Jim at JHU

Nomination of Alfred Jenkins Shriver for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Alfred Jenkins Shriver is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alfred Jenkins Shriver until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Meatsgains (talk) 21:30, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Jim at JHU. Great work so far. I've added some categories to the Shriver article and made a couple other small changes. You might also consider addressing the problem that the article is an "orphan", that is, that no other wikipedia article links to it. Also, take Meatsgains point that the citations would be better if headlines and page numbers were added. If the articles are available online, you can also add the url to the citation similar to the one I added from google books. You've been around for a while, so I don't want to tell you anything you already know, but feel free to ask me any questions you have here or at my talk page. You can also ask questions at the teahouse - people there are better at things than I am and will often be more able to help than I can. Smmurphy^(Talk) 16:23, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Smmurphy. I've edited several articles but this is the first one I created from scratch, so if it looks like I went around some established procedure, it was not intentional; I did use the Wizard for article creation and - by my standards - he merited inclusion. I added the article title and author for the Baltimore Sun Magazine article I cited twice. I believe the Sun's content is available online but it's on a paysite and I've never been inclined to fork over the money. I also linked from the Johns Hopkins Club article to the article on Shriver himself; I hadn't thought to do that previously. Thanks again for your advice.Jim at JHU (talk) 17:34, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

IMO, what you did was fine - at least in terms of procedure - but your formatting put up some red flags. My understanding is that new pages are patrolled by a group of editors on the look out for junk pages. These editors look at as many of the thousands of new pages created each day as they can trying to figure out what belongs. They are supposed to do a careful job, but their accuracy can't be perfect, and they often will propose an article for deletion based on cosmetic factors. In this case the formatting was not standard, you didn't add categories, the citations were not very complete, and the page was/is an orphan. After the afd was started, another user, Zackmann08, formatted the page (use two equals signs for most section headers - this may have been your biggest problem, even though the deletion discussion will center on notability and sources) and I added categories and did a little bit of citation cleaning and you've done more. It is possible that if Meatsgains had seen the page as it is now, it wouldn't have been proposed for deletion. I think the chances that it will actually be deleted are now very slim. Look at the formatting and try to copy it more closely on your next article creation. Keep it up! Smmurphy^(Talk) 18:39, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Wanted to let you know that I voted to keep Shriver's page. Smmurphy's assumption is correct - if I would have seen the page now, I would not have taken it to AfD. Nice work on improving the page! Meatsgains (talk) 19:31, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Meatsgains! It was definitely a learning experience for me and I appreciate the efforts of those who fixed some of the problems and made it look more presentable. I also added something on Shriver Hall to the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University page and linked to Alfred Shriver from there. I will definitely use this as a "template" if I create further articles from scratch.Jim at JHU (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)