Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/WJOS-LD

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. Editors arguing for delete base their position on the failure to drum up enough available sources to meet GNG; editors arguing for keep point to SNGs and the possibility of print coverage existing. Since we've also established that such coverage would not be accessible/requestable from a typical library, it is essentially impossible to refute either side's analysis. As editors are relatively evenly divided and the discussion is already so long as to dissuade further participation, I'm closing it now as no consensus rather than relist. signed, Rosguill talk 03:25, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WJOS-LD

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WJOS-LD (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Non-notable defunct LPTV station. No sources. Mvcg66b3r (talk) 12:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The other reasons provided for deletion in this nomination are both invalid: the nomination seems to have been prompted by the cancellation of the station's license earlier this year ("defunct station"), but Wikipedia's general notability guidelines explicitly state that notability is not temporary. The other reason, "no sources", displays an abject failure by the nominator to comply with WP:BEFORE, since the article already contained two valid sources for the article's contents: the FCC's station information page contained information about the station's status and history, while the station's web site (no longer active, but available through the Internet Archive) indicates what its programming consisted of.
These and other possible sources should have been investigated by the nominator prior to nominating the article for deletion; see WP:NEXIST. The lack of sources in an article is not an indication of non-notability; the question is whether sources exist, not whether they have been cited (here, they were actually present in the article, just not cited, which makes it even less acceptable that the nomination preceded without any attempt to determine whether sources existed).
Lastly, I note that while two of the sources I cited are not fully-independent of the subject, the station's web site is a valid indication of what its programming consisted of; primary sources may generally be cited for their own contents. Barnhart's obituary is presumptively valid as evidence of his death, as well as evidence that he was the station's owner, the date that it began broadcasting, and what its ostensible purpose was. There may also be independent sources for these things, but these will do for the purposes for which they're cited. P Aculeius (talk) 16:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • [1] and [2] are the station's website - not an independent source.
  • [3] is the FCC listing for the station, it's little more than a database entry and isn't significant coverage. Documents linked to from the entry are written by the station and aren't independent.
  • [4] is an obituary of the owner of the station (at least it's claimed to be - it refers to him as starting "WJOS TV" but nowhere mentions WJOS-LD). Since it's apparently written by the subject's friends or family and published in a local news outlet it isn't a reliable source and it doesn't offer significant coverage of the station.
I couldn't find any better sources although there are other media outlets called "WJOS". The sourcing is also problematic in that articles are supposed to be based on third-party, reliable sources (WP:V), this article is not. WP:TVS/STDS is not a guideline, it's an information page published by a Wikiproject with no official standing, and it notes thatWhile television channel and station articles, like all articles on Wikipedia, must meet the general notability guideline.... This 2021 RfC attempted to make something similar to WP:TVS/STDS into a notability guideline, the proposal was rejected. Hut 8.5 17:32, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be unfamiliar with the guidelines for citing primary sources. Works (including websites) are valid sources for their own contents. A television station's program listings and statements regarding what it broadcasts are perfectly valid as sources for what the station broadcasts. That's all they're cited for—and therefore perfectly valid. Likewise, an obituary is a valid source for the fact that someone has died, or that he is the same person as the owner of the station, or that the person mentioned as a news presenter and subsequent owner of the station was his wife. It does not matter whether the newspaper is local or national, print or online, as long as it's in the business of publishing news. I don't know why you even bothered to type "it refers to him as starting "WJOS TV" but nowhere mentions WJOS-LD", as if any reasonable person would be in doubt as to whether these are the same station—and reviewing the FCC's license data clearly indicates that they are.
This is just a parade of excuses for getting rid of something because it's not important to you, all of them ignoring what Wikipedia policy actually says about sourcing. Nobody's claiming that this station was a vital part of the community or that the world won't go on without it—but the fact that it broadcast original and network programming to the area where it was located for around twenty years, give-or-take, makes it sufficiently notable for a short article in Wikipedia, identifying what the station was, where it was located, what it did, and when it was in operation. You can't systematically exclude each source demonstrating these things and then use the lack of sources to justify deleting it—that's not how AfD is supposed to work! P Aculeius (talk) 18:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The general notability guideline says thatA topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. This is the main standard used for determining notability on Wikipedia (and the only standard if the topic doesn't have a more specific guideline, as is the case for broadcast outlets). The subject of this article fails this test - the sources cited are either not reliable, not independent of the subject, or don't present significant coverage of the subject. It's OK if the article cites sources which don't pass all three of these tests, but there does need to be a source which does for the subject to be notable. Yes, it's fine to cite the station website for what that station broadcasts, but the fact you can do that doesn't show it meets the general notability guideline, because it's not an independent source. It's also very much not OK to write an article primarily based on sources which aren't independent of the subject - see the verifiability policy. The obituary also fails this test - it doesn't show significant coverage of the subject (the TV station gets one sentence in it) and it doesn't appear to be a reliable source. It certainly is not the case that all news outlets are reliable sources, and this obituary doesn't appear to have been written by the news site themselves anyway.
Again, the page WP:TVS/STDS is not accepted by the community as a notability standard, and the idea that every TV station which broadcasts original content must be notable has been explicitly rejected as a notability standard. It doesn't matter whether the subject passes. And as I've noted it insists that articles should meet the general notability guideline, which this one doesn't. Hut 8.5 07:53, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So what you're saying here is that the page for the station doesn't have suitable sources? Mer764Wiki (talk) 16:38, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Sammi Brie: What's your take? Mvcg66b3r (talk) 18:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Mvcg66b3r An LPTV is only ever going to get GNG coverage from within its area, for the most part. And WJOS-LD at least has it, evidence of local programming, and the things I generally look for when determining notability. The 2003 profile of Barnhart and the 2020 article on the station's sale are probably the best available material. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:41, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Update: I spent a few hours scouring archived editions of the Pomeroy Sentinel and Sunday Times-Sentinel on Google Books, and managed to find some news stories documenting the station's origin and history from roughly 1997 to 2004. Google's archive only goes up to 2004, and the Sentinel no longer has its own web site (it's been amalgamated with several other local news sites) or the ability to search articles from several years ago (I'm not even sure when it first started posting online). But it's enough, IMO, to demonstrate independent and verifiable coverage of the station's establishment, owners, cable provider affiliation, programming, and participation in community events. It's not a gold mine—but it's as much as you could possibly expect to find of a local broadcast station in a very rural area. There is presumably more information out there—the stories only stop in 2004 because I don't have the ability to search for them any later than that. But I think this is enough to support the article's continued existence. P Aculeius (talk) 18:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    NewsBank picks up the slack from there, though there really is just one SIGCOV piece. I have found and added as a reference an article dated September 1, 2020: "The end of an era - WJOS to be sold". It's a 400-word story and includes a previously undisclosed detail: Brenda negotiated with a Texas man to sell the station, which clearly never happened. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:30, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the help with the citation templates. I tried to use them, but got errors because I didn't have a URL for the original stories on the newspaper's website—which no longer exists—and which may never have been posted online. All I could find was Google Books archived print copies, and I also got errors due to not having any indication of when they were archived. Plus the links were really long—I only figured out that they were twice as long due to the Google text search and highlighting of search terms after I'd already decided to give up on "cite news". Good thing an expert came along to clean up! Like I said, I don't usually work on things like TV stations—or religious topics, beyond Greek and Roman materials—I only came to this because I got an AfD alert for WikiProject West Virginia, and it seemed like a topic that shouldn't be deleted. I may not have any interest in the station, but if I run across references to it I'd probably want to be able to find out what it was. And that's the value of short articles on Wikipedia! Thanks again for your help. P Aculeius (talk) 05:26, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep Hoo boy this is a something. I have worked on several LPTV projects over the years (W21BF is kind of similar), in addition to evaluating a lot of the HC2 stations for possible deletion, and small-town LPTVs like this can be very tough to write without the newspaper you need in the right years. If you don't have it, you are flying blind; there is not likely to be coverage frankly of any kind outside that newspaper. It may say something that I have only ever taken three LPTVs to DYK amid my hundreds of stations (I can even name them: K26AC, WVUP-CD, WYBU-CD), and each of those had a lot of coverage for different reasons. The coverage in The Daily Sentinel includes two bona fide SIGCOV pieces and a bunch of material that at least attests to local programming. This station was clearly something of a goner the moment Pete died; it never repacked (channel 45's frequency is no longer used by TV stations), though it did hold a permit to move to channel 34. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:50, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Sammi Brie and others above. Andre🚐 03:13, 16 July 2023 (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.
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