Talk:Zion Reformed United Church of Christ

a review

This is an ambitious article by a brand new editor which raises a number of issues.

Pro

It is reasonably well written and readable. Aside from a little drama:

"citizens of Hagerstown could see the dark cloud of acrid smoke rising from the cannons in Gettysburg" and

"was installed at the unbelievable price of $10,500" -- unbelievable high or low?

there's little to change here. I'm a sucker for stained glass, so the photographs add considerable interest. The article is largely historic, rather than being a sales piece for the church. It is, at first blush, well referenced, although more than half of the refs are internal documents and most of the rest are a local history that doesn't speak to current notability.

Con

Author It has one author, User:Zion UCC. That raises several issues:

• The user name is a violation of policy WP:GROUPNAME
• It may be used by more than one person, which violates WP:NOSHARE
• It suggests a conflict of interest WP:COI
• Although the point of view is mostly neutral, there are a few places where the article shows the difficulty of writing about yourself WP:NPOV
• User:Zion UCC has made no contributions other than this article, but it was largely created at User:Zion UCC/Zion Reformed United Church of Christ. This suggests that the actual creator is an experienced editor -- few newbies would know about creating user subpages.

The author's style of citations and extensive use of images (thus the NOTREPOSITORY issue you mention below) is not at all the style of an experienced editor. I'd say that it's more likely that the editor is new. I've encountered several situations where I expected a role account and it turned out not to be, so I'd say that it's (statistically) unlikely that this is one. There's no way that you could be wrong on the others. Nyttend (talk) 13:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Notability

This is an old and interesting church. There are, of course, many old and interesting churches and it's not at all clear that this one passes our test for notability WP:Notability and WP:ORG. If I had first seen it as a paragraph or two, I would have hung a deletion tag (WP:AFD) on it on those grounds. Although the length of the article and the effort that went into it should not affect that decision, it inevitably does, so it's harder to take that action at this stage. As noted above, most of the 36 citations are either internal or old; in fact, none of the external references speak to current notability.

While the use of internal citations needs to be cleaned up, I see enough third-party sources to say that it's notable. Notability isn't temporary, so the age of the sources isn't really relevant. Nyttend (talk) 13:16, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Advertising

If this were a commercial organization, I would add {{afd1}} immediately on the grounds that an article about a commercial organization written by that organization is not acceptable. Should we cut some slack for a church? WP:NOTADVERTISING

Overall, the article is NPOV, and churches obviously aren't "in business" for most people — of course they want to attract locals, but you in Massachusetts and I in Ohio really aren't likely to become members of the church because of this article. Advertising is somewhat of an issue, but I think that it's not as much of a problem because it's a church. Nyttend (talk) 13:21, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Copyright Issues

Eleven of the twenty stained glass images are explicitly described as pre-1923 and therefore public domain. The balance may well be copyright violations. Note that the issue here is not the photographer's rights, which are explicitly waived, but the rights of the creator of the glass, which the photographer cannot waive. The photographs of the mosaic also probably fall into this category.

Mosiac is not a problem: it was published before 1978 without a copyright notice. We'd have to inquire about the date of the newer windows; unless they're 1978 or later, they're safe, since they don't appear to have copyright notices either. Nyttend (talk) 13:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I think you're quibbling here. The copyright notices I've seen on stained glass are down in the corner with the artist or studio signature, nowhere near visible in images this size. However, I raised it mostly for completeness, I find it hard to get excited about a church photographing its own stained glass, notwithstanding the creator's rights, and arguably, it's a work made for hire.Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 13:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Really...I expected that a notice would be large enough to see at a photograph of this resolution. I've never paid much attention to stained glass windows, and I've never looked for a copyright notice on any. Nyttend (talk) 14:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Minor Violations

The lists of leadership and of the founders probably violate policy against lists. The photographs, while well done, may violate the rule against image repositories WP:NOTREPOSITORY and be better handled with a {{Commonscat}} tag.

No question about the images, although of course we should leave some of them in. As for the individuals, I partially agree and partially disagree — the founders need to be removed, but the pastors could be kept. If we had no List of Governors of Massachusetts, it would be reasonable to include a list of governors at Massachusetts; this is a significantly shorter list and not likely to be worthy of being split out, so I think that it shouldn't be cut. Nyttend (talk) 13:19, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Summary

I'm not sure where I come down. On balance, I'd probably let the article stand, after resolution of the minor issues and the copyright questions, but others may feel differently.Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 12:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Overall, I'd agree with you, and our disagreements would put me more strongly in favor of the article than you. Nyttend (talk) 13:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties document is here [1]. Although I didn't see it specifically mentioned, it would be a contributing property in the Hagerstown Historic District, and appears within the boundaries on the map [2]. Acroterion _(talk) 14:02, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems like a great article, at Start quality or higher already. I love the stained glass window pics. Someone went through trouble to create and share them, and they are small, compactly presented, and awesome. Note, if the small images were all combined into one larger .JPG file, there would be no question that it is relevant to include in the article. Don't mess with that, keep them. Nice job, author! --doncram (talk) 15:27, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Did Hager give the land, or sell it?

The third paragraph in the History section tells us that Hager gave the land to the church. The sixth paragraph says that the church purchased it from his estate for a nominal price and a rent. The second paragraph of the Cemetery section says he gave it. Which is it?Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 13:10, 6 April 2010 (UTC)