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. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:50, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Daryl Wine Bar and Restaurant

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Daryl Wine Bar and Restaurant (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Rather Run of the mill Restaurant no indication of any notability except sparse coverage from local papers. Fails WP:CORP particularly WP:CORPDEPTH The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 17:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • The nominator says it lacks notability and WP:N, a Wikipedia "guideline" is pretty much the criteria used for determining whether or not to keep an entry. The sub-guideline for businesses, WP:CORP absolutely does weight sources and says "local coverage" isn't enough for a business. There is no indication that this restaurant was ever notable, and the last AfD resulted in "no consensus". WP:NTEMP does not apply in other words, unless the restaurant was every notable in the first place. I would suggest, that NTEMP actually makes it more obvious why a restaurant that is reviewed locally is not notable, since in the real world that type of attention is indeed completely "temporary".Griswaldo (talk) 20:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, its the fact that its "closed for refurbishment," which in restaurant-speak usually means "gone gone gone".--Milowent • talkblp-r 19:47, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please see discussion on article talk page. I think Jimbo deciding not nominate the article himself only adds credibility to the deletion nomination process and to the questionability of this article.Njsustain (talk) 09:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is entirely irrelevant, and possibly a variant of WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST. I think Wikipedia's job is to keep articles that have been written on subjects that pass WP:GNG and that have no other compelling reason to be removed. If restaurants are unusually well sourced among other objects in the universe, so be it. I don't have the slightest encyclopedic interest in restaurants, but I don't decide on articles based on what I like or I don't like. I see well sourced and obviously notable information here, and I see no compelling reason to remove it. If we will have 100.000 entries like this, so be it -this is a voluntary encyclopedia and our coverage depends on what our editors feel happy to write about. I'd prefer to see more good articles on biochemistry than good articles on restaurants, but it's not by slashing the latter that I improve the former. About MWB, well, first of all I don't see why do we have to refer to an external commercial service -in theory if one has to suggest an external target, I'd be for Wikibooks, which is WMF. Second, there is again no objective reason to remove an article with multiple independent reliable sources. If MWB wants to cover the place, they are welcome to do so, but this has nothing to do with us. --Cyclopiatalk 13:12, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Except there are many on this project who feel that an encyclopedia ought to focus its limited manpower on certain subjects. We simply can't cover all the minutia out there, and we definitely can't do it well. Some of us want to be part of a project that knows its limits, and aims to do its best to cover the most encyclopedic topics, while steering away from blatant attempts at marketing and PR even if they do fit the letter of some guideline. You claim this is just WP:IDONTLIKEIT, but every decision we make here, as a community is WEDONTLIKEIT, or WEDOLIKEIT. You're just making a claim to a certain kind of authority when you say that WP:GNG is completely on your side. I don't agree with your reading of of notability guidelines in the first place but if you want to get into policy wonkery, WP:IAR is a policy, while WP:GNG is a only guideline. The very pragmatic and context specific issues that have been raised by Jayen and others about restaurants and restaurant "coverage" should make anyone with common sense, resist the temptation to wikilawyer the untenable position that the literally millions of restaurants in the world with this kind of coverage ought to have wikipedia entries. What your particular literalist reading of the applicable guidelines tells me, after applying some common sense, is that specific guidelines for restaurants ought to be hatched so we don't find ourselves here repeatedly arguing over more useless PR on Wikipedia, and not that we ought to preserve every piece of restaurant PR that is supposedly "well sourced".Griswaldo (talk) 14:05, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nice but flawed piece of rhetoric. We cannot decide arbitrarily on which to focus our limited manpower because we're not a company paying editors to execute orders. We're volunteers, and if our volunteers prefer to write about restaurants than biology or history, I am saddened just like you, but so be it: I am not so arrogant to judge what people should write on or not. If you don't want to deal with articles you don't like, just keep them off your watchlist and your manpower won't be wasted -nobody has an obligation to maintain all of wikipedia. I am not also policy wonking for the sake of it, nor I am a guideline-thumper -quite the opposite, my position (which is "untenable" only in your own POV) and my arguments come out of two essential philosophical tenets: 1)WP:NOTPAPER, that is, we are not technically bound by limits of previous encyclopedias and therefore we shouldn't fear to go beyond the tradition of previous encyclopedias 2)There is no piece of knowledge intrinsically more "encyclopedic" than another, that is, WP:UNENCYC is a known fallacy. The essence of GNG is that of giving an as much as possible objective and measurable criteria for notability: if something has been covered by multiple reliable sources, this means that sources have taken notice of the subject and therefore it is not only verifiable but notable. Oh, and finally, I am sure you will be equally enthusiast in invoking IAR if someone wants to keep an article which is not notable per GNG but that is liked by part of the community...won't you? IAR is empty without either 1)overwhelming consensus (and let's remember that local consensus doesn't trump global consensus) or 2)a very serious, objective and rational reason. IAR is not a free out-of-jail card: especially now, where there is a 10 year-long consensus on most practices and processes on WP, IAR is best seen as a lifesaver for emergency, extreme cases which aren't covered by other community-consensual policies and guidelines. So, if you have a problem with restaurants, your best course of action is what you also already devised: to amend GNG to cover this case, seeking consensus by process. --Cyclopiatalk 15:09, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
More wiki-lawyering to no practical benefit to the project. There is no indication that your reading of policy is commonly held by the community. You can act like its the literal truth of the Wikigods, written in stone tablets all you want, but in the end, unless people agree with you, that's just you shouting in a vacuum. I'm not going to get suckered into another one of these endless pissing contests with you Cyclopia. Unlike you I recognize that you, the other party, have a legitimate POV, I simply disagree with it and feel that others do as well. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 16:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, since first you said my position was "untenable", I am happy to know that now we recognize each others' POV as legitimate (please strike the "unlike you": I have always recognized yours is a legitimate point of view). As for the community reading, well, the fact that this article already survived an AfD, even if as "no consensus", is an indication that it is at least a viewpoint as common as the opposite one. About the "pissing contests", I don't really know what you're talking about, but well, no, I don't like pissing in public . --Cyclopiatalk 16:56, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I meant untenable for the encyclopedia in practical terms, not illegitimate. Your own argument, is quite literally, that my points, and all of those from people who oppose yours, are illegitimate vis-a-vis Wikipedia's sacred canonical guidelines. I will not retract. Sorry. Final transmission over. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 22:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I guess you're free to comically misunderstand my comments. --Cyclopiatalk 22:20, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please refer to Pissing contest, which is badly in need of an image. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 17:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Should we delete biographies when people die and books when they go out of print? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't relevant. You are going under the assumption that this restaurant was notable before it closed... it was not. The closure is simply another indication that this restaurant was not notable in the first place. Njsustain (talk) 21:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Either way, being closed doesn't have a bearing. If it is notable, it is even if it is closed. If it is not notable, it isn't even if it was open. It is simply an irrelevant information. Jimbo could have said "per nom, coupled with the fact that its name begins with a D" and it would have been the same. --Cyclopiatalk 18:46, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. It's entirely relevant that a restaurant of alleged notability closed in just three years. If the statements that had made the establishment allegedly notable were true, the establishment would not have closed so soon. Nothing significant has changed about the restaurant since those reviews nor the last AfD, so why did the place close its doors? Is it possible the reviews were not really adequate to establish the alleged notability in the first place? Yes. Is it possible that the first AfD discussion did not come to a proper conclusion? Yes... in fact it didn't come to any conclusion... it was "no consensus". Perhaps looking at this article in the clear light of day, so to speak, with six more months of evolution of the perception of the purpose of WP articles, and with seeing the that this restaurant clearly wasn't the cat's pajamas that it was painted to be by not entirely neutral sources in the first place, it is time for the debate to continue, and it is clearer now whether or not this article should exist. Njsustain (talk) 09:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, no. It's not the quality of statements that makes a subject notable; it's the existence of statements themselves. WP:GNG does not require coverage to be positive. To say that a closed restaurant is less notable than an open one is as ridicolous as to say that a dead person is less notable than an alive one. All that it counts is sources coverage, and here there is plenty. --Cyclopiatalk 10:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The only significant coverage are *reviews*; I feel very uncomfortable basing notability off of reviews in such a way. Nothing else establishes a significance apart from "it exists". I'd say we want some reasonable level of significance beyond "it exists and was reviewed". Otherwise we're going to end up recording millions of these places :) --Errant (chat!) 10:49, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
We consider reviews from RS as good indicators of notability for artists; why it should be different for restaurants? And so what if we're going up to record millions of these places? --Cyclopiatalk 12:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Such reviews are usually academic, and often draw attention to the importance or significance of the work (which is part of notability). A restaurant having good food/service is not necessairily notable or significant and in this case the sources do not appear to identify it is particularly notable or significant in it's "genre". I doubt that you would manage to keep an article sourced entirely to reviews of the artists work :) The point is; accepting a few reviews as satisfying notability criteria is troublesome because we then end up recording all the millions of restaurants over the world that have been reviewed a couple of times - and that is silly. I appreciate we are big and essentially limitless in capacity, but lets try and have at least some focus :) --Errant (chat!) 12:59, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am sure that not all artists which are reviewed on NME and Wire are "particularly notable or significant in its genre" but nevertheless they would be strong indications of notability. Again, it seems that the only reason here is that people think it's "silly" to cover objects which are covered by RS only because they are "millions". This is absolutely irrational. A restaurant is no more and no less of an object than an asteroid or a mountain, and there are millions of both, yet while we feel perfectly natural to cover the first, it seems editors here are uncomfortable with the second. The only thing that counts is that there are sources. About the focus: Again, we're not here to decide on what our editors contributors should focus. This is entirely left to the will of our volunteers. Again, I'd love that WP had more focus on ancient philosophy or molecular biology than restaurants, but 1)we cannot and should not force that: WP entirely depends on what our community writes about 2)removing restaurants doesn't help our coverage elsewhere -the two things are independent. --Cyclopiatalk 13:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is going to go in circles, I know, but one final word from me and I will let it lie - we do not have articles on all mountains and asteroids, what would be silly for the same reason. We are here to document human society and the natural world in a useful and encyclopaedic way. This restaurant is not relevant to that aim, and neither are most restaurants across the globe. Common sense is a good guide here :) --Errant (chat!) 13:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I guess you haven't seen my userboxes if you talk of common sense. Let's say that when I hear these two words, I reach for my revolver :)--Cyclopiatalk 14:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A review's relevance of being able to establish notability is in question if it is only showing whether it provides good food... hardly a notable feat. If the restaurant goes under shortly, I think that goes to show that the review didn't really predict whether the place was to become or remain an establishment of note... only that it provided a certain service at a certain point in time... again, hardly an encyclopedic act. And what evidence of notability was there besides reviews? The analogy with musical artists is not apt as the artist produces a work that it kept. There is no museum or archive of previously prepared meals. Also, I think the "common sense" factor is not meant to insinuate whether one contributor has it or not. It is meant to ask... if we apply the "rules", which we know are NOT engraved in stone, to this situation, do they make sense? Should we blindly follow the letter of the "law" (actually "guide") if it does not make sense to do so in this case? We need to use our common sense to do that, or to quote one person: "I wish people could see past this rigid reliance on RS and make better judgment calls." Njsustain (talk) 15:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What does it mean to "make sense"? That's where "common sense" fails utterly. It's nothing else than a nice name for our prejudices, habits and expectations. Now, our prejudices and expectations may play against this subject. But we ought to be rational, objective, and remember that notable does not mean "important" or "outstanding". It means "something worthy of notice" -a crucial difference, not as slight as it seems. How do you discriminate if a subject is worthy of notice? By the simplest and strongest objective test -if other sources have effectively already noticed it indeed. That's not the mere letter of the GNG guideline: that is the philosophical essence of the guideline. Now I ask to you: why doesn't this test make sense in this case? People so far only maked the case that it is not an important or oustanding place (thus confounding notability with importance or fame) or that if we cover this, then we are free to cover a lot of other similar subjects (but nobody made a case to understand rationally why this is a problem instead of a neutral open possibility). --Cyclopiatalk 15:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sigh*; rationally that includes the a huge number of restaurants in recent history. Rationally they are of low importance to an encyclopaedia. I really don't think your argument is a good one because it's implication is "we do not judge notability, just count the sources" - which is most definitely not the spirit of GNG. Our policy and approach is clear; we have a set of rough guidlines which essentially asks for significant coverage. It is then up to us to discuss and agree on what significant coverage is needed. Simple existence of sources is most definitely never enough. off topic; but the idea of "common sense" is pretty much the most crucial counter point to rationality. It is important to understand both; and to note that they are as complementary as they are conflicting - it is perfectly possible to be rational/objective and apply common sense, as in this case. Quips about revolvers is not helpful/useful --Errant (chat!) 15:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You also, for some reason, are confusing Rationality with objectivity. They are different; rationality is about reasoning, you don't have to use objective criteria but it is often the most logical approach. Rationality is about logical reasoning and optimal solution; so rational decision making applied to the Wiki is about what is in scope and what is not. We are reasoning that out here --Errant (chat!) 15:33, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Rationally they are of low importance to an encyclopaedia.: "Rationally"? On the basis of what rational argument? Again, WP:UNENCYC is a known fallacy, and it is a fallacy because it is circular: "Subject X is unencyclopedic" "Why?" "Because encyclopedias do not cover it." "Why?" "Because it is unencyclopedic." Do you really have a compelling rational argument? If so, please share it with us, I'm open to change my mind. And no, I'm not confounding them: we ought to be both rational and objective. About common sense: No, it's just a fancy name for rubbish prejudice. In history "common sense" told us that the Sun rotates around the Earth, that time and space are absolute and that reality does not depend on the observer. All of these very reasonable and common sense prejudices turned out to be wrong. --Cyclopiatalk 15:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your argument is no more rational by that standard. "This restaurant should be included in the encyclopedia. Why? Because WP:GNG says it should." Rationally speaking, falling back on GNG, is no different from falling back on some unstated standard of encyclopedic scope. The only difference is that encyclopedic scope claims its authority from "common sense" while "GNG fundamentalism" claims authority from the revealed truth of the wikigods, as transcribed by their mortal servants at WP:GNG, and as interpreted by the faithful (e.g. "rabid inclusionists"). Your claim to some higher rational ground fails utterly. The idea you presented above, that you are acting rationally, "without prejudice", while others are bringing their prejudices to the discussion, is absurd from a social science perspective. When you self-identify on your talk page as a "rabid inclusionist", you must realize that you are identifying with a variety of assumptions that are neither objective, nor shared by everyone else. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 16:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have to admit it, Griswaldo. You are right. No need to fake anymore: I am actually not a human, but I am the mighty NyarlathoWales, the slimy servant of Wikiztoth, the "amorphous blight of nethermost inclusionism which blasphemes encyclopedia articles at the center of all Internet". "Ph'nglui mgBLPw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'NPOV fhtaGNG!" --Cyclopiatalk 17:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)But the same argument applies to your view; which is that appearance in sources is enough to negotiate inclusion. Just because that is a long held opinion does not make it logical or even rational. Basic reasoning should show that, logically, such an approach means there is a massive amount of "things" that meet that criteria, and so it is a useless objective criteria for inclusion (unless the point is "lets cover everything", which doesn't seem rational in itself). Hence, we have the option to discuss each article on its merits and decide if it (and the general area) is of significance to our encyclopaedia. "Subject X is unencyclopedic" "Why?" "Because encyclopedias do not cover it." "Why?" "Because it is unencyclopedic."; umm, this is terrible rhetoric because it is not my argument at all :) I think it is not significant for inclusion under our criteria because it is a trivial piece of knowledge without any enduring notability within the spectrum of human knowledge. Why? Because the sources are geographically very close, their contents are reviews and contain only trivial mention of the restaurant and it's background (and does not give any significance to them). There is nothing that identifies any point of interest or distinction this venue has other than "it exists". The latter part of my argument is that allowing a low bar for such articles is problematic; and logically, hundreds of articles about a restaurants is not of any interest for us to record. I could also cite NOTDIRECTORY, on the reasoning of "We are not a review site". And that, I think, puts it as plainly as I am able :) You are arguing rationality and objectivity, but to objective criteria you ascribe to a) is illogical when applied blindly and b) is intended as a guide to help specific decisions. No one here can claim to be more rational than the others, we are all being subjective at the moment (which is why you need to step off that high horse :) rationality's major flaw is blind faith and a deep misunderstanding...) We are talking about prime optimisation of Wikipedia as a useful and broad encyclopaedia. Do not imagine that just because I want to delete the article that means I am not "objective" :) --Errant (chat!) 16:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Just because that is a long held opinion does not make it logical or even rational.: True. It is however a criteria which is more objective than others. It unfortunately leaves space to some fuzziness (what does "significant coverage" mean?) but at least it relies on data (the sources) and not pure opinions (like "importance"). And it directly and strongly addresses the question of "notability": that is, it directly measures if something has been already noted. That's why it is at least substantially objective (it does not depend strongly on editorial opinion) and rational (it is a rational measurement of notability). I know that in principle every criteria is arbitrary; however each criterion can be judged on its merits, and the alternative criteria herein suggested do not seem to have the positive properties of objectivity and rationality of this one. Second -on an entirely different note- it is not only a long held opinion: it is the consensual opinion of the WP community on how we judge notability. The two things are entirely independent but reinforce each other.
Also: you say it is a "trivial" piece of knowledge: why is it trivial? Why is this piece of knowledge trivial and the size of the Itokawa asteroid is not? Do we have an objective criteria to say what is trivial and what is not? Or it is just because we have a prejudice against some pieces of knowledge and not against others? --Cyclopiatalk 17:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]


If we are to blindly follow guidelines... guidelines made by other users who have no better or worse judgement than the ones discussing this article... what is the point of the pillar of WP that it does not have firm rules? Whether you call it common sense, judgement, rationality, etc., the bottom line is we know that regardless of what a few run of the mill, to be expected reviews from a few years ago say, this restaurant's fleeting existence isn't worthy of an article, regardless of whether if fulfills the checklist of RS... but that is not to admit that I think it does fulfill notability requirements, because it does not. We are not expected to be slaves of the guidelines, so repeating them incessently with no reasonable/rational/sensible/logical/based on human judgement reason for why it should be kept is pointless. Njsustain (talk) 17:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Notice that I am not talking of "blindly follow guidelines" (the only one who thinks that is Griswaldo in his Lovecraftian delusion). I am talking of the deep question of what notability means and why the one put by the GNG happens to be not only a guideline that we should generally follow, but also a good general criteria. In any case the difference is that local consensus should not trump global consensus: see WP:CONLIMITED, which is policy. Finally, there is a reasonable/rational/logical reason to keep this article: It is about a subject which has been noted by multiple sources. This means that it is not an indiscriminate, irrelevant piece of information: it has been discussed by other sources, and thus it passes an objective criteria of notability. Therefore we have no compelling reason to remove this article, and there is no benefit to the encyclopedia in removing it. The burden is on you to justify why it should be removed, not on me to find reasons to keep it, once it is agreed that it passes all our policies and guidelines -this is articles for deletion ,not articles for inclusion. --Cyclopiatalk 17:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This restaurant is within the "local" scope of the NY Times' regional section and other reviews.Njsustain (talk) 08:45, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On the issue of reviews not being enough in general, you are wrong. WP:ARTIST explicitly cites reviews as an indicator of notability. In software it is long standing common practice. I can't understand why for restaurants this becomes magically wrong. --Cyclopiatalk 11:44, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reviews of artwork are vastly different from restaurant reviews, and are usually academic in some way. Independent critical review of an artwork is about as different from restaurant review as you can get :) Software; I doubt you could establish notability purely through reviews. It is worth pointing out the issue here is not so much use of reviews as a source for notability, but the use only of reviews as the significant coverage. It is simply not compelling :) --Errant (chat!) 12:00, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Cyclopia: The word review does appear in WP:ARTIST. However, context is important: 3. The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.. That is very far from "WP:ARTIST explicitly cites reviews as an indicator of notability." Two immediate reasons why: 1) Multiple and independent; since restaurant reviewers live to review, that doesn't qualify as independent; and 2) the reviews are listed as being reviews of a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work. So, to interpret that as saying that WP:ARTISIT explicitly cites reviews as an indicator of notability does not really tell the full story.  Frank  |  talk  12:10, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Out of the tens of thousands of restaurants in the New York Times area, it reviews one or two exceptional ones a week. We accept the New York Times review of books and off Broadway to establish notability, why not with restaurants? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:28, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean this kind of mention - its clearly promotional without assertion of any specific notability. Off2riorob (talk) 05:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. Note those are all within the "local" purview of the NYT. These aren't in Peoria, Oklahoma City, Walla Walla, or Rangoon. Clearly all of those restaurants in that promotional piece are not of "regional" importance just because a NYT reviewer went on a LOCAL excursion to a bunch of restaurants of varying quality across the river in New Jersey. Njsustain (talk) 10:20, 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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