Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Townsend Letter

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 no consensus. v/r - T P 03:41, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Townsend Letter

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Non-notable periodical with no credible assertion of notability. Orange Mike | Talk 01:45, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Delete A quick search of Web of Science finds only two instances where the Townsend Letter was cited in the professional literature. PubMed comes up empty. Alexa ranking is very poor (686,796 worldwide). None of these necessarily requires deletion, but they all point to a lack of notability. I worry there is not sufficient reliable and independent coverage to allow inclusion. On the converse, it is a long-standing publication with a claimed circulation of about 10,000. I would be inclined to keep if there were some coverage of the publication, outside of itself and a brief mention on Quackwatch. --TeaDrinker (talk) 02:34, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:47, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as per User:DGG's rationale in the 2007 deletion discussion. Here's an edited copy of his rationale:

This is basically a print journal, with some of the articles available online free. Based on Ulrich's Periodicals Directory:

1. It's not indexed anywhere except in Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, which is mainly UK oriented but is the most complete of the relevant indexes.
2. The publisher is unknown otherwise: this is their only title. It's a private operation run by the editor, Dr. Jonathan Collin.
3. It's a consumer magazine, claiming only 6000 paid subscriptions.

However, though not available through the Proquest & Wilson database hosts, it is available through the Ebsco and Gale hosts. The magazine's been going under slightly varying titles since 1983, which is a long time in this part of publishing. Ulrich's will serve as a source. Being in Ulrich's doesn't show notability, since they put in everything they can find, but it does document the basics. I think being in two of the four major online services is notability for a consumer magazine.

Regards, Unforgettableid (talk) 10:06, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: I actually find DGG's rationale to be a compelling argument in favor of deletion. The fact that a periodical is available through a couple of catalogs is interesting, but not sufficient to create a well-written encyclopedia article. There is literally no more than two or three simple, descriptive, barely informative sentences that can be adequately sourced and written on this subject. It seems impossible, using existing independent secondary sources, to demonstrate much or any impact or notability here, and so I don't think we should have an article. MastCell ^Talk 21:57, 30 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, B music ian 06:19, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the sound analysis in the prior AFD. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:50, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - My reasoning is probably going to be a bit controversial, but I think this is exactly the sort of article which shouldn't be deleted, as they can provide information about little known journals for which there is little easily available information. The balance is of course always in not going overboard and include every journal ever published, but the Townsend Letter seems to be mentioned often enough on the web to merit an inclusion. The next challenge is to make sure that the article is NPOV, and doesn't make the journal seem like more than it is, but that has nothing really to do with whether it should be deleted or not (and it actually appears to be pretty good on that front). --Kristjan Wager (talk) 21:35, 31 March 2012 (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.