Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gerry Ford (A Special Report)

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. The Flying Saucer (song), Santa And The Satellite, Energy Crisis '74, and Mr. Jaws, probably merge the rest. Fences&Windows 01:59, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gerry Ford (A Special Report)

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While the musician Dickie Goodman himself appears to be notable enough for an article (thus nixing WP:SD), and as a Dementite myself I recognize the notability of the topic of Novelty records, a single or album by Goodman would not appear to meet the WP:General notability guideline and in particular lack "significant coverage," or the coverage needed for a "reasonably detailed article" of WP:MUSIC. Article is an orphan lacking sources. Might be WP:Original research, somewhat WP:INDISCRIMINATE in that content is limited to a brief summary of the single (analogous to WP:PLOT?) and a list of what it samples. Web search finds some copies for sale, Wikipedia mirrors, listings in two printed price guides (it's worth about $6.00 evidently). Not sure the content merits merging to Goodman, or if a redirect would really be needed. Шизомби (talk) 23:49, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Albums and songs-related deletion discussions. —J04n(talk page) 23:55, 23 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am also nominating the following related pages because they are also Goodman songs and albums with the same flaws identified above. Some of them mention they are "flops," "hard to find," articles contain info about unsourced rumors. I think this is all of them. Please give these orphans a nice warm home for Christmas by the Deletion yule log:

Most of them can be merged, but Keep The Flying Saucer (song), which inaugurated the novelty genre of "sampling" songs. If I'm not mistaken, it was a Top 10 hit back in the mid 1960s. There are others that made the Top 40 as well, although most of these did not. Kind of an interesting nomination-- are there any songs from this artist that you don't want deleted? Mandsford (talk) 00:50, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge/Redirect anything useful from these articles to Dickie Goodman. Keep The Flying Saucer (song) as it was probably his most successful. TheRetroGuy (talk) 00:53, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the five Top 40 hits from the list above [1]. As you can see, "Mr. Jaws" reached #4, and Flying Saucer reached #3 (back in 1956, also "before my time", not the mid-60s). Energy Crisis '74 and Santa And The Satellite were both in the Top 40 at one time. The other hit doesn't have an article, although it was a remix of Flying Saucer, if I'm not mistaken. If those four examples are taken out of the nomination, I'd support a merge of the remainder. Mandsford (talk) 01:04, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment If RS exist to verify the notability of "The Flying Saucer" as inaugurating a genre and also contain sufficient significant coverage to write a "reasonably detailed article" about the song, I would not oppose keeping that one. If all there is to say about it is that it was his most successful, it's probably better handling it WP:WITHIN-(a WP essay, but sensible) Goodman's article (which needs attention) or one on novelty sampling songs as a genre, if there are enough RS for that. I'll try looking for more extensive info on it, time permitting. When "merge" is being suggested, what content is it that is being suggested for merge? There's already an extensive discography in his article which includes all of these. Шизомби (talk) 01:10, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The Flying Saucer (song), Santa And The Satellite, Energy Crisis '74, and Mr. Jaws, all of which were top 40 singles. Close nomination as to all the others, because nominating articles about 40 or more songs at once, including both hits and non-hits, makes it difficult to review them all. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:11, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Several of those songs charted in the US, meeting the requirements of WP:NSONG. A list this large is going to require massive amounts of time to exercise the due diligence required. I think each nomination should merit it's own AfD discussion.. Vulture19 (talk) 02:20, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merely charting does not meet the requirements of the GNG and NSONG, both of which require "significant coverage." Meeting notability for a song means meeting both WP:N and WP:MUSIC, not one just or the other, and I continue to believe these meet neither. NSONG states that charting indicates it is "probably notable," not that it is notable. It goes on to say, "Notability aside, a separate article on a song is only ["is only," not "is probably only"] appropriate when there is enough verifiable material to warrant a reasonably detailed article; articles unlikely ever to grow beyond stubs should be ["should be," not "should probably be"] merged to articles about an artist or album." A Google Books search and Amazon "search inside" has a manageable number of hits on Goodman, so it doesn't strike me as unreasonably difficult to review all the songs at once. I don't understand why so many substubs were created for each song when the parent article Dickie Goodman is stub/start with multiple issues and novelty record is stub/start and undersourced. The place to start is by building up his article with good sources, and if it turns out there enough RS and enough significant coverage to spin out other articles, then that's the time to do it. I'm willing to consider "If the reasons given in the deletion nomination are later addressed by editing, the nomination should be withdrawn by the nominator" with regard to "The Flying Saucer" at least, if people do address it by editing now; I will try working on adding sources to the Goodman article. Шизомби (talk) 04:27, 24 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The Flying Saucer (song), reserve opinion on all other songs. Song charted and there is independent coverage of the song in Time magazine [2] from 1956. Vulture19 (talk) 13:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep Buchanan and Goodman On Trial, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. It appears that after being sued for The Flying Saucer (song), this was the response song that charted. Info is sporadic, a couple of hits are [3], [4], and the gBooks hits, [5], hint at information that are WP:RS, but info does not appear on the web. Vulture19 (talk) 14:30, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete The Banana Boat Story, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. There is a claim to some notability in the article ("This was the first break-in single to sample commercial jingles, rather than rock 'n' roll songs."), but a less-than-thorough search has not yielded any sources to back this claim. Vulture19 (talk) 15:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC)a[reply]
Weak Keep Santa And The Satellite, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. Song made Top 40 charts, and has good web presence [6], but a less-than-thorough search didn't show any of the "top shelf" WP:RS. Vulture19 (talk) 16:09, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The Flying Saucer Goes West, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. Other than giving Elvis a run for popularity in Ottawa [7], there appear to be very few sources for this, none particularly reliable. Song did not chart. Vulture19 (talk) 18:30, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete Frankenstein of '59, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. While the last hit here looks intriguing I doubt I'll ever have time to actually look into further. gHits are inconclusive. Vulture19 (talk) 12:39, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Stagger Lawrence, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. Other than appearing in the congressional record, the only possible claim to notability of this song is in the collaboration with a possibly notable DJ out of Detroit. Vulture19 (talk) 17:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep Russian Bandstand, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. There just may be enough here for an article. The song charted in the top 100, but seems to get coverage and analysis now and then in cold war research. May be minor, may not. Add on the collaboration with a possibly notable DJ out of Detroit, may be worth keeping. Vulture19 (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge The Touchables, The Touchables In Brooklyn, Santa & The Touchables to Dickie Goodman, reserve opinion on others not already commented on. Searches on the first in this group are complicated by the occurrence in the title of the other two. Regardless, there are hints of motability that I can't seem to access from the web, again would actually have to dig through some books that I don't own. Vulture19 (talk) 01:37, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When doing Google searches, it's usually advisable to include "-wikipedia" or "-(some phrase or sentence in the wikipedia article)". The number of hits usually goes down dramatically. Compare [8] or [9] to your search above. WP:GOOGLEHITS is generally an argument to avoid, because it doesn't tell us much. The question is whether there are reliable sources with significant coverage of any of the songs, enough for a reasonably long article, if the parent article is long enough to justify a split per the (I think) reasonable standard of WP:NSONGS and Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs#Notability, which concurs (or whether there's a good argument for ignoring those guidelines). I doubt whether that will be the case. Perhaps I could drop The Flying Saucer (song), though I think Goodman's own notability is better served by discussing that song in his article. I'd add that I think it would be frustrating for a WP reader to follow the links for each of his songs, only to see they don't say anything that wasn't already or couldn't have already been said in his article. Goodman's own article is a big mess, including lines like this: "I was told years ago by Jon Goodman that this was Bobby Darin and that Dickie produced it, possibly I misunderstood what he was saying, because I just found out that this was recorded by The Glass Bottle, on Avco. I can't add more info until I get my copy in the mail. I have a recording from Jon's second CD." Either someone added remarks like that with little understanding of what WP is, or that's copied from somewhere else without attribution, possibly a copyvio. I didn't have a search and destroy mission here; while I suspect most of the stubs in Category:Song stubs would also fail N, RS, V, etc. and could be prodded or AfDed, that's not how I want to spend all my time on WP. I stumbled across this particular orphanage of song stubs when reverting a vandal. I considered prods, but I don't like the lack of records of those when successful relative to the AfD process, or merging, but I suspected it might be more controversial for some. I'm willing to help improve Goodman's article, which I think is a more productive use of my/our time. Besides the internet, my university library is pretty good, and interlibrary loan is pretty fast most of the time - I could order that Death Discs book. Шизомби (talk) 03:51, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm not using the volume of gHits as the only factor in my opinion - however, if the number of gHits is large, that, ipso facto, is an indication of notability. This would be a rationale for using the "weak" modifier to the opinion. Also, perhaps I didn't specify (my mistake) that in some of these cases, they weren't gHits I was referring to, but gBook hits. As these are not always available in preview form on the web, we can't make a reasonable assumption, for or against, the validity of these sources, nor can we make an assumption about how detailed the reference actually is. That would require someone to actually find the book and look it up. Given the extremely large number of articles here, I may not be as thorough in looking as I would like to be, as the first deadline on the discussion is approaching, and frankly this AfD discussion has taken up most of my wikitime. Given that not all of the listings here meet the the same deletion criteria, I feel it important to look at each one individually.

Regarding the Dickie Goodman article being a mess - I was always of the understanding that an AfD was not a tool to be used to improve an article. Merely merging all, or a lot, of these candidates would make the referenced article more of a mess. One of the abnormal aspects of most of these candidates are the inclusion of other notable songs. (You could almost make an argument that that confers some notability). The listing of samples used is integral to the song, and to move all of these to the Dickie Goodman article would make that almost unreadable.

Also, could you do me a small favor? I have no idea what your user name is unless I look through all of the code or do a mouse hover. Can you include, parenthetically, the name that would appear in an edit list? Thanks. Vulture19 (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2009 (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.