Talk:American Lindy Hop Championships

Notability

The notability of this article as it stands is quite shaky. Despite its name, ALHC is not actually that significant of a Lindy Hop event these days, with the International Lindy Hop Championships getting far more attention. The Brooklyn Paper source is the only one that appears to contribute to notability (the others are either unreliable, as in Jitterbuzz, NYC Swings, and Danceplace, or trivial mentions, as in Sfetcu), and it's a hyperlocal paper. Searching Newspapers.com brings up some possible other sources, but I cannot access it currently while the Wikipedia Library transitions. Pinging Викидим, who patrolled the article — what did you see contributing to notability when you did so? Sdkb ^talk 04:41, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

My decision was primarily based on the competition called "major" and included in a very short list (see the first reference, this is not a trivial mention IMHO). That said, if you feel that this source is not good enough for the claim, I can listen to your arguments and possibly change my opinion. Викидим (talk) 05:19, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Викидим, a definition of a swing dance event as "major" is relative to other swing dance events. And if we're looking at precedent there, the current number of articles for individual swing dance events on Wikipedia is 0 — Canadian Swing Championships was deleted, and the International Lindy Hop Championships might be notable but for now is redlinked. But even going into that is inappropriate WP:OTHERSTUFF — Wikipedia's notability standards are about coverage in reliable sources, not about which events are considered "major", so you should not be making NPP decisions based on that.

Back to RS coverage, the mention in Sfetcu consists in its entirety of this: Some of the major Lindy Hop competitions include the following: ... American Lindy Hop Championship [sic] (an American competition with an emphasis on showcase categories). There is some room for debate about what precisely constitutes significant coverage that goes beyond a trivial mention, with some editors arguing that the threshold is around 100 words, but the list entry here is way below any reasonable standard. It is very plainly a trivial mention by the consensus definition, which is what you should be using for your NPP work.

Lastly, I notice you mentioned good enough for the claim. Sfetcu is a self-published book, so its reliability is dubious. But per above, whether it supports the characterization of "major" is separate from notability considerations. Sdkb ^talk 05:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for a detailed explanation. I agree with your reasoning, will try to find more sources, and, if not found, will remove the patrolled tag. Викидим (talk) 05:54, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Added few more references. It seem that the mystery of "major" event with dearth of modern sources is solved: the event was a first-of-a-kind (at the time) competition for Lindy Hoppers), so it enjoyed some popularity early in its history (made it into Time's 1998 "Year in pictures"!). It had apparently faded afterwards, Stevens & Stevens, 2011 say that it was popular "well into the twenty-first century", this language usually is used to stress that by 2011 it was no longer popular. In addition to Time and Stevens & Stevens, I have found and added few more sources of lesser quality. All said, this is still borderline notable, although I think that many more sources can be found in the late 1990s periodicals. Викидим (talk) 09:15, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you that ILHC is definitely notable, are you planning to write an article? Викидим (talk) 09:17, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

At some point I may, but you're welcome to beat me to it! Sdkb ^talk 13:52, 4 October 2024 (UTC)