Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant

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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The result was Nomination withdrawn (NAC) Pastor Theo (talk) 02:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

The reliable sources discussing this group come from mainly two sources: Expecting Armageddon (Stone, 2000), and a 2005 Montana Supreme court Factual and Procedural Background [1]. Other than those, there is also this example of a Harvard student passing through Montana in 2004 briefly documenting every religious group he could find. The best source, for obvious reasons, is the research by Stone that spanned 16 years of visiting and documenting the group in Montana, published in 14 pages of research. With those sources in mind, there are currently 3 WP pages, Leland Jensen, Neal Chase, and Bahá'ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant, which all basically repeat the same thing. I'm proposing to delete the article about the community and merge any unique information into the Leland Jensen or Neal Chase articles because,

  1. Stone's research was about failed prophecies of Jensen and Chase. Followers were only discussed in ways that they responded to the leader.
  2. Stone had access to membership data and said that the group never exceeded 200, and had less than 88 enrolled in 1994, also noting that the rate of defection accelerated in the 1990s.
  3. A division among the remaining members in 2001 broke them apart, indicating declining participation and ambiguous structure and leadership
  4. The page doesn't have notability of its own, being about a religious group smaller than most church assemblies. It's notability comes from Leland Jensen and his prophecies
  5. The information is not being deleted or censored, but only organized properly
  6. Since Neal Chase is a living person, involved in an unresolved court dispute that is being discussed on the page, and the page is being edited by one of his supporters, it seems particularly prudent that information is presented accurately and fairly.

Let me make it perfectly clear that I am a member of the Baha'i Faith, and as such regard the sect as heretical, and I've been disputing with User:General Disarray for years over these types of articles. However I think deleting the page and using the two biographies is the best way to present the information. Reliable and verifiable sources support this.Cuñado ☼ - Talk 18:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment Wikipedia policy is generally to move content away from articles about people and into articles about the events they participated in. This would suggest merging in the opposite direction to your proposal. Is there a reason this would be inappropriate? JulesH (talk) 19:21, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Which policy? Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • KEEP Cunado's characterization of the BUPC's article and notability are not being represented accurately here, and he has not found any support whatsoever for this on the article's talk page. In fact, quite the opposite. He first just redirected the article without discussion here. The discussion that followed found no consensus, which I would like to point out included User:MARussellPESE who historically shares the same objections as Cunado. He noted: "Cuñado, there are more criteria for WP:Notability than raw numbers. The OBF doesn't meet any; but Leland Jensen does, and the BUPC by association. Whether they have 100 or 1000 followers they've received extensive, and unwelcome to the BPC, notoriety for the repeated failed prophecies. My first direct experience with Jensen et. al. was the memorable TV Nation episode (five) in August '94. My recollection of Micheal Moore in Times Square wearing a WWI doughboy helmet and trying to raise Jensen on the phone on the appointed day & hour still raises a chuckle. MARussellPESE 03:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)"[reply]
  1. The BUPC were not studied by Stone, but rather the findings in his book were the result of research done by three different professors from the University of Montana that spanned 16 years.
  2. As MARussell noted, the BUPC were satirized by Michael Moore's T.V. Nation in 1994 among other "Armageddon Groups".
  3. The Missoulian Newspaper more than meets standards for notability, and have been publishing coverage of their local group for more than 30 years.
  4. The BUPC have never published numbers of membership, so any claimed data is purely speculative.
  5. Leland Jensen and Neal Chase's articles are biographies about themselves, and even a cursory glance at the three articles shows that nothing is duly noted in any of the articles. The BUPC are a group with many self-published books and websites about themselves, but this article does not solely rely upon them. In fact very little is found in any of these three articles that relies upon them for references. The biographies about the leaders are separate and independent of the article about the group. Cunado has not provided any difs to support his assertion that these three articles "all basically repeat the same thing".
  6. There is no "unresolved court case" involving the leadership of the group. The 2001 court case has been resolved amicably. The plaintiff in the case, who had created there own site has removed it, and all is well in the group again. This should be obvious to Cunado as his own NSA has twice since 2004 dragged the BUPC, with Neal Chase named as it's President, into Federal Court in Chicago suing them over copyright violations for using the name Baha'i. It's odd that his leaders consider the BUPC notable enough to repeatedly drag into court to protect their marks, but Cunado would have the readers believe the groups is entirely un-notable.
  7. Cunado's WP:TEND with this group isn't hard to establish considering that his contributions show 34 out of 36 edits between 1/18/09 and 1/21/09 involved contributing WP:OR and WP:SYN over these pages mentioned here.DisarrayGeneral 20:09, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A quick review of policy makes these arguments irrelevant. Organizations are notable if they 1: The scope of their activities is national or international in scale. AND 2: Information about the organization and its activities can be verified by third-party, independent, reliable sources. "Organizations whose activities are local in scope may be notable where there is verifiable information from reliable independent sources outside the organization's local area. Where coverage is only local in scope, the organization may be included as a section in an article on the organization's local area instead." Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:19, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Please read on below, for as Baileypalblue notes, their notability is well established beyond merely being covered by the local press, but have 3rd party recognition from Stone, appearances on Art Bell, Michael Moore's TV Nation, the Harvard research study, Balch, et al. DisarrayGeneral 20:29, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only source that is significant is Stone's. Balch is the researcher published in Stone's book, so that is a redundant source. The others are casual mentions on TV, and the "Harvard research study" was not a study of the group, it was a study of every religious denomination in the state and represents another casual mention. Stone's book and the court document are the only reliable sources. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
FTR, this webpage is the "casual mention" of the Harvard Study. The "casual mention" of the T.V. Nation spot was 10 minutes of the 44 minute episode. These are entirely new concerns, which beg the question "why now" when you've been an active contributing editor to this article since November 2005? Just this past January 18th you did a major rewrite to the article, and on the 19th tried to delete it without discussion. It's natural to question such erratic behavior, isn't it? DisarrayGeneral 20:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not proposing to delete information. The pages need to reflect the only reliable sources, which means merging and redirecting. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 20:47, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
FTR, here is the TV Nation video. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 21:28, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Organization is notable for its place in the history of the Bahá'í faith and per WP:ORG as a prominent local non-commercial organization which has received national reliable source coverage (extensive coverage in The Missoulian, Stone+the Harvard research plus religioustolerance.org and other sources out there for national coverage). The size of the organization (which is disputed) does not render it non-notable if it has received sufficient reliable source coverage, and the size and condition of the organization today is not relevant to the subject's notability, because notability does not expire; even if the organization disappeared tomorrow, the subject would be notable as a matter of historical record. Any further concerns about article sourcing, BLP, unnecessary duplication of content, etc. should be dealt with via article editing, not deletion. Per the comment of User:JulesH, it appears that Leland Jensen and Neal Chase are both independently notable, so there's no reason to delete any of the three articles. Baileypalblue (talk) 20:13, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The article appears to meet WP:ORG and WP:RS standards. If the nominator wishes to merge the text into other articles, that is a matter for another forum. Pastor Theo (talk) 00:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Retract - I agree that this is a merge issue and not a deletion. I should have proposed a merge with RFC. I'll go that route, sorry for the confusion. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 00:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Apology accepted. That's obviously a gross over-simplification of the intentions behind this AFD, for in the first attempt to redirect this material to the Leland Jensen article copious amounts of information were being deleted in the process. I'm glad to see the obvious subterfuge being attempted here has been resolved. Good luck with the "merger". DisarrayGeneral 01:57, 11 February 2009 (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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