Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarina Singh

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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  no consensus. There is some legitimate disagreement on whether her productions are significant enough to make her notable, and even though the people who think so are in the minority, their arguments are not ridiculous either and I cannot really read a consensus out of that. I have also taken into account that some effort to rewrite the article from a pure autobiographical piece. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:52, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sarina Singh[edit]

Sarina Singh (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Article created by its subject and while there is some evidence of notability it appears to be promotional in nature and the notability isn't all that solid. Eeekster (talk) 08:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't think the documentary is at all well known, though. I've seen no evidence at all that suggests it is well known. Of what you've provided so far, the ghits are insignificant (see below) and the linked above database entries only prove it exists. If there is a real case to be made that she is notable, I think it's only on the basis of Lonely Planet and not the documentary, which I think is not well known or notable. Sarah 09:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but only after a serious NPOV rewrite. Notability appears to be there, but the article is way too promotional at the moment. Has potential, but needs a neutral editor to help. RWJP (talk) 10:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. — Sarah 01:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom and RHaworth. I disagree that the one hour documentary is sufficient basis for a claim of notability. I don't find notability here to be at all compelling and certainly not on the basis of the documentary. IMDB and the Australian FFC and National Library links posted above are just database entries which only prove the documentary exists but they don't prove notability. Even if the documentary is notable, it seems that would justify an article about the documentary, not necessarily the writer. I've spent quite a lot of time on Factiva and the Australian New Zealand Reference Centre today but I really can't find much that would qualify as non-trivial or anything that would be useful in sourcing the article. Most of the articles that come up are articles that describe locations she has written about in the Lonely Planet books and are merely mentions in passing. There's a small number of articles she has written for newspapers but again, she's not the subject of the articles and merely has a byline. There's also a not insignificant number of articles about someone of the same name from Ireland and a couple of very short articles saying she was acting as agent for the sale of her parents multi-million dollar property in Hawthorn, Victoria, which also doesn't support notability. I'm also concerned about the quality of the sourcing in the article and I really don't think it's heading in the direction of complying with WP:BLP, WP:RS or WP:V.
  • Three of the 12 citations go to Amazon pages for Lonely Planet books.
  • Six of the twelve citations go to the National Geographic Traveler website - one of these cites is merely a list of contributors, three are links to two articles she contributed to their site, and two are to what seem to be the same page, an article which refers to an article she wrote.
  • Citation ten is a link to www.eternalmewar.in which appears to be user-generated and lists 70 titles (including Singh's polo in India book) which received grants from the "The Maharana of Mewar Historical Publications Trust". The only thing this link is able to confirm, is that Singh received a grant for a polo book in 2000.
  • Citation 11 is a PR page for the documentary at the Ronin Films website
  • Citation 12 is the Screen Australia database entry for her film, again all it does is prove the film exists.
I don't think any of these sources are adequate for a BLP and if the article is to be kept, it must be properly sourced to verifiable, reliable sources - the question is, do such sources even exist? I haven't been able to find anything of a reliable source nature which isn't either the byline or introduction to articles she has written, mere database entries (Amazon, IMDB, Screen Australia etc) and mentions in passing. Sarah 07:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm still for a Strong Keep. I'm sorry Sarah. Perhaps you didn't read my earlier message. Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Creative professionals clearly mentions that if "the person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews," then it's enough for the person to qualify as notable. You can argue that a "documentary" is not a "feature length film". But you cannot argue that "Beyond The Royal Veil" is not well known, which is the basic criteria for notability of the professional who is linked with the work (as per the guideline). Here are 9000 odd links from Google Search for "Beyond The Royal Veil". [5] Even if you take out arbitrary links, a common sense approach will show that the work is pretty well known. That's enough for Sarina Singh to qualify for an article. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ ―Œ ♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣ 06:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's no need to apologise! Of course I read your earlier comment - I replied to it! But I just don't agree with you.:) You need to be able to write a reasonable article about a person which requires sourced information about the person. The difficulty with writing about, researching and assessing the notability of contemporary writers is that generally we have a significant number of hits for their name, but when you actually examine them, you find that most are merely bylines for articles/books/etc they've written or contributed to or references to content they've written. We only report what has already been published by reliable sources, and this is especially vital for biographies of living people, so to be capable of writing a reasonable biography about someone, we need actual published information about them, not merely a swag of pages mentioning their name. And I'm sure you'd agree that the last thing Wikipedia needs at present is more poorly sourced biographies of living people, but that is exactly what this article currently is. As I said above, on the weekend I spent a few hours looking through Factiva and the Australian New Zealand Reference Centre (an Australian database of news, journal, magazine articles) but have not been able to find anything substantial about her. I also think you're chasing a red-herring here with the documentary. First, you're right that it's not feature length - it was about 50 minutes long, but regardless, I still see no evidence that leads me to believe the documentary is notable or well known and as I said above, I think if there is a reasonable case for asserting notability, it's on the basis of Lonely Planet. I'm actually quite stunned to see that you're actually arguing a case for notability via the documentary. That seems most unusual to me, to say the least, particular when we're talking about someone who has contributed to published books. Yes, I see there are over 9,000 g-hits for the documentary's name, and yes, I agree that pure g-hit numbers are pretty meaningless, but when you look a bit further than google's first page, you'll see that there are actually only 60 distinct g-hits for "Beyond The Royal Veil" [6]. I'd argue that's even more evidence that this is not a well known or notable documentary. I also noticed that according to IMDb (and recognising IMDb's fallibility), the documentary did not receive a broad release (they only have a release date for Germany). Likewise, "Sarina Singh" gets 306 distinct g-hits (of 36,000 total) [7] and most of those are mere references to material she has written and book shop entries. I actually spent a considerable amount of time researching both the writer and the film because I'm Australian and I have a particular interest in Australian culture in general and I would have been interested in working on the article and trying to save it from deletion and bring it in line with policy, but the more I looked, the more I became convinced that this person is just not ready for Wikipedia yet. Sarah 09:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Appears to fail WP:BIO and is clearly at some level self-promotion. Orderinchaos 10:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, the crux of this argument seems to have boiled down assertions that Singh is notable for her role in creating "Beyond The Royal Veil". With all due respect to User:Wifione though, I don't see that that particular documentary is notable enough to be considered a "well-known or significant work". For instance, not only do we not have any article on it already (which one would expect we would if it were notable), it hasn't got five votes at IMDB, and I can't find any real independent coverage of it. Without that, any claim of notability for Singh falls rather flat, I'm afraid. Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC).[reply]
  • This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 12:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fred, if you want the article kept, please find WP:RS-compliant sources and ensure that it is adequately sourced. Currently the article still does not comply with WP:BLP because the sourcing is inadequate. The article is basically sourced to Amazon and a few articles she wrote about places. The first source, for example, is absurd. An Amazon listing for a book does not support that information - it doesn't even support the claim that she's Australian! I also do not believe that "interesting documentary" is a policy-based rationale for keeping articles. Your removal of material is all very well but given the origin of the article and the user's comments etc it's hard to believe the unsourced biographical and promotional material won't simply return after the AFD. I also disagree with your claim that she is the "author of a substantial number of books". And some of your edits seem to have introduced errors where you give her sole credit for books she was just one of many contributors. (the polo book, the Aboriginal and Tores Strait Islander book and the Pakistan and the Karakoram Highway, for example, all had multiple contributors but you're presenting it as though she was the sole author of them). I find a claim of notability on the basis of her writing far more reasonable than claiming she is a notable film-maker but I'm still not at all convinced. I'm pretty confident that if she was a notable Australian author, there'd be newspaper, magazine, etc, articles about her, not merely bylines and references to her writing. The people who want this kept really need to address the lack of RS-compliant material about her. Sarah 16:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sarah, your points were well made, but just to qualify my keep. I agree with Wifione that she meets the minimum notability requirements as to her work on the documentary alone, and there are also the Lonely Planet contributions. I also agree there is little, beyond these contributions, to write an encyclopaedic article "about her", but biographical details are not the only criteria: work done is another. There are plenty of celebrities whose biographical details are multiply sourced: there are other authors (especially documentary makers) who are almost invisible in front of their subject. Though we may debate the merits of the policy, "work done" is sufficient notability for the article to comply. Moloch09 (talk) 18:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Moloch09, thanks for clarifying your thoughts. I'm still quite baffled by the belief that notability is established via the documentary. It was financed and aired by SBS which a well known public television network in Australia that often passes under the radar and generally doesn't rate very well. SBS airs tons and tons of these types of short docos about people's personal stories, ancestors etc. I'd say this is part of the reason the Australian editors/admins who have commented so far seem to be of the view that she and the documentary, at least, is not notable or well known. Australia has a population of around 22 million people and SBS's slogan is "Six Billion Stories and counting..."! (you can see it in their banner at the top of their website.) Which works out to be around 273 of these documentaries for each man, woman and child living in Australia! I still think that *if* she *is* notable, it's as Fred sort of said and because of her work with Lonely Planet. She's contributed to a number of LP books and articles and if you're weighing notability, it seems to me that has an awful lot more weight than the the 50 minute documentary episode, apparently about her family's ancestors. I also disagree that work-output is sufficient to get over a lack of verifiable material about a subject. As someone said above, if the doc or books are notable, then the article ought to be about the documentary, book etc. I'll also say now (not to you, Moloch, but in general) that if the article ends up being kept, and it starts creeping back to being promotional when the next book comes out, or we see PR type activity and unsourced peacocky material back (remembering that this article began life as a copy and paste of her own promotional article), I will bring it straight back to AFD. Hopefully by then the recent unsourced/poorly sourced BLP-related discussions, RFC, arbitrations, etc will have concluded and we will have much clearer guidance for dealing with poorly sourced bios of living persons. Sarah 04:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I confess. I saw the documentary and found it very interesting. Not a source, I know... Fred Talk 22:36, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wifione, the edits since I was last here yesterday have certainly improved the article and it's far better than the version I saw yesterday, but there's a couple of obvious problems. First, per WP:SURNAME, please refer to bio subjects by their last names, not their christian names - it's way too familiar. You (or someone, I haven't actually gone through the contribs) also added material claiming that she was the wardrobe designer for an American film and on that basis made the heading refer to movies and documentaries (plurals). I'm pretty sure that she was not a wardrobe designer for that American Desi film in 2001. In 2001, when that film was being made, she was working on two books - one in India and one in Australia. There's also not a single mention of that film, fashion or costume design, etc on her website and if you take a clser look at IMDb, you'll see they have two separate listings for Sarina Singh, one the author who co-wrote the documentary, the second, a wardrobe person (see Sarina Singh list at IMdb [8]). Both have only been credited for working on one production. I also noticed that there's at least half-a-dozen Sarina Singhs, (which obviously needs to be considered when looking at search engine results and g-hits) so it would be wise to be especially careful when adding information about someone of this name who's work is not as an Australian writer because this Sarina Singh seems to be purely and pretty much exclusively a writer. I'm not sure but her father or grandfather may be notable themselves. I think, from the information she wrote in that editorial about her father and what I have found in other articles, that the documentary is at least about some of his relatives and ancestors (which actually would make complete sense as short tv shows about people's genealogy, family histories, autobiographies, etc is exactly the type of material that SBS gets behind and airs)It is very hard to find and untangle appropriate information from back the thougn because there seems to be a number of people from that generation that share his exact name (possibly they were named after Bhagat Singh, an Indian freedom-fighter. Her editorial said "My father, Dr Bhagat Singh - whose father had migrated to Fiji after World War I..." I could be very ignorant about the movement of the Indian people post-WWI, but I would think it would be unusual for two Bhagat Singh's to move their family from India to Fiji at the same time. A Bhagat Singh who moved from India to Fiji after WWI, has a lot of newspaper articles at the time and is possibly notable. Sarah 04:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as per Fred. His rewrite enforces NPOV. She sails just above notability criteria.

Moloch09 (talk) 17:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Does not meet the criteria of WP:CREATIVE. In particular, she has not "created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." Wikipeterproject (talk) 16:41, 31 January 2010 (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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