Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jennifer Wilbanks (2nd nomination)

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 of the debate was keep (which does not preclude a move by normal means) --SPUI (talk - RFC) 08:22, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You can see the first nomination here

The last time we AFD'd this article a bunch of people said 'she is probably notable, but we should do this again in a ~year'. Well, it's been a year and we need to reevaluate this person. Is she notable? No. She is a nobody. Nothing about her is unique or special (lots of people runaway, apparently). You could argue that the "media circus" around her was notable, but then the article should be called the "Runaway Bride incident". However, just because this person received media coverage does not mean she or the coverage is notable. No. Basically, the media made a mistake. Why should we be forced to cover their mistake? One rule of thumb that I use is "Keep the article if it can be featured", but this article is unfeatureable. There is just not enough to say about such a unimportant person. BrokenSegue 14:08, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I personally don't care about her one way or another. But given that bobbleheads of her are now being marketed, it seems premature to delete the article. There still seems to be at least a trashy kind of notability associated with her.Bjones 14:16, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Trashy indeed. Let's not get the dirt on ourselves. BrokenSegue 14:17, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep she's notable via major media coverage. Whatever we think about her or the story ("trashy" definitely sums it up) it is notable and should be covered, IMHO. Gwernol 16:01, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Still notable, alas. youngamerican (talk) 16:02, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Runaway Bride incident per nom. The media circus is notable, but not the person. Eivind^t@c 16:10, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The news channels have forgotten her, why can't we? Brian G. Crawford 16:55, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. A chronicle of media circuses from prior years becomes more valuable, not less, as they fade from popular memory. Smerdis of Tlön 18:16, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Runaway Bride incident. 10 years from now, people will still remember "the story of that runaway bride", even if they don't remember her name. Stev0 18:37, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Runaway Bride incident --Mmx1 19:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - I do not understand the rationale of "why can't we forget her?". Why not happily forget her on a page just like the many many articles on forgettable TV series, Pokemon cards and other trivia. When and if some incident comes up and somebody reacalls the Willbank's fiasco for the sake of parallels, then the Wikipedia article will be a useful source of information on that, at the time, notable incident. The information is verifiable, it was sufficiently notable and may be called on again.--A Y Arktos 20:29, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Note she is still featuring in the news, for example, in an item on Atlalanta news today and last Friday in Ohio about those dolls.--A Y Arktos 20:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete she ran away, is this notable? Stupid media beatup. - Ta bu shi da yu 21:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment If it is renamed, United States and 2005 should probably be in the name too, "Runaway Bride Incident" is very vague. Esquizombi 21:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment If we delete everything we'd rather forget about, will we be deleting any reference to the OJ Simpson trial and the whole Monica Lewinsky affair, too? Also, if you say "That Runaway Bride" to someone (at least in the U.S., and probably other countries where U.S. news is common), they'll know exactly who and what you are talking about. Stev0 21:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Runaway Bride incident. It was a historical event in American popular culture. This article would also be useful to someone researching topics such as news values. Accurizer 22:23, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per AYArktos. He has a point. She is at least as notable as some obscure Pokemon card or other fancruft. What, are we low on disk space? --rogerd 23:14, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. It's not that she deserves to be notable, or that the incident was notable. She's well on her way to being a stock figure in urban/media folklore, or popular culture, or whatever. Nobody ought to care about Nicky Hilton, either, but that's not the issue. Monicasdude 23:38, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Monicasdude. Wish it weren't so. --Allen 02:15, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, notability doens't disappear. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEME?) 03:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - notability does disappear. 15 minutes... --MacRusgail 03:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and do not rename, major media coverage at the time and continues a pop-culture figure. Create a redirect from "Runaway bride incident" to this article if you must. Crypticfirefly 04:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep -- the event was a big enough media storm to reach pop culture status leading to the marketing of Bobbleheds and the like, and involved the FBI and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. -- Longhair 05:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep -- I vote to keep the page just like it is. People voting to delete it obviously care enough to take their time to comment here. I personally love that dummy. Keep her here!
• Delete, I don't think it is notable enough. — mark ✎ 09:06, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Deletenot the first bride to run away and this is just a comtempory nothingness that has already been forgotten by the media.--MONGO 12:45, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - she has not been forgotten by the media - see Google news search for steady trickle of articles. For example The Forgotten Story Of Iman Muhanna Mohammad (found through Google News) references Willbanks to contrast how the media treats incidents involving women of colour with white women.--A Y Arktos\^talk 18:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• I'm inclined to vote delete, but since deletion seems an unlikely possibility, I suppose I will case my vote for rename as above or merge into missing white woman (or perhaps we could add her and all the others to a list of missing white women or some such thing). Failing that, let's try doing another afd in ten years.-PlasmaDragon 16:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep- Who cares if the "media made a mistake"? She is notable by many standards. I mean, lots of kids fall down holes, but does that mean that we should consider deleting the Baby Jessica article because she wasn't special enough? That article is even more passé than this one! No, both were media darlings for a time, and both have name recognition worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. Dick Clark 22:01, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and do not rename per some suggestions; create redirects as necessary. Why would we throw away good content which has been online over 1 year? Ridiculous. KWH 04:10, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Wikipedia is not limited for space and so we can provide articles that record past media frenzies. Keeping only the instances where the media were right and deleting those where they got wrong is hardly NPOV. I've got no opinion either way on the rename suggestions. Thryduulf 16:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Non-notable. Jon Harald Søby 17:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Notable enough that no one voting asks who she is. A prototypical example of Missing white woman syndrome. Jtmichcock 03:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep she has entered history as one of those cultural oddities that will show up forever on "This Year in History" type shows and lists - notable. --Krich (talk) 22:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Moe ε 02:26, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep P-unit 23:07, 2 April 2006 (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.