Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Massachusetts Development Finance Agency

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. Black Kite (t) (c) 19:13, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Massachusetts Development Finance Agency (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log) • Afd statistics

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As far as I know, we don't consider the agencies of US state governments (as opposed to Federal ones) inherently notable, so we have to look for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". I believe that standard has not been met here.

• Of 24 footnotes, 11 are from the agency's own site or from other Massachusetts government sources, and thus not independent.
• Footnotes 3 and 19 are primary sources and don't contribute to demonstrating notability.
• Footnotes 5 and 14 are, respectively, a résumé and a Google Maps link, evidently not reliable sources.
• Footnote 23 is raw HTML.
• We're thus left with footnotes 4, 6, 9, 11, 18, 20, 22 and 24, which are Boston Globe articles. Of these, 4, 6 and 18 are not really about the agency. 11 is a short report about its merger. What we're really left with is 9, 20, 22 and 24, four articles from 1988-89 about a bureaucratic battle the agency was involved with, an agency called "obscure" and "arcane" by the Globe itself. While an interesting piece of local news, this hardly seems to qualify as encyclopedic, and it's telling that in 20 years, the newspaper that most thoroughly covers the workings of the Massachusetts government has only mentioned MDFA a handful of times. Biruitorul ^Talk 16:27, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 17:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 17:45, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Per Nom Winner 42 Talk to me! 00:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Courcelles 00:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The agency has about 8,700 stories that mention it in Google News Archives. The predecessor agency, the Massachusetts Industrial Finance Agency, is also covered by this article; it has about 6,800 stories that mention it in Google News Archives. State government agencies are important; they often affect citizen's lives in more direct and tangible ways than federal agencies. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:08, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• • I clicked those links and received 0 results for both. Could you please identify one or two sources that might indicate independent coverage of this agency? For that—not perceived importance or effect on citizens' lives—is the standard of notability this encyclopedia uses.
    • I've got 'safe search' off in my Google settings. If you have it on (the default), maybe that derailed these links, which have "&safe=off" in the URL. If you do the same searches by hand, you should get the results I do. For some specific news stories, try this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this. They give an idea of what the agency is about and what kind of projects they fund and so forth. Wasted Time R (talk) 05:00, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Also, a general comment: I'm not saying state government agencies aren't often notable. Clearly, many of them are. But I'm just not convinced this one is. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:49, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - The notability guideline is primarily about the inability of finding any reliable independent sources of information. The proposer has demonstrated that there are actually a number of such independent source articles to be found online; there are doubtless a number of articles, papers, analysis, and reports to be found on paper, and in libraries and archives, not online. As a recently-created item, this wikipedia article merely awaits the attention of additional individuals to follow-up on the initial article editor. Responding to the lack of enthusiasm of the deletion proposer for the actual activity of the agency, a counter view is that in 2009, the agency was responsible for facilitating the borrowing of hundreds of millions of dollars, and as an agency aiding hundreds of businesses, non-profit entities, housing projects, and governmental divisions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--involved moving forward projects in the state of over a billion dollars. Such activity, repeated annually, demonstrates that the agency is financially more influential than a large number of the 351 municipalities of the state.
-- Yellowdesk (talk) 01:30, 19 December 2010 (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.