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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 as a week so far has suggested nothing else (NAC). SwisterTwister talk 06:25, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Graham McCann

[edit]
Graham McCann (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Reason

The text of this biographical stub is a single sentence. The sources given are a by-line for an obituary in the Guardian, and his own SPS website only. The entire article is a list of 5 biographies. The EL is IMDb. None of the individual books merit a Wikipedia article, and the mentions of him on Wikipedia make no basis for a claim of personal notability. The NYT has reviewed one and only one of his biographies, that on Woody Allen. A biography not even used as a source on Wikipedia. Amazon does list a few of his major works: "A Very Courageous Decision: The Inside Story of Yes Minister", and other books about entertainment series and entertainers, but no reason to thus assert a person about whom no biographical information is given is actually notable as a person. Sorry. Collect (talk) 11:55, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep. Try doing some basic research before PRODing or filing an AfD. As I mentioned on the talk page, I am going to spend five minutes doing some research to show the obvious notability. This AfD is, I'm afraid, ridiculous, and has been filed by someone who prodded on the basis of a NYT search, and an AfD search on the basis of an Amazon search. That's bloody poor. – SchroCat (talk) 12:37, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I spent well over an hour researching the person (well - trying to find anything at all about him as a person) - all I could find is that he is about 29 years old. Period. I did not list them all in the reasoning above, but if you like I can list them, but then we will have a wall of text documenting that the person is not actually notable as a person at all. And I looked at well over 30 sites, so I regret to inform you that your attack on me is quite ill-aimed. I have a strong reputation of !voting Keep on AfDs, by the way, participating in over 650 of them, and have rescued a fair number of articles over the years. Collect (talk) 12:48, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You spent over an hour searching and found nothing? I'm trying to look on a mobile on a patchy signal and with no access to my usual databases, but the following is a quick snapshot of McCann's professional notability established in just ten minutes. I've also seen him interviewed on cultural documentaries, but I'll have to dig the details of those out at a later date.

BBC

The Guardian

Referenced in academic works

This is not a very good AfD (it was a poor enough PROD, and I don't understand why the nominator was so impatient to file an AfD given my comment on the talk page, but there you do. As to "attack", I have done nothing of the sort. Your action was poor and that has been pointed out to you, including why it was poor. Not an attack by any stretch. – SchroCat (talk) 13:19, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And information about the person? Collect (talk) 13:52, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've already told you I have some information (which I need to check for reliability and other BLP hurdles, but that is secondary to the canon of his work. (I see that some reliably sourced info has been added though "McCann, a graduate of King's College, became a lecturer on social and political theory at Cambridge after completing his doctorate.[5][1][6]" – SchroCat (talk) 14:16, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep Reputable biographer of over a dozen notables, why pick on this, are you now going to take the McCann bio to the reliable sources board too? A great number of authors of biographies, even the most reputable ones often don't have an abundance of biographical information about them anyway. They become notable for the number of references in acadmeic works they have and their output.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:12, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The biographies might be notable - but what can you tell me about the person? Biographies are, as I understand it, supposed to be about a person, but I might be wrong. And the person here is not an "academic writer" but one of "popular biographies" as far as I can tell. I point out the the sources given at the time of the AfD are not remotely near "reliable source" level - one is a source showing the person wrote an obit, the other is the person's own website. I would be pleased if this is actually made into a biography, but it still is short, and relies on the author's own website as two of its sources. Usually folks who are only "lecturers" are not considered "notable" under WP:SCHOLAR. No academic titles or awards, not noted in any academic field, not notable as expert on British political history (his nominal area of expertise), etc. I would be delighted if material relevant to being a biography were there, but it is not there right now at all. Collect (talk) 13:52, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." In other words, articles should not be deleted on the basis of the extant version at the time of nominating, but the notability of the individual and their public output. That is clearly the case here. – SchroCat (talk) 14:14, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
How can one rationally edit a page where the information about the person (see the dictionary def of "biography") is simply not there? And adding "sources" which are not actual independent sources (a publisher blurb which is one provided by the author is no better than one provided by the author on his own site), and using the fact a person wrote an obit is not really helpful. And I would love for a real biography to be kept, but this one, ain't one. And he clearly fails to meet WP:SCHOLAR as a start. Care to try again? Again - I really much prefer to keep really notable persons - but this person as far as I can tell is not one. Collect (talk) 14:27, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Time to stop BLUDGEONing now. In case it has passed you by, Wikipedia is work in progress and not all the information we would like is available. For the third time: I have some information about McCann, including the near-trivia of the date of birth (does it matter and who really cares about that one date). As before, I am not going to breach BLP by putting it in there without checking the source properly. In case you missed it, some info on McCann has been added, which provides some background about him. It's a shame you're being way too narrow-minded and overly-defensive on such a poor AfD, but each to their own, I guess. – SchroCat (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:29, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The "biography" has now been totally puffed up with details of his every work, or nearly so, and still with nothing of consequence about the actual person. Seems odd to me. Collect (talk) 19:04, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
oh for crying out loud – it's a fucking work in progress, so stop being obstructive and petulant. Time for you to step away and being so disruptive. – SchroCat (talk) 19:17, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There ought to be more biogaphical info, but that's the case for a lot of these biographer types. They're famed for their publications, which most other writers will write about, rather than them themselves, who are not as interesting as the subjects they write about. They're acceptable and help make the encyclopedia more resourceful than if they didn't exist it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:00, 5 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh I'm sure both are fond of do-nuts ;-)♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:53, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Arguably the best known biographer of Cary Grant and many other actors. Quite a prolific author that can be found in many academic and journalistic results. I'd say he's at least a sufficiently notable biographer. Cheers, κατάσταση 03:30, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. It seems odd that this very newly created article needs to be swept out of Wikipedia when there are so many others which could be questioned for lack of notability. Samantha Chase this is just an example; it hasn't been touched in two years--some for longer. Don't understand the urgency to delete this when there are so many other stubs which have been here longer and have had nothing added to them in some time. We hope (talk) 13:27, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. We were being a bit snobbish; he's a full-time writer who trained as an academic but has wound up a full-time writer in a popular culture field. I found enough stuff in JSTOR to establish that his work has been extensively reviewed, and he thus meets GNG, but in incorporating the material I've rather hijacked the article I'm afraid. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:19, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Not at all: the re-focussing is excellent and does nothing but strengthen the article. Cheers – SchroCat (talk) 18:28, 6 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but noting the person is not notable for anything other than being listed as author of a number of "popular biographies", and does not meet any other notability criteria at all, including not meeting WP:SCHOLAR. As notable as people who wrote AD&D modules, or entertainment features for Buzzfeed. And also noting that the initial article proposed for AfD did, in fact, fail in the requirement to make any real claim for notability of the person. Several of the sources now used, alas, seem to fall into the marginal category of not making any real claim about the author at all. Collect (talk) 14:31, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There is no claim on keeping him because of his academic work, so SCHOLAR is something of a straw man here. As to your claims on AD&D or Buzzfeed, that really is rather pointless. His work has been praised, and it is because of that work that he is notable. as you've been told before (and hopefully it may sink in at some point) this article, like the project, is a work in progress, and as further details about the person come up they can be added to someone who is, through their work, notable. - SchroCat (talk) 14:41, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Collect: I'm sorry, I beat the bushes for articles with biographical information, but the man does have a right to privacy, and it's also possible that relevant articles are simply not online, or require subscriptions (The Times has notoriously gone paywalled; I'm sure there are others). The thing is, as you now recognize, he meets GNG. His work has been written about quite extensively. (I'll pass over the comparison to Buzzfeed and D&D writers except to note that he started out with a scholarly approach, and in fact I remember reading before about the novelty of his taking a scholarly approach with Monroe. But WP:SCHOLAR is inapplicable.) I've been looking for the guidance not to write a biography if biographical details can't be found, but instead found the reverse—the warnings against cobbling together a bio for a WP:BLP1E. That clearly does not apply here; we are doing no harm. I re-read the actual notability rules and yup, GNG still trumps everything. Unless our policies are ever rewritten to exclude articles on people that are inadequate as biographies, that means it's entirely appropriate for us to have an article on a person that is not in fact a biography, but is rather about who they are or what they have done. As someone says above, that applies to many academics; commonly the biographical details only become available to us after they die and obituaries are published. We also don't know much about the actual lives of many sportspeople from the era before modern journalism. But notable deeds are notable. We are an encyclopedia, not just a dictionary of biography. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:27, 7 June 2016 (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.
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