Jump to content

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 keep. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy[edit]

The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This self published book does not meet the criteria of WP:BK. Objectionable and racist content has been removed from the article, the references do not support the book's notability. This collection of tracts by a member of a fringe cult only needs a one line mention in the article on the author. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:48, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: With all due respect, that is not a reason for deletion. – ukexpat (talk) 22:01, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: What I meant was it is not notable.Cathar11 (talk) 22:36, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
User:Cathar11 is also adding misinformation to the article on Alma White. I am not sure why he/she is doing it, but they are adding information that is directly contradicted by the source material they are using as the reference. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:09, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See Alma White talk page this was not misinformation but sourced from a contemporary obituary.
Merge because of additional information and sources added.Cathar11 (talk) 21:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain exactly which feature of the guideline it fails. Just pointing people to a multi-page guideline isn't useful at all. Quote a specific paragraph. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Wikipedia isn't censored. Charles Wright Ferguson's 1929 book The New Books of Revelations: The Inside Story of America's Astounding Religious Cults has a full page devoted to the book. That reference is already in the article. Lynn Neal has a June 2009 article called Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance in a publication called Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture which covers the three publications that White and Clarke collaborated on. That also is already used as a reference in the article. For a great timeline see History of the Klu Klux Klan in New Jersey. There are 100 citations for the book in Google books here. While I applaud the noble concept of getting rid of articles in Wikipedia about racism, its isn't the way Wikipedia works. Not discussing history doesn't make the past go away or prevent it from happening in the future, it just creates ignorance. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: Three errors of fact there.
      • 1 Ferguson devotes two sentences on page 271 [1] to the book and reproduces part of the preface.
      • 2. The google books result above lists the article subject and then 96 other books, in fact less since some are cited more than once, which mention in one line summaries the book.
      • 3. Neal's article discusses some of Branford Clarke’s illustrations in the book and mentions briefly an advert for the book in White newspaper the Good Citizen. The book itself is not discussed, just Branford Clarke's illustrations.
    • Please produce some WP:RS which establish the notability of the book. Jezhotwells (talk) 22:52, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Arguing that the lengthy article of White and Clarke only discusses the illustrations and not the book is just silly semantics. Ferguson is indeed a full page and includes the introduction to the book, which you keep deleting. If there are 10 facts about the book from 5 articles it has the same depth of coverage as 10 facts from a single book. There is sufficient information for a stand alone article. This article is not a stub either, it is a full sized article. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 16:47, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect and merge to Guardians of Liberty. This article (TKKKIP), along with two of her other books Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (KGL) and Heroes of the Fiery Cross (HFC) appear to fail WP:BK on their own. Ferguson does mention TKKKIP for a page or two, but it's pretty borderline, and HFC has one brief mention in a reference. Of the other 96 "citations" in Norton's list, those that can be previewed basically just list the book and the author in their bibliographies, without discussing it. Due to the age of the publication, there might be offline reliable sources, and if any are found, I'm open to revising my opinion. But assuming none are found, I suggest redirecting and merging all three to Guardians of Liberty instead of to Alma White. Guardians of Liberty is a reprint of these three books, and I think "combining" the borderline RS's of the three articles allows this article to meet the requirements of multiple RS's in WP:BK. It is currently a short article, with plenty of room to absorb content from these three articles; the three articles share a lot of text in common anyway. This way, we have the opportunity to have one decent-sized, useful, somewhat more comprehensive article (and redirects if someone searches for an individual book title), rather than a smattering of stubs that (due to a lack of multiple reliable sources that actually discuss each book) are unlikely to go very far beyond a description of Alma White's views, a list of the book's table of contents, and excerpts from the books. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:23, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Alma Bridwell White or other appropriate page. Cnilep (talk) 00:03, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neutral. The page still has serious problems (such as too many primary sources and direct quotations from the book or its contributors, and lack of historical or sociological context), but the article is being substantially changed. The question may need to be re-addressed in the future. Cnilep (talk) 22:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per historical significance. Disheartening as the topic itself is, the article educates on racism... a very sad reality in the United States of 1925 and is representative of a time whan a very unhealthy set of ides had an unfortunate strength. As RAN notes above, Wikipedia is not censored... neither does Wikipedia ignore that nasty ideals played a prominant part in history. Note: A 1925 racist tome will not be the subject on online RS. Time to look in pre-internet archive for news articles discussing the book. Surmountable issues, no matter how difficult, are not reason for deletion. Schmidt, MICHAEL Q. 00:48, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • merge as Floquenbeam suggested. conceivably we could have an article on each of the books, but they simply are not worth it. Certainly I think that Wikipedia should discuss all such topics fully, and the way of being truly not censored is to discuss them just to the same extent we would discuss them if them were more acceptable to our current way of thinking. Normally i would say merge to the author, but when there is such a convenient place, we should use it. Splitting into as many articles as possible for what after all are relatively minor works makes very little sense to me. Same principle as merging episodes. DGG ( talk ) 01:00, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

*Merge as per Floquenbeam and DGG. The fact that the book is self-published isn't relevant here, because it's not being considered as a source, this is the book as a subject. I don't think the number of incidental references quite meet the general notability guidelines, but I absolutely agree that taken collectively with the author's other works it's a notable subject and worth preserving, as MichaelQSchmidt suggested.--otherlleft 02:11, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Changing to keep based upon new information added to the article, I now have no doubt this book is notable.--otherlleft 18:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep a viable standalone article on a notable and fascinating subject, with the reliable and verifiable sources provided to support notability. Alansohn (talk) 16:20, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Were this the work of a 2010 nutbag, it wouldn't be notable; but it's the work of a 1925 nutbag that's been revised and reprinted several times. No real objection to merger in the article about the later edition, but it would appear that the original version contained material edited out of the subsequent ones. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:30, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The editors trying to delete the article have removed some of the material. Some of the quoted material was by Lynn S. Neal and from her article. I don't have access to the full text of the Neal article anymore. They accused the creator of the article as being racist for creating this. I had the opposite problem with Buz, I thought he was being too overzealous in exposing racism in the institutions associated with Alma White to the point of the articles being coatracky. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as I checked Academic Search Complete and came across Lynn S. Neal, Assistant professor of religion at Wake Forest University, "Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance," Church History; Jun2009, Vol. 78 Issue 2, p350-378, 29p: "The article discusses the image 'The Men Who are Refusing to Bow to the Great Image' from the book The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy by Alma White. The author claims that the image raises questions about the history of religious intolerance in the United States through a fusing of biblical myth, American identity, and Klan ideology. Efforts by the Ku Klux Klan to promote the Protestant religion and its moral ideas are detailed, with a specific focus on the ways that Klan members justified their goals." An aspect of the book is analyzed by a scholar in a journal article that is nearly thirty pages long, i.e. more than just treatment in a review even. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 19:29, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep Note: I was canvassed, so feel free to discount this as much as desired. Given the above back-and-forth I was debating between merge (group of minor books, etc. per DGG et al) and keep due to sourcing existing. The real question to me is if anyone actually cares about this book. I found 50,000 GHITS and 100 Gbook hits. While not very relevant to WP:N, I think it is relevant to a merge discussion. Especailly of an 80 year old book. I'd say it's a well-known book and notable enough for an article. As far as deletion goes, I believe that a page of coverage here and there of a book of this nature is enough for notability. Given the nature of the book, I'd not expect book reviews or the like. Hobit (talk) 05:10, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, notable. Gbooks shows it has been referenced and discussed in multiple academic studies. --Cyclopiatalk 11:26, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I am the original editor so my view is biased. Buz lightning (talk) 22:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge There are way too many articles on this topic [[2]] and some are way overblown. The basis of this article is an early 20th century newsletter distributed by the Pillar of Fire Church, which is both an article and a category Category:Pillar_of_Fire_Church on Wikipedia with many subtopics. The newsletter became this book and other of the books that have their own separate articles at Wikipedia. I am sure the enthusiasts who are placing these articles have good intentions but they seem to be stepping over the WP:Not line into advocacy.Skywriter (talk) 22:38, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop attacking the editors and confine your arguements to the material at hand. Just so we are clear, it is my hatred of bigotry that drives me to edit these articles. Buz lightning (talk) 22:55, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Wikipedia rule is: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:27, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't point people to multi-page Wikipedia guidelines and tell them your rational is buried somewhere in there. If you have read the guideline and found something that pertains, quote it directly. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please don't point people to multi-page Wikipedia guidelines and tell them your rational is buried somewhere in there. If you have read the guideline and found something that pertains, quote it directly. I don't see anything in the guideline you can possibly be referring to. The Wikipedia rule is: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." Thank You. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:52, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have struck Webley455's comment per Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive591#Webley455_sockpuppetry. Sincerely, --A NobodyMy talk 00:00, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Ample sources indicating notability of this unpleasant little book. Edward321 (talk) 00:58, 12 January 2010 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_Ku_Klux_Klan_In_Prophecy&oldid=1138845827"