[]1While at the [OER14
conference]2, I had an interesting discussion re: an [article for
deletion]3 case. I’m going to give the specific example here,
because it exemplifies a few issues, but I think the things considered
have much broader relevance than given here. I’ll also note, the person
wasn’t asking for intervention (I think I did correct a typo or
something minor, but I didn’t get involved in the AfD or do much else),
instead they were just asking whether I could give any insight into what
was going on, and what advice they could give to their colleagues who’d
edited it and wanted to save their work. If anyone has any other views,
or/and resources do let me know, happy to incorporate them or just add
them yourselves as comments. So….#Current position: The
Wikipedia article for the [International Journal of Mobile and Blended
Learning]4 was up for deletion. The journal is the official
publication of an association (International Association for Mobile
Learning), which also has a conference (mLearn). Both the association
and conference articles have already been deleted, but the outcome of
the [journal deletion discussion was ‘keep’]5. Some of the editors
of the Wikipedia article seem to be associated with the journal, which
is probably very common for journals and the alike, although generally
it’s best practice to add content to the ‘talk’ page, and let another
editor move that content into the main article space. From reading some
discussions around this, it seems the Wikipedia community might be a bit
more flexible on this in the case of journals.# **Standing issues –
why was the article put up for deletion? ** So, the question is, why
was the article put up for deletion? The journal article could be
improved, and there are a number of issues with it: 1. The [article is
not well linked to]6 (although it does link to other articles,
which is a good thing) 1. One of the few articles linking to it is
currently up for deletion
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IADIS_Mobile_Learning]7 2.
M-learn (the conference)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/MLearn]8
has been deleted (and the article in ‘1.1’ above refers to m-learn as
more significant than it!) 3. M-learning could use improvement as an
article in any case, so this topic-related link-in is also not
particularly “high quality”, if anyone can improve this article that
would be great 2. There are no references or external sources given (but
these are a challenge for journals unless they get press coverage or
coverage in specialist magazines which is very unusual) 3. It is fairly
young as a journal, and quite niche – although I think I’m probably an
inclusionist on such matters, particularly given the challenges of
establishing notability via any kind of general notability criteria (see
below).#Possible Actions: In such circumstances, other than
improving the article itself (the obvious thing to do!) there are a
number of possible options around articles: 1. Give up – don’t edit the
article, and accept the journal may not meet general notability criteria
at the moment if it comes up for deletion again (but keep an eye out to
recreate the article in the future if its notability improves) 2. Merge
content – consolidate the sets of materials into one article (or however
many are appropriate). So in this case that would look like either: 1.
Recreate the association article, and merge the mLearn and journal
articles into that (This makes more sense in terms of which article has
priority, but from an ontology perspective merging journals into
societies makes me want to cry! I want Wikipedia to ‘know’ about both!)
2. Recreate the association article and just merge the mLearn material
into it, and link to the journal. This seems like a sensible option –
the conference & association together seem notable to me, but the
journal is separate. 3. Create more articles around the AfD target
article – this means there are more links in/out, but of course risks
just creating extra articles (and possibly lots of ‘stubs’). In this
case this might’ve been an option, and would have involved recreating
the association and m-learn articles as distinct but in such a way that
they’re justifiable in their own right (I’m not sure I’m in a position
to know if this is likely, but to be honest my instinct is it isn’t
going to be successful). I’d suggest ‘4’ is a better option…. 4. Improve
existing articles around the AfD target article – if the field is better
represented, and appropriately described in relevant articles, then this
is likely to make clearer the value of articles ‘within a set’ as
opposed to on their own. Of course, there is a big risk here that you
engage in [conflict of interest]9 editing (see resources below
around this) and even if you’re making lots of other high quality edits
alongside, if it looks like you’re engaging in a concerted attempt to
insert your journal/society/conference into more articles it will not
look good. A better strategy might be to improve the articles, and
suggest on the talk pages that someone else puts the
journal/society/conference in. In this case, whatever else is done, the
M-Learning article could use some work on it, and improving that would
likely relate to some core venues in the field (including the journal
and conference), as well as perhaps encouraging other relevant people to
edit and continue the improvements!# General Guidance The general
principle for notability is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#General_notability_guideline]10,
but this is very challenging for academic-areas to meet. So, for
learned-societies and journals there is some discussion on notability
criteria: * Discussion on learned society notability
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Notability_%28academics%29#Restarting_discussion_.28April.29]11
