Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kevin Joseph Aje

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 keep. (non-admin closure) Sam Sailor 10:40, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Kevin Joseph Aje

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The only sources here are the website of the organization he headed. The only additional source I found in a websearch was a blog. There is no policy backing for the claim that "bishops of major denominations are default notable". This boils down to very questionable value judgements on what is major, ignoring that in some areas the Catholic Church is of little to no impact, and often these dioceses are very small and ignored both in the larger church and by local people. The diocese here has 60,000 members which is one half of one percent of the population of the area it covers. Unless people can produce actual third party reliable sources that cover Aje, I do not think we should keep the article. John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:11, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 04:43, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 04:43, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Nigeria-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 04:43, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as he is a bishop of the Catholic Church (would he be up for deletion nomination were he a European or American bishop?). Although 60,000 is comparatively small, that's still a rather large religious following. There are mayors and other leaders on Wikipedia with far less people under their jurisdiction. I agree that the article needs additional third party sources. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 05:15, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I would like to additionally point out that the other bishops of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sokoto all have articles: Matthew Hassan Kukah, Michael James Dempsey, Edward Thaddeus Lawton. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 05:18, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Through a quick Google search I found multiple mentions of him: AllAfrica, Catholic News Service of Nigeria, The Guardian, Africa Files, Reflections on Friends, Comrades, Heroes, Agenzia Fides, Zenit, Vanguard, and Dominican Life. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 05:30, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I have added some references (and additional information). It is difficult finding sources from the pre-digital era for countries which have not yet digitised newspapers, journals, etc from that time. However, I have found some independent, reliable, post-2000 sources which I think are sufficient to establish notability. RebeccaGreen (talk) 08:19, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Sourcing aside, I have just found WP:BISHOPS, which states "The bishops of major denominations are notable by virtue of their status. This includes Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican Communion bishops." So Bishop Aje, as a Roman Catholic bishop, is notable by virtue of his office, and does not need independent coverage to establish notability. Although that's an essay, not a guideline - but as he does have independent coverage, he meets both WP:GNG and WP:BISHOPS RebeccaGreen (talk) 09:07, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Musters past GNG. Also several book sources mention him [1], if only sparingly . -Indy beetle (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per WP:BISHOPS, Roman Catholic Bishops are notable. This is a reflection of the fact that they almost always have enough sources to pass GNG. Anyway, if you don't agree with WP:BISHOPS, he passes GNG anyway as noted by others above. I'd also note the risk of systemic bias in deleting articles about African people/places/things/etc which might have less than stellar sourcing, since newspapers/books/journals/magazines/etc from African countries are less likely to be found in online databases/searches. SJK (talk) 17:13, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:BISHOPS. St Anselm (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Per SJK, said subject has sufficient sources to establish notability, hence he meets WP:BISHOPS. It is also important to note that systemic bias is a bug, not a feature.

Is Nutin 01:29, 13 November 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Soltesh (talk • contribs)

Keep. We have always considered that diocesan bishops of major churches are notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:34, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- Bishops of major denominations are notable per se. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:20, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, so the take away is that if a Church meets some arbitary definition of "major Church" no matter how small the actual groups someone leads, they are major. While A person like Michael John U. Teh who lead at least 10 times this many Latter-day Saints in the Phillipines and was and is a clear worldwide leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has his article deleted. Also, I want to know where all these default defenders of the guidelines on "bishops of major churches" are when these guidelines are demoted and relagated to non-importance in discussions of significant leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:31, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnpacklambert: I think the reality is the LDS Church functions differently from other Christian groups such as the Roman Catholic Church or Anglican Communion. Catholic and Anglican Bishops are given a lot of leeway in how they govern their dioceses; they are subject to a higher level of authority (national church bodies for Anglicans, the Vatican for Catholics), but despite this subordination you can find a great degree of variety in policies between dioceses in both Catholicism and Anglicanism. By contrast, the leaders of the LDS Church equivalent to dioceses, which could be considered to be either stakes/districts or areas, are given far less leeway to implement distinctive local policies. The LDS Church is subject to much more central control than Catholicism or Anglicanism, and hence there is much less scope for local leaders to distinguish themselves by doing something different. Also, both the Catholic and Anglican churches have for decades (even centuries) been beset by controversies and power struggles and factions, and those controversies/struggles/factions are quite transparent – you will see them expressed in church-internal publications (magazines, theology journals, etc), and they are quite accessible and interesting to the secular media and to academia, and of course bishops inevitably have a central role in them. By contrast, the culture of the LDS Church is very much to avoid public controversy among its leadership – if any equivalent controversies happen in the LDS Church, they are very much behind closed doors, and nobody outside of LDS leadership circles knows much about them. Also, LDS leaders don't tend to become involved in secular politics to the same degree as Catholic Bishops sometimes do. The end result, is that Anglican and Catholic Bishops tend to be a lot more interesting and noteworthy and notable, even to a non-religious observer, to similar level LDS leaders. And, given enough of them are noteworthy in these ways, it tends to develop into a default assumption that they are noteworthy (not just within Wikipedia, even in the secular media.) So rather than being motivated by some sort of anti-LDS bias or animus, I think this outcome is simply inevitable given the LDS Church's culture. SJK (talk) 09:33, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, are you saying this is a WP:POINTY nomination because you're miffed that articles on LDS leaders get deleted? -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:55, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- This is a nomination motivated by the fact that articles sourced to only the websites of an organization that was run by the subject should not exist. While some of your points may stand, I think they also fail. At least on their surface many of these articles on bishops do not show that they in any way do many of the things you describe. The LDs equivalent is clearly areas not stakes. Areas, especially those outside the US, have a lot of leeway in implementing a lot of policies. Also if you look at say the article on Benjamin De Hoyos you will see area leaders do get involved in what they feel are moral issues. I will conced this is a much more reserved involvment than that of some Catholic leaders. However it is complicated in another way because virtually all members of area presidencies are general authorities.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:38, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There are public controversies, disagreements, on how to apply Catholic policies between Catholic Bishops. For example, there is a policy saying politicians who vote for legalised abortion (or who vote against abortion bans) are to be denied communion. But some Bishops want to enforce that policy vigorously, others aren't very keen on enforcing it. You can often assign Bishops to one camp or the other just based on their public statements–e.g. in the US, Thomas Paprocki (Bishop of Springfield, Illinois), publicly announced he was banning Senator Durbin from communion for voting against an abortion ban, while Chicago Archbishop Blase J. Cupich went on TV to say he would be hesitant to do something similar. Can you point to similar public disagreements between LDS area presidencies, or even general authorities? I'm not aware of any; if there are any at all, they are far less frequent than in the Catholic Church. The more transparent culture of the Catholic Church (and other churches too) means there is simply far more interesting stuff to say about their leaders than about most LDS leaders, which is one of the reasons why reliable sources (and hence Wikipedia) tend to pay individual Catholic leaders far more attention than individual LDS leaders, even if the number of church members they oversee is similar. LDS leaders don't disagree with each other publicly, any disputes they may have stay behind closed doors, Catholic Bishops don't hide their disagreements to anywhere near the same extent. SJK (talk) 20:41, 17 November 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.