Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Koehnline

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. Although there is disagreement on the value of recently found sources, I see a consensus to Delete this article. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:55, 22 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

James Koehnline[edit]

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There are not many reliable sources that discuss James Koehnline in detail. Even the cited sources barely discuss him at all. I found some passing references and citations to his work, but that is not enough to write a full article on the man. Furthermore, quite a bit of the found content was published by obscure publishers or was self-published. Since Koehnline is still alive, we have to be particularly careful about this type of thing. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 14:33, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Artists, Authors, and Politics. ―Susmuffin ^Talk 14:33, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I found at least one reliable source with in-depth coverage of James Koehnline: "An Infinite Bag of Tricks," Abstract: This installment looks at the work of James Koehnline, who creates art based on digital imagery. Published in: IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications ( Volume: 31, Issue: 2, March-April 2011) Page(s): 4 - 5. Also, I am finding some writing about Koehnline in Fifth Estate (periodical), along with what looks like 20+ Koehnline collages. And it looks like the book Koehnline coedited, "Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture," is reviewed by at least one reliable source, and cited by several others. I'd be happy to work on adding these sources to the article and cutting anything that isn't reliably sourced. Elspea756 (talk) 15:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 15:53, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete This artist does not meet WP:NARTIST. He has not been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, or won significant critical attention, or been represented within the permanent collections of any notable galleries or museums. Seems more like WP:PROMO of a working graphic artist. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 17:19, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete In its current state, I don't see any reason for keeping. First source (Black 1994, p. 92) only mentions him in a laundry list of "mileu collagists", none of whom have their own Wikipedia articles. Second source (Miller 1999, p. 287) mentions a book he co-edited in a footnote, but the actual reference is to an essay within that book by Miller himself. External links are to Koehnline's own website, an obscure dead web page that includes a couple of his works, and an interview with Koehnline that I assume is what the rest of this article is pulling from. So the only source that goes into any substantial detail about him is a primary source and it's not even cited inline. I'd be open to changing my vote to "Keep" if Elspea756 can put together a better article with the sources they found. --Grnrchst (talk) 11:00, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@WomenArtistUpdates and Grnrchst: Update Just to update here as I'm going through these sources: There are at least 28 issues of the Fifth Estate (periodical) that I had thought, based on the first few I looked at, that they each might have multiple Koehnline collages in them. For example, there are two collages including the cover in Spring 1990 issue, three in the Autumn 1992 issue, four including the cover in the Spring 1991 issue, and the front and back covers in the Fall 2006 issue. At least one of the 28 issues, Vol. 42, No. 2(376) (Oct., 2007), has some writing about Koehnline's work that is longer than a brief mention, but it is still only about four paragraphs in an essay on a broader topic. However, maybe around a third of these 28 issues just have a small ad for the "Gone to Croatan" book, edited by Koehnline and containing an essay by Koehnline, available along with over a dozen other books at the Fifth Estate bookstore. The one review I mentioned is in The Whole Earth Review, 1994 (83), p.40, which I haven't been able to track down a copy of yet. The best source still looks like the two-page article "An Infinite Bag of Tricks" in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications in 2011, but that was written in conjunction with a Koehnline collage on the cover, and has several quotes from Koehnline, so is largely based on interviews, which are maybe too much of a primary source for Grnrchst. And I'm not sure that "15+ year contributor to notable anarchist/underground publications" reaches the "substantial part of a significant exhibition" that WomenArtistUpdates is looking for. So, if these sources don't seem adequate, I'll suggest a solution might be to redirect this Koehnline article to Fifth Estate (periodical) and put a sentence or two about Koehnline into the "1980s and 1990s" section, as an artistic contributor whose work was first published there in the early 1990s. Elspea756 (talk) 15:18, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would support a redirect to the Fifth Estate article, per your suggestion. -- Grnrchst (talk) 15:27, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would NOT support redirecting a non-notable graphic artist into a poorly sourced, puffy article. There's enough information out there to bring Fifth Estate into encyclopedic value, see https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-scl-fifthestate and remove copyright violation in the lede (see https://www.bobdylan-comewritersandcritics.com/pages/mags_fichiers/fifthestate.htm), but don't add in non notable information about James Koehnline. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 15:18, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your directive. Best of luck with your updates to the Fifth Estate article. Elspea756 (talk) 15:37, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, _signed,Rosguill ^talk 01:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Created by a pre-AFC IP (216.39.144.162 (talk · contribs)) back on May 30, 2004. Of course, since WP/BLP standards have tightened up since then... --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 09:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Update I've found another source, Semiotexte, v. 5, issue 2, from 1989, on pages 129-31, 175, 185, 191, 231, and 255 has about a half-page written description of Koehnline's work and biography, and then seven of his collages. Elspea756 (talk) 13:05, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's a standard bio for using his illustrations in the journal, not significant coverage. czar 18:38, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It won't be independent coverage either, unless I am misunderstanding Elspea756's description. Artists write those bios themselves. -- asilvering (talk) 22:55, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Not seeing what sources we'd use to justify covering within the Fifth Estate article. Also not seeing which three sources discuss his work in particular depth. czar 18:42, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I've found yet another source. Michael Kinsella's book, "Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat" published by University Press of Mississippi, from 2011, names Koehnline as one of the four people who created Ong's Hat, and gives more biographical details of Koehnline. "the artist James Koehnline, who designed the cover of the original Incunabula: A Catalogue ... anarchist and surrealist collage artist ... his work appears within a number of CDs, books, and magazines that are part of the countercultural ... provided the illustration for the cover of Bey’s T.A.Z. and edited the book, Gone to Croatan ..." So, we now have at least three different biographies of Koehnline to use as sources: 1) "An Infinite Bag of Tricks," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications ( Volume: 31, Issue: 2, March-April 2011) Page(s): 4 - 5, 2) Semiotexte, v. 5, issue 2, from 1989, and 3) "Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong's Hat" University Press of Mississippi, 2011. And we could also use 4) Fifth Estate, with multiple details published from as early as 1990 (Winter issue 1990-91, Vol. 25, No. 2, has "Swamp Rats & Urban Rats Unite!" by George Bradford which is a review of Koehnline's collage-illustrated poetry) to as recent as 2007. These four sources should allow us to write a properly sourced short biographical article. Elspea756 (talk) 03:51, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Considering the page and updates here in AfD, his work is definitely notable, though the article leaves a lot to be desired in its current revision. Suitskvarts (talk) 18:32, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Accessing all three sources aforementioned, I do not see how they meet the significant coverage criterion nevertheless constitute enough material to write a biography worthy of the subject.
1. Legend-Tripping Online is a three-sentence mention that does not say more than that he was a collage artist who illustrated for Hakim Bey.
2. Semiotexte is previously discussed above as being a standard artist bio, potentially self-authored, shown alongside his work in the journal. (Mind, too, that he is part of the Autonomedia collective that publishes Semiotexte.)
3. The IEEE article is the only article that approaches Koehnline's work in any depth but sparsely and with little biographical detail.

Altogether it would seem impossible to write a detailed article based on this material, especially if these are the best sources available. A redirect to other articles, e.g., to cover as a sentence in Bey's or Autonomedia's articles, also seems untenable as undue weight. czar 02:01, 22 June 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.