Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Morgan (engineer)

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 delete‎. Clearly we shouldn't have the article. Only one keep vote wasn't a bare assertion that could have come directly from ATA but should we merge or delete?. Of the substantive arguments there seems to be no real claim of passing GNG and bare mentions into the target article would not need this to be retained. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:30, 3 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

David Morgan (engineer)[edit]

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Lack of notability, subject is a UK traffic cone engineer of no real note aside from his purported (and dubiously sourced) claim to have invented the plastic traffic cone. The page is short and two entire sections are completely unsourced.In1tiate (talk) 06:49, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Engineering and United Kingdom. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 07:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The article already includes adequate references from reliable sources. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 18:13, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would contest the reliability of the specific sources used in this article, frankly. Travel guides and publicity pces do not hard-hitting fact-based journalism make. Regardless, the issue at hand is that the subject is far from notable. Per WP:NSUSTAINED, notable subjects require notability beyond a single event - Mr. Morgan is notable only for claiming to have invented the plastic traffic cone in 1960. In1tiate (talk) 09:26, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 06:36, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article already has adequate sources to establish notability, and more are available:

"Traffic cone collection tops 500". Oxford Mail. 2007-04-12. Retrieved 2023-08-26.
"Our love/hate relationship with traffic cones". BBC News. 2013-05-14. Retrieved 2023-08-26.
Carlson, Leland (2015-10-01). Dull Men of Great Britain: Celebrating the Ordinary (Dull Men's Club). Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-2797-3.

Morgan is notable not only as the purported inventor of the traffic cone but as the world-record holder for largest collector, and has received coverage in RSs for both. Jfire (talk) 15:13, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep the King of Cones per the refs cited.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 18:53, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to traffic cone. Alternatively just delete. I have looked at this carefully and made a copy edit to the page to correct the claims per the source. There is a lack of reliable secondary sources, independent of the subject, that address his notability. But despite that, there is clear evidence that he has made a plausible claim that he was the first to engineer traffic cones out of plastic, and that his company cornered the supply of these. There is also good evidence that he holds a record for the most number of cones. These are salient facts, but they are not notability for a biographical article. These are better placed in the traffic cone article, which can say that cones were made originally from rubber[1] or wood, and were often three sided rather than conical, but from 1961 they were engineered in plastic. The world record could also be mentioned there as it is as worthy as anything else in the "in popular culture" section. As this is all we can say about the subject, the enclopaedia can cover this, no information being lost, without need of a permastub biographical article about someone who didn't actually invent the cones, and just has a lot of them. The claim to have engineered cones from plastic is not very notable, and holding a world record for a collection is not notable (as should be clear: notability is permanent, but a world record is not. A world record becomes notable only when it is covered in reliable secondary sources for some reason. That is, the subject must meet WP:GNG, and in this case, the subject does not). Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 09:22, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
delete Yeah, please: this is obviously a very local interest fellow (yes, the UK counts as local for something like this), and his achievements do not cut the mustard. We have not as a rule found people notable for world record collections even when Guinness does verify the record, and being the first to mold a traffic cone out of plastic is a very minor accomplishment. We don't make articles for people simply out of human interest stories. Mangoe (talk) 13:30, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or merge. Local "news of the weird" is routine NOTNEWS material. Multiple separate instances of such coverage does not make a topic encyclopedic. AFAICT the Dull Men calendar is trivial coverage as well.

JoelleJay (talk) 04:24, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merge per Sirfurboy. Fundamentally, even if this is a GNG pass, all you can write with extant sources is what exists now (basically nothing) but I also agree this is NOTNEWS-type coverage or else simply not something that determines notability per our standards (Guinness Records.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 12:44, 30 August 2023 (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.