User:Joe Decker/AfDProject1

Project 1: Are these "notable?" Below is a set of, they happen to also all be BLPs marked unsourced. For each, I'd like you to imagine that they showed up at AfD with a deletion rationale of "not notable"; for each, I'd like you to tell me how you'd decide what should be done with the articles--not just your vote, but why, and which notability criteria you considered, and what sources underlie that.

Dominic Madden
Answer: delete per this. After a type into google, I am struggling to find any secondary sources. I have found a few, but they're only copied from Wikipedia, Wiki is not a reliable source, especially when there are no references. Also per this, which strongly recommends delete, even with no consensus..--Chip123456 ^Talk_Contribs 18:58, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Yeah. I think I'd probably add the two sources I just added, but note that the first certainly isn't significant coverage, and that there's not much more I can find... [1] was the search that netted me anything at all. And yeah, that's a WP:GNG question. I'm not going to send this off to deletion myself--I think it's close enough that someone more knowledgable than I *might* be able to find something, and the article itself isn't particularly problematic, but I'd probably give this one a delete at AfD. I know it may sound odd that I'd vote delete *and* add a source, but it's a good policy. Saying you can't find sources that meet WP:GNG is a good argument I'd give good weight in closing, actually *adding* a source and then saying it would give me a little more confidence that you had tried--something that probably does influence how I "close", if that makes sense.

It looks like the sources I did find might have been ones you'd missed, although you may have written them off both as not sufficient enough coverage (which would be a reasonable point of view.) If you had trouble finding them, well, I always try Google News Archives and Google Books searches. GNA has been harder to get to these days, you have to do a Google News search and then click on "archives" in the left column. If you didn't see The Stage and Evening Standard, then play with that a minute and see if you can get them to show up, as with the link I provided above. Thanks!
Sumaira Malik
Answer: Keep per this. They have held a high national status for their country. I would advise sources to be added, from reliable, secondary websites.--Chip123456 ^Talk_Contribs 19:04, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd accept that as a clear and sufficient argument there as a closer. Because I've found a few hoaxes at Wikipedia I'd probably try, were I !voting myself, to find something to verify the position (remember, WP:NRVE), but those sources are readily visible in Google News Archives and in Google Books. As a closer I'd give your argument good weight. --j⚛e decker ^talk 21:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Peter McCormick
Answer: Possible keep per this. They have received an OBE which is a big things here, in the UK.--Chip¹²³⁴⁵⁶ 17:16, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Response: I actually had to look, there's been different consensus about the notability of OBE's in general, more recently that it's not enough by itself. Here's some AfDs: [2], [3]. There is not a lot of direct guidance on just how significant an award has to be for it to count, often editors will discuss the number of people who have that award as one indication. Here's how I searched. I tink if I'd been contributing to an AfD discussion here I would have gone to sources and tried to get an answer out of WP:GNG, I don't think the two sources I've just added to the article quite get the article there, but I'm guessing that with the OBE in view there's enough. I'd probably vote keep, but want to see the sources as a closer. (By the way, don't feel too bad about this one, there are a LOT of cases where "policy" is really a lot of precedent that people have remembered from participating in lots of AfDs. Going through exercises like this is how you get to know most of them! Do learn how to look for past AfDs as I have, and keep participating at AfDs.--j⚛e decker ^talk 00:03, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
John P. McLaren
Answer: Possible keep per this. They have recieved a well known significant honour, that of a Major-General.--Chip123456 ^Talk_Contribs 19:28, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Wow, this is an interesting case. And I think that's a sensible by-the-book response and way of looking at it. I didn't find much in the way of secondary sources, so it's harder *for me* make a WP:GNG argument. What convinced me was reading WP:WikiProject_Military_history/Notability_guide#People. Now that's an essay, but in my experience it's generally at least accorded some respect in Wikipedia discussions... and it's easy to look at the WikiProject advice as really providing some guidance about the very rule you just invoked. As a closer, I'd probably have felt the argument was okay, if you'd mentioned the WP essay it'd be somewhat stronger--a lot of times subject-matter experts somewhat better intuition about what subjects are going to pan out and what aren't, and their guidance is helpful. I think your answer was fine, by the way, I expect this guy would get conflicting !votes if taken to AfD, but would more likely than not, end up kept. I did add a good-enough-to-verify source to the article, because it's my way.
Bobby Miller (musician)
Answer: Keep per this (bullet 5). They have had an album distributed by Sony records, a big label company.--Chip¹²³⁴⁵⁶ 17:32, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
Ahh, but doesn't that require two such albums? You might be right, but as a closer I wouldn't be sure. I had a heckuva time finding sources, too, so I actually sent this one to AfD, we'll see what happens. (You're welcome to contribute there, btw.) As I look at this, I realize there's a theme that's probably not very visible that's worth talking about. While I'm probably more sensitive to this issue than many editors, I tend to take sources (and therefore the GNG) pretty seriously, and unsourced biographies are, well, there's a general concern about their existence. Maybe it's an exaggerated concern, maybe it's not, but with biographies it's helpful to try and do some sourcing even when there's an SNG argument--unless it's really, really cut-and-dried (member of a national legislature, Miss Universe, named chair at a university.) Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but it's been quite a day here! Cheers, --j⚛e decker ^talk 00:27, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Luciano Milo
Answer: well, the basic criteria for sports people states that it must have secondary sources. The one which is present in the article us from the New York Times, a paper which is notable. But there is a lack of these secondary sources - the NYT one being the only one present in the article. I manger to find [www.federicafaillelucianomilo.uzbebe.com/ this]. His ice partners article seems to be better sourced - so perhaps we could use things from there for this article.--Chip¹²³⁴⁵⁶ 10:15, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Heh, looks like j04n got to adding a source first, that takes all the fun out of it. Yeah, I do see some reliable, maybe not in-depth coverage too, like this, and with coverage of championship level work, I'd likely keep. Sports figures and politicians are, in my experience, the two types of people most likely to be given the benefit of one of the special notability guidelines even with a little more reliance on reliable, but perhaps primary or perhaps non-in-depth sources. --j⚛e decker ^talk 00:13, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
Philip Mitchell
Answer: maybe weak keep, the user is an established author with the BBC, the BBC is a pretty important station here. However, I can't find any decent secondary sources.--Chip¹²³⁴⁵⁶ 10:15, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
WK is probably a good bet, I could see this one going either way if people didn't show sources that rose to WP:GNG, with plausible arguments either way. Book in the New York Times, play transcribed on BBC, those are big deals, nobody would deny that. It's more a question of whether the roles in each (translator, etc.) are enough to confer notability on him. I'd probably lean yes. But a plausible answer could be made for no (if the sources didn't get any better.)
Brian Morris (anthropologist)
Answer: Well, I've been trying to see if I could find coverage of his books on t'internet. There seems to be mild coverage of the books on Google books. Also, I'm not sure whether his title of an Emetrius professor would influence notability. Per WP:ACADEMICS, he may be notable to have that significant rank, though I'm not sure.--Chip¹²³⁴⁵⁶ 10:15, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
Okay, now some stuff about academics, which are also a hard case. (Boy, this was a tough set, sorry about that!) While it's good (and in fact, what I do first) to look at news and books sources for scholars, a lot of times "Google Scholar" also provides very useful feedback. here's a search. What I find pretty convincing is that the 3rd entry looks to be a book by him, and it's cited by 300+ other academic sources. Cite counts are a very poor metric of notability, but if someone is the only author of a paper or book and it's got a cite count into the hundreds, it's very likely that the guy can be shown to be notable some other way. That's very telling. Given that it's a book, there's very possibly a review or two of it hiding somewhere. There are more complex ways to evaluate citation counts (see h-index in particular), and those are often refered to in AfD discussions. The important thing to recognize is that even those are weak metrics, so while a very good h-index is probably worth a keep, a good argument based on someone in the discussion who can more convincingly describe someone's academic achievements is often worth some extra weight in closing.

I don't think emeritus profs are generally considered notable per se, but if they have a named professorship (e.g., the Joe Decker professor of Deletion, lolz), that is generally seen as an automatic cue of notability (if it can be verified, and the university is at all reputable, or at least not a total fake.) --j⚛e decker ^talk 00:13, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

When you're done, I'll go through and write down first, what I'd do in the same situation (e.g., what my !vote would have been), and second, how I would have "weighed" your own opinion if I were closing the AfD. Closures of AfDs have to be made with an eye towards all the relevant guidelines involved, and often even with an eye towards the sort of "usual practice" that sometimes doesn't get written down. Give me a poke if you have ANY questions at all, and give me a poke as well after you've done two or three, there's no reason I can't start "answering" once you have!