Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Supermarine Aircraft

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 Snowball KEEP (NAC). WWGB (talk) 03:17, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Supermarine Aircraft

This page appears to rely on the company's own webpage, a private individual's tripod webpage, and a mnor club article that refers to the plane in passing. As a result, the page neither establishes notability, nor does it meet criteria for reliable sources. It also risks being a vehicle for promotion of the company. If reliable sources establishing notability can be located, and the language is NPOV, I'm happy to vote to keep, but my very cursory initial explorations suggested this is going to be difficult to achieve. hamiltonstone (talk) 03:54, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep. I now believe the article has passed the threshold for rescue. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

*Delete - As per nom. Frmatt (talk) 04:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep - Having re-visited the article and browsed some of the sources, I'm changing my vote as well...can an admin close this one as keep, please? Frmatt (talk) 17:29, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Comment if deleted, it should redirect to Supermarine, the famous WWII manufacturer of the Battle of Britain fighter Spitfire. 76.66.192.144 (talk) 04:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep Surly each aircraft manufacturer in Australia is a notable topic for an article. There appears to be a whole category consisting of air craft manufacturers in Australia and it would seem that it would interject an unfair bias into the category as a whole if some manufacturers were notable and some were not. How many planes do you have to build a year to be notable, if building one less would then make a manufacturer non-notable. I am certain that there are hobbyist mags, on the subject of home built aircraft, and these will no doubt have coverage of this popular model, so there can be no doubt that reliable sources on the subject of the aircraft itself and its manufacturer are available.

This group of articles is currently of fairly good quality but could be improved, with the addition of more sourcing, but if we delete these pages, that will never happen. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and if we are tearing it down faster than we are building it, it becomes a failed work in progress. Unless those voting to delete the article can prove that there is some reason that this particular aircraft will not, and has not been featured in the various hobbyist publications devoted to the subject, then it must be agreed that verifiable sources exist.

Now the chore is to go out and find these clearly existent sources for this notable topic!

TeamQuaternion (talk) 04:37, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Your last remark is the key one. Applying WP policies, it is not appropriate to say that, because there is a category 'aircraft manufacturers of Australia', every manufacturer gets an entry. If there are inadequate reliable sources, then it should not stay. Otherwise, every backyard hobby plane builder could get themselves in WP. Finally, you comment "Unless those voting to delete the article can prove that there is some reason that this particular aircraft will not, and has not been featured in the various hobbyist publications devoted to the subject" - that is precisely the wrong way around - the onus is on editors to provide sources, not on the rest of us to prove they don't exist. hamiltonstone (talk) 04:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Comment - a google search shows only a handful of reliable sources about this company, most of the hits are either about the original aircraft, or are photo-type sites where people have uploaded pictures of their kit-built aircraft. I would still agree with Hamiltonstone that this page fails WP:Notable and while it is an interesting company, doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Frmatt (talk) 04:50, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —AustralianRupert (talk) 06:31, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep My usual approach to make an objective decision on an AfD is to see if I can find any references for it or not. If I can, I add them. This approach lets the availability of references speak for itself. I did a search and found one from the Australian Ultralight Federation showing the aircraft was reviewed and approved in 2001, and added it to the article. This article meets my test, and in the process now has an additional reference too. It appears there should be more in that search. Ikluft (talk) 08:30, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I found a 2004 article from Aero-News Network covering Supermarine's beginning to promote to the US market. That completely satisfies the notability question. Ikluft (talk) 08:44, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep. The article was created by an editor whose usual area of interest is motorcycling, there are no COI or advertising motivs here. What is wrong with using the company website as a reference? Surely it is likely to contain the most up to date and accurate information? Just take care to avoid highlighting pages that mention cost and distributors etc. or paint a glowing picture of the product, readers can find this themselves if they want to. As for notability and references, the company and aircraft appear in print (at least four independent aviation magazines). I believe that the number of aircraft produced is out of date, the total is nearer 150 now, to my mind any company that has produced this number of aircraft deserves an article. The significance/uniqueness of what the company is trying to achieve is a factor not normally found in similar aircraft company articles. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 09:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Comment: Your question: "What is wrong with using the company website as a reference?" The answer: ""Wikipedia articles should rely primarily on reliable, third-party, published sources" (WP:RS). I haven't had much involvement with AfD discussions, and I can't say I enjoy them. The few times I've brought things here, people have come out of the woodwork, annoyed that someone is attacking articles that interest them, and ignoring wikipedia policies and guidelines, as though they had nothing to do with the question at hand. I'm a fan of aeroplanes, the articles interest me, and none of that is the point. You say "the company and aircraft appear in print (at least four independent aviation magazines)". The question isn't whether that might be true, but whether those references have been cited in the article. Anyway, it now looks, based on the Aero-News Network article, as though notability is established, and I'm switching to keep. I just wish editors would focus on WP policies and guidlines in these discussions, otherwise the encyclopedia's reputation and reliability gets undermined over time. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:16, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep appears to be a notable company in Australian aviation other editors have now added more references, just needed more work rather than deletion. MilborneOne (talk) 11:02, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

• Keep - meets WikiProject Aircraft notability requirements. More refs are available and can be added. - Ahunt (talk) 12:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Keep – meets all the criteria for a notable subject. FWiW, since the original challenge is now being withdrawn, I am invoking WP:SNOWBALL. Let's get back to work! Bzuk (talk) 17:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC).
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. —Grahame (talk) 08:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
• Keep Good work rescuing the article! Dream Focus 21:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

• note 150 spitefires!!!! In the darkest day of world war two in the battle of Britian, I doubt that the RAF could field more than three times that number. In those dark days 150 more spirefires would have been notable, I see no reason that is is less notable now. For future reference, I wanted to add that the program wings of the luftwaffe has a great show about the ME 109 which opposed the spitefire. The final section of the show is about some guy who build his own 3/4 scale 109. What is an ME 109, or a spirefire, is it an air craft design, or does the vintage when the plane was build make it what it is. There is a point of view that the second answer is correct, that the ME 109 is an air craft design, and from this point of view, as pointed out in the show ME 109's continued to be produced in quantity by the Spanish government well after world war two. So my point being that the notability of an aircraft in current production is in some small part at least influenced by its venerable history. Perhaps the appropriate links should be included between articles. In any case, glad to see that the consensus is for keeping this potentially fine article!TeamQuaternion (talk) 03:09, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

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.