Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biker's bell

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Flowerparty^☀ 03:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Biker's bell

Non-notable topic based upon completely unreliable sources: The article says: "There are many websites that describe the legend of the biker's bell." (first, note that it's just websites, no printed documentation). "Some of the pages are of private enthusiasts," (i.e. just some person) "others are of online community representatives," (some person with a website) "and yet other web sites containing the legend are of retailers of motorcycle equipment and accessories.There are even companies that specialize in selling these curious artifacts." (places trying to sell you stuff). No indication from any reliable folklore sources that this is actual folklore, let alone enough to have its own article. Person who created this article basically only showed up to make this article. DreamGuy (talk) 14:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as unsourced copypasta. Hairhorn (talk) 16:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I have added a citation following a simple search. AFD is not cleanup. Colonel Warden (talk) 07:25, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copying and pasting the same stock text you put on lots of AFDs doesn't mean that the article in any way deserves to be kept. DreamGuy (talk) 19:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We're just getting started. I have done a little work to bring out the facts of the matter so that we have more than just the fanciful stories. The items go by a variety of names and so trawling through the sources takes time. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The added in citations prove it is notable. Dream Focus 15:31, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete completely non notable urban legend of dubious provenence. "added in citations" do not show any notability whatsoever. KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Looks to be the extension of a word-of-mouth marketing campaign. I'd need to see something pretty solid showing notability for this one before I'd argue to keep. Right now, I'm on the fence ... the sources aren't very good, but they aren't patently horrible, either.—Kww(talk) 20:09, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The alleged "reliable source" added by User:Colonel Warden via his "simple search" is a book self-published through LuLu.com, a notorious vanity press outfit which means it's no more reliable than a mere personal blog. If this is his idea of showing notability, he's proven that it isn't notable. DreamGuy (talk) 20:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have removed the cites which utterly failed RS: a geocities source and the sales catalogs. There are now two "sources" left, neither impressive. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:51, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I'll go for delete after KillerChihuahua's scrubbing. He fails to note that of the two sources that are left, one is an unattributed cut-and-paste of the other. So, we are left with one source, and the article fails WP:V and WP:N.—Kww(talk) 21:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For goodness sake, it is a copy in its entirety? I scrubbed based on RS and only glanced at the content. Ok, one source then, either a letter column in a bikers mag or a vanity blog site - I'm going to guess the vanity blog site is the copyvio. KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think you have it backwards: the letter column admits they copied it, they just don't say from where.—Kww(talk) 22:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So the whole article is based on a piece of vanity fiction which has been used to sell bells for bikers? ye gods. KillerChihuahua^?!? 22:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and ask for assistance in improving the article from it's author and earlier contributors. As this AfD is only a day old, it would be prudent to encouage User:Colonel Warden and others in their attempts at improvement to meet the nom's concerns. Even though AFD is not for WP:Cleanup, it usually forces such to happen, and the article's format or sourcing can and should be addressed through CLEANUP, per WP:POTENTIAL and WP:PRESERVE since Wikipedia does not mandate a WP:DEADLINE for improvement, as long as there are efforts to do so. He has his week... let's let them work as the clock ticks and then judge the results when they are through. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 00:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh for God's sake, there's nothing TO improve. It's just nonsense fluff made up by some nobodies to sell crap. DreamGuy (talk) 17:39, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh for God's sake, pleae try to offer at least a pretense of civility. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 02:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. While it's a "known neologism" in biker communities, my attempts (and others) haven't been able to find reliable sources for this. If some semi-reliable sources are found (which is probably the best that could happen), it might be worth bringing out the razor of ignore all rules to keep this, and I'd change my delete opinion. (I've never suggested IAR before- but it seems this might be a good case, and I'd be willing to elaborate if required). tedder (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Gremlin Bell" in use on motorcycles is written of in Star Tribune and Lowell Sun. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 04:54, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The first one mentions the Gremlin Bell, then says "The bell is said to ward off evil road spirits." But no more- it is an article about "bike blessings." The second one didn't appear in my database source, so I wasn't able to see if the full article talked about it any more than the excerpt said. tedder (talk) 06:13, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. There is a large body of work on modern folklore, and anthropology on biker subculture. Yet it isn't mentioned there? Maybe in 10 or 20 years this will grow in stature, but not now. Or maybe it will be forgotten without Wikipedia to keep it alive. Why not add one or two sentences to an article like Superstition or Amulet or Evil eye as an example of a modern talisman? But delete this page.--Dbratland (talk) 23:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There are no sources in the article, and there seems to be none available, to show that this is anything other than made-up. Not just the supernatural incident, but the whole concept of the "biker's bell". pablo_hablo. 12:14, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The nominator and another editor have removed various sources in the course of discussion. One, for example, was a newspaper article which indicated that Harley Davidson have not only made such items, but that they have been counterfeited. Such action tends to invalidate the discussion by removing the material which is under debate. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:38, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Q @Col. Warden — do you mean this one? pablo_hablo. 13:39, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly hope not.—Kww(talk) 14:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

CW, are you kidding me? The article you added was to support a claim you put in the article that Harley Davidson made a silver bell that was the equivalent of a biker's bell per this AFD, and that article makes NO CLAIM at all about such a bell. There's NOTHING in there remotely similar to the topic of this Wikipedia article. If I am going to give you any good faith at this point I can only assume you did a search for Biker AND bell and that caught the fact that this article was about bikers and was written by someone with "Bell" in their name and that you completely slipped up by not paying attention. Otherwise it would appear that you are intentionally lying about the content of the article. Either way you only go to prove why your claims cannot be taken at face value. DreamGuy (talk) 15:29, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's bad, but it's not that bad, DreamGuy. The arrests were made at the Ride Bell company, which presumably makes rider's bells, although that is never explicitly said.—Kww(talk) 15:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Along with my mention of articles on talismans and charms above, there is an appropriate place where knock-offs of Harley-branded items could be discussed. There is no reason to make the Harley brand so special or the "biker's bell" product so special as to have it's own article. It is just an unremarkable example of a common thing.--Dbratland (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have some ideas too about articles into which this might be merged, such as Motorcycle#accessories. But merger isn't deletion. As some of our biker readership may want to search for our content on this topic, it seems appropriate to retain this article title to assist them. Why are you !voting delete rather than merger? The outcome of this discussion should be constructive rather than destructive. The original author of this article appears to have created it in good faith and we should respect his initial contribution even if we choose to transform it. No? Colonel Warden (talk) 18:33, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is deleting a whole page and then adding one or, at most, two sentences to a sub-section of a different page the same as a merge? (You're right, btw, that there are a ton of motorcycle articles that overlap and should be merged.)--Dbratland (talk) 18:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If anything of the article is retained then this is a merger and the licence requires that we respect the contributing editors by preserving the edit history. Performing deletion in such a case is an additional, unnecessary step and I am not aware of any good reason to do so. Please see our policy which explains this, "Consider making the page a useful redirect or proposing it be merged rather than deleted. Neither of these actions requires an AfD.". Colonel Warden (talk) 00:25, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Does this mean you have changed your !vote/opinion? Merges and redirects, whilst not requiring an AfD, are often the outcome of AfDs. There are many possible targets for this article to be merged/redirected to. Some have been mentioned above. Urban legend would be another. pablo_hablo. 00:46, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The issue at AFD is whether someone presses a delete button to make the entire article and its history go away. Redirect, merger and other imaginative suggestions are different ways of keeping the article. My preference remains to keep the article separate as we have several possible destinations and this would avoid the need to choose between them. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:58, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that, of which you should be extremely well aware, is that redirecting articles like this one without an AFD to delete the underlying article frequently results in an edit war when people keep undoing the redirect. This way, the bad article gets deleted and, if someone later installs a redirect, it's likely to stay stable.—Kww(talk) 01:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is not such an edit war. The author of this article wrote it as a writing assignment. He indicates that he uses Wikipedia but is quite intimidated by the process of editing. By going out of our way to utterly eradicate his first effort, we would be sending an unwelcoming message. This would be contrary to our editing policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've never understand why people even try to argue that we should keep bad edits just to be nice. New editors need to know how to make articles that meet our standards... they either learn from their mistakes and do better or they go away. Either way is better than just sitting back and accepting crap just for the sake of encouraging people to happily add more crap later. DreamGuy (talk) 17:29, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, the effort expended in this debate is evidence that the author's work is taken quite seriously. Hardly unwelcome, even if this article is deleted.--Dbratland (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - noteability established by good secondary sources added by the Colonel. Some of them had been incorrectly removed, as explained on the articles talk page. Page view stats show close to two hundres views per day over the last few months. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:48, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Those sources did not meet WP:RS and they were properly removed. Page view stats have absofreakinglutely nothing to do with notability. Please reread our WP:NOTABILITY and WP:RS standards to educate yourself. DreamGuy (talk) 17:29, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're right about viewing stats not directly relating to noteability. Theyre more a secondary argument showing that folk likely to come to the encyclopedia for information on this topic. With respect dreamguy, on the articles talk page I've quoted some of the applicable policy showing the sources are valid, whereas you seem to be assuming they say something they dont. If you can quote me a policy passage that clearly shows Im wrong Ill happily apologize and withdraw my keep vote. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:55, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge a stub to Motorcycle accessories. No way this deserves its own article, but we can verify its existence with a few sources. Fences and windows (talk) 21:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That would be a reasonable result - good find. Note that the article Motorcycle accessories has just been spun off from Motorcycle and currently only has one source. It could use an infusion of sourced material, such as this article. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:22, 26 May 2009 (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.