Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Australian Intervarsity Choral Societies Association (2nd nomination)

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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. In the end, it does not appear that there are sources sufficient to pass WP:GNG. T. Canens (talk) 19:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Australian Intervarsity Choral Societies Association[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Australian Intervarsity Choral Societies Association (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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fails WP:ORG. my original nomination stands. nothing in gnews. and nothing in a major Australian news website: [1]. LibStar (talk) 12:33, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. —Grahame (talk) 01:25, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I think this nomination fails WP:BURO even without the book that has been written about the organization.  The organization is surprisingly well-organized, has a national scope, long history, detailed archives, website updated today, organization puts out a magazine 3-5 times a year, and regularly organizes events.  Here is a link that discusses an AICSA event.  I found some links on Trove, including this one. Unscintillating (talk) 08:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
the trove search mainly picks up unrelated coverage of the same acronym. So it regularly organises events, how come it can't get any coverage in Australian press? You would expect a "premier" organisation to. LibStar (talk) 08:50, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
[insert begins here]
Here is a research article about the Australian press's coverage of AICSA events: Reception, Recognition and Reputation: Australia's Intervarsity Choral Festivals in Mainstream Press Criticism since 1950. Here is a quote, "An examination of the newspaper criticism of festival concerts since they commenced in 1950..." (emphasis added).  Do you still think that there is no "coverage in Australian press"? Unscintillating (talk) 08:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, Lib, but saying that all of this press is university press is a straw-man, in fact, the article title specifically says that the press involved is "mainstream".  We now have evidence of multiple and controversial mainstream newspaper citations; WP:N states, "Notability requires only the existence of suitable reliable sources, not their immediate citation. Wikipedia articles are not a final draft, and an article's subject can be notable if such sources exist, even if they have not been named yet." Unscintillating (talk) 10:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
[insert end here]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:00, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - It's Australia's premier choral society; a peak body with national participation and impact. Sufficient reliable information exists to create a verifiable encyclopaedic article so notability may be met even if the primary guidelines at WP:N are made out. As a comment, I would point out that InterVarsity Choral Festival (Australia) should stand or fall with this article. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I have contacted several members of the IV Choral Society in case they are able to point to media coverage we have not seen. - DustFormsWords (talk) 01:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • For everyone's reference, those enquiries did not produce results. I'm still inclined to Keep on the basis of it being verifiably a national peak body, and thereby being notable despite failing the primary criteria of WP:N.
  • Delete unless DFW's enquiries bring up anything. No significant coverage in reliable sources, which is what we need to have a proper, verifiable and reliable article about an organisation. Like Starblind I'm very sceptical of these university association articles. The claim that this is "Australia's premier choral society" seems rather unusual for a peak body of what are essentially university student clubs. That's the kind of claim that could confer notability if it could be verified. --Mkativerata (talk) 08:12, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a school club.  It never occurred to me that this organization was being run by students, I just assumed that these were music faculty.  But it gets yet more interesting, here are links that show that the Erato editor is a research physicist at U of Queensland. [list of AICSA officers, including Erato editor]. [Link showing the AICSA officer is associated with QUMS at the University of Queensland]. [Profile of research physicist at U of Queensland with same unusual name].  While being dead serious about the music, there is an element at AICSA of freedom from everyday work.  It takes it out of the ordinary, again, I think that the organization is of obvious interest to an encyclopedia. Do you agree that this topic is of obvious interest to an encyclopedia? Unscintillating (talk) 08:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't think an organisation that draws its membership only from university campuses is of obvious interest to an encyclopedia. For example, I'm not seeing any sources saying that the Association is recognised for its achievements by the music community at large. --Mkativerata (talk) 09:18, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
totally agree with above. It is not notable outside universities reflected in a lack of coverage in non-university press. LibStar (talk) 10:24, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Libstar, see response above. Unscintillating (talk) 10:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mkativerata, I agree that these articles do not make clear the association's contributions to society.  Do they produce recordings?  Do they generate convention income and atmosphere for communities?  Why do they create controversial press?  Why are the members so motivated to volunteer?  Unscintillating (talk) 10:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Australian Music Centre is the "Australian national section" of two established international music organizations, and their Resonate Magazine notices AICSA here.  Under notability policy, Resonate Magazine is a national media taking notice of AICSA, which is "a strong indication of notability".  Unscintillating (talk) 19:08, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The short article is entirely about the Festival. It doesn't mention the Association at all. So it would support an article about the Festival, but not an article about the Association. The Association can'y inherit notability from the Festival unless the Association also gets significant coverage in reliable sources. --Mkativerata (talk) 19:10, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let's assume for the moment that I agree that AICSA is less notable than IVCF.  We would then need to have a nuanced discussion about whether to merge AICSA into IVCF, or merge IVCF into AICSA.  At the end of the discussion and merge, would we not still have the same information in the encyclopedia?  How is the encyclopedia improved?  And we haven't even begun to discuss the book that is the current source for the AICSA article.  I'm still seeing WP:BURO as the reasonable approach to consensus for this AfD.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are many problems with having separate articles on non-notable subjects. One of which is that it makes the subject more prone to original research -- if there are insufficient sources, stuff needs to be made up to fill the article. Another problem is that an article on a non-notable subject is less likely to be properly watched. This is a case in point: the article has been a blatant copyright violation for close to five years. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:32, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You continue to make good points.  Was there some reason for (1) deleting the AfD tag on the article and (2) not reverting the article back to before the possible copyvio?  Unscintillating (talk) 03:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reverting back to the clean version should and will be done. It just needs an administrator to delete all of the revisions in between, for which purpose it needs to be listed at WP:CP. I couldn't figure out how to keep the AfD tag on it, but I have no objection if someone figures it out. I've restored the AfD tag - sorry for that. --Mkativerata (talk) 06:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Newspaper citations (post-1999)[edit]

Hello LibStar. I am, by the way, currently one of the assistant editors of the society’s magazine (Erato). The annual festival regularly obtains press coverage in the major daily papers, depending on which city it is being held in, from time to time: both in the form of pre-publicity (e.g. the festival will be putting on concerts), but more importantly, in the form of concert reviews; a sprinkling of these over the decade could be cited since the publication of Peter Campbell’s 1999 book: like the many reviews quoted there, these are only of use to document individual concerts or festivals, and the fact that these form part of an on-going tradition:

  • Patricia Kelly, “Massed Choristers Enthral”, Courier Mail (Brisbane), 12 July 2000: p.41
  • Graham Strahle, “Aquarian Confusion: Bernstein, Mass”, Advertiser (Adelaide), 13 Feb. 2001
  • Neville Cohn, ‘Hobo-inspired masterpiece', West Australian (Perth), 23 February 2004, p.10
  • Joel Crotty, ‘Chorus celebrating en masse’, Age (Melbourne), 8 February 2005, p.A3:8
  • Rodney Smith ‘Choir raises roof to praise heaven’, Advertiser (Adelaide), 6 February 2006
  • Elizabeth Ruthven, “Choir celebrates with real gems”, Mercury (Hobart), 21 July 2009

I suppose the weakness of the article(s) – either the one concerned with the long-standing tradition of national festivals (IVCFs), or the organisation that oversees the running of them (AICSA) – is that no one has seen fit to actually investigate what it is that is special about them and write it up, as opposed to tinkering with the publicity material from the AICSA website (which is what I presume Mkativerata is describing as “copyright infringement”, based on an edit by an anonymous IP back in 2006). AICSA is essentially the umbrella under which the various choral societies — none of them individually notable (re: the above remarks of “school clubs”) — have formed a long-lasting national arts organisation, which as others here have noted is regarded as notable by both the Australian Music Centre and the Australian National Library, which is home to AICSA’s archives: the ANL holds nearly complete sets of publications, concert programmes, reviews of the past 60 festivals, as well as sound recordings of all but one of the festivals. Philip Legge User Email Talk 03:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, do any of these newspaper articles have a write-up about AICSA?  Or do they only discuss IVCF?  Thanks, Unscintillating (talk) 04:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a very uncommon thing to find in concert reviews! Also, Arts commentary is infrequently posted on-line but often relegated to print only. On the other hand, the articles which provide advance notice of coming festivals will typically mention AICSA at either an explicit or implicit level (e.g. in relation to how the Festival is hosted successively in all the major capitals, with the exception of Darwin, and often visits regional centres: e.g. Newcastle, Goulburn, Launceston; thus the choir usually comprises singers from all of the states and the ACT). I suppose that’s because it provides the journalist with an “angle”.
I should have mentioned before that the main source cited in the article was added by me, back in 2006. The book was published largely out of the related research materials for the author’s PhD thesis (Melbourne Uni. 2000). As a source book it cites a large number of newspaper articles related to each of the festivals, which may address one of the problematic issues here (since someone has criticised that the article has only one source: there are others!). I notice someone else mentioned the article should stand or fall with the other one (IVCFs) – but that isn’t the question under discussion here, which is re: deletion of this article.
If the main concern is over notability, then my suggestion would be that this article should be rewritten from the top (not least to remove the supposed copyright infringement, of AICSA website copypasta) and at the same time merged with the other article, since the unbroken tradition of annual festivals is significant on a national scale (the oldest state Arts Festival is PIAF, which is three years younger); for example, 60 years’ worth of concert recordings provide a substantial historical resource in terms of the gradual changes in performance practice, repertoire choices, and general musical professionalism of personnel over that time.
Cheers Philip User Talk Email 06:57, 8 February 2011 (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.
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