Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Articles on Caltech dormitories

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - no consensus, should perhaps be merged - SimonP 05:52, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

Articles on Caltech dormitories

This proposes the en bloc deletion of the articles on the Caltech dormitories. (See Caltech#Housing system). The article on Lloyd House already went through VfD (See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Lloyd House) and the consensus was to delete. It was subsequently recreated as a redirect and protected after several attempts to recreate it, probably by students in the dorm. Ruddock House was also deleted after a VfD, and is currently tagged as a CSD after being recreated yesterday. Most of the rest of the articles are currently stubs. The articles in question are: Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House, Ricketts House, Lloyd House (deleted), Page House, Ruddock House, and Avery House. If deleted, I recommend that after being deleted, redirects be created and protected, to avoid continued vandalism. Delete all. --BM 17:40, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Delete all. Dorm buildings = not inherrently notable. Redirect and protect. DaveTheRed 18:49, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. I should have noted in the initial paragraph that essentially all the useful information in these stubs is in the Housing section of main Caltech article. --BM 19:34, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. College dorms have practically no potential to ever become encyclopedic, unless something important has happened there. -Aranel ("Sarah") 20:01, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as vanity. Radiant! 20:09, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Caltech Houses are unique and are NOT DORMITORIES. They were specifically modelled after various fraternities and Housing systems in Europe and America in the 1930s when the South Houses were originally built. While I admit that the detail on many of the House entries leaves much to be desired, I would like to mention that when Ruddock House was first nominated for deletion in February a friend of mine significantly updated the page so that it was much more detailed than many Fraternities and yet the administrator apparently couldn't be bothered to read more than the one bold word per vote to see that there had been votes in favor of deletion, then a major change, and then slightly fewer votes against deletion and to apply common sense (in my humble opinion) to refrain from deleting the entry. As Caltech Houses are probably most accurately Institute owned Fraternities with a close-knit and strong family atmosphere and not run-of-the-mill dormitories deleting all of these is, in the mind of those people who attend or have attended Caltech, on par with deleting every Fraternity because they are dormitories. As a side note, the Ruddock article was NOT recreated by a Rudd (a member of Ruddock House) but by a member of another House. While, yes, I cannot deny that it was probably stupid to put up the joke Ruddock House entry, said person was probably just wondering why there was no entry and put up something funny to insiders in hopes that we would put up something meaningful. Therefore, I believe these pages should neither be deleted nor redirects created/protected and that Ruddock's old page immediately prior to its February deletion should be undeleted. After Finals (now through next week) and the GREs (April 2) I will help update each of the 7 House pages with meaningful information. Furthermore, if for some reason you absoltely cannot wait that long, at least do not prevent us from recreating meaningful pages at that time. Finally, in response to the deletion of the old Ruddock House page, I propose a change in wikipedia deletion policy that before deleting a page that has had a major change made to it, there must be at least one vote for deletion after said major change (or some fraction of total votes or something). 131.215.172.30 16:15, Mar 12, 2005 (PST)
• Keep - or merge into one article. - SimonP 03:48, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)
  • You wouldn't be saying merge if you had read the articles, because essentially all the information in the separate articles is actually already in the "Housing system" section of the Caltech article, with the exception of some pretty unencyclopedic information in the one or two of them that are more than a sentence. --BM 04:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, first of all the entry in for Ruddock that was deleted in February had some unique information. I would personally be willing to update all of them except for the last time my friend updated a page so that it wouldn't suck it got deleted anyway because of all the votes for deletion from before he even updated it and so I have no way of knowing that my work would be worth it due to those of you who already voted for deletion. Oh, that and finals are right now so I can't put the time into it anyway. 131.215.172.30 05:05, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to the Caltech article. RickK 05:32, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)
• Merge to Caltech and split off if it becomes too big. --SPUI (talk) 12:05, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to the main article, split off only when too big - David Gerard 13:59, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to Caltech and split off if it becomes too big. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:39, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to Caltech. If the housing section starts to get overgrown within that article, then split off into Caltech housing system or somesuch. If there is so much on any individual dorm that it seems to need its own article, then the text probably needs a judicious application of red pencil. --TenOfAllTrades | Talk 23:51, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and expand - The Houses of Caltech are not dormitories and their history and culture has had influence reaching far beyond the Caltech campus. For example, the slogans DEI and FEIF were secretly engraved on the Voyager space probes and have also often shown up in computer games and other places. Therefore I think that information about the Houses have great value. -- Spoon! 23:59, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete all, as per BM. vlad_mv 15:29, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Merge - The houses at Caltech are certainly more on par with fraternities than regular college dorms, and each has a unique history and lasting effect; however, fraternities are national organizations encompassing orders of magnitude more people than students in the Caltech houses. I agree with Spoon! that there are definitely things to be said about each house, but until such time (perhaps even a few days) as more meaningful and encylopedic content can be written (at which point they will then deserve their own articles), I propose that they be merged into a separate Caltech Housing System article. I believe a redirect would be inappropriate because some of the information in the articles (such as the histories in the Dabney and Blacker entries) would be out of place in the main Caltech article. -- Anonymous Caltech student, 01:11, 22 Mar 2005 (PST)
• Keep or merge into new "Caltech Housing" article. Seriously, it's not like a small clique of people is putting together personal homepages on Wikipedia; these Houses have years of history and thousands of members. Anyone looking for insight on life at Caltech should be able to get information about the Houses. Also, the information on these pages may not be directly relevant to the main Caltech page, so it seems a bit out of place to just dump this information back into that article. I could see a separate "Caltech Housing" option, though, if it were felt these pages didn't deserve an existence on their own. -- Caltech student 65.3.0.25 01:05, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Merge into an article on the House System at Caltech (not the "housing system"). The House System is unique among American educational institutions, is certainly of interest to anyone interested in life at Caltech, and is not without its impact on broader culture (as others have mentioned). As they stand now, some of the pages are just fine (Dabney House's is quite nice, I think), while others need help (the page for Blacker House, of which I was a member, is poorly organized and indulges in needless detail about room numbers). I am disappointed that I am unable to see the Lloyd and Ruddock pages which have been deleted, shouldn't old versions be accessible from their history pages?. I was tempted to vote to keep the pages as they are, but I do see the danger of vanity editing. I thinking having all House information on one page will help discourage that, and would also be a good place to collect history and traditions that are common to multiple Houses. --BlueMoonlet 01:25, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • You do know that by VfD rules, a "Merge" vote means "Merged into an existing article" (emphasis added), right? If you want a new House System page, you should vote for Keep. 65.3.0.25 02:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Okay, fine. House System at Caltech now exists, and I invite you all to start making it better. I will do no more work on it. I certainly hope that whoever tabulates these things will take notice that not everyone voting "merge" is voting for the same thing. --BlueMoonlet 07:37, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. These pages are a valuable source of cultural information. As mentioned earlier, pieces of this House System culture have reach far beyond the walls of Caltech. While it is true that several of the pages are stubs, a number are reasonable and have bean growing for the past year or so. The reason that these pages are not the most descriptive is the same reason that they should be kept: there is such a small pool of experts in the field and we want to increase that awareness. --sligocki
• Keep as separate articles, though creating a new House System at Caltech is not a bad alternative. The Hovses have a LOT of history and traditions due to their unique setup; the problem here is that the pertinent information hasn't been put up yet. Just look at gdbg.org, especially the FAQ page - and that's all for just one Hovse! If anything this shows that these articles definately do have the potential to become encyclopedic. If the pages are kept, I would be willing to contribute some material myself, and to encourage others to do so as well. If there's concern that there still won't be enough material, a House System at Caltech article with sections for each Hovse would be preferable to total deletion or merging with the main Caltech article; if any section or the whole article becomes too large, the individual Hovse page could then be split off again. --JPS (Caltech Student, affiliated with 3 of the 8 Houses)
• Keep The individual caltech houses have as much tradition, if not more, than say, the Harvard Dunster and Kirkland houses. Likewise, they have their share of famous alums. Looking at the Kirkland house article, they mention the selection process, the history, the steroptype of the house, the traditions, famous alums, and other bits like the cats and the custodians. ALL of the Caltech houses have all of these things, and if that's not enough to make the article encyclopedic, I don't know what is. -GZ Caltech student
• Keep. Christ, people, if there are Wikipedia entries for every single Pokemon, then entries for specific university dormitories certainly aren't any more trivial than that. Luvcraft 19:24, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Just another group of students at a university. National fraternities are encyclopedic. Fraternities local to one university are not (precedent). —Korath (Talk) 23:19, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • The Houses of Caltech are NOT FRATERNITIES; fraternities have not existed at Caltech for 75 years. Unlike a fraternity system, all freshmen are selected in one of the Houses in a unique process called Rotation. Each House and its traditions are unique to Caltech and are not branches of some other organization. Nevertheless, the Houses have a deep history of making noticable impact in the world by way of pranks and other things in ways that I think few student organizations have ever done. --Spoon! 02:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • In addition, if you were to suggest the deletion of the articles of the Houses of Caltech then wouldn't you certainly advocate for the deletion of the articles for Dunster House, Kirkland House, Mather House, Currier House, and Pforzheimer House of Harvard University; as well as Baker House, Bexley Hall (MIT) of MIT; for the Houses of Caltech are certainly no less notable or encyclopedic than these? --Spoon! 02:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • If you're not arguing that they're the equivalent of fraternities, then they deserve to be here even less, as "just another building that students sleep in". And yes, I'd vote delete on all of those. —Korath (Talk) 06:40, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
      • Comment: We should probably use the Discussion page for posts which aren't either votes or direct replies to votes; in that spirit, I've posed the question of defining "encyclopedic" over there. -- Caltech student 65.3.0.25 07:15, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC) I decided this was the wrong way to address my concerns.
• Comment: Guys, remember that being non-encyclopedic is not bounds for deletion. I quote from the Guide to Votes for Deletion article: "'non-encyclopaedic' is shorthand for 'Something that traditionally does not belong in an encyclopaedia, and doesn't fit the traditional definition of things that do'. This in itself may not be enough to justify a reason for deletion, unless the article is clearly a case of what Wikipedia is not. Note that some users use this term and 'non-notable' interchangeably." Also note that an article is not non-notable (i.e., is notable) unless "1. it is patent nonsense, or 2. it is original research, or 3. it is unverifiable, or 4. it is uninformative, or 5. the subject of the article is of potential [emphasis original] interest to only a small number of people (eg. 100 people), or 6. it does not otherwise belong in Wikipedia (as per Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not)." Since there are more than 900 undergrads at Caltech at any one time, and the number of alums exceeds 10,000, these articles do not apply under clause 5; enough of the articles have content that deleting them all under clause 4 is inaccurate. I ask again: What grounds other than vandalism are there for deleting these articles? -- Caltech student 65.3.0.25 09:21, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete all. As a Caltech student, I agree that these fraternities (and yes, they are just another set of fraternities) are inherently unnotable. The fact that my fellow students so adamantly defend their inclusion is just a symptom of usual college-student self-importance. They've deluded themselves into thinking that anyone else cares about their silliness. Just look at the information in the article: nothing but bizarre, pedantic lists of traditions that, while important to a few college students, are hardly encyclopedic. Take this: "TTBOAI = the two being one and inseparable; Blacker tradition provides that whenever someone mentions "the Church and Hovse of Blacker", everyone else so responds." That belongs in an encyclopedia? -- Caltech student

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.