PROF and WP:AUTHOR, and all the books can be confirmed at WorldCat . SwisterTwister, WP:PROF is specifically specified in the guideline an alternative to the GNG, so whether he meets GNG is irrelevant, but he almost certainly will if appropriate sources are searched. A little rewriting is needed, but it is't all that promotional .Huon, Jesus: a theology is in 262 libraries, which is quite a bit for academic theology, The Ministers Wife is in 571, and The Evangelical tradition in America is in 556, so there's no basis for saying they aren't read. (The source for the figures is Worldcat at [5]. the standard database for books.) Unless one thinks the academic study of religion unimportant and unworthy of coverage in an encyclopedia , there's no basis for this nomination. DGG ( talk ) 16:23, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome to improve the article. It's not me saying Sweet's work isn't read, it's one of the rather few third-party sources (of dubious reliability - it's an opinion piece, but in a national newspaper) I managed to find. If this is kept I'll simply remove the unsourced and unreliably sourced, promotional content from the BLP, leaving us with a one-line stub unless someone else can present sources that would actually allow us to write about Sweet in some detail. I don't have access to the source E.M.Gregory found, so I can't make use of that myself. Huon (talk) 17:07, 17 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep: as holder of a named professorship and a prolific author, deletion should be out of the question. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:42, 17 April 2016 (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.