Misplaced Pages

:Articles for deletion/Grand Lodge of Iowa building - Misplaced Pages

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
< Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Doncram (talk | contribs) at 17:32, 29 March 2011 (→Iowa Masonic Library and Museum: reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 17:32, 29 March 2011 by Doncram (talk | contribs) (→Iowa Masonic Library and Museum: reply)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Grand Lodge of Iowa building

AfDs for this article:
Grand Lodge of Iowa building (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

No indication that the subject is notable. Searching google (standard search, books and news) shows that there are no reliable sources that are independent of the subject that discuss this building (note: there are lots of sources that discuss the Grand Lodge of Iowa as an organization... but none that I can find that discuss this building). To justify having an article on this building, we need someone other than the body that built it to have commented on it. Article seems to have been created purely in order to bluelink (and hence justify) inclusion in a list article on notable Masonic buildings. Blueboar (talk) 15:06, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Speedy Keep. The article includes assertion of notability. Deletion nominator's assertion that the article is needed for the building to be included in List of Masonic buildings is incorrect; the building could certainly be included there whether or not there is a separate article for it. But the building seems notable on its own for an article, too. I started it just as a stub; it woulda been nice to get a chance to develop it before an AFD started. Deletion nominator has nominated for deletion or supported deletion of many other historic Masonic building articles, all or almost all of which have been Kept. Keep and develop is appropriate here too. --doncram 19:55, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Related AFDs include List of Masonic buildings AFD, Masonic Temple Lahore AFD, Sons of Haiti AFD. Many other items of dispute at Talk:List of Masonic buildings about whether individual items could be kept there, now almost all of which are kept and further have articles. --doncram 21:10, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Those AfDs aren't particularly related, and WP:OSE is an argument to avoid. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:39, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete unless references found. The article simply claims it was important, but doesn't provide a single source about the building or its history, and I can't find anything except puffery on the lodge's own website calling it "one of the outstanding buildings of the world." (odd that no one else has noticed it). Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 20:06, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
I've added some references, including documenting that it is a museum and/or holds 4 different museum collections and is open to the public. It is also a contributing building in a cultural district. It's notable just for being a museum, alone. Adding category tags for that, too. --doncram 20:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep Being somewhat of a Misplaced Pages newbie editor I do not understand why this deletion was started in the first place.
    Here is my reasons / questions:
    1) The article had been a stub for 19 minutes before it was nominated for deletion. The article has in the next 24 hours been greatly expanded (10 times it's original stub).
    2) I put in the words Grand Lodge of Iowa Cedar Rapids Iowa into Google and in the top four returns there was this a lengthy article. The second productive return from Google is a March 2011 Grand Lodge Bulletin PDF in Which it is noted that the Cedar Rapids Lodge is the main office for the Iowa organization. Granted these sources may have a connection to the subject but WP:ABOUTSELF allows this as long as it is not self-serving. I did not search further, but the Misplaced Pages article now states many references.--RifeIdeas Talk 22:03, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
The source RifeIdeas points us to is the Grand Lodge of Iowa website, ie the organization that built and owns the building... of course that organization thinks its own building is important... However, our WP:Notability guidelines require that we establish notability through reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. In other words, we need sources that are not connected to the Grand Lodge of Iowa. And since the article subject is the building... the sources need to discuss the building; not the masonic bodies, libraries, museums or other things that meet or rent space in the building (per: notability is not inherited).
As a comparison... if you search , and for sources on "Masonic Hall" in New York City (the Grand Lodge of New York's building) you get a LOT of potential sources.... with the Iowa building you get hardly anything at all. Blueboar (talk) 02:07, 28 March 2011 (UTC)Blueboar (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
IMO this is an obviously acceptable Misplaced Pages article now, with 9 references and notability as a building with architectural distinction and history, as a library, as a museum. Blueboar, please withdraw your deletion nomination, and then discuss at the Talk page to which name the article should be moved, perhaps "Iowa Masonic Library and Museum" or one still reflecting "Grand Lodge of Iowa", for a more formal name of the building and institution combined. This AFD is not needed; some more development of info and fine-tuning of presentation is all that is needed, and should take place at Talk page. --doncram 02:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Comment: Most of the new sources are about things other than the building itself. Notability is not inherited. What I could see is the creation of an article on the Grand Lodge of Iowa that included a short section on the building (ie I could support a merge). But even with your additional sources, I don't think the building itself is notable enough for a stand alone article. Blueboar (talk) 02:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
The first library that it replaced was the only Masonic library in its own building, in the world, per New York Times obituary of Parvin, its builder and longtime head of the Grand Lodge of Iowa. The current library building is a fine building, on its own (have you looked at pictures?) and is notable as a building and as a library, with perhaps the largest Masonic library collection in the world. The article can be a "combo" about the library as a building-based institution and its two buildings, but I am not personally interested in this getting dragged into a more amorphous topic of the Grand Lodge as a group with no place / substance / whatever. You can start an article about the Grand Lodge (which i don't think you want to do). But the article about the building and its building-based institution is gonna stay, frankly. We can just let the AFD process run, I suppose. I'm disappointed. I thought hair-trigger AFD noms with no prior discussion were no longer the M.O. --doncram 02:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I have verified that nominator nominated the article for deletion 19 minutes after it was created.  Detail is posted at Misplaced Pages talk:Articles for deletion/Grand Lodge of Iowa building.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:50, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete: Nom's argument is persuasive; while Doncram speaks at length about the references he is adding, the references keep failing on the fundamental premise: that they are not sources independent of the subject which discuss the subject in "significant detail." Over and over again, this building's own website is cited, and of course it cannot be considered as bolstering the notability of the building. The "National Heritage Museum" citation - presuming that the site has "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy," which is unproven - is a blog post. The three Cedar Rapids Gazette articles submitted without link? I could neither find evidence of them on Google News archive search or on the Gazette's own website. In Doncram's shoes, I would be less concerned with displaying indignation at the putative haste of the AfD and more with providing reliable, independent, verifiable sources which discuss the subject in significant detail.  RGTraynor  10:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Umm, sorry the 3 Cedar Rapids Gazette articles are not conveniently on line for you. Are you disbelieving them? Email me and I will send you PDF files of them.
I added cryptic mention of a circa 1910 New York Times obit with some info about the predecessor library, will complete that out later.
The article is like most museum and library articles in that it uses information from the museum/library's official websites. Is there anything factual at all asserted in the article that you disbelieve? So what if there is some puffery in the institutions own claims, which are quoted. Do you disbelieve that their assertions are their assertions? I believe the facts of the size of the building and that it is made of marble, etc. Seriously, what does anyone disbelieve here? --doncram 12:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Reply: Doncram, you're not at all a rookie, and you can't pretend not to know that a subject's own website cannot be used in support of its own notability. No one is challenging whether they have a clear handle on the size and composition of their own building, but that was never the point. As far as the Gazette articles, I'm more than happy to e-mail you for PDFs and will do that, but what concerns me is in not finding any trace of the articles ... not behind pay walls, not under any Google News archive, nowhere. I can get better results from my hometown weekly, not for articles published as recently as last fall in the paper of record for a metro area of nearly half a million.  RGTraynor  20:41, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment - The new title does seem more accurate, but the move does not resolve the the underlying problem ... we still don't have independent secondary sources that discuss the building. Blueboar (talk) 23:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment Is it the building that must be notable, or the contents, such as the museum exhibits and the library, that must be notable, or the organization, or all three? This question arises often when discussing a building, an organization, and the organization's museum exhibits and books, three different aspects covered in a single article. It seems to me in this article that the organization and the museum exhibits are far more notable than the building itself, so discussing the building is not the important issue. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • The answer is either of the first two: it's got to be notable as a building or the museum and library it contains must be notable (or both of course, but we wouldn't usually produce separate articles about the building and its contents). Just because an organisation is notable doesn't mean its buildings are. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:54, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Some more info There are other mentions of this in online references, such as in tourist-oriented places to visit in the area, if you search on other terms like "Masonic Library". One more factoid: The 2010 edition of the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, lists the Masonic Library (the 1884 one) as being one of the places "of note" in the city of Cedar Rapids, after just Coe College and Mt. Mercy College and before "an art museum with a collection by the artist Grant Wood; the National Czech and Slovak Museum (1995); and Municipal Island, a strip of land in the main channel of the Cedar River, on which the municipal building and a neoclassical war memorial are located." Sorry i can't give you a URL for this encyclopedia entry. I'm not going to put that into the Cedar Rapids article or this article, but these are mentions of it (or its predecessor also to be covered in this article) as a significant place. I emailed the various Cedar Rapids Gazette articles to RGTraynor, by the way. There are lots of museum and library and high school and other kinds of articles that are in wikipedia, where the notability is pretty obvious and the only source is the official website (which is fine). --doncram 23:53, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Iowa-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Museums and libraries-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:37, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Iowa Masonic Library and Museum
  • Keep - it's pretty obvious now that the article has had a day to settle in since being started. It has changed a bit, and I expect that it may change a bit more in the next few days. In any case it's beyond a stub, several references from independent sources - it's notable. Smallbones (talk) 02:56, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep - don't know what it's original state was, but it looks to me like the suitable references have been found. Yaksar (let's chat) 03:21, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Keep. It looks like a significant enough institution for an article. In any case, nominating an article for deletion 19 minutes after it was created is truly ludicrous. I have no idea what the nominator was thinking! Equally ludicrous was his deletion of a reference to the building's webpage citing "no self-published sources". What? That's not what WP:SPS means at all. Of course an article can reference the organisation's own webpage to say when the building was built! This is a pure misinterpretation of the policy. When a building is constructed is a fact and there is nothing whatsoever that says that uncontroversial facts cannot be garnered from information published by the institution in question as long as that institution would generally be considered a reliable source. Change this and you would be deleting much info from a large proportion of our articles! -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:35, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Comment by nominator... The focus of the article is slowly shifting, When I nominated the article for deletion, it was an article about a non-notable building. However, it is turning into an article about something else... a somewhat notable institution (the library and museum). That shift in focus is making me re-evaluate my nomination. I still maintain that the best place to discuss this topic would be as part of an article on the Grand Lodge of Iowa and not as a stand alone article... but that can be discussed on the article talk page. If this shift in focus from building to institution continues, I would be willing to withdraw the nomination. Blueboar (talk) 13:01, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm afraid that's still no justification for nominating it so soon after creation. Articles should always be given a chance to grow and perfectly decent references should not be removed for spurious reasons. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Actually, Necrothesp, I disagree. At the time he nominated it, it read, in full, "The Grand Lodge of Iowa building in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is a building whose dedication was asserted to be the most important event in Iowa masonry during the 20th century. It was built in 1955.", with the only reference being to the Grand Lodge itself and no templates indicating that work was ongoing. Blueboar was not out of line to nominate it, in my opinion.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:40, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
thank you Sarek. It was indeed the assertion that the dedication of the building was "the most important event" that caused me to remove. That assertion needed an independent reliable source.
I think my nomination has been justified by what has already occurred. You could say that the article I nominated has already been deleted. We no longer have an article about a non-notable building. We have a different article about a (somewhat) notable institution (the library and museum). Blueboar (talk) 14:03, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
That is BUNK or worse. The assertion that the dedication had been asserted to be "the most important event" was supported by the reference that deletion nominator removed from the article, before opening AFD at time 19 minutes. That quote and reference was also available in List of Masonic buildings article, where deletion nominator had edited recently (and had seen the quote and its reference removed and restored recently there before). The AFD deletion was not justified at all. Why not add a notability tag and discuss at Talk? --doncram 14:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
19 minutes Sarek! We cannot have articles nominated so quickly. Stubs are perfectly viable under Misplaced Pages guidelines. I agree it wasn't a great article as it stood (and the assertion you mention was indeed POV), but that is hardly the point. No templates are necessary to indicate that the article is being worked on - it simply should have been given a little more time before AfD was initiated. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:34, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
While I generally agree with you that people are too trigger-happy here, I've often seen articles nominated (and deleted) for A7-speedies at far less than 19 minutes. This isn't the appropriate place to be discussing this, as it's a long-term problem with an unclear solution.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:38, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Necrothesp, I understand what you are saying, but you are missing some context... yes, as a stand alone page, this article had only been in place for 19 minutes when I nominated it... however, the question of whether the building is notable had been raised at List of Masonic buildings prior to creation of the stand alone article... I had been looking for sources on this building well before Doncram created the stand alone article, and had not found any. I don't think this qualifies as being "trigger-happy". --Blueboar
That's a mischaracterization about the issue being raised. It was not raised at the Talk page. MSJapan and Blueboar both deleted or removed the building or the I-think-interesting assertion about it being "most important" in view of some, from the list there. It was wrong to delete it. I restored it and took the issue forward by beginning to develop an article. They were clearly wrong, there, in terms of applying reasoning about article notability rather than different policy for list-item inclusion there already. I wanted to avoid that discussion there. It is clear enough now that the item is in fact article-notable, so obviously it is list-item-notable. They were also clearly wrong, IMO, in misunderstanding that a big self-serving claim can be interesting and factual. It is factual and sourced that the claim of "most important" was asserted. And, what do they think was a more important event for Iowa Freemasons during the 20th century, anyhow? --doncram 17:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Question: It appears that Doncram (the article creator) objects to the shift in focus... So it will be helpful if we can get a consensus to help us move forward. Should this article focus on the institution (the library and museum) or should focus on the building? Before we can settle the question of whether the topic is notable or not, I think we need a consensus as to what the topic actually is. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I reverted changes by Blueboar and by SarekOfVulcan at the article, which recharacterize the topic. I consider theirs to be unfriendly changes, as if to support their original nomination and Delete votes as having been reasonable, when they were not IMO. I also object to mischaracterization of what i have wanted here. I added most of the info in the article now about the museum and library aspects of the article; i am not objecting to that. I do think the topic is notable as a building as well. That is not as well supported yet, but the remedy is not to rip it out. The editor(s) who could not find any info at all before, should not be the ones to judge that info will never be forthcoming on the topic of the building. In fact there is plenty of info about the building available. And there's probably more about the architecture of this $1,000,000-in-1955 marble-clad building to find. A topic is notable if it is likely that sources will be found; just because you don't know about them, have not found them, have not looked for them, just like you could not find anything before, does not mean you get to rip it all out of an article.
I am pretty sick and tired of battling with the Masonic editors (B and V and MSJapan) about everything touching on Freemasonry. Give me some credit for my experience identifying notable topics. Kneejerk battling by the Masonic editors has cost me and other Misplaced Pages editors hundreds and hundreds of hours in useless AFDs and hundreds of thousands of bytes of wasted discussion, largely in the Talk page archives of Talk:List of Masonic buildings but also scattered across various wp:V, wp:N, wp:3RR, wp:ANI and other discussion boards and many other Talk pages.
What I wrote before, is this is notable as a building with architectural distinction and history, as a library, as a museum. Blueboar, please withdraw your deletion nomination, and then discuss at the Talk page to which name the article should be moved, perhaps "Iowa Masonic Library and Museum" or one still reflecting "Grand Lodge of Iowa", for a more formal name of the building and institution combined. This AFD is not needed; some more development of info and fine-tuning of presentation is all that is needed, and should take place at Talk page. Should i keep repeating that? --doncram 17:09, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
You would not need to battle with the "Masonic editors" if you gave us some credit for our experience and knowledge of our subject (instead of always taking the stance that "I'm right and they are wrong"). Should I continue to repeat that I am happy to withdraw the nomination if the article is focused on the (somewhat notable) institution and not the (non-notable) building? Blueboar (talk) 17:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
You know, Doncram, we're still waiting for your first edit on the talkpage. And I'd really like to know how retouching a photograph is supporting a withdrawn delete vote. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
What am I supposed to do if you are always wrong? Seriously. But, i have in fact devoted many hours to arranging a massive (25,000+ edits) change to a National Register-related footnote, on behalf of Blueboar who had a valid point to make on that, and I do not unilaterally otherwise dismiss everything. Sorry there was some beneficial edits by you, Sarek, in what i reverted; the main point is that you are recharacterizing the article to be not-about-the-building while this AFD is going on. I think the building is notable, and I don't want the AFD to be characterized later, as disallowing anything about the building.
Note to others: SarekOfVulcan has now opened an ANI report about this, great (at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Unfriendly reverts. But, I can't spend more time on this today in either forum, sorry. --doncram 17:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Categories:
Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Grand Lodge of Iowa building Add topic