Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (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 keep. I'm as sceptical as they come with respect to claims for automatic notability for, say, primary schools or degree mills, but it is really not realistic to expect a state research university not to be extensively covered in reliable sources. Sandstein 17:42, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt[edit]

Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Fails WP:GNG. None of the current sources count towards notability in my assessment - all from the organisation itself or its partners. I have gone through pages and pages of web search results, and all I found were sites from the university itself or affiliates, press releases, data-dump sites, and this interview (an interview, so not secondary).

Now, I must address the fact that this article has already once been nominated for deletion, as recently as three days ago even. That nomination was withdrawn, for reasons unrelated to notability. Hardly any actual discussion about notability has happened for this article. And to prevent the faulty arguments in that one keep vote from being repeated here: no, WP:UNIGUIDE is not a guideline, it is an essay, and no, this uni is not inherently notable because as used on Wikipedia, 'notability' is not an inherent quality but determined by coverage in reliable independent secondary sources, and no, a quick web search does not show the sourcing can be improved (not my quick web search, at least). PJvanMill)talk( 15:14, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. PJvanMill)talk( 15:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. PJvanMill)talk( 15:21, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Degree-granting tertiary institution. Well-sourced. Clearly notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Necrothesp, you say it is well-sourced - would you mind specifying which of the sources in the article you think are worth anything? Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 12:16, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 11:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I am a member of this university and I asked a friend to write the English version. So, please withdraw your deletion request. Many Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.26.144.28 (talk) 08:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Degree-granting tertiary institution. Well-sourced. Clearly notable. But why we have it included on a list devoted to secondary education is a mystery. Unless of course that the proposer has see an auto translation of the word Hochschule and is running on autopilot. ClemRutter (talk) 12:31, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@ClemRutter why we have it included on a list devoted to secondary education is a mystery Is this about me deletion-sorting it under "education"? If that was incorrect, my apologies, I'm fairly new to deletion sorting and "education" seemed like a logical place for it to go... Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 13:29, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Both the education and schools deletion lists relate to all levels of education, so nothing wrong there. Neither is "devoted to secondary education". -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: To give a bit of background: I am here because this article was listed at WikiProject Cleanup and normally I would have cleaned it up. The only reason I even considered making an AfD nomination is that a cleaned-up version of the article would look something like this - and no, I am not exaggerrating. It concerns me that the keep arguers so far seem to have a different definition of "well-sourced" than I do. I challenge those who want this article kept to present an analysis of the sources that goes beyond the citation count. PJvanMill)talk( 13:29, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm extremely puzzled as to your definition of cleanup if you think that would reduce it to a single-line stub (not that there is anything wrong with stubs). Do you maybe think that sources published by a respectable university are not reliable as to information about itself? You are wrong. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:50, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Necrothesp Note that that says so long as the following criteria are met: ... 5. The Wikipedia article is not primarily based on such sources - which it is in this case. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 17:41, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The sourcing is seriously lacking. As what is currently in the article is trivial and (or) primary, and I was unable to find any sources when I looked that wasn't either one of those things. So, in no way is this "well-sourced" or "clearly notable," and it's being dishonest about the process to claim otherwise. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:47, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. If we start to delete articles on accredited universities like this one then Wikipedia really is in even more trouble from the deletionist lobby than I've long suspected. Sad that the project has come to this. Goodbye WP:COMMONSENSE. Wikipedia was never meant to be a monolithic bureaucracy in which hard and fast rules trumped common sense. Only the deletionists with their weird love of destroying others' work and slashing Wikipedia's content believe that and it is specifically shot down in several places (e.g. WP:BURO, WP:IAR). Some actions are of no benefit to Wikipedia. Attempting to delete articles like this is one of them. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:55, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Articles like this for accredited universities that aren't notable have been deleted at AfD or with PRODs before, many times. It's not a new thing and the sky hasn't fallen down because it happens. I think you need to take a deep breath, stop freaking out over the whole thing, and think about this from a less cynical perspective. Things change. That's life. There's millions of universities out there and tere's plenty of articles for actually notable ones that are never going to get deleted. Which is the important thing. It's not like an AfD is final anyway.
One of my main problem with people who act the way you do about this is that they act like AfDs are final when they aren't. The bar to recreate an article when it becomes notable is extremely low. Although, it's much lower for an article that gets deleted through PROD. Which makes me wonder why people like you are so against them, but I digress. The point is, your worrying about nothing because this is a non-issue and it just makes things worse then they need to be. That's usually how it works when someone tries to swim up stream like your doing though. It's not like I feel great about it every time I vote delete when I do and there's definitely some things I wish were a little more lenient, but the guidelines are what they are and most of the time these articles don't ultimately contribute anything to Wikipedia anyway. At least it's better then everything being based on personal opinions and Wikipedia being un-navigable because only 1 out every 2 million articles isn't a three word stub or blank page. It's all about the cost to benefit. All your doing is thinking about the cost of deleting things and from a clearly slanted bad faithed perspective, without factoring in the benefits of not having a bunch of blank or non-encyclopedic stub articles. I understand where your coming from, but it holds back progress in a lot of ways and unnecessarily makes the whole thing more contentious then it needs to be. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Articles like this for accredited universities that aren't notable have been deleted at AfD or with PRODs before, many times. I'd be happy to see an example. I honestly don't recall one. A handful of the myriad small colleges in India etc have been, but I can't remember a European public university being deleted. If you think progress = deletion then further discussion is pointless. All I know is that I've been helping to build this project for over sixteen years and attitudes like yours sadden me and make me wonder what we're doing here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:46, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Necrothesp: I didn't say progress=deletion. Nor is that what I think. I agree further discussion is pointless, because it's pointless to have a discussion if your going to miss construe what I say and use it to make wrong readings of my thinking. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:02, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Necrothesp, you apparently think "All degree-granting tertiary institutions are inherently notable" (I hope you find that a fair representation of your argument) is just common sense. I think "We cannot base an encyclopedic article just on non-independent sources" is common sense. It just so happens that my common sense is backed by consensus. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 17:45, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think you'll find consensus has always been that degree-granting tertiary institutions are notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:46, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Necrothesp: PJvanMill said you apparently think "all" degree-granting tertiary institutions are "inherently" notable. Maybe the consensus is that "degree-granting tertiary institutions" are notable, but that doesn't necessarily mean "every" degree-granting tertiary institutions is "inherently" notable. As your arguing. Nowhere is such a position that "every degree-granting tertiary institutions is inherently notable" stated anywhere in the guidelines, RfCs, or anywhere else from what I can find. The only thing about it seems to be a clause in WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES (which is a supplement to the guidelines) that says "Most independently accredited degree-awarding institutions have enough coverage to be notable, although that coverage may not be readily available online." The important point there is "most have enough to coverage to notable." Which isn't "all have enough coverage to notable." Also, if they were inherently notable as your implying, then coverage would not even be mentioned in relation to them would it? Given that, clearly the notability guidelines about "coverage" (or lack of it) matters or it wouldn't say it does. I've see nothing anywhere, guideline, RfC, Etc. Etc. that says otherwise either. In the meantime, there's plenty of things confirming that having coverage in multiple reliable independent sources is a bedrock of articles. What there might be some people who have voted keep in AfDs here and there because they think degree-granting tertiary institutions are inherently notable, but random people voting in AfDs is not consensus about anything. What this comes down to is if you think that (random people voting in AfDs) circumvents the other (clear guidelines, broad consensus, Etc. Etc.). --Adamant1 (talk) 00:57, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Necrothesp Maybe, but I simply don't see how an acceptable article can be made from the current sources. And I'd argue that the AfD process exists precisely for articles that cannot be made acceptable. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 19:14, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I would once again urge you to read WP:STUB. As long as a stub is capable of expansion it is acceptable. The idea that an article on a European public research university is not capable of expansion is, frankly, preposterous. That's even if we do delete everything sourced only to the university's own website, which as I've also said is not necessary per WP:SELFSOURCE. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Necrothesp, WP:SELFSOURCE is in fact the reason that I don't think an acceptable article can be made out of this, specifically where it says the great majority of any article must be drawn from independent sources (emphasis mine). As for your argument that the stub would be capable of expansion, two things: (1) this is not a research university, as you say, but a Fachhochschule - quite something different (2) I still haven't seen a single source that it could be expanded with. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 17:12, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dear PJvanMill)talk maybe you can give us some time to put references behind all statements. I am glad that I managed to get this entry into wikipedia. It is a lot of work with all the editing and if you delet it, we have to start from scratch. And, please have a look at the German Wikipedia page. This is the best reference. It is online for quite some years now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technische_Hochschule_Ingolstadt. The English version is a near copy of the German version and strangely, there doesn't seem to be a problem with the German version. However, I can ask that we make changes to the English version. But we need time - at least 3 months - to find all the references. Your example page "this" is not very helpful as it is only one line. People would want to know more about a university. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.26.144.28 (talk) 11:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Dear IP editor, I don't know whether the article is acceptable on the German Wikipedia - standards can differ between Wikipedias. I certainly don't think the article is acceptable by the standards of the English Wikipedia, though.
The current state of the article does not matter much. The reason that this article is being considered for deletion is not that it is bad, but rather that it looks like it cannot be made good. What we are discussing at "Articles for deletion" is whether the article should exist at all.
You could convince me and other editors that the article should be kept by providing a few reliable, independent sources (for example, news articles) that discuss the university. There's no need to cite them in the article; listing them on this discussion page would do. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 19:37, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep' and suggest to withdraw this absurd nomination. Public university with thousands of students. Rankings: [1], [2], [3]. Recent news report: [4]. —Kusma (t·c) 21:34, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Kusma, for providing what looks to be an independent, reliable source. Regarding your 'suggestion': somebody else has vote-non-voted 'delete'. Kind regards from PJvanMill)talk( 22:55, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep degree granting university which can be easily reliably sourced to secondary sources. I admit news sources were hard to find in a simple web search but searching news sources directly show a number of results. SportingFlyer T·C 11:06, 25 November 2020 (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.