Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darrers

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 no consensus. Sandstein 09:36, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Darrers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I can't find any reliable sources anywhere that indicate this meets GNG. I acknowledge the difficulty of finding online sources for a supermarket from the 1970s that went defunct in 2007, but still, you'd think if the store really was one of the first anywhere to introduce a free plastic shopping bag, you'd see evidence of that somewhere.

I checked Google, GBooks, GNews, GScholar, archive.org (text search and metadata), JSTOR, and Questia, using a number of variations on the name, including "Darrers", "darrers store", "darrers stores", "darrer's stores", "darrers bag", and "darrers+ireland". (Updated May 23 to add: I have just checked Newspapers.com and Highbeam despite their American focus, and also found nothing.)

The most I turned up were scans of local newspapers from 40 years ago which mention Darrers in the context of ROUTINE local coverage, and one memorial from an Irish man who complains that his mother bought cheap shoes from Darrers that he hated.

It's not enough for a GNG pass, or any other N pass either. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:54, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Can't really be objective about this as being a Carlovianan this store was a large part of my childhood/teens. Very important stop when buying your fancy erasers and pencilcase each school year ;) That said, it does look as if the Darrers bag has made it into the local museum, might corroborate the story of the free bag? Smirkybec (talk) 23:30, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any policy-based arguments to support your keep vote, or are you going to stick with ILIKEIT? A bag being included in a local museum is hardly indicative of the kind of significant widespread attention required to pass WP:N. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:39, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest my answer was pretty tongue-in-cheek. I acknowledge that Darrers has not been written about a huge amount, and there is a lack of sources for it. That said I am an inclusionist, so I will always err that way. I know that histories have been written recently about other local retail institutions such as Hadden's and Shaw's Stores, so I think Darrers time will come. And I wasn't saying that inclusion in the collections of the local museum should argue for its retention, but that it might offer a source for being the first store to give out a free bag! I would say that it has an Irish notability, and given that retail in Ireland is poorly represented on-Wiki, I would be disappointed to see one of the few articles go. Smirkybec (talk) 11:17, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We don't evaluate articles based on the hope that there may be sources in the future, we evaluate them based on what's available presently, and right now (as even you acknowledge), there isn't enough to keep the article. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:40, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I don't think User:Smirkybec was seriously offering her affection for the subject as an argument. Bit more civility please. The possibility that this was the first supermarket to offer free plastic bags in Ireland or the world is key, and it seems that this nomination is a bit hasty. Battleofalma (talk) 11:05, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I implore you to produce any kind of source whatsoever that validates that claim. You cannot simply assume that sources must exist, you have to actually provide some evidence that they exist in order for your argument to be taken seriously by the closing administrator. I take some offense to the claim that my nomination was hasty - I made extensive searches through a number of databases as indicated in my nomination. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:47, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The best I could find to support that claim: http://www.igp-web.com/Carlow/Tullow_St_04.htm . I'm inclined to believe that it is true. Tazerdadog (talk) 08:05, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It says a lot that an unverified personal recollection on a personal website with no editorial oversight is the best evidence available to support "notability" for this store. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:35, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 05:51, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ireland-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 05:51, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 12:15, 23 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete None of the Keep !voters have produced any references that meet the criteria for establishing notability. Topic fails GNG and WP:NCORP. HighKing⁺⁺ 14:57, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete nothing that meets the new and improved NCORP. Keep votes have no basis in any policy or guideline. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:37, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Fails WP:GNG and the keep votes are not convincing. -- Dane ^talk 22:51, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: does not meet WP:NCORP & significant RS coverage not found. Just a directory listing with no opportunity for improvement. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:59, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment-Perhaps a few, better, reliable links are needed in the article? As for voting I'll abstain for now-I hate voting delete. but cannot rule a delete vote in a couple days if reliable links are not added. Antonio Im not Darrers! Martin (Unusual user's talk page) 09:18 June 3, 2018 (UTC)

The fact that "a few, better, reliable links are needed" is the whole crux of this AfD. Actually, it's the crux of almost any AfD and doesn't particularly need pointing out. As I noted in my nomination and in several follow-up comments, if I had been able to find any reliable sources in the first place, I would've added them, and if anyone else could, they would've produced them some time in the past two weeks. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 10:19, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep As the nominator notes, the US-based news archive sites do not have many/any articles covering this subject. However the Irish news archives do. A quick search of irishnewsarchive.com for example turns up extensive references (to the store and the store's apparently recognisable bags). This includes, for example, two news reports from the Munster Express in February 1970 (across two weeks - 13 Feb 1970/page 20 and 20 Feb 1970/page 62) covering a shoplifting case - which uses "Darrers bag" as a synonym for "plastic bag". A classified "lost and found" ad in the Munster Express from 1976 (27 Aug 1976 page 4) which - whether a joke or serious - reinforces that the concept of the "Darrers bag" was a recognisable "thing". Finally, coverage of the closure of the store in The Nationalist newspaper (2004 and later in 2017) confirms that by that stage the concept of the Darrers bag was "meme"esque and quasi-folkloric. (FYI - I only looked for "Darrers bag" in the archives. Because "Darrers Stores" returned so much that I couldn't wade through it all....). In short, I strongly advocate a keep. Normally I am the FIRST to point to GNG as a trigger for AfD. But, by nominator's own admission, this was based on more US-centric sources only. Other available sources seem to support a GNG claim. Guliolopez (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Addendum. I have added several of the many refs I found to the article. I would also offer (to the "there is no coverage" argument) the cover of "The Nationalist" from 24 Sep 2004 for example. Alongside mass-graves, robbery and Daniel Day Lewis, they made the closure of Darrers a "front page" topic. OK. It's not exactly the New York Times. Or the Washington Post. Or even The Irish Times. But still :) Guliolopez (talk) 18:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Almost all the sources you have added to the article are trivial at best and do not meet any of the criteria of WP:RS, let alone the more stringent criteria of WP:NCORP. The first one is an obituary of the owner not a discussion of the store, the second is a business listing which never contributes to notability, the third is a copy of the source Tazerdadog posted which I pointed out as unreliable above, the fourth is a classified ad mentioning a lost Darrers bag which obviously has no bearing on any claim of notability, the fifth is pretty much the only reliable source although it's a regional paper so that doesn't contribute much in the way of notability, the sixth is a tweet from a museum which I have already pointed out does not support notability, the seventh is entirely about something else and the words "From the Darrers bag" are the only part of it that concerns Darrers, and the eighth is a local source.

So the only two sources you have presented that aren't utterly trivial are local, which fail the portion of WP:N that requires "significant attention by the world at large" (typically taken to mean national coverage at a minimum). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:00, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• I didn't add those references (to this AfD thread) in support of the NN/SIGCOV discussion. I added them (to the subject of the AfD thread) in support of the article text.
• For example, I added the "obit" reference because it supported the infobox and location text. Not because it supported a non-trivial coverage argument. That is met elsewhere. (On the classified ad, I didn't realistically add it because it supported the claim. The "synonym for plastic bag" is already supported by another reference. I added it because it was a bit "light". Remove if you wish).
• In terms of the NN/SIGCOV argument, as noted, when I went looking for sources to confirm notability, I found more sources than I could dig through. 1,336 news references in fact. Including 40 "front-page" stories. The latter primarily in the Munster Express, Leinster Nationalist, Waterford News and Star, and other regional papers.
• I did not include these in the article, because they are not required to support the text/claims in the article. However, examples include the Leinster Nationalist front-page of 24 Sep 2004 (including a half-page "feature" where the subject is clearly the primary topic), a Munster Express front-page of 30 Sep 1994 (also covered in a later op-ed), and several others.
• In terms of WP:N and "world at large", I may be misreading your note, but I do not read "world at large" (or WP:RS) as precluding regional coverage. I would however note that, as evidenced by the other 'keep' advocates here, these things are rarely "black and white", "yes or no", "1 or 0". If they were, AfD could be replaced with automation.
• And finally. Kudos for all the effort on WP:BEFORE. You went above and beyond. BEFORE is more than upheld. Its just that some subjects predate the wwweb. And hence not always found in open/online sources.

Mine is still a "keep". Cheers. Guliolopez (talk) 21:11, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep: per Guliolopez. Pre-www topics will always be a problem, so such nominations that may well only have local offline sources should be treated with care. ww2censor (talk) 14:52, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete--First things first, the standard of sources to support claims within an article is of a much lower standard than that for sources to establish WP:N.Secondly, it's utter insanity when someone adds a classified-advertisement as a source in an encyclopedia. Nobody has claimed that Darrers is a hoax and neither is AfD a hoax-debunking venue. Thirdly, I'm getting pretty surprised at the recent trend of throwing a volume of nonsense-rubbish-sourcing at AfDs, all of whom mention the subject tangentially at best, probably hoping that the sheer quantity will deter an quality-wise-analysis.Fourth, coverage in regional sources don't matter an iota, as to establishment of notability.A local/regional newspaper in my locality featured me in the front page, after I cracked a famed exam with quite a good rank and that does not make me any notable.~ Winged Blades^Godric 07:14, 12 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • tl;dr--Per PMC's brilliant arguments.~ Winged Blades^Godric 07:32, 12 June 2018 (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.