Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Sol Foundation
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- The Sol Foundation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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More than a year ago, Melcous correctly added our template for excessive reliance on non-WP:INDEPENDENT sources to this article on a UFO club run by enthusiast Garry Nolan.
In any case ,the underlying issue has gone unresolved. I conducted a truncated WP:BEFORE consisting exclusively of a Google News search (because, given the subject, it's obviously not going to appear in any journal or book).
This search found pages upon pages of references to this outfit which might incline the casual observer to presume it passes WP:N. However, on close inspection, most of these are to The Debrief, which is unambiguously non-RS. Its editor-in-chief is Micah Hanks (who also reports on Sasquatch, [1] wrote the foreword to a "non-fiction" book on monsters that purportedly live in South Carolina [2], wrote a book about something called "ghost rockets" [3], and used to host a podcast about ghosts and ESP) The other contributors of this site come from a similar pedigree.
Additional sources are WP:ROUTINE (e.g. an event listing at the San Francisco Standard [4]) or are purely incidental mentions, such as organization officers being quoted by title in stories.
Fails WP:GNG. Chetsford (talk) 09:38, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Organizations and California. Shellwood (talk) 09:55, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Philosophy, Paranormal, Politics, and Science. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 10:47, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Comment: The Guideline for establishing notability in this instance is Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies). 5Q5|✉ 11:37, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Strongly oppose deletion. Regardless of individual beliefs about UAPs, the topic is widely covered by mainstream media, government sources, and academic commentary. Wikipedia’s role is to document verifiable information, not to judge its validity. Deleting well-sourced content undermines neutrality and public access to information.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hempanicker (talk • contribs) 13:58, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Keep this article. To describe Dr. Nolan as an 'enthusiast' is a deliberately biasing term meant to diminish. Such derogatory language should not be used in a delete argument per rules. Dr. Nolan is a noted research scientist. Of one wants to describe a noted scientist with nearly 400 peer reviewed papers as an enthusiast, then one might also say Chetsford, the person proposing this deletion, is an enthusiast for anti-science propaganda. The Sol Foundation has now published several pure research papers on the subject of NHI (which by the way is mentioned in the UAP Disclosure act as put forward by Senators Schumer and Rounds) multiple times as a global definition of not just the idea of "aliens" but also any other non-human intelligence that might have originated on Earth prior to humanity. The pogrom driven by Chetsford, LuckyLouie and others is a malicious attempt against freedom of information and should be resisted. TruthBeGood (talk) 15:25, 1 May 2025 (UTC) — TruthBeGood (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
- Very Strong Keep I have edited my keep and refactored the prior discussion below. The article has substantially changed since this was nominated. This was the Reference section when The Sol Foundation was sent nominated to delete:
- I have now added sources including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Hartford Courant, Catholic News Service, Aleteia, Rice University, Newsweek, Daily Express, PopMatters, Society of Catholic Scientists, la Repubblica, Focus (German magazine), Niconico, La Razón (Madrid), Sunday World, Futurism, the International Social Science Journal, and more, and still have more yet to go through when I have time. This is the References section now after 39 edits by me:
- Here is all current sources sorted against WP:SIGCOV: Talk:The_Sol_Foundation#Current sources ranked against WP:SIGCOV
- That is coverage from seven (7) nations: the United States, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Japan. I think this is now a trivial keep and the AfD should be withdrawn. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 01:34, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Newsweek is considered generally unreliable per WP:NEWSWEEK. The Daily Express is considered generally unreliable per WP:DAILYEXPRESS. "Popmatters.com" - a small pop culture, citizen journalism website [5] that publishes listicles like "the best albums of 1999" - is doubtfully RS for coverage of xenobiology, quantum physics, and astronautical engineering per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. The La Razon article mentions the Sol Foundation once (in a title quote attribution to its founder) and is not WP:SIGCOV.
I've gone through the rest of the sources in this latest batch and they all are insufficient in similar ways, however, due to the sheer volume of sources I am truncating the written portion of my analysis for purposes of readability. (I previously evaluated a different shotgun spread of sources by the above editor in a comment I made [6] said editor has taken it upon himself to collapse.) Thanks - Chetsford (talk) 03:11, 2 May 2025 (UTC)- Readers: Please pay attention to this.
- Your La Razon remark is completely made up of whole cloth and your imagination. Why would you do that? Did you think no one read the content? The La Razon article says, "Inspirados en proyectos científicos y divulgativos, como el que ha puesto en marcha Garry Nollan con la Fundación SOL, o en Francia UAP Check, los miembros de UAP Digital y UAP Spain prevén la próxima creación de un Panel de expertos multidisciplinar que impulse el debate y el estudio científico sobre los Fenómenos Anómalos No Identificados en territorio europeo." That translates to, "Inspired by scientific and educational projects, such as the one launched by Garry Nolan and the SOL Foundation, or by UAP Check in France, the members of UAP Digital and UAP Spain plan to create a multidisciplinary panel of experts to promote debate and scientific study on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena in Europe." Which is the citation for, "La Razón credited the Sol Foundation with having inspired similar research ventures in Spain."
- How is that a "a title quote attribution to its founder"? La Razón explicitly credits the SOL Foundation itself, not just Garry Nolan or its title, as an inspiration for UAP Digital and UAP Spain’s planned expert panel. The sentence structure in Spanish--"como el que ha puesto en marcha Garry Nolan con la Fundación SOL"--clearly attributes the project’s inspiration to both Nolan and the SOL Foundation as entities, not merely using the Foundation’s name as a descriptor. There is no valid counterargument because the conjunction "con" ("with") grammatically links Nolan’s action to the SOL Foundation as an active collaborator or source of the project, making it impossible to interpret the Foundation as a passive or incidental mention.
- The nominator has substantially misdiscribed everything. Did you notice how many of the sources are notable enough to have deeply complex Wikipedia articles themselves? The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics is a bad source for the topic of a foundation studying UFOs? Some of the sources are thorough and entire pieces on the SOL Foundation. Some are brief but relevant mentions, and all of them were picked because they were relevant and contributed to Wikipedia:Notability. Look at my user page. I don't mess around with sourcing; this was something I did rapid fire because we simply needed to demonstrate notability, not build a complex 80k+ article... yet.
- Remain Very Strong Keep. Parse all of nominator's remarks carefully for accuracy at this time. I don't know what is going on. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 03:45, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I'm not going to engage in a debate as to whether the six word phrase "Garry Nolan and the SOL Foundation" constitutes WP:SIGCOV. But I acknowledge and appreciate your obvious passion for this subject. Chetsford (talk) 03:55, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you. Everyone knows that not every article source needs to be WP:SIGCOV. The point today is I have demonstrated breadth and scope of Wikipedia:Notability, with articles from global scales, from long to short pieces, to some that are significant and some that are minor. That's still notable. You can't minimize major international publications. You have not demonstrated in any way that The Sol Foundation lacks notability. There are still more sources, and more content (multiple citations for some) to pull out of the sourcing I've already added. There is no such thing as an AfD qualification or requirement that the article has to be in any sort of advanced state of development. Please be honest with our peers and fair. Very Strong Keep. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 04:06, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- "I have demonstrated breadth and scope of" We'll have to agree to disagree. As noted by my previous comments, your sources include WP:NEWSWEEK, WP:DAILYEXPRESS, a citizen journalism pop culture website, a Substack newsletter with 8 subscribers, something called "exopolitik.com", [7] etc., etc. Chetsford (talk) 04:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- What version of the site are you even looking at? Hartford Courant, Focus, Sunday World, the Catholic ones, AIAA, and so on? I challenge you, here and now, to show me exactly where Substack is used as a source, or else withdraw the AfD and recuse yourself from this article going forward, in perpeuity, with no option to undo that, and it will be enforced by other Admins? Do you agree?
- "I have demonstrated breadth and scope of" We'll have to agree to disagree. As noted by my previous comments, your sources include WP:NEWSWEEK, WP:DAILYEXPRESS, a citizen journalism pop culture website, a Substack newsletter with 8 subscribers, something called "exopolitik.com", [7] etc., etc. Chetsford (talk) 04:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you. Everyone knows that not every article source needs to be WP:SIGCOV. The point today is I have demonstrated breadth and scope of Wikipedia:Notability, with articles from global scales, from long to short pieces, to some that are significant and some that are minor. That's still notable. You can't minimize major international publications. You have not demonstrated in any way that The Sol Foundation lacks notability. There are still more sources, and more content (multiple citations for some) to pull out of the sourcing I've already added. There is no such thing as an AfD qualification or requirement that the article has to be in any sort of advanced state of development. Please be honest with our peers and fair. Very Strong Keep. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 04:06, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I'm not going to engage in a debate as to whether the six word phrase "Garry Nolan and the SOL Foundation" constitutes WP:SIGCOV. But I acknowledge and appreciate your obvious passion for this subject. Chetsford (talk) 03:55, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Newsweek is considered generally unreliable per WP:NEWSWEEK. The Daily Express is considered generally unreliable per WP:DAILYEXPRESS. "Popmatters.com" - a small pop culture, citizen journalism website [5] that publishes listicles like "the best albums of 1999" - is doubtfully RS for coverage of xenobiology, quantum physics, and astronautical engineering per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. The La Razon article mentions the Sol Foundation once (in a title quote attribution to its founder) and is not WP:SIGCOV.
- That is coverage from seven (7) nations: the United States, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Japan. I think this is now a trivial keep and the AfD should be withdrawn. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 01:34, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Here, the current version right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Sol_Foundation&oldid=1288346733
- Show me exactly where the text string "substack" shows up anywhere in that article. Do you agree to my terms? -- Very Polite Person (talk) 04:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I never said it showed up "in that article." You said your comments on this Talk page "demonstrated breadth and scope". Those comments include "Additional possible sourcing found in under <5 minutes of minimal effort ... substack.com/home/post/p-142904928" [8].
"Do you agree?" No thanks! Chetsford (talk) 04:39, 2 May 2025 (UTC)- No, this is what you are compelled to judge against:
- I have been exceptionally clear that I am arguing against the live, production sources. You arguing against what I previously linked here and did not use in the article is irrelevant. All that matters is what is in the live article now, and what is in the article now trivially meets Wikipedia:Notability and particularly, it meets Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies). Not, again, what I linked and withdrew on the AfD. What is now live. This article passes AfD now trivially. If you are unwilling to address all the sources, you are not arguing per policy, and 'good faith' becomes questionable, as you are then arguing against non-acceptable criteria which is not policy. We are all slaves here to outcomes. That includes the nominator. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 16:12, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I never said it showed up "in that article." You said your comments on this Talk page "demonstrated breadth and scope". Those comments include "Additional possible sourcing found in under <5 minutes of minimal effort ... substack.com/home/post/p-142904928" [8].
Updated my remarks with newly found evidence. |
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I see more mentions yet on Google News and Google Scholar that are required to be considered. Premature nomination. Just because an article is a stub that no one has had the time or energy or will to build from available data doesn't mean it's not notable or should be deleted based on not being "done". I started Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review just yesterday -- based on what that article looks like, would you delete it? Certainly not. The one article I linked on the talk page alone has enough outbound links to quash any AfD there. I have found a raft of material there with a minimum energy of effort--it took me less than 5 minutes to find what I linked here for Sol Foundations. See next Joint Geological and Geophysical Research Station that at first glance was hard to source, but I dug into enough data that now it's fine. This is an endemic problem on Wikipedia it appears? Just because the one user cannot or will not find data doens't mean a topic isn't notable. [[9]] is how I found Invention Secrecy Act, and now when I get the will and time to go back to it, I'm not even a third of the way into the sourcing I have saved. A more "done" article will have 70-80+ sources, not just 24. The same thing happened with how I found this article and how it's references look today. This article here was a particular pain to source and had one (1) source when I found it; click to see the current version. Just because an article takes work and is a stub still doesn't mean it's not notable. It's also obvious "not just The Debrief" as sourcing, which is not a disallowed source in any event under any rational or widely accepted rules nor precedent or RfD or discussions anywhere. Keep for The Sol Foundation. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 13:21, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
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WP:ASPERSIONS are out of place at AfD. Thank you. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 18:37, 1 May 2025 (UTC) |
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- Delete, both per the nominator's openening argument and their subsequent rebuttal of the supposed 'sourcing' presented. We require independent, third party sources and unfortunately none of any quality have been offered. I note that so far, both 'keep' !votes not only fail to present policy-based arguments for maintaining the article, but are littered with aspersions and near-personal attacks (e,g the nom's so-called "bias", "threats" and alleged immaturity)—while themselves demanding civility! To quote, these have "neither role nor allowance here". Neither, of course, does WP:Argumentum ad Jimbonem, aka WP:JIMBOSAID. (Also, from a purely formating point of view, could we only bold our !votes once, please.) I have hatted the aspersons, etc., above; if they are repeated I will seek administrative involvement. The ubnderstanable passons that AfD can sometimes generate is no excuse for assuming bad faith. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 18:37, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Hello, have you had the opportunity to review the rewritten article?
- It's almost completely redone since the AfD and youre !vote. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 23:51, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Re-stating my delete !vote for the record. If it's required, as it seems to be á la mode, call it a Very Strong Delete. The article has been expanded in byteage, but the sources are of no better quality, unfourtunately, so WP:HEY doesn't apply (as an example of WP:HEY in an AfD, see for example at Becky Sharp, for Nations of 1984 or in Concordat of Worms, et al.). As has been established by the nom's thorough analysis of the new sources, few of them are both independent or indepth. None support the claims made to WP:SIGCOV or WP:NORG, while support !votes themselves seem to rely on non-policy based arguments (e.g. BUTITEXISTS, an argument to avoid, using WP:OR to analyse sources' claims, and suggesting that all opinions given equal weight). And that's ignoring the continued questioning of other editors' motives. The keep !votes are, perhaps unsurprisingly, greater in number; they are, equally unsurprisingly however, weaker in policy. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 17:01, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
Repeated aspersions from now-indefinitely blocked editor |
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- Weak Keep. The few sentences I have read of the walls of text above haven't given me much motivation to read more, but evaluating this one on the merits: First, we have 2 unambiguous RS mentions: a brief mention in the Oxford reference ("In 2023, Garry Nolan established the Sol Foundation, a research center dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of UAP."), and an article from Focus discussing the org in depth. Second, we have lots of incidental mentions in RS, which are not themselves sufficient to establish notability but do support it. Third, although sources like The Debrief shouldn't be considered reliable for making claims about UAP, they are being used here to establish the existence and nature of a UAP-related organization, which could be acceptable. This, combined with the fact that several people are continuing to actively seek out and add new sources to the article, paints a picture of a low quality article with WP:SURMOUNTABLE problems, so I'm landing on keep and improve with this one. -- LWG talk 22:21, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Note to Closer Re Offsite Discussion of this AfD. Extensive and impassioned offsite discussion of this AfD is occurring on Reddit's r/aliens and r/ufos (e.g. [10], etc.) and on X (e.g. [11], [12], etc.). Chetsford (talk) 03:23, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Weak delete, as with other topics in this area there seems to have been a certain amount of WP:REFBOMBING going on in this article (with things like PR press releases being cited for some reason). I'm not seeing the multiple reliable WP:SIGCOV sources needed for WP:NORG, and I disagree that the one sentence in the oxford source counts for this, and I also disagree that a bunch of passing mentions/mentions in unreliable sources somehow makes up for this fact (and this isn't supported by my reading of WP:GNG) Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 07:38, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- May I ask what unreliable sources you see here? Express and the PR thing from Japan (which was only there to give easier English language context to the other Japanese media source) are both gone.
- Several of the articles are about SOL specifically. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 23:49, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Keep, per WP:HEY and WP:ATD. When it was nominated I would have voted the other way, per WP:TOOSOON, but with the newly added material I feel it now just crosses the line of notability and will likely improve in the future. 5Q5|✉ 11:20, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Among the newly added sources like WP:NEWSWEEK, WP:DAILYEXPRESS, etc., which do you think are the best examples that prove SIGCOV here? Chetsford (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Talk:The_Sol_Foundation#Current sources ranked against WP:SIGCOV
- I've assembled this here for users to review. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 13:22, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Among the newly added sources like WP:NEWSWEEK, WP:DAILYEXPRESS, etc., which do you think are the best examples that prove SIGCOV here? Chetsford (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Keep per arguments made by LWG and 5Q5. The article's improved substantially since nomination and good RSes have been identified. An an aside, remember, we have to exercise a measure of parity across coverage of all non-scientific beliefs. National Catholic Reporter and The Debrief aren't RSes for the existence of God or UFOs, but they're fine to verify specific groups of notable people have joined together to promote a shared belief. Noting that someone believes in Sasquatch isn't actually a argument for deletion: Ghosts, Ghost rockets, and the Holy Ghost are all 100% encyclopedic topics. Feoffer (talk) 12:03, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- "remember, we have to exercise a measure of parity across coverage of all non-scientific beliefs" I'm not familiar with that policy. Chetsford (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Well it was just an aside. GNG is met per LWG and 5Q5. More abstract discussion is for some other page.Feoffer (talk) 15:55, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- "remember, we have to exercise a measure of parity across coverage of all non-scientific beliefs" I'm not familiar with that policy. Chetsford (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Keep The sorted list in Talk:The Sol Foundation#Current sources ranked against WP:SIGCOV captures enough of the primary criteria in WP:Notability (organizations and companies)#Primary criteria to justify keeping the article. WP:HEY and WP:ATD also appear to have helped the quality of the article improve in the past week. Tschieggm (talk) 17:14, 2 May 2025 (UTC)— Tschieggm (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
- Keep. The article passes WP:INDEPENDENT, WP:N, and WP:SIGCOV. This has been evidenced by the above posts of Very Polite Person, Feoffer, and LWG. Ben.Gowar (talk) 17:51, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Source Evaluation. The article has changed considerably since the nomination with the carpet bombing of a dozen new sources into it. As nominator, I'm obligated to evaluate them to determine if the nomination should now be withdrawn. Based on my evaluation (below), I affirm the this article fails WP:ORGCRITE. We would need at least three sources that are across-the-board green (reliable, independent, and significant in coverage) as per WP:SIRS. As per SIRS, several sources that meet 2 of 3 criteria don't add together to create a single quality source. After one year of efforts, we still can only scrape together one.
Source WP:INDEPENDENT WP:RS WP:SIGCOV Notes The Central Minnesota Catholic Yes Maybe No One sentence mention of The Sol Foundation Marin Independent Journal Yes Yes No Article is about organization's founder Garry Nolan; contains one sentence mention of Sol Foundation Rice University "Archives of the Impossible" conference website No Maybe Maybe Two sentence mention of the Sol Foundation in the speaker bio for Garry Nolan at a conference at which he was speaking Newsweek Yes No No Consensus-determined unreliable source per WP:NEWSWEEK International Social Science Journal Yes Yes No One sentence mention of The Sol Foundation in this 33-page article popmatters.com Yes No Yes WP:USERGENERATED entertainment website . American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Yes Yes No Another one sentence mention Society of Catholic Scientists Yes Yes No Another one sentence mention la Repubblica Yes Yes No Another one sentence mention Focus Magazine Yes Yes Yes Report on the club's conference Niconico Unknown No Unknown WP:USERGENERATED video sharing site a la YouTube La Razón Yes Yes No Another one sentence mention arXiv Unknown No Unknown Community-determined unreliable per WP:ARXIV (preprint hosting service) The Debrief Yes No Yes The Debrief is the new website landing page for the podcast of ghosts/cryptozoology/ESP/flying saucer blogger Micah Hanks. While presented with an attractive new skin and under the headline "science and tech", it's the same pseudoscientific entertainment fanzine. Recent podcast episodes have uncritically discussed remote viewing [13], Atlantis / Lemuria [14], Thunderbirds [15], "The Deep State" [16], and Ancient Aliens-style cruft [17]. Sunday World Yes No No The Sunday World is a tabloid news outlet a la WP:DAILYEXPRESS and regularly peddles a variety of 'weird news' type articles. There's just a one sentence mention, in any case.
- Chetsford (talk) 06:51, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- In your source evaluation, you left out Aleteia (2 mentions), Hartford Courant (3 mentions), The_Byte (3 mentions). WP:NEWSWEEK says: "consensus is to evaluate Newsweek content on a case-by-case basis." WP:ARXIV says: "generally unreliable with the exception of papers authored by established subject-matter experts." The arXiv paper was written by subject matter expert Matthew Szydagis, a university physics professor who is also a member of UAP orgs. This is a lot of media coverage for a foundation less than two years old. Even if the article were to be deleted, it will surely be republished. Just tag it at top with {{more citations needed}}. 5Q5|✉ 12:04, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you for catching that. It appears each of the three I missed are more fleeting, incidental mentions that only prove the organization exists (which is not in doubt), but don't meet the requirements of WP:ORGCRIT.
Insofar as Newsweek; when we evaluate an outlet, like Newsweek, on a case by case basis that (usually) means we accept some limited use for the mundane and routine. Obviously, reporting on a club of people whose leader may believe aliens are jumping through dimensional portals to conduct medical experiments on humans [18] is not the kind of basic, nuts and bolts use portended by WP:NEWSWEEK.
Insofar as arXiv goes, generously assuming the author is an expert, it may be usable for WP:V under WP:SPS, but unpublished manuscripts are -- by the fact they're unpublished -- not significant in coverage so are not SIGCOV. That said, a physics professor is no more an SME on flying saucers than a professor of music theory, since flying saucer belief is not a subject that falls within the bailiwick of physics. An SME on flying saucers might be a professor of folklore or sociology, or a clinical psychiatrist. Chetsford (talk) 13:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)- On this narrow point, I gotta side with Chetsford. If we let everyone with a Phd and ARXIV qualify as a SME expert, we'd be lost. It's not "scientifically important", that's a red herring. Feoffer (talk) 13:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you for catching that. It appears each of the three I missed are more fleeting, incidental mentions that only prove the organization exists (which is not in doubt), but don't meet the requirements of WP:ORGCRIT.
- As mentioned above, The Debrief is reliable in the very limited context of profiling a like-minded organization. No one questions that the group exists. Feoffer (talk) 12:30, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- No one questions that the group exists. Indeed, no one does. But see WP:BUTITEXISTS. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 12:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Fair enough, I'll reword. Not to put too fine a point on it: no one questions The Debrief's reporting that the group exists. Feoffer (talk) 12:53, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Existence ≠ Notability Chetsford (talk) 13:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- No one here has suggested otherwise. At issue is whether Debrief functions as an RS in the very limited context of profiling an association of notable people with admittedly fringe beliefs. Feoffer (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- The community has previously critically discussed TheDebrief [19]. Opinions ranged from "Treat it as a group blog / self published source" (User:MrOllie); "the DeBrief is weighted toward generating sensational clickbait rather than reliably sourced journalism" (User:LuckyLouie); "Largely self-published website with a lean towards UFO/alien crankery and sometimes questionable pop science takes" (User:Bon_courage). MatthewM stated it was "highly credible, least biased, and mostly factual". Chetsford (talk) 14:07, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- I get it, it's a complex source, but look just at the matter at hand. Is there any reason their 'reporting' is mistaken or erroneous about who is in the organization and what they've said in the direct quotes? Feoffer (talk) 14:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Unknown. We can't undertake the WP:OR needed to analyze the veracity of specific claims. The only thing we can say for certain is it doesn't meet our standards of reliability. Chetsford (talk) 14:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- I get it, it's a complex source, but look just at the matter at hand. Is there any reason their 'reporting' is mistaken or erroneous about who is in the organization and what they've said in the direct quotes? Feoffer (talk) 14:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- The community has previously critically discussed TheDebrief [19]. Opinions ranged from "Treat it as a group blog / self published source" (User:MrOllie); "the DeBrief is weighted toward generating sensational clickbait rather than reliably sourced journalism" (User:LuckyLouie); "Largely self-published website with a lean towards UFO/alien crankery and sometimes questionable pop science takes" (User:Bon_courage). MatthewM stated it was "highly credible, least biased, and mostly factual". Chetsford (talk) 14:07, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- No one here has suggested otherwise. At issue is whether Debrief functions as an RS in the very limited context of profiling an association of notable people with admittedly fringe beliefs. Feoffer (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Existence ≠ Notability Chetsford (talk) 13:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Fair enough, I'll reword. Not to put too fine a point on it: no one questions The Debrief's reporting that the group exists. Feoffer (talk) 12:53, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- No one questions that the group exists. Indeed, no one does. But see WP:BUTITEXISTS. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 12:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- NOTE: User's assessment of Popmatters is factually completely wrong; it's like saying the "New Yorker" is USERGENERATED because they take open submissions. They clearly have editorial control as seen here. From our own sourced article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PopMatters#Staff:
- PopMatters publishes content from worldwide contributors. Its staff includes writers from backgrounds ranging from academics and professional journalists to career professionals and first time writers. Many of its writers are published authorities in various fields of study.[2][7] Notable former contributors include David Weigel, political reporter for Slate,[8] Steven Hyden, staff writer for Grantland and author of Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation?,[9] and Rob Horning, executive editor of The New Inquiry.[10] Karen Zarker is the senior editor.
- As I said above, assume good faith is incredibly thin here and ANY TEXT by this user on anything UFO-adjacent mandates compulsory maximum scrutiny, as I have now repeatedly factually demonstrated the user is attempting to distort facts to achieve their goal of deleting these articles in direct opposition to sourcing guidelines. DO NOT take either of us at our word. Take the articles and facts at their word, and remember we are compelled to live and die by Wikipedia rules alone here. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 16:32, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- I'll be adding them later:
- Please evaluate these too and attempt to be accurate. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 16:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- This is not tenable. It's the third time you've apparently Google searched "Sol Foundation" and blasted every responsive link into this thread as purported proof of SIGCOV then demanded we prove each one isn't. The San Francisco Standard is addressed in the OP. Word on Fire Catholic Ministries is obviously not RS. Your approach is not conducive to a coherent discussion.
"assume good faith is incredibly thin here and ANY TEXT by this user on anything UFO-adjacent mandates compulsory maximum scrutiny, as I have now repeatedly factually demonstrated the user is attempting to distort facts to achieve their goal of deleting these articles" This is the third time you've pivoted from discussion into attacking the motivations of individual editors. I would again strongly encourage you to take your concerns to WP:ANI. I'm not personally offended by your ongoing aspersions, they're just derailing to the AfD. Thanks - Chetsford (talk) 16:49, 3 May 2025 (UTC)- Word on Fire is patently WP:RS to discuss a topic of 'Would Extraterrestrial Intelligence Disprove Christianity?'. Again, as I demonstrated to all above with the La Razon example that you utterly mischaracterized--and that finding is incontrovertible--you're doing something here that is problematic. The article passes notability for the small scale of the article that we have. I would strongly encourage you to reconsider your actions, as you seem to be tilting at increasingly tall windmills. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 17:02, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Note to AfD closer: nominator has NOT rebutted my revealing they misrepresented Popmatters in their table, because that alone with the rest pushes this into basic trivial Notability compliance. That's why it's such a problem to them getting a successful deletion here; at that point the article subject will always be notable going forward. Diff here; there is no possible policy-based counter-argument to diminuize the Popmatters piece or present the site as not fine for WP:RS. This alone resolves the AFD. -- Very Polite Person (talk) 17:17, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- You have, thus far in this discussion, scattered more than two dozen different sources into the wind including unambiguously non-RS ones like WP:NEWSWEEK, WP:DAILYEXPRESS, and a Substack newsletter with 8 subscribers. It's easier for you to take a pass through Google Search and shotgun any URL you find into the discussion than it is for me to offer rebuttal after surrebuttal for why each of these random links don't pass any realistic threshold of sourcing. So, if I stop responding to any particular item, assume it's for no other reason than I simply can't keep up. Chetsford (talk) 02:31, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- This is not tenable. It's the third time you've apparently Google searched "Sol Foundation" and blasted every responsive link into this thread as purported proof of SIGCOV then demanded we prove each one isn't. The San Francisco Standard is addressed in the OP. Word on Fire Catholic Ministries is obviously not RS. Your approach is not conducive to a coherent discussion.
- In your source evaluation, you left out Aleteia (2 mentions), Hartford Courant (3 mentions), The_Byte (3 mentions). WP:NEWSWEEK says: "consensus is to evaluate Newsweek content on a case-by-case basis." WP:ARXIV says: "generally unreliable with the exception of papers authored by established subject-matter experts." The arXiv paper was written by subject matter expert Matthew Szydagis, a university physics professor who is also a member of UAP orgs. This is a lot of media coverage for a foundation less than two years old. Even if the article were to be deleted, it will surely be republished. Just tag it at top with {{more citations needed}}. 5Q5|✉ 12:04, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for compiling this table. I'm not sure I agree that a source is unreliable for information about the existence and nature of a pseudoscientific UAP organization simply because the source also publishes similar pseudoscience. If anything it would be reason to scrutinize whether the source is truly WP:INDEPENDENT. But I haven't seen any reason to think that The Debrief is unreliable on the question of whether The Sol Foundation exists and is notable in the realm of UAP-related orgs. Also, as 5Q5 pointed out, you seem to have omitted the Hartford Courant and Aleteia citations, both of which seem to pass all three criteria. By my count the Focus, Hartford Courant, and Aleteia citations are sufficient to satisfy WP:SIRS, and the citations to The Debrief, arXiv, and the organization's own website pass the lower bar of being appropriate for inclusion, if not necessarily for establishing notability. The reason my keep vote is weak is that all the significant coverage about this org seems to relate to a single symposium they hosted in 2023, while the repetition of that event in 2024 doesn't seem to have gotten much if any coverage. There's a decent chance that in two years I'll be back here voting "delete, this org seems to be defunct". But I'm not there yet. -- LWG talk 13:41, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- "There's a decent chance that in two years I'll be back here voting "delete, this org seems to be defunct"" WP:NOTABILITYISNOTTEMPORARY. Either it's notable or it isn't. It's not going to become non-notable in two years. Chetsford (talk) 16:52, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- That's fair, but my weak keep vote isn't because I think it's notability might change, it's because I think it's notability is borderline and further information might convince me that it never was notable. -- LWG talk 18:26, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- "There's a decent chance that in two years I'll be back here voting "delete, this org seems to be defunct"" WP:NOTABILITYISNOTTEMPORARY. Either it's notable or it isn't. It's not going to become non-notable in two years. Chetsford (talk) 16:52, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Comment even though I voted keep, the article was a mess. I took a buzz saw to it to clear out the distracting material that will have to go anyway if this closes with keep. -- LWG talk 18:26, 3 May 2025 (UTC)