Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Somerton

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 merge‎ to Hbomberguy. Any merged content still needs to meet WP:BLP requirements. RL0919 (talk) 12:52, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

James Somerton[edit]

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Telos Pictures:

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Article created after Somerton was accused by a YouTuber of plagiarism as a redirect to said YouTuber. After that, the full article has turned into a non neutral description of an irrelevant controversy. WikiDasher (talk) 12:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. WikiDasher (talk) 12:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Sexuality and gender, Internet, and Canada. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 12:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 12:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The plagiarism controversy is clearly the primary reason for Somerton's current notability. We have good RS coverage of the plagiarism controversy and clearly that needs some coverage in Wikipedia. So this all hinges on WP:BLP1E. The question is how should we cover it? I think there are three options:

If this can pass BLP1E then obviously we keep the article, maybe reducing the secondary controversy about the "apology" video to a couple of sentences. (I didn't think it was too overblown until I went looking at how we cover Colleen Ballinger's far more infamous apology video and was surprised to see that we barely mention it.)
If Somerton fails personal notability but the controversy does not then we should recast this as an article about the controversy. That would mean renaming and expanding the article to include the other YouTubers involved and to focus more on the general issues of lazy content mills and pseudo-academic YouTubers not doing their citations properly (or at all). (It would be ironic if we ended up renaming this article "Plagiarism and YouTube" ;-) )
Merge this back to Hbomberguy in a reduced form.

I have yet to decide which I support, except that outright deletion is definitely not an option here. There is too much RS coverage for this to go away completely.

Maybe the next step is to try to determine exactly how notable Somerton is outside of this controversy with a view to answering the BLP1E question. My impression was that he was a fairly big fish in the Canadian and LGBT YouTube scenes and that his film production company, Telos Pictures, had attracted some attention before it folded. In retrospect, I realise that this may not actually be the case. Maybe he was just really good at bigging himself up and I fell for it? I think this could go either way.--DanielRigal (talk) 14:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the plagiarism controversy is only relevant if the content he created were relevant. After googling his name, I don't feel he was very important in the LGBT community. WikiDasher (talk) 15:13, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I, however, agree with you in that the content itself should not be deleted. I would think moving it to Hbomberguy would be the ideal solution. WikiDasher (talk) 15:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merge or refactor. The article is 100 percent about a plagiarism controversy that sank an online influencer's career, with zero biographical depth even as an essayist. Selective merge back to Hbomberguy. However, I am not against refactoring it into a more general article about plagiarism on YouTube as suggested above. • Gene93k (talk) 19:37, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Refactor. In terms of Somerton's notability, its mostly his self-destruction. However, reliable sources also comment on his spreading of misinfo and the Telos film company scandal.

There are other queer YouTubers who are claiming other harassment from him; the ace couple on YouTube have suggested his coverage of the asexual community was horrific, and Jessie Gender has apparently been targeted by him during some scandal involving him targeting the Nebula streaming service. these are all youtube videos, which cannot be cited on wikipedia? homo momo (talk) 22:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

as the person who originally made this article, im a bit biased. I've been hoping these other scandals get more coverage, but as it seems to have died down a bit in the weeks since, i assume the plagiarism scandal will be the main thing that is notable about this guy. homo momo (talk) 22:53, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

one possible source that discusses james somerton outside of just plagiarism is this student journalism website that interviewed him a year ago. https://tigermedianet.com/?p=63554

Not sure how reliable this is, as its mostly james doing self-promotion. homo momo (talk) 22:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, honestly lets Merge actually. yall make good points :D homo momo (talk) 05:57, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Had thought about making such an article myself, but it might not pass WP:SUSTAINED. Alexschmidt711 (talk) 23:05, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment it seems that the notable thing here is the hbomber video and not somerton, we could move and expand this to cover that whole vid—blindlynx 02:18, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into Hbomberguy. Feel like it could be better talked about there. Wandering Morpheme 23:24, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Hbomberguy, but I'd be open to a split article about the plagiarism video/controversy per DanielRigal's suggestion. Seems like that topic could pass GNG, and info about Somerton would be added there as appropriate. Regardless, the only other RS I could find from before the video was a Mary Sue article from 2022 which was updated in the wake of this controversy (but you can see the original in an archive). PantheonRadiance (talk) 01:24, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge Mattl (talk) 15:48, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Hbomberguy, we could probably just create a designated section of his page dedicated to the plagarism drama Cereally8 (talk) 04:13, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge or refactor. After a bit more searching I'm in agreement with everybody else that there isn't enough here for a BLP. Maybe this could be an article about the video but, as it fails to mention any of the other channels called out for plagiarism, it would take some work to make rebalance it. Merging it to Hbomberguy might be the easier option. --DanielRigal (talk) 00:49, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge (selectively!) to Hbomberguy. Reliable sources are all about the plagiarism scandal, and most of them seem to be discussing Brewis' investigation and video more than they are discussing Somerton. Maybe there's an article on James Somerton plagiarism scandal or Plagiarism on Youtube to be written, but given how recent it all it it remains to be seen if there's any WP:SUSTAINED coverage, and given that everyone involved is a living person I would err on the side of not having an article which is going to be a perennial BLP/NPOV nightmare unless we are really sure it's important to have an article on. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:51, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I agree with blindlynx regarding the Hbomber video - it can easily fill a page by itself. BlueMonday1984 (talk) 16:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are not that many sources most of the wikipedia articles would consider useful/reliable/etc. for the entire Hbomberguy video on its own, I think? Unless I'm missing some? We can't cite the actual youtube video by itself, can we? homo momo (talk) 06:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge, see User:Caeciliusinhorto. There is definitely an article to be written on yt plagiarism but subject does not make sense as a standalone article — FenrisAureus ▲ (she/they) (talk) 08:24, 13 January 2024 (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.