Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/American Society of Military Comptrollers

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 delete. kelapstick^(bainuu) 21:52, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

American Society of Military Comptrollers[edit]

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no evidence of notability DGG ( talk ) 07:36, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:43, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:44, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all the sources in the article are primary. the only other sources I've found are one line mentions. LibStar (talk) 07:47, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep ASMC is a nation-wide organization with 18,000 members…that should qualify the organization as notable. In addition, the article got 246 on-line hits in past 30 days…clearly a topic of interest to many Wikipedia readers. Finally, there are at least 4 others Wikipedia articles that link the ASMC article. Although some of the article's source links have now been broken or cited text deleted from on-line sources, the original article had a variety of sources including a government agency web-page (United States Department of Defense), a hard copy publication (Armed Forces Comptroller), and an outside organization (American Council on Education). Multiple issues banner seems appropriate; however, deletion is inappropriate response to those issues. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Orygun (talk • contribs) 13:09, 30 September 2014‎
Delete: There may be independent secondary sources that contain significant coverage of the subject, but I couldn't find them. Orygun's arguments have little to do with the relevant standard. As LibStar points out, none of the cited sources are independent. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 05:30, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've added 3 new sources that aren't associated with ASMC.--Orygun (talk) 06:09, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how you can say those aren't associated with the ASMC. NCS is a lobbying group of which the ASMC is a member. The Grant Thonton survey was co-sponsored by the ASMC. And the ASMC is a designated "provider" of Learning Market / NASBA. (Presumably they have a contract.) None of these are independent sources. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 06:23, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Added couple more sources, Program Manager which is published by Defense Acquisition University and Kaplan Scholarships 2014 book. Also, Grant Thornton survey focused on Federal Government workforce; the documents only connection with ASMC was sponsorship cited in one paragraph on Table of Contents page. Don’t see how identifying survey sponsor in footnote disqualifies that document from use as valid source of information about that sponsor. Same is true for NCS and NASBA. While they have a relationship with ASMC (and many other organizations), there’s no reason to believe that the information they provide about those organizations is false or inaccurate. I’ll keep looking for more sources. In meantime, this article is still getting ~250 reader hits per month which indicate a reasonably high level of interested in the organization by Wikipedia users. Still think deleting it is inappropriate.--Orygun (talk) 08:09, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Program Manager article is unreliable and its coverage of the ASMC may be insignificant. It's an article summarizing a conference put on by the DAU (the publisher of the article) and contains a small portion not about the ASMC but about a description of the ASMC by an ASMC employee (Frank Arcari). The Kaplan book's reference to ASMC is just a few items on a list of "Sponsoring Organizations", hence neither independent nor significant coverage. Thank you for your efforts, but please do some due diligence to avoid the appearance of bombardment. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:03, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out what you’re looking for in terms of sources. This article has a wide variety of what appears to me to be reasonably reliable sources, each covering specific areas of text info. Here’s another try. It's public record memo from DOD Under Secretary that discusses ASMC and the training it provides through its profession development institute. Source says ASMC is not officially sponsored by DOD, but organization provides excellent training and certification programs. Attach are several back-up letters from U.S. Senators and a member of Congress that discuss the merits of a specific ASMC event. This seems to be independent confirmation that the organization is substantial and the training and certification it provides is important to independent third-party, the DOD. I’ve also repaired the original link to the American Council on Education source (Ref #2). ACE represents presidents of accredited degree-granting universities and other education institution. That seems like a pretty independent source. In any case I fixed the link.--Orygun (talk) 21:42, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see you haven't participated in AfDs in the past, welcome. I'm merely following our normal notability standards, which require significant coverage by reliable independent secondary sources. If you need assistance consider following those links. The DOD letter is a primary source. The ACE page isn't independent as it was probably written by the ASMC. ASMC paid ACE thousands of dollars to be designated as an ACE CREDIT organization. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 21:49, 1 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am new to the process and have now done reading you suggested. Based on that, I see two issues here. Is there third-party confirmation that the organization is notable; and the adequacy of source material supporting the article, secondary sources being most desirable. However, third-party confirmation of notability and secondary sources are not the same thing. Let’s look at notability first. In this case, there are a number of sources that attest to the notability of the organization…e.g. Under Secretary of the DOD says ASMC provides excellent training and certification programs for the DOD workforce and many outstanding DOD employees are members of the ASMC. American Council of Education is an independent education and training accreditation organization, the same as those organizations that provide independent accreditation to colleges and hospitals. In your note above, you suggested that accreditation was automatic. While it may cost money to have training courses/programs reviewed, accreditation is not automatic…i.e. their opinion is based on an independent accreditation review. ACE says ASMC is professional organization with 18K members and administers a national certification program for government financial manages from the DOD and U.S. Coast Guard. The international survey firm Grant Thornton says ASMC is a nonprofit educational and professional organization established in 1948 that administers a professional certification program and sponsors an annual professional development institute for government financial managers. Pearson VUE, a firm that conducts independent testing for professional certification and academic admissions for government and private sector institutions, says the ASMC certification program comply with provisions of the Fiscal Year 2012 Defense Authorization Act regarding professional certification for DOD financial managers; and the Kaplan Scholarships 2014 book published by Kaplan Publishing, a firm that specializes in publishing college prep material, confirms that ASMC provides a number of college scholarship. These third-party sources highlight ASMC as a respected and well-established professional organization with a large nation-wide membership and significant impact on government financial management community through its training and certification programs while contributing to broader public interests via its college scholarships. This is clearly a notable organization. Now, regarding the issue of primary and secondary source. An article without adequate secondary-sources may require a banner to remind readers and editors of that deficiency…however, that is not grounds for deleting an article written about a notable subject. Secondary sourced material is based on primary sourced material, published in a second forum. Four of the five sources listed above are secondary-sources. In addition, Program Manager, a hard-copy professional magazine published by Defense Acquisition University, is another secondary source. Taken together these secondary sources cover material in four of the five sections in the article. Finally, according to Wikipedia (WP:SELFSOURCE), self-published sources (like the ASMC web-site) may be used for information about the source itself…especially in an article specifically about the source as long as the information isn’t libelous, commercial, or false. That means information provided by ASMC, about ASMC is appropriate unless there is some specific reason to believe the organization isn’t telling the truth about when it was form, how many members it has, and what if does. I do not believe there is any indication that the material ASMC published about its history, membership, and/or programs is suspect. This means the remaining sources are valid for use in this article, even though they are primary source material. Bottom line…this is a notable subject, appropriate for a Wikipedia article, and should not be deleted.--Orygun (talk) 03:28, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not quite sure why, but you seem to be misunderstanding our notability guidelines (WP:ORG and WP:GNG). What you call "third-party confirmation that the organization is notable" is generally based solely on significant coverage by multiple independent secondary sources. If there is no such coverage, then a lack of notability can be inferred. The theory here is quite practical: you simply can't write a verifiable, neutral, encyclopedic article without such coverage and without violating our "No original research" policy. Note a key line in that policy: "Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them." --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 17:01, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article previously had 5 secondary sources (ACE, Grant Thornton, Pearson, Kaplan, and Program Manager) with no evidence that info provided by these sources is false or inaccurate. However, it appears that’s not enough…so I’ve now added 13 more secondary sources, including a book, 5 newspaper articles, 5 published DOD sources, and an additional private and .org source (1 each). The sources cover specific info in various parts of the articles. Is this enough outside material to demonstrate significant coverage?--Orygun (talk) 23:30, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but not in my view. I believe I reviewed all of the new sources you added and all are either primary sources, or sources affiliated with ASMC, or sources with only trivial coverage of ASMC. You can throw as many of these sources into the article as you wish and it won't make any difference from a notability perspective. If there are specific sources we haven't already discussed that you think make the cut, then by all means, link to them here and we can talk about them. --Dr. Fleischman (talk) 07:36, 6 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I previewed a pay-for-view newspaper archive and got 58 hits using "American Society of Military Comptrollers" as search criterion. I could only read the text immediately around the search words, but almost all of the articles appeared to be about local ASMC chapters or region ASMC training events. Any chance those could be useful? I don’t want to pay to access sources if they aren’t going to be any help.--Orygun (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2014 (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.