Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ProJared

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 are many assertions of notability here, the benchmark of notability are reliable sources, and no "keep" opinion identifies a reliable source covering this person in depth, despite being asked to do so by "delete" opinions. Arguments based on popularity, page views, subscribers, etc. are immaterial. Sandstein 06:17, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

ProJared

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

• How to contribute
• Introduction to deletion process
• Guide to deletion (glossary)
• Help, my article got nominated for deletion!

ProJared (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Appears to fail WP:GNG via WP:ONEEVENT. The article was previously deleted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jared Knabenbauer and has since been involved in a controversy that has taken place primarily on Twitter. Since the initial accusations that were the cause of the one event of actual coverage, there has since been no follow up and appears to either have been unfounded or retracted due to the likely legal ramifications that should have followed the severity of the accusations. It appears to mostly have been a Twitter feud between the subject and his now-separated wife. Other then the news-hits based around the Twitter feud, which in and of itself appears to be unreliable, the subject still lacks reliable sources with significant coverage, same as when it was deleted in 2016. He gets mentions in regards to the D&D show he was involved with, but that's about it.

If the accusations creates more coverage in the future, I am not opposed to re-creation with reliable sources. Yosemiter (talk) 21:42, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Addendum. As he has since gained more attention after I nominated, it is possible that WP:SUSTAINED coverage beyond the typical WP:ONEEVENT guideline can be considered. (Specifically: "a person may be generally famous, but significant coverage may focus on a single event involving that person".) I'll leave that up to others whether coverage of the subject's rebuttal to the initial allegations is more coverage or just an extension on the same event. However, I still stand by that prior to the allegations, he received only passing mentions. Yosemiter (talk) 03:07, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I favour delete on this one. His career as a "personality" isn't particularly notable, so it's just some controversy on twitter. If we included every person who's ever made a series of misguided tweets; we'd have thousands more biographies. All of this information seems very much like WP:TABLOID journalism. That being said, he is closer to notability than most for actually having some RSs talking about him. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep You say he isn't notable as a personality, but two newspapers cited in the article say he is a personality, one as a children's personality and not one for a narrow topic like Dungeons and Dragons only. I do agree that the controversy section is over the top and should be summarized more clearly and stick to facts, but to remove the whole page over that is over the top given the pre-controversy citations which are easy to find in a periodical search filtering for the date. KitsuneLogic (talk) 05:25, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I did that in my WP:BEFORE, and that is what led to my nomination of the article here. (See here and here.) He gets a couple dozen mentions, no in-depth coverage pre-May 8 accusations, hence failing WP:SIGCOV of GNG in my opinion. (And, yes, under his real name he gets mentioned in D&D article, more so than under the ProJared handle.)

    The "two newspapers cited in the article say he is a personality" I believe you are referring to are this and this, of which his full coverage is "...Jirard Khalil (aka The Completionist) has brought several of his compatriots from the Normal Boots family, including ProJared, DidYouKnowGaming,..." (Indianapolis Star) and "Game Shakers’ premiere episode features cameo appearances from YouTube’s pop culture comedians and gaming entertainers including GloZell, Lasercorn and ProJared." (Business Wire). Both are simple list mentions, again failing significant depth of coverage.

    The closest thing I found to in-depth coverage pre-May 8 accusations is "When Liking And Subscribing To Your Favorite YouTuber Isn't Enough" from Kotaku, where he does get quoted once as he is one of the subjects of an independent video game (Asagao Academy) made featuring NormalBoots members, made by the wife of one of the NormalBoots' members.

    So my logic here is: he was not significantly covered before the accusations, the accusations led to unreliable breaking news reporting without WP:SUSTAINED coverage; he is a subject that may be notable for only a single event of WP:NOTNEWS coverage. Hope this explains my nomination further using more in-depth Wikipedia notability expectations and interpretations. Yosemiter (talk) 12:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep I am not just saying that because I created the page and sank considerable time into it. ProJared was notable, not so much for his own YouTube channel, which did top one million subscribers, but for his work and appearances on other channels such as Game Grumps and NormalBoots in the days when gaming was cementing itself as a genre on YouTube. He was also on televison's Game Shakers. The Dungeons & Dragons series Dice, Camera, Action was tremendously popular streamed on Twitch as well as rebroadcast on YouTube. I have tried to not let the tabloid'ish controversy dominate the page, though that was covered too by Newsweek (but probably not their print edition). I know it's not in policy, but I don't know if pageviews have ever been considered for notability. The page views show a substantial interest from the public to come to Wikipedia to find out, who is this ProJared and what is his background. Anyway, these are my two cents on the matter. Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:07, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Yosemiter: I totally understand if you feel the controversy is "tabloid trash" and want to remove it entirely. I would be fine with that. The fact remains, ProJared is a part of YouTube history. You can see him mentioned here alongside PewDiePie well before the controversy. This book is published by Routledge which is not a self-publishing house. If you question who the author is, she's a full professor at University of Copenhagen. Bleeding Cool articles such as this also highlight how ProJared (mentioned as Jared Knabenbauer) is important. This, too, is pre-controversy. I have 'no intention to involve myself in what looks like an edit war at ProJared. Cheers, --SVTCobra 21:51, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: I don't believe I ever implied that the subject is "tabloid trash", only that the only significant coverage he has ever gotten is of the One Event variety, which in this case is somewhat controversial. I am neither a fan nor particularly involved in YouTube subjects. I came across the article via general vandalism cleanup and decided to look into the sourcing due to the subject matter.

In regards to the two sources you point out, in Cultural Journalism and Cultural Critique in the Media, he is mentioned in general that he is a YouTube video game reviewer with 570,000 with no other depth about him personally. The publication is interesting in that he was one of two chosen as an example as general voices on what appears to be on the two ends of spectrum of popularity (specifically comparing the 570,000 to PewDiePie's then 36 million) in the medium. The second article, Acquisitions Inc. and Dice, Camera, Action Announce Crossover Event, has a full depth of coverage on Knabenbauer of "..while on the other side Jared Knabenbauer visited the C-Team as Diath." In other words, I am not seeing what I would consider WP:SIGCOV: Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention.

P.S. When I stated "self-published", I was not referring to any of the news sources themselves. I was referring to the news articles that covered the allegations only had self-published statements as their own sources (ie Twitter from the parties involved). Re-publishing self-published statements does not make the statements more reliable. Yosemiter (talk) 22:49, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Yosemiter: I didn't say you thought ProJared was trash; I was saying we can trash the "Controversy" section of his article. What remains is a nice concise article which I think is well-sourced about a minor but somewhat influential personality (or whatever a YouTuber is). It would be longer than most which are tagged "stubs" and it would be about someone more significant than dozens of other people (not that the latter is a legitimate argument). Also, I just now learned this is all triggered by a new video by ProJared? I was unaware. Well, excessive coverage and even edit-warring over this could be expected for any subject. Did Britney Spears get excessive coverage when she shaved her head? Did it bleed onto Wikipedia? I think both are a yes. The answer isn't delete just because we get an influx of {{WP:UNDUE]]. P.S. I have no idea why you say what you said about the Cultural Journalism source. Where do you see they were selected as "opposite ends"? I see the following quote: "Both have engaged very large audiences and represent new ways of reviewing ..." Cheers, --SVTCobra 23:35, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: In regards to "opposite ends" comment, I meant that both have a following, but one is magnitudes greater. It was just an assumption on part to why he was mentioned, possibly an incorrect one. My skim of what is shown had four mentions of him, two in direct relation to PewDiePie as they were deemed similar, one as a note showing the numbers of "large followings", and one as an index to the page number he is referenced. It does not appear to specifically name why he was chosen and not anyone else, I could only assume that those two, and only those two, were chosen due to demographic similarities and how they make content as gamer "professional-amateur" (author's term) critics. From what I can tell, and from when I did watch some of those types of videos years back, in 2015 there were likely dozens to hundreds of YouTube-based comedy-style critics of video games with greater followings. The most it says about him specifically: he is a gamer, he has followers on YouTube, and he critiques games with a comedic yet authoritative style. As I said previously, the publication is interesting but I don't see how it is more than a mention as it is a name drop, even if it is in a non-routine article. Yosemiter (talk) 02:10, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Yosemiter: An assumption? So, you looked up the statistics around the date of publication and made an assumption about what a professor was writing about and how she selected her subjects? Well, clearly we need to delete ProJared based on your logic and evidence. Why are you shooting yourself in the foot? I have never said ProJared was an automatic pass for general notability, but you lying to prove he is not is an ugly look. Hey, by the way, a video came my way to catch me up on what happened which made you want to delete ProJared. It can be seen here. But it's probably from another non-notable YouTube channel which we should delete from Wikipedia. Cheers, --SVTCobra 02:48, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@SVTCobra: That is nowhere near what I said. I said the author specified the number of followers for both, I did not look them up, but I am at least aware of some others and those are in the millions. (and when I said "from years back" previously, I mean circa 2011 or so, well before 2015. As far as I am aware, some of those YouTubers are still around.) I then assumed that the author chose those two YouTubers because of the drastic difference in number of followers. That was my assumption, the why is he mentioned in this publication, simply because no other criteria was given by the author. (I'm not watching the video, but I opened it, it was published after I nominated the article. ProJared's rebuttal video was also after I nominated, so I had no way of knowing he would ever come up again. There was no news for months at that point on the subject.) Yosemiter (talk) 03:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep There is plenty of coverage in sources for this article. Especially recently with all of the controversy and his most recent video. Bowling is life (talk) 04:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
  • @Bowling is life: the recent controversy is the one event I was referring to. A series of WP:TABLOID reports of unreliable sourcing (Twitter from the self-published wife/ex-wife and Conrad, resulting in she said/they said statements, followed by a self-published YouTube rebuttal). Fairly insubstantial in all regards. Yosemiter (talk) 04:30, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep As the comment above me said, there's a LOT of coverage for these sources, and he's pretty well-known through his YouTube channel and collaboration with Game Grumps. There are real sources but you've got to find them. He's had significant coverage before the famous event. JoeLollo (talk) 06:30, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
  • That is a WP:THEREMUSTBESOURCES argument, so what do you call real sources? (With significant depth of coverage please.) Please go ahead and see my multiple links of news searches from the before the event, they appear to be strictly mentions. Yosemiter (talk) 02:10, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
• Delete - per WP:1EVENT, the nom, and the prior AFD. Sergecross73 msg me 15:12, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
• Keep: Subject is a notable Youtuber, and was featured on news articles prior to the controversy. He also used to have over 1 million subscribers. There is no shortage of coverage regarding the subject before and after the controversy. Sk8erPrince (talk) 15:27, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per WP:10YEARTEST. Someone looking back on this controversy would not care, because it's not significant, just recentism overshadowing notability._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 16:35, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
• Keep Agree with Sk8erprince. Subject is a well-known YouTuber, regardless of the controversy surrounding him. zorbo678(TALK) 12:07, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
• Comment Just a reminder to anyone !voting (also WP:!VOTE) that fame or popularity is not the same as Notable for inclusion on Wikipedia. (From WP:N Article and list topics must be notable, or "worthy of notice". Determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity.) So being "well-known" by a specific group or having 1million subscribers is not the same as being significantly covered in independent media sources. Thank you, Yosemiter (talk) 12:31, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@Yosemiter: Notability for entertainers is defined at WP:ENT and the second criterion is: Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following. But I submit to you, ProJared meets all three criteria. --SVTCobra 13:21, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The fact that the subject used to have 1 million subs on Youtube is very much in line with the second criterion for WP:ENT, which is why my stance is "keep". Sk8erPrince (talk) 13:27, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

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.