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. Black Kite (talk) 00:10, 29 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

List of vegetarian festivals[edit]

List of vegetarian festivals (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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this is a completely indiscriminate list that has grown so unwieldy and serves only as a directory and advert for every Joe's festival, it needs to be nuked from orbit. Should we recreate it, a list with only notable veg festivals should be included (ie. those that appear here) Praxidicae (talk) 15:27, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 15:43, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 15:43, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 15:43, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and endorse the nominator's plan to improve the list. pburka (talk) 16:01, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is silly. There is no point in keeping a list that would only have a handful of useless entries that are more than adequately covered by the category. Praxidicae (talk) 17:06, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What's silly is suggesting that a page which has been edited by hundreds of editors over 16 years should be peremptorily torn down just so that we can start the process all over again. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:34, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The list is too large to keep and too small to save! I applaud the nominator's novel argument. pburka (talk) 00:44, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It also omitted (perhaps without reading the entire article?) the Toronto Vegetarian Food Fair, which is the original event from which every other event had been copied, first by Boston around 1995-1996, then quickly by others until 'the idea was out there' for others to replicate without crediting anyone else (except their own 'ingenuity'?). Let's look at this:

"Held every September since 1985 at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, the organization's Annual Veg Food Fest attracts over 40,000 visitors annually and is the largest event of its kind in the world^[1] and is credited with having inspired a copycat VegFest movement in the United States, where over 120 such events are scheduled for 2018.^[2] The event provides opportunities for visitors to learn about vegetarian issues and to sample vegetarian foods from diverse cuisines."MaynardClark (talk) 02:11, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Don't tell me. Add it to the list with a high quality reference. (The Star article is a good start, but the coverage isn't really significant and doesn't support the claim that the festival has been running since 1985.) pburka (talk) 03:33, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:NOTDIRECTORY. Almost all of these events are non notable and are referenced only by their official website or a social media link. Ajf773 (talk) 20:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom and Ajf773. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 06:55, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Passes WP:LISTN: [1], [2], [3], [4]. If the list needs pruning then this is best done in situ, per our editing policy, to maintain attribution and accountability. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:27, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The demand for the page is really high; its potential utility is far greater. The organization of the page could be improved, but perhaps it ought to become its own project or part of a pre-existing project with lots of energy. The variability of the definition could be an issue (an occasional folk music festival shows up in the list). MaynardClark (talk) 13:45, 8 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment on keep - The truncated list fails to include the Toronto Vegetarian Food Fair, the 'mother of all North American vegetarian food fairs' from which Boston (North America's first and largest food fair) was copied in 1995-1996, from which most of the others in the USA were later copied). Criteria for truncating list was not well considered. I suspect that the 'editor' who decided to 'reduce' the previously very useful article is not 'in the know' (there is an inherent 'conflict of interest' in not knowing the subject matter, and the COI policy needs to be revisited in light of the grievous judgment error 'the contending editor' evidenced in trying to eviscerate good work by many editors (admittedly, of varying degrees of competence, thoroughness, and professionalism). MaynardClark (talk) 20:36, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Note: Duplicate !vote struck. One bolded keep/delete/whatnot per person please. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:14, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm the 'editor' in question. I retained every festival which had references to reliable secondary sources or which had its own article. You'll find that the deleted festivals are easily found in the history and can be reinstated, if you can find reliable sources to demonstrate notability per WP:GNG. The idea that non-experts have an inherent COI is contrary to Wikipedia's principles. pburka (talk) 20:57, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. A legitimate sourced list with clear selection criteria. My very best wishes (talk) 17:02, 9 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My very best wishes can you clarify what legitimated sources there are? Thanks a million. :) Praxidicae (talk) 22:45, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

They are easy to find simply by a Google search [5]: see articles in BBC, Fuffington Post, Reuters [6]. There are also relatively poor quality sources, some of them are used on the page, such as this, but I think they are sufficent to establish that a festival X does exist and a few detail about it. Nothing else is needed for a list. My very best wishes (talk) 00:09, 13 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Something other than MERELY a 'list'. The point that ought to be noted is the popularity of such an annual event (and its ability to generate revenue, also), and the large numbers of attendees. Police estimates (not always accurate, but not unreasonable) (for events notable to police) were used in early events, showing thousands of attendees. It may not compare with sports events, that generate revenue, also. They are advertised in radio and television and in subways and buses. MaynardClark (talk) 22:30, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Further, the nature and purpose of such events needs to be listed, and the (seemingly) inadvertent result is a concurrent representation of an array of different vegetarian and vegan practices - religious, compassionate, health, political, animal advocacy, etc. It should have been listed as part of projects on vegetarianism, veganism, animal advocacy, and culture. MaynardClark (talk) 22:33, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Andrew, MaynardClark and My very best wishes. Ajf773 is clearly incorrect that all festivals listed are 'non notable', as many have their own independent articles. Moreover, items on lists don't need to have their own independent articles to be included on a list (WP:LISTN: 'Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable'), so nom's plan B to limit the list to the items in 'Category:Vegetarian festivals' is unwarranted. Most festivals on this list without their own articles are mentioned in reliable mainstream media or other RS, so these can stay. However, festivals that can only be found on their own website or social media can be justifiably removed per GNG. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:45, 15 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• I didn't say they were all 'non notable' but I did say that almost all were non notable. Secondly we are not a directory so we have no business listing every single festival that has a bare mention in primary sources. Ajf773 (talk) 20:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - So here's the thing. As far as I can tell, there is one notable festival on this list. If we also include very strange articles that seem to be about a group of non-notable festivals that share a name (kind of a misguided dab page), then we have a total of three. All the rest either have no notable subject or link to an article about an organization or tangentially related music festival. For this to be a viable list without falling into WP:NOTDIRECTORY territory, we need entries for it. As it stands, this is going to be a collection of press release blurbs for any non-notable event that, gets some local coverage. That's a clear WP:NOT issue. There is sometimes an argument to have a list with entries that are explicitly not notable (as per WP:CSC), but this is not that kind of subject. That kind of subject would be more limited and not turn Wikipedia into eventbrite. Importantly, though, no prejudice against recreation if more notable examples pop up (there are likely a few that can be created). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:12, 16 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• It seems like there are a couple passionate editors trying to improve this, which is always a good sign. As my primary problem with the article is that there just aren't enough notable examples to justify an encyclopedic list without becoming an event directory, if people intend to create more articles on vegetarian festivals (which is likely quite possible), I would also support userfying. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:14, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• NOTE to everyone: I've done a thorough improvement and expansion of this article, giving secondary RS to mainstream media about each veggie festival. If there were no such sources to be found, I deleted the entry. My focus has been on Europe, where the backbone of these events is formed by Veganmania and VeggieWorld (whose articles I concurrently updated and improved) that form distinct sets of festivals with a common mission/vision/identity. Many of these editions attract more than 5,000 visitors and some even more than 10,000 a year. The encyclopedic relevance of such a big group of large-scale festivals can hardly be ignored. The problem was that previous editors were either too lazy or too inexperienced to provide RS to show this to be the case, but the RS are all over the place if anyone really takes the effort to look, especially beyond English-language sources. You might be surprised how many French, German, Dutch, Polish, Austrian, Swiss, Croatian etc. mainstream newspapers have been covering these veggie festivals in the past decade. Even if you've never been taught any of these languages, Google Translate may be your friend (unless it messes up sometimes, haha). Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:20, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• PS: I've also created the c:Category:Vegetarian festivals to organise the dozens of media files produced at these events around the world. It looks like most people who uploaded them were inexperienced with Commons/Wikipedia and failed to properly categorise these photos and videos, making it harder for others to find them. The photos show these festivals are taking place all over the world, each in their own way, sometimes as part of a larger festival that is religious or musical/dance in nature rather than centred around the veggie/vegan food itself. I uploaded some CC videos I could find on YouTube to add to this multimedia collection; some of these videos have been included in this list. I decided not to include videos from vloggers who went to festivals, as these are too personal and do not have enough encyclopedic value to illustrate what a veggie festival is like. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:29, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The changes don't address the primary issue, which is that Wikipedia isn't a directory or indiscriminate list of things/events. All the changes have done is turn a list of redlinked/non linked festivals into blue links of the location they're held in where the target articles say absolutely nothing about the subject. Praxidicae (talk) 17:39, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As noted, WP:LISTN clearly states that 'Because the group or set is notable, the individual items in the list do not need to be independently notable', overruling WP:NOTDIRECTORY. The events that are not mentioned in RS have been removed and/or will not enter the list (again). Moreover, WP:NOTDIRECTORY clearly states that 'mention of major events (...) may be acceptable'. In the secondary RS I have consulted, the number of visitors, if mentioned, has always been between 3,000 and 13,000 people. This is not 'every Joe's festival', as nom put it. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:50, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: I'm a little on the fence here, but I'm looking down this list and seeing mostly festivals that are music festivals or some other type of festival where they happen to not serve meat products for various reasons. That is not a "Vegetarian festival". The lede attempts to wave this off by saying "Many of these events are also food festivals and/or music festivals and can also contain edutainment", but this isn't the case. As this list appears to be lacking specific criteria for what constitutes a "Vegetarian festival", I believe it fails WP:NOTDIRECTORY and agree with the nom and Rhododendrites on this. Anyway, that's my two cents. Waggie (talk) 18:00, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How does the list feature 'mostly festivals that are music festivals'? Currently there are 45 festivals listed, only 6 of whom are primarily music/dance festivals that only serve vegetarian/vegan food (all held in the Netherlands and Czechia). 2 entres on American festivals that are centred on vegetarian/vegan food also mention they feature music, but are not 'music festivals'. Thus, 87% of the items mentioned here are primarily food festivals. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:17, 18 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Nederlandse Leeuw thanks for your inquiry. I appreciate your detailed reply. I did look more carefully and there certainly are other specifically vegan/vegetarian food festivals in the list, more than I realized from the random sampling I performed initially. However, I note that many of them are only supported by press releases, simple event announcements, and other similar poor quality sources that do not confer notability, and list items are supposed to be demonstrably notable. I suspect that if I dug through them and eliminated the ones without WP:SIGCOV, there wouldn't be too many left in the list. Per WP:CSC, selection criteria should either be all notable, all non-notable (which should be considered in the context of a parent article instead), or items that verifiability (with RS) clearly are included in the group. So, while I think you made a good point about my initial post, I still must stand by my initial decision. I'm sorry that you couldn't sway my belief, but I appreciate very much the dialogue with you. Waggie (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Waggie, I very much appreciate your constructive criticism, and the revision of your standpoint on the mostly musical nature of these festivals (quod non). I wonder what you base your claim on that 'many of them are only supported by press releases, simple event announcements, and other similar poor quality sources that do not confer notability'? As I wrote pretty much all information about the European festivals, I can take credit for about 30/65 references in this article. They are all mainstream media articles, most of the media even got an English Wikipedia page that I linked to to show this. Most of them are written by journalists or reporters who actually attended the festival and/or put the festival in a larger socio-economic, cultural and perhaps even political context. I hope I don't have to argue here whether Der Standard, Večernji list, Le Figaro, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Trouw, Gazeta Wyborcza, 20 Minuten, The Independent etc. are top quality newspapers in their respective countries, virtually all of the others I cited are notable enough for their own English Wikipedia page as well. Moreover, WP:CSC says 'These lists are created explicitly because most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles', it's not ' either be all notable or all non-notable'. I think you'll be able to agree that the European events cited by me are all verifiable by RS.

For the moment, I'm not willing to go through all North American festivals to weed out any non-RS and replace them with RS, because frankly that's not necessary to demonstrate that this article can be wikified and properly cited in the way I did for the European half of it. I'm even willing to have the North American content deleted for now and have everyone here only judge my text, I'm pretty sure it would fulfill all the criteria then. What I'm a little tired of is a repetition of the same arguments that have already been refuted as invalid and no acknowledgement that they have been refuted as invalid. You're the only one who so far seems to have been willing to admit they were wrong, and yet proceeded to repeat arguments others have made (especially about earlier versions of this article, before I came along and overhauled it), and also have already been refuted by the Keep camp. I hope you're still willing to look at the article again and open to revising your opinion. I also very much appreciate this dialogue with you. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:LC items 2 and 7. Stifle (talk) 09:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Invalid Wikipedia:Listcruft is an essay, not a policy. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:19, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't make a vote invalid, Nederlandse Leeuw. AFDs often cite essays that aren't policies because they are consensus based guidelines and community norms. LC is one of them. Praxidicae (talk) 12:41, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines". Essays are the opposite of 'consensus based guidelines and community norms', they are opinion pieces. The vote is meaningless because it doesn't constitute a valid argument. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:52, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Often essays are cited in AFDs. It does not mean you get to invalidate someone's vote because you don't like it and especially means you shouldn't be throwing around templates. Praxidicae (talk) 13:09, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I didn't know that, I struck the template. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:30, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I mean... this !vote is pretty poor though (sorry, Stifle). #2 is clearly inapplicable (it's not like we're talking about the stats of one particular obscure fictional element or something -- it's of interest to vegetarians and people who like food festivals... that's really broad) and #7 is the opposite of the problem, which is that there aren't enough relevant articles to justify this list. #7 is actually an example of how this essay is outdated. Beyond there being a trend of pushback against calling other people's contributions "cruft," there's more acknowledgment of the principle summarized by WP:NOTDUP now (i.e. that lists of articles are perfectly fine navigational aids as long as the topic is appropriate, inclusion criteria is clear, etc.). That said, Nederlandse Leeuw, pointing out that it's an essay doesn't usually help. You'd want to emphasize why policy is on your side rather than on the !voters. It's not invalid to cite an essay. There are lots of essays that act as stand-ins for particular interpretations or applications of policies and guidelines. Some are far more used than others. There are some policy/guidelines at the root of WP:LC, though, regardless of whether you agree with it. If you just draw attention to the shortcomings in a !vote, ideally the closer will take that into account rather than just count votes. Please strike the invalid template. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:11, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Very well. Your elaboration makes some sense and is much more useful than the vote itself, that isn't technically invalid so I struck it per request. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• NOTE to everyone: I've replaced all weak sources with RS for all sections except the US. Reference 35 to 62 may still be checked for reliability and the adjoining text for notability and relevance, e.g. KBPS Public Broadcasting is an RS but the fact that dogs were not allowed may be too trivial to mention, even though the source mentions it. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• NOTE to everyone: the overhaul of the article is done! I now removed all remaining weak sources, eventbrite-y sites, press releases etc. relating to the United States and replaced them with reliable sources where necessary. I've also removed lots of information that is not relevant for the events in a list article like this or for Wikipedia in general, such as the exact address where it was held or whether dogs were allowed or whether the co-organisers are married. It really should be kept at the basics. I understand that the fluff that was originally there is an important part of the reason why many here felt it should be deleted, but that is now pretty much fixed. I am also still open to trimming it further down, such as which allegedly notable people showed up at the Detriot festival. I've left the question of whether the Boston festival is the oldest and has been copied from Toronto open for further verification, because it may well be true, but couldn't be established by the sources provided because they were weak, so I removed them. I remain open to your suggestions and constructive criticism. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:41, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Per recent edits by Nederlandse Leeuw. There are reliable sources on the article, enough to establish notability. Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:47, 20 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:HEY. Nederlandse Leeuw has done an excellent job of fixing an "unfixable" page. — Toughpigs (talk) 23:34, 20 May 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.