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 No Consensus to delete. Participants in the discussion have advanced to opposed points of view, that the organization fails the relevant notability guidelines and that the guidelines should be liberally interpreted or set aside for political organizations. While not embodied in the text of, say, WP:ORG the view that we should have deliberately broad coverage of political parties and organizations is common enough at AfD and I am not willing to ignore a view espoused by three upstanding members of the community in good faith, especially when the discussion has only six participants. Also there is no apparent concern that coverage is insufficient to meet the policy standard of verifiability. Given the above analysis an No Consensus close is inevitable. Eluchil404 (talk) 05:21, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Americans for Conservative Training[edit]

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This group claims to be notable for organizing several Tea Party protests between 2009-2010, in particular the Kansas City tea party at the Liberty Memorial (see List of Tea Party protests, 2010). In April 2010, a single wire story about the Tea Party mentioned the group and was picked up by two sources, the Winnipeg Free Press[1] and the McClatchy-Tribune News Service[2]. The story was a reprinted news item from a Kansas City Star article which mentioned the group in the context of "thousands of tea partiers and hundreds of tea party groups". The organizer of the group, Andrea Plunkett, then a student and previously a volunteer for McCain's 2008 campaign, received a glowing hagiography by KCUR-FM [3] and the group received passing mention in local news stories about political races in 2010.[4] However, Americans for Conservative Training appears to be a defunct, Facebook-only group at this time[5] with little encyclopedic importance. I have no objection to a redirect to Tea Party protests but I fail to see the importance of a group whose sole claim to fame is organizing a protest in Kansas City and backing a losing candidate. Viriditas (talk) 10:26, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - I advocate a very low bar for the inclusion of political organizations in WP. This is material that SHOULD be in an encyclopedia. There seems to be a large enough web footprint for this organization that sources probably exist. I feel at least as certain that Andrea Plunkett could be made into a notable biographical subject if this organization is not, with a redirect extremely appropriate in that eventuality. I do not share the assessment that this is a "Facebook only" organization, nor am I convinced that the organization is now defunct. This might be a good target for improvement by ARTICLE RESCUE SQUAD if they want to invest some time in digging up sourcing. Carrite (talk) 17:18, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Feelings are good, as they guide us in making sound decisions. But they are only helpful after we examine the hard data and the evidence and we let the evidence, not our feelings sway us. In this case, please see the evidence I've collected at User:Viriditas/Americans for Conservative Training. To summarize, the organization, Americans for Conservative Training, received no significant coverage in either reliable or even unreliable sources. Per WP:ORG, "trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability." The organization has also failed WP:CORPDEPTH. Andrea Plunkett, on the other hand, has received significant coverage in at least one reliable source and one unreliable source, but again, this is not enough. Viriditas (talk) 04:56, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't examined the sources, but surely there is a difference between "importance" and WP:Notability, isn't there? Mark Arsten (talk) 21:01, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes. Importance refers to content, and notability to source coverage. However, there is a close relationship between the two. For example, if the organization was important enough to the tea party movement, we would expect to find more significant coverage enhancing its notability. Importance is more arbitrary than notability, but it can be gauged. The fact that no reliable sources give this organization credit in 2009 when the Kansas City tea party protest took place at the Liberty Memorial speaks volumes. And based on the number of tea party protests that have taken place, is there any indication that the KC protest was important and notable? None that I can see. Viriditas (talk) 05:08, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:54, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:54, 10 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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) 00:04, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep on the basis of the potential for improvements. I agree with Carrite that the bar for political organizations should be kept very low, and for religious organizations also, These are areas where lack of knowledge and sometimes prejudice often come into play, and we need to be especially alert to represent all schools of opinion. It hs become conventional here to say that notability is just a matter of sourcing, but it isn't really true, and very rarely do we decide only on that basis. We do take the importance of the subject into account, using various rules like LOCAL and NOT TABLOID and NOT NEWS to keep out the relatively trivial no matter if there are sources--sources that would be enough if the subject were actually considered important--we've deleted tens of thousands of articles on such a basis. We've kept many thousands also, when the sources are marginal and the subject important. We are humans, not reference-counting software, and are expected to use judgment. DGG ( talk ) 02:33, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- I've poured through the entire set of references available on the subject. Please describe exactly what kind of "potential" improvement is possible, because I don't see anything to add or improve. On what basis should we keep this permastub? Viriditas (talk) 01:44, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete; although the subject clearly exists, the amount of coverage does not yet appear to be significant from what I can find. Perhaps this should be created as a sub-section (Merge & Redirect) in the Tea Party movement article as it maybe too soon for it to have its own article. If new reliable sources can be found to denote its notability the redirect can be restored as a standalone article. --RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 03:09, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 19:28, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete fails WP:GNG. 3 gnews hits is hardly signfiicant coverage. LibStar (talk) 07:07, 28 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - per DGGs and Carrites reasonings. A very low bar for the inclusion of political organizations on Wikipedia should be held. And per that this article is within the inclusion criterias.--BabbaQ (talk) 10:49, 31 March 2012 (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.