Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saginaw (ship, 1953)

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. On the whole, many of the arguments for keeping strike me as flimsy at best. That said, it would be a significant stretch to say there's consensus for deletion. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:42, 28 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

MV Saginaw[edit]

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Non-notable ship without claim of notability and with a single reference to a fansite. There are WP:ROUTINE and passing mentions/videos aplenty in google, but no obvious WP:RS that I can see. Upgraded from PROD based on conversation with @Geo Swan:, the article creator on my talk page. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:54, 20 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:23, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:24, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:24, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The "claim of notability" is the ship itself; ships of this size are almost invariably notable, and a quick search bears this out: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and more. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:33, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, lets look at these:

[7] is self published through AuthorHouse and thus not WP:RS.
[8] is 648 words long and the ship is not the primary topic, so it's unlikely that the ship is covered in depth.
[9] I don't have access to, but the ship is not the primary topic.
[10] I don't have access to, but the ship is not the primary topic.
[11] is eight lines of routine coverage of its construction
[12] is this ship used to illustrate a barely-related article.

I acknowledge that there may be more, but they'd need to be better than these. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Per the General Notability Guideline, significant coverage "need not be the main topic of the source material" Dankarl (talk) 15:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I've moved the article from Saginaw (ship, 1953) to MV Saginaw, the proper title, and have fixed the AfD so the move shouldn't screw up the closing. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Stuartyeates (talk) 01:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Question: How is "the ship itself" a claim of notability? bobrayner (talk) 01:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Because freighters of this size are assumed notable unless sources can't be found. It's not like an individual car or aircraft; each ship is unique. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Is there a link for that? Stuartyeates (talk) 06:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - Now that we're here at AfD, we can see whether or not this "assumption" is right. Is there any evidence that the ship passes the general notability guideline? If yes, I'm happy to keep the article; if no, the assumption was wrong. bobrayner (talk) 12:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      - Articles are kept or deleted based on the closing administators interpretation of both our policies, and on widely accepted consensus. Yesterday I asked someone who placed {{prod}} tags to review the consensus at four {{afd}} based on almost exactly the same concern as those expressed in his prods. Nine minutes later the prod tagger promised to initiate this afd. Note: Nine minutes is not long enough to read my comment, read the four afd to any meaningful level of detail, and draft even a brief reply.
        Yes, I know that both policy and consensus are in a state of flux. Fine, then the tag placer had an obligation to read the earlier consensus, and explain when the consensus had changed, or why it should change, or when a new policy trumped the consensus. Geo Swan (talk) 17:31, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Week keep. It gets a full chapter as the John J. Boland III in Freighters of Manitowoc and is one of 15 ships in the scintillating video Great Lakes Ships Volume 6. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As mentioned above Freighters of Manitowoc is selfpublished through AuthorHouse and not a reliable source. Stuartyeates (talk) 03:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep as per "large ships are notable unless proven otherwise" policy in WP:SHIPS even in case of ships that are not very exciting. Tupsumato (talk) 09:48, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any policy that "large ships are notable unless proven otherwise" - could you clarify? And even if that were policy, how would that lead us to conclude "keep" if investigation on this page finds that the ship fails the notability guideline? bobrayner (talk) 13:03, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for a thought fart. My point was that in the past large ships have been considered "almost invariably notable" like Bushranger said above, especially if they are of one-off unique design. However, if we look at e.g. Mitsui 56 series, it's safe to say that an individual ship in that ship class of 151+ mass-produced bulk carriers is unlikely to be notable unless something happened to it. Tupsumato (talk) 07:44, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, the ship is a rather unremarkable lake freighter. PK T(alk) 14:40, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I suggest this discussion should be closed due to a lapse of collegiality on the part of the nominator. WP:PROD stays active for seven days, or until someone removes the {{prod}} tag. Nominator himself removed the {{prod}} tag, and escalated this to an {{afd}}, nine minutes after I asked them to review the consensus established in four earlier {{afd}}:

I see this as seriously disruptive behavior.

We are all volunteers here, and all our time is valuable. In particular, the time of everyone participating here is valuable. If our nominator had instead read the earlier {{afd}}, and explained how their concerns differed from the concerns raised and solidly dismissed in the earlier {{afd}}, I would have had 6 days to try to address those concerns. We may have reached a civil and collegial agreement, during the remaining 6 days the {{prod}} had to run. This would have spared the time of everyone else who has participated here.

I suggest we should not endorse {{prod}} taggers escalating their {{prod}} challenges to full {{afd}} simply because they are not prepared to show the respect to other contributors required to take the time to answer civil and collegial questions. Geo Swan (talk) 17:07, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I believe there are occasional groups of amateurs and volunteers whose work is nevertheless reliable, and should be considered reliable sources. In my personal opinion the boatnerd site is an instance of a site whose work should be considered reliable. I initiated a thread at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#When can the work of amateurs and volunteers be considered reliable sources? What about the User:Geo Swan/boatnerd site?
Keep The larger and commissioned ship notability has been long standing as described by The Bushranger. From a quick look I also have to agree there is some disruptive behavior here in challenging that when the record is rather clear as noted in the comment immediately above. A discussion on the larger question of ship notability might be worth while and I might chime in on the side of consolidating some "articles" into groupings such as List of Empire ships (A), but this is the wrong place to address that issue. Palmeira (talk) 21:34, 21 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
delete Obviously non-notable laker, one of hundreds if not thousands that were built, sailed, and scrapped without particular incident. Boatnerd may be a useful source but the fact that one site tries to catalogue everything doesn't confer notability. Mangoe (talk) 15:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- By long tradition, as reflected in the four {{afd}} I listed above, multi-million dollar vessels, that may end up carrying over a billion dollars worth of cargo over their lifetime, have been considered worthy of inclusion here, even if their career has never had a "particular incident". We have about a dozen separate special purpose notability guidelines, like WP:POLITICIAN, WP:ACADEMIC, because the WP:GNG does not fit every single kind of topic. We don't have a specific special purpose notability guideline for ships. In those four earlier {{afd}} listed above it was suggested that essay WP:Notability (vehicles) applied -- and I believe that suggestion was thoroughly refuted, and it was pointed out no one ever reads the essay, which has basically been defacto deprecate.
  Maybe we need a new special purpose notability guideline, or we need to add new section(s) to an existing special purpose notability guideline.
  Until we have a new guideline, I would suggest the closing administrator close in line with the long precedence that very large vessels are notable, without requiring an "particular incidents" in their career -- unless a truly novel and compelling argument is presented here. But I see no truly novel or compelling argument. Geo Swan (talk) 17:23, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm having to interpret this as "all lakers are notable, because all of them are documented on boatnerd and all are 'big'." But it isn't notable for freighters to cost millions of constant-2013-dollars and carry billions of constant-2013-dollars in cargo value; it's routine. Mangoe (talk) 19:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - Boatnerd or not, "all lakers are notable" would...actually be a very reasonable position to take. We need to rememeber that Wikipedia is not paper and stop defining "notability" as "would be in a dead tree tome". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 19:41, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      - It's not a reasonable decision to take; it's a boat nerd position to take, in exactly the same way that "all locomotive classes are notable" would be a foamer position to take, or that "every comic character is notable" would be a fannish position to take. Notability is not the intersection of "fannish interest" and "sources", and in particular it is not a ship registry. And please stop attributing positions to me that I didn't take. Mangoe (talk) 20:20, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Nobody attributed anything at all to you. I was speaking of Wikipedia as a whole and the very disturbing trend I have observed. Also, "all locomotive classes are notable" would also be a reasonable position to take. Comic characters are, however, an entirely different thing. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 20:28, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Bushranger and Palmeira. Completeness is a positive virtue in an encyclopedia. If we have a longstanding practice of writing about ships above a certain benchmark, then it is better to cover them all rather than cultivating gaps. Palmeira's comment about preferring lists for some classes of ship has merit amd could be discussed.--Arxiloxos (talk) 19:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Per long established consensus that, subject to meeting WP:GNG via WP:RS, most ships over 100' long / 100 tons are notable enough to sustain an article. Vessels under 100/100 may also be notable in some cases. For evidence of the said consensus, see the record of ship-related AFD discussions. Take particular note of the reasons in the rare instances of deletion as to why the outcome was to delete. Mjroots (talk) 20:48, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a non sequiteur, unless you're now bypassing the GNG. Is there any evidence that this ship is notable? bobrayner (talk) 23:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not bypassing the GNG at all, which is a guideline, not a policy. What I'm saying is that there are plenty of sources available online which could be used to improve the article, as a quick search using her IMO Number 5173786 proves. That the article as it currently stands needs improvement (infobox for a start), is not a reason to delete it. Mjroots (talk) 07:34, 26 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Per many of the arguments already outlined. I would, however, like to see an actually guideline for ships be created because this comes up way too frequently and we waste so much time with the same arguments. —Diiscool (talk) 20:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We already have a guideline for notability of ships and of many other things. It's the general notability guideline. Is this ship notable? bobrayner (talk) 23:14, 24 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Stuart's assessment of the sources provided by The Bushranger. I do have access to those NY Times stories, and they hardly mention the ship - they're about other issues and mention it only in passing. As such, I don't think that notability is established. The notion that largish commercial ships are automatically notable is rather dubious - there have been many thousands of such ships sailing around at every point in time for the last 150 odd years, and few have received anything other than passing coverage or directory listings in reliable sources. While I agree that commissioned warships should be assumed notable unless proven otherwise, this is due to the wide availability of reliable sources which provide a descriptive summary of the construction and careers of even the most humble naval vessels. I'd like to see someone establish genuine notability for a randomly selected example of one the many thousands of bulk carriers which have been churned out of South Korean and Chinese yards over the last 30 years, registered in a flag of convenience country and ply the waters between non-Anglo countries before being scrapped. I've looked into doing it for some of the Australian coastal trading ships my Grandfather worked on, and couldn't pull it off. Nick-D (talk) 09:56, 26 November 2013 (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.