Talk:Museumand

Article for deletion discussion

This article seems to me to be suitable for deletion as per number 7, and possibly other serials, at WP:Deletion Policy. It may be that other editors feel that it might be rescuable through improvement, hence this discussion.

I arrived at this article having seen reference to it on two websites. 'Museumand' is described in the article as a museum based in Nottingham. I sought to improve it. However, I can find no evidence in acceptable Wikipedia sources that 'Museumand' is a real organisation rather than a brand once used by other parties on a couple of occasions. The references at the article itself lead either to dead links, refer ostensibly to a Museumand site itself (one of the dead links) or do not refer to Museumand at all.

Specifically, reference one is an error 404; 'page not found'. Reference two is a local newspaper which makes no mention at all of 'Museumand'. Reference three is a website which ostensibly describes a book, "Objeks and Tings" which Museumand is to produce. I can find no evidence that such a book exists. Reference four is a website which links to a page on what appears to be an otherwise inaccessible Museumand website: The link contains a series of slides in the form of a pseudo-book. Reference five is a dead link. Reference six is a dead link.

Museumand does not appear to be a Museum, nor even an organisation. It does not appear to have physical existence. I can find no references to Museumand which conform to WP:RS. I infer from the the references I have seen to Museumand that rather than being a museum or organisation it is, in effect, a well-meaning idea with a single originator which has been referred to/employed in a couple of (real) museum displays. My view is that the Museumand Wikipedia article is essentially the product of a modest attempt at PR (see WP:PR). I can see no way of improving it since Museumand does not appear to be a real organisation; I therefore conclude it should be proposed as an article for deletion. I will leave these comments here and alert the article creator (@PamD), then take a view either following other comments or in the event that no comments are received here. Emmentalist (talk) 20:29, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

@Emmentalist The website of Museumand is currently saying "Maintenance", rather than being a dead link; the Internet Archive has copies of these pages, and unless there is evidence to the contrary I would AGF that the website is indeed undergoing maintenance today. Several of the dead links you mention are to pages of that site. I have linked to an archived version of ref 1.

Ref 2 doesn't mention Museumand because it is about the founding of its predecessor.

The book "Objeks and Tings" has been catalogued by Leeds City Libraries.

Ref 4's linked "otherwise inaccessible website" was archived in 2022, though the archived version struggles to get beyond displaying the cover of the 148-page book.

There is a current exhibition, Parnder Hand: A Caribbean answer to British banking exclusion, open until June 2024 "by Museumand, The National Caribbean heritage Museum" at the Bank of England Museum. The Bank of England Museum published in June 2023 the third blog in a series of blogs written by Museumand – the National Caribbean Heritage Museum Opens in a new window celebrating the role and contribution of the Caribbean community in the UK., with a link to www.museumand.org, the site currently reported as undergoing maintenance.

The Museum Association's piece about the reopening of Nottingham Castle Museum includes To commemorate the 75th anniversary of Windrush Day, a temporary exhibition, 70 Objeks & Tings, has been developed at the museum by Museumand (the National Caribbean Heritage Museum), working with Nottingham City Museums. The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the same title (available for sale at the Castle shop).

I believe that this museum without walls is notable and that this article should exist. PamD 23:54, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this reply, @PamD. Taking your thoughts fully into account, here are mine. The Museumand article fails WP:GNG on several points. It also fails WP:Verifiability and WP:reliability. My own view is that it also fails on WP:WhatWikipediaisnot (i.e. it amounts to PR). I think this would have been picked up if the article had gone through the AfC process. Specifically, there is no evidence of significant coverage of Museumand in reliable sources and your reference to the catalogue of Leeds City libraries requires original research (see WP:No OR). Moreover, that a 2022 website is now archived is simply evidence that the website once existed, not that it exists now. A maintenance notice (I have found a reference which might constitute WP:OR which suggests that the site has been under maintenance since 2022) is again not evidence of an extant website, let alone a notable museum. A long period of maintenance is often a sign that the domain name has not changed hands and remains in contract with an ISP, but tells us no more than that. The book you refer to does not appear to have an ISBN number nor be referred to by any verifiable bookseller (again, that may constitute OR). As you know, public libraries catalogue all sorts of things which do not actually take the form of a book. In essence, I think Museumand was essentially a modest and well-intentioned display which was put up for a short time by a small number of libraries/museums. It has received no notable coverage. It is in no way a museum and there is no evidence available that it has any form of present existence. There is no evidence that Museumand is a group, as described in the article, let alone a museum. There are other sources (which again I think would constitute WP:OR were I to include them here) in which the originator of Museumand describes it as a "national museum"; this is clearly misleading at best and illustrates the PR problem. I absolutely presume that the Wikipedia article was created in good faith, but its failure on so many WP policies, and the lack of any reliable sources which might enable the article's improvement, leads to it being suitable for deletion. As we disagree, I will nominate the article at WP:AfD. All the best, Emmentalist (talk) 08:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how looking at public library catalogues constitutes "Original Research", and I resent your implication that my work is PR, suggesting that I am an undisclosed paid editor or, at the least, have COI. I have no connection with Museumand beyond having heard about it (almost certainly on BBC Radio 4, though I didn't make an exact note at the time) and believing it to be Notable. PamD 09:17, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I have now incorporated much of the material I mentioned above into the article, showing Museumand's recent activities in holding exhibitions in 2023 at Nottingham Castle and in 2024 at the Bank of England Museum. The AfD discussion page appears not to be properly formatted as yet so I will delay replying there until an AfD afficionado has sorted it out.

The fact that https://www.museumand.org etc are showing up in Google searches and are linked from the 2023 blog posts encourages me to believe that the pages have recently been active and that there is indeed ongoing maintenance. PamD 10:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi, @PamD I'm very sorry you feel that my nomination of the AfD suggested that you had WP:COI or were a paid editor. I honestly don't think that is implied in any way. Specifically, I wrote: "I absolutely presume that the Wikipedia article was created in good faith". My reference to PR refers to the repetition of PR by others who are not the PR originator; that is how PR works - it is designed to influence ongoing discourse through others in precisely this way. The lack of a functioning Museumand website is really the least of it, by the way. The central problem with the article is the lack of notability through a lack of extensive, verifiable and reliable coverage in non-deprecated sources. If I may, however, I will deal with the changes you have made. You have added a number of references, but they are almost all to websites of unknown provenance; some are again cached web pages not now available - often from the putative organisation's own unavailable website. None of these are acceptable WP:RS. In one case it is a local council advertising a future event which does not explain what Museumand is. The standout reference is number 8, which is to a mention of a podcast in the Guardian. This last reference does not verify the existence of the museum or organisation but rather the podcast. However this reference is, in my view, an acceptable source which could be used in conjunction with others to show widespread coverage (if such coverage existed). However, it clearly cannot of itself serve to satisfy WP:Notability any more than a mention of the many other podcasts the article mentions would do so for all the other podcasts. I say again that I do not doubt that someone who own the domain name 'Museumand' has contributed to a number of museum/gallery displays but there is no evidence of notability and no evidence at all that Museumand is either a Museum or a real organisation. As a final point, I would say that while it might seem benevolent to support a claim that someone has created THE national Caribbean heritage museum, there might well be people within the Caribbean communities who feel that this is a grandiose and perhaps even unhelpful claim. I'll leave it at that. All the best, Emmentalist (talk) 17:10, 15 February 2024 (UTC)