Jump to content

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Plainfield Riding and Driving Club

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 keep‎ and move to Plainfield Horse Show. Editors are welcome to discuss a better title or boldly move to one. Owen× ☎ 17:24, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Plainfield Riding and Driving Club

[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

Plainfield Riding and Driving Club (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I can find no discussion in depth on this subject. All I can find is photographs and passing mentions in the newspaper, such as "50 years ago today it began having horse shows," and "XXXX won YYYY trophy." I can't even find articles about its organization or dissolution. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 02:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Animal, Organizations, Horse racing, and New Jersey. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 05:29, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: The Plainfield Horse Show was apparently a prominent event of its time, run by the club, and had its own show grounds. Numerous sources exist, however they are prior to the internet. According to WP:NPOSSIBLE, it is only necessary to show that sources exist, though it is not necessary to have cited them in the article. My wiki-work in the area of carriages and driving has enabled me to find enough sources on this topic to indicate that this subject passes standards for notability.
    There are 15 search results in the New York Times archives ranging from 1907 to 1935 for "Plainfield Horse Show".[1] Almay has numerous historical photos,[2][3] most of which have been copied to WikiCommons. The articles and photos indicate several high society individuals attended as spectators and competed in the shows. Since driving clubs limited their memberships to worthy well-connected individuals, and driving is/was an expensive pastime, I would expect that society pages would be covering this annual horse show.
    This 1906 issue of Bit & Spur[4] has numerous references to Plainfield (the club, the grounds, and the show) throughout the issue, and on page 129 covers the first day of the show, names the class winners, and mentions there will be more detailed coverage to follow in their next issue. There are three pages of coverage in a Bit & Spur 1913 issue.[5] The content in these two issues indicate to me that this periodical probably extensively covered this horse show for many years.
    Another periodical, The Carriage Monthly also covered the Plainfield shows.[6] At this point, having satisfied myself that this is a notable topic, I stopped searching for more sources.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:42, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I really respect your expertise in this field. I did read the mentions of the club in newspapers before I even suggested this article for deletion. They mentioned the horse shows and sometimes contestants and winners, but not the club itself.
    I just read references 4 and 5 below. Nearly every reference in 4 is either a photo caption or mentions a horse entered in a show. Page 341 basically describes a new venue for the club, names the committee that brought this to pass and says they got drunk. The article in reference 5 is mostly about a show at the venue. Neither of these cover the club in depth; they talk about the shows.
    WP:ORGSIG requires significant attention from independent sources, and photo captions and race date anouncements don't qualify because they tell us nothing about the club.
    I believe you that members of high society were club members, but WP:INHERITORG says that organizations don't inherit notability from members.
    WP:ORGCRITE says that notability requires significant coverage from multiple reliable sources, and the sources I've read talk about the grounds, which are not the club, and the horse shows, which also are not the club. The only mention of club members named the ones who somehow got the venue built and got drunk. None of this explains to the reader the club's notability, why and how it came into being, what its purpose was, etc. I couldn't even find a newspaper article about the fate of the venue or the club. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 09:16, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Then we should rename the article to Plainfield Horse Show, especially since that fits closer to the types of sources that do exist, and leave the club name to a mention within the article. (I would do it, but not during an AfD.)
The grounds were owned by the club, and the show was run by the club. It is common practice in Wikipedia to lump together in one article all closely related topics if there isn't too much content, for example a company, it's founder, it's products, and it's headquarters. Sometimes it's a toss-up as to whether the article is titled for the company, the founder, or its product. It was common practice for a club, patron or organization to establish and hold long-running horse shows. Examples include Badminton Horse Trials at Badminton House, and the Topping Riding Club (still in existence) held a horse show for several years before it was renamed Hampton Classic Horse Show after its more famous location, The Hamptons.
You missed my point about the elite. I meant that the show would have gotten ample news coverage because of its patronage by famous names (sources exist), and was not trying to suggest that celebrity competitors made the show notable (inheriting notability). Just because it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to find those sources online, doesn't mean they don't exist. I have shown that sources do exist for the horse show, quite in detail, and over a long period of time (10+ years). See WP:NPOSSIBLE: "Notability is based on the existence of suitable sources, not on the state of sourcing in an article".
Since we can easily rename the article (and expand it with my recent research), I suggest focusing less on "the club" (current title) and more on "the topic" of the club, which includes it's show, it's members, it's grounds, etc.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 15:29, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Search results for "Plainfield Horse Show"". New York Times.
  2. ^ "Search for 'Plainfield Riding and Driving Club'". Almay.
  3. ^ "Search for 'Plainfield Horse Show'". Almay.
  4. ^ "Plainfield : The First Day". Bit & Spur. II (11). The Bit & Spur Publishing Company: 129. January 1906.
  5. ^ "At Picturesque Plainfield". Bit & Spur. XII (1): 18–19, 56. January 1913. (page 56) ...which in point of daily and also total attendance, broke every record for the past ten years, clearly indicating that in New Jersey, as in other sections, there is a decided increase in horse interest, and all that pertains to the horse ... The management is to be warmly congratulated.
  6. ^ "Dates of Prominent Horse Shows". The Carriage Monthly. Philadelphia: Ware Bros. Company. May 1912. pp. 45, 49. Following are the date of the principal horse shows scheduled for the remainder of the year. The list includes the more prominent shows of this country and Canada: ... Plainfield, N. J., June 6th-8th. (page 49) Both championships in the harness class went to J. W. Harriman's entries. (page 45)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 02:48, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Keep and expand The problem is that we have a one sentence stub. Looks like the club formed to run the horse show, so there’s little sense in splitting the two concepts. Now that it has been discovered , Someone (and it won’t be me, but I am linking some sources I found if anyone else is interested ) needs to expand it enough so that it can stand on its own. But I concur that this show/club was notable, and I would make an analogy to the articles on various horse races that were a big deal in their time but are now defunct. I’m on Newspapers.com and a constrained search for this club name gave me 577 hits. Looks like the club itself incorporated in 1905 with $25,000 of capitalization and there had been a horse show in 1904. I have linked an article on the 1905 incorporation and a oiece in NJ.com from 2012 discussing the event. Another clipping from 1963 discussing the show in 1913 noted that it drew 400 entries, which was pretty impressive. Looks like it ran through about 1917 or so— these shows stopped during WWI and many never recovered — and the grounds burned down in 1922. Looks like the organization had a polo team for a while afterwards. But bottom line is that I recommend we close this for now, give interested editors a chance to build it up from a stub, and then see what we have quality wise. As a horse show, it easily hits notability. Montanabw(talk) 06:04, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Keep and Rename. The sources found by Grorp are adequate to show notability of the horse show at the very least. Per WP:PRESERVE I think this should be updated rather than deleted.
    Anonrfjwhuikdzz (talk) 11:43, 30 March 2025 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Plainfield_Riding_and_Driving_Club&oldid=1284284906"