Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society

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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 keep. MelanieN (talk) 03:44, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society[edit]

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Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Procedural nomination due to contested WP:PROD. The original reason given for the prod was No independent sources at all. What the journal has to say about itself, as in the footnotes here, can never confer notability. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:45, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I am neutral when it comes to the outcome of this AfD. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:30, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I am nominating it on behalf of the original prod nominator. You have not provided a valid reason to keep the article in this AfD response. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:50, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NJOURNALS is a WP:ESSAY, its not policy or guidelines so you can't make arguments "per" it Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:01, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please consider WP:ONLYESSAY (ironically, another essay). StAnselm (talk) 19:10, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Which part exactly? Also note that the content of NJOURNALS *does not* support your argument, much the opposite in fact... "It is possible for a journal to qualify for a stand-alone article according to this standard and yet not actually be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Independent, third-party sources must exist for every topic that receives its own article on Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Verifiability: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.")." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The sources in question have now been added to the article. StAnselm (talk) 20:19, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Have they? All I see are reference texts which don't count towards WP:GNG because they don't contain in-depth coverage. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:15, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, the bit you were quoting from WP:NJOURNALS was referring to reliable third-party sources, but not necessarily significant coverage. StAnselm (talk) 21:25, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
WP:N clearly lays out the requirement for significant coverage, NJOURNALS (again an essay which carries no weight) assumes that you already understand WP:N which is where you're getting into trouble. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:34, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. (I was the prodder of the article.) As I said in the prod, there are no independent sources at all, merely three footnotes that all refer to the journal itself. I was unable to find any reliable secondary sources via Google either, and it looks like nobody else has found any since 2007, when StAnselm created the article. So, unless there are special notability rules for religious journals, the subject is not notable. (After edit conflict:) StAnselm, what is "SK #1", please? I'm not familiar with this code. Why should an unsourced article be speedy kept? And how is this an "automatic" AfD nomination, any more than other nominations? Bishonen | tålk 17:00, 27 July 2022 (UTC).[reply]
WP:SKCRIT #1: absence of deletion rationale. I was referring to the procedural aspect of the nomination. Anyway, here we are. No, religious journals don't have special notability rules, but the main criterion applied to academic journals is whether they are indexed in a selective database, which this one is: the Atla Religion Database. StAnselm (talk) 17:22, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We do not appear to have independent notability guidelines for academic journals[1]. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:34, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I am unable to locate sources which satisfy WP:GNG and there are none currently on the page. (note that SK1 most likely stands for "Speedy Keep 1" (Absence of delete rationale) but maybe not because that doesn't apply here as a valid rationale has been repeatedly offered) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:04, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note that sources don't have to be in the article to be kept. In any case, it's hard to find sources, isn't it? Because there are so many GBooks hits, because the journal is cited so much. StAnselm (talk) 17:22, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Simply being cited does not contribute to WP:NOTABILITY, we need in-depth coverage in independent reliable sources. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:31, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (1) It is not true there are no independent sources. We have a citation of an encyclopedia for the sponsoring society. (2) a lack of citations is NOT a ground for deletion, except where BLP applies. (3) Peer-reviewed academic journals are likely to be notable in any event. (4) An academic journal is likely to be cited in other journals. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:15, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There are numerous reliable sources on this journal in Google search, including by mainstream universities and other academic sources. Google Scholar shows that its individual articles are routinely cited scores of times. But, the article sourcing needs to be improved. Banks Irk (talk) 17:26, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP The main reason for the deletion request was a lack of independent referencing, that has now been addressed. That was a weak deletion reason to begin with, especially on a magazine with a 60 year publication history. Now there is no doubt that it passes NJOURNALS . Per NOTABILITY. ALSO: NOTE TO CLOSER: There was no actual reason given for this to be listed here either, as there is absolutely no requirement to send an article to AfD after being deprodded. Was BEFORE even attempted? Regards, GenQuest

"scribble" 18:09, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure about "passing" WP:NJOURNALS. That's an essay. The article does not seem to pass WP:GNG. Bishonen | tålk 18:35, 27 July 2022 (UTC).[reply]
The lack of independent referencing, has not been addressed. None of the sources currently on the page contribute to WP:GNG. WP:NJOURNALS is a wp:essay. NJOURNAL alsosays "If an academic journal cannot be demonstrated to be impactful via reliable sources, we should probably not have a dedicated article on it." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:11, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The idea that journals need to pass the GNG--that is, someone writes about them, rather than for them or in them or cites them--is a fundamental misunderstanding of how journals work. Good journals can go along without anyone ever writing about them in independent, reliable secondary sources for decades. MIAR shows JETS is an independently indexed work with an upward trend on their now-retired ICDS (Composite Index of Secondary Diffusion) scale. The abbreviation, JETS, is listed in the SBL Handbook of style 2nd edition on p. 238. Again, it's a trivial reference, but it clearly indicates that the journal is sufficiently repeatedly cited in other academic religious studies writings to merit inclusion. What else can one ask for? Jclemens (talk) 21:32, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is a very insightful observation. And it is entirely consistent with the quote from WP:NJOURNALS above cited, I think erroneously, in favor of deletion. This journal's articles have been extensively cited in multiple other academic and scholarly journals and books in its field, proving that it is significantly "impactful via reliable sources" in its field of scholarship. It is not realistic to expect that a highly specialized journal is going to have coverage in the popular press, but having significant impact in its specialized area meets all of the pertinent criteria for notability. Banks Irk (talk) 22:23, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The solution would then appear to be getting NJOURNALS endorsed by the community as an actual guideline, until then yes journals do actually need to pass GNG. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:34, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in addition to that, I think the discussion here, including a RS that it is a major journal on conservative American theology, is persuasive on GNG. [2]. Let me be clear, I'm not approaching this from some doctrinal standpoint - I've got no sympathy whatsoever for the theological precepts of the Society and its Journal - I find the whole idea of biblical inerrancy fundamentally ridiculous. But the objection that a RS characterizes it as a major journal of conservative American theology is too narrow or qualified to constitute notability would be like saying that a physics journal that published only articles on string theory, and never publishes any on loop quantum gravity, is too specialized to be notable in the wider physics field.Banks Irk (talk) 23:41, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The objection to the characterization is only within a theoretical exploration of NJOURNALS, until its endorsed by the community such discussions can only be theoretical. That characterization would possibly fulfill one of the criteria laid out in NJOURNALS (which is again an essay unendorsed by the community which would need to be endorsed to enter into force), but it does nothing to move the needle in terms of GNG. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:47, 27 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"until then yes journals do actually need to pass GNG", well no, because we have other rules for when a rule requires us to do dumb things like delete articles about important journals. Yes, there's no consensus guideline yet about the notability of journals, but also there's no consensus guideline yet about the notability of journals.Jahaza (talk) 02:19, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We don't even have to cite IAR. Exceptions to guidelines, like Notability, are expected; that's why the GNG is not policy and never has been: because local consensus can say "Yeah, deleting JETS would be a dumb outcome. Let's not do that and keep the encyclopedia better than if we blindly followed the letter of the guideline and made it worse." Oh, and essays are cited as normative in deletion discussions all the time, without needing to be elevated to guideline status before being considered useful and valid arguments. Jclemens (talk) 05:48, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep cited well enough in Google scholar. Deathlibrarian (talk) 00:22, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I can support merge/redirect as well. There is already a subsection in the Society's article on the Journal that could be expanded with the text and sources added since this AFD commenced. But I can't support deletion.Banks Irk (talk) 23:20, 28 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
A merger would indeed be a reasonable ATD, if deletion were in fact indicated. I contend that it is not, and thus this should be closed as keep, with merging an editorial-level discussion among interested editors, rather than an enforced AfD outcome. Jclemens (talk) 00:14, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge A likely search term, and the information we have is fine to keep as information, but this is fine as content within the context of the society itself. It doesn't need its own article yet, as there's not much more that even could be written to expand this. The main article about the society is not so large that this text would overwhelm it, and thus its fine to cover all of this content in the article on the society itself. --Jayron32 14:45, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Evangelical Theological Society, as it's a plausible search term and there is more than nothing to say about it, but not enough to warrant a dedicated page. XOR'easter (talk) 17:07, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Plenty of sources already in the article, including this one. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 12:42, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That talks a little about the journal, but it seems mostly to be about the Society, with the former treated as just one activity of the latter. It's a matter of taste, I suppose, but I don't really see how that reference makes the case that we need two separate pages. XOR'easter (talk) 18:43, 30 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - a major theological journal, published since 1958 without interruption. It includes a couple of book references, ISBN and all that jazz. Used to be that books were golden sources on Wikipedia —and these book references negate the nom "No independent sources at all", so for that reason alone the AfD ought to be closed. The Journal is cited widely on Wikipedia, and for good reason: it is a peer-reviewed journal which has published innumerable articles on theology for 64 years, so it stands to reason that numerous articles cite its published articles. In fact, 188 Wikipedia pages point to the article here for AfD. Interestingly, one of the articles, Biblical inerrancy cites how the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society published the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy; the very article being proposed to be deleted forms part of the content scaffolding around here. Can someone identify some abstruse technicality for which the article should be deleted? Maybe (but probably not). But the wikipedia would be poorer for the effort.XavierItzm (talk) 23:17, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Theology is not a large academic area but this journal is held in over 900 libraries on WorldCat. It is indexed by SerialsSolutions, a signification indexing service. It has been preserved in Microform (and presumably that has been now digitized) by ATLA - "Atla is the hub of worldwide scholarly communication in theology and religion." So unless someone versed in Theology can dispute that this is a key journal in the field, I think it's a keeper. Lamona (talk) 00:23, 3 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Serials is not a selective index. One also does not need to be a field expert in theology to argue against notability. The onus is on the subject to meen WP:GNG, not on us to show it doesn't meet it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:52, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But ATLA is certainly selective. StAnselm (talk) 21:56, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Evangelical Theological Society. There is no exception for journals in WP:GNG, and nobody here presents GNG-compliant sourcing, which means that most "keep" opinions should be disregarded. The article is also short enough to merge into the society, which is what we normally do with non-notable publications. Sandstein 06:56, 5 August 2022 (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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