Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Kirtzman

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. Spartaz ^Humbug! 22:17, 7 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew Kirtzman[edit]

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This biographical article is largely written by the subject. Although he disclaims that, it is clear that most of the words in the article are his work. That violated WP:COI, WP:NPOV, and WP:Promotion and other policies. . Jim . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 11:25, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Uhmm. Notability is less than border-line here. The reference appear to depend on self published books (and having books published does not make one WP notable unless the books are notable anyway) and other references are to advertorials. So, as Spock might have said “He might be notable Jim but not as we know it.” So Delete. --Aspro (talk) 19:11, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, or rather, Blow it up and start again. Subject may just fall on the right side of notable (primarily for his ownership of property in Fire Island Pines, rather than for his journalism, see [1], [2]) but this article needs a hefty rewrite from someone who isn't the subject himself. Yunshui ^雲 _水 10:02, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 10:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 10:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. MT Train^Talk 10:47, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – To paraphrase Aspro ; “….Uhmm… He might be notable… but not as we know it.”. My thought process has always been to follow our policy of Notability where it states notability is the property of being worthy of notice, having fame, or being considered to be of a high degree of interest, significance, or distinction. It also refers to the capacity to be such. Persons who are notable due to public responsibility, accomplishments, or, even, mere participation in the celebrity industry are said to have a public profile. We may not agree in the way an article is written or even the tone of the piece, but that does not take away the notability of the subject. It just means the piece needs to be edited, and to be honest, it impossible to edit a deleted article. Andrew Kirtzman has garnered more than enough coverage in the New York Times, CBS, New York Daily News, Newsday and numerous other, both printed and televised, sources to justify his inclusion. A need to rewrite is not a reason for deletion. Thanks for listening. ShoesssS ^Talk 15:02, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: So OK, he has got his 15 minutes of fame in a very few publications but is that 'encyclopaedia' notable? Has Jim has noticed, we have a Klingon on the starboard bow and questions if we should wipe it off. written with apologies to Roddenberry Also note: Kirtzman Strategies is a self professed public affairs communications firm. So, if they make such a ham-fisted effort of creating a simple WP article – are they really as competent at what they claim when it comes to communications - if they can't even create a proper article about themselves? Scrub it and don't let them leave it to unpaid WP editors to improve their promotional article for them when they profess to be the experts at communications and pay themselves very well for it ! --Aspro (talk) 20:31, 23 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is not established by asserting it, but by reliably sourcing it. No article can ever claim anything about its subject that exempts them from having to be sourced much better than this is, because notability is defined by the sources used to support the article's statements, not by the statements themselves. Bearcat (talk) 20:40, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep He's likely notable, but for his real estate interests. Not sure he'd pass WP:AUTHOR or WP:JOURNALIST, but there's in depth coverage of his landholdings on Fire Island. Minor edit: Needs to be scrubbed, though. SportingFlyer talk 05:31, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, without prejudice against recreation if somebody without a direct conflict of interest can do better than this. For the purposes of qualifying for a Wikipedia article, notability is less a factor of what an article says than of how well the article reliably sources what it says, but the sourcing here isn't cutting it at all — half of the footnotes are to primary sources that cannot support notability (books sourced to their own publication details rather than to reliable source coverage about them, building sourced to photograph of building, etc.), while the sources that do represent media coverage are almost all just glancing namechecks of his existence in articles about other things. The only source here that's about him in any non-trivial way is the wedding announcement, but that represents routine "coverage" that doesn't actually establish notability either. While he might be eligible to keep an article that was sourced properly, nothing here is "inherently" notable enough to keep him if he's sourced like this. Bearcat (talk) 20:36, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your claim here is just wrong: "For the purposes of qualifying for a Wikipedia article, notability is less a factor of what an article says than of how well the article reliably sources what it says." In fact, notability is a property of the subject, not of the article. See WP:ARTN. Notability is ONLY a factor of existing sources, not at all of how well the article says anything. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 14:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, notability is a property of the subject, I didn't say it wasn't — but the matter of whether the subject has that property or not is measured by whether he has reliable source coverage in media or not. No article about any subject can ever claim anything that is so "inherently" notable that they're exempted from having to pass GNG just because of what the article says. Bearcat (talk) 15:30, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -- First of all, the three NYT articles already used are enough for Kirtzman to pass GNG. Hence the nomination is flawed. Furthermore, Kirtzman passes WP:AUTHOR on the basis of his book about Bernie Madoff, which was pretty widely reviewed when it came out. Here are a few instances:

MUST READ Jewish Times (Baltimore, MD) - September 4, 2009
First, do no harm Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PA) - August 30, 2009
BANKING ON BERNIE - A PAIR OF NEW BOOKS DIG INTO 'THE WORLD'S LARGEST PONZI SCHEME' AND THE MAN BEHIND IT San Jose Mercury News (CA) - August 30, 2009
MAN OF STEAL - TWO AUTHORS ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN WHAT WENT WRONG WITH WALL STREET'S SUPERMAN. Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - August 23, 2009
Reading Madoff: Books that rose from the fall Associated Press Archive - August 21, 2009
Evening Standard: How Madoff got away with it
Ponzi king Madoff had inexperienced regulators eating out of his hands, says book Asian News International (New Delhi, India) - August 12, 2009 Evening Standard, The (London, England) - August 13, 2009
MADOFF WOWED KID PROBERS New York Post (NY) - August 11, 2009

192.160.216.52 (talk) 14:20, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, the New York Times articles cited here aren't enough to get him over GNG by themselves. Two of them just glancingly namecheck his existence in articles that aren't about him, and the one that is about him is just a WP:ROUTINE wedding notice. That's not the kind of coverage we require. As to the other sources you list here, I can't speak to whether they support Kirtzman's notability or not without seeing their text. Bearcat (talk) 15:30, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What in the world are you talking about? Your position is that you personally have to be able to see the reviews, which you evidently can't because you don't have access to the databases, before you can change your !vote from delete? That can't be right. Keep is the default, so you should be saying that you have to be able to see them before you !vote delete. Anyway, they're reviews of the guy's book in prominent newspapers. That makes him pass WP:AUTHOR. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 16:52, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, keep is not the "default" in an AFD discussion. There is no guaranteed right to have a Wikipedia article: the burden of proof falls on the keep side of an AFD debate, not on the delete side. It is not "everybody is automatically presumed notable until somebody can prove otherwise" — it's "the people who want the article to exist have to prove that the topic qualifies to have one in the first place". That is, the burden of proof here is on you, not on me. Bearcat (talk) 05:35, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

But I did prove that the guy's notable. I listed a bunch of reviews of his book in prestigious newspapers, which establishes notability per WP:AUTHOR. You seem to be ignoring this fact. If you won't even take the time to evaluate the sources, why should anyone listen to your opinion on notability? 192.160.216.52 (talk) 19:42, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 05:57, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete IP user, you have not "proved" anything. You can't just throw half-formed references into the ring and expect everyone else to track those down and evaluate them for you. If you want to make an argument here, you have to actually make it and support it. Because I happen to have access to Lexis-Nexis, though, I did look for these reviews. Oddly enough, the most comprehensive news database in the world did not have full text for some of these. The ones it did have (e.g., the Evening Standard, the New York Post) were not actually significantly about Kirtzman or his book, mentioning him only in passing or merely quoting him about Madoff. Merely having reviews has little bearing on WP:NAUTHOR anyway, which asks if the person ...has created ...a significant or well-known work... To that end, I note that this article states that Kirtzman's book sold all of 3,000 copies in the first month after its release. That is not a significant or well-known work. This person fails the tests of WP:GNG as well; where the coverage about him has been significant, it has not been independent and where the coverage has been independent it has not been significant. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 06:18, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Friend, you're mistaken. There is absolutely no requirement for me to find online versions of references, see WP:PUBLISHED. That's the first thing that you just made up. Second, having reviews has great bearing on WP:NAUTHOR, which states explicitly that "The person has created ... a well-known work ... [that has] been the primary subject ... of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." Your claim that reviews don't have any bearing on NAUTHOR is the second thing you just made up. Finally, your claim about Lexis-Nexis is silly as well. It may be the most comprehensive news database in the world and stuff, but subscriptions to it come in levels. Sadly, whatever level you have access to doesn't have all the reviews I listed, but other levels, in fact, do have them. Finally, your argument about the number of copies sold is bankrupt. Thus Spake Zarathustra sold only 40 copies of the first edition. Why not bring that up to AfD? In short, you can certainly !vote to delete, but your reasons are out of policy and basically invented. Clearly the closer will take this into account. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 13:23, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

First, where did I say "online"? I did not. Online references are really preferred in AfD discussions because then other editors can verify whether the references offered are significant but properly-cited references are essential. What I see above is indistinguishable from taking the output from a generic search and therefore has no probative value. Secondly, you are misapplying WP:PUBLISHED, which is about reliability of sources in an article. This is not an article, it is a discussion about whether an article is about a notable subject and proponents of keeping an article on the subject are not generally expected to keep throwing the burden of finding an verifying sources onto others. Experienced closers will most likely see it similarly. Even then, WP:RS states the sources must be properly cited which, as previously mentioned, you did not do. By the by, I have access to Lexis-Nexis through two universities, one public and one private. They are at the highest level of news access (although the legal document access is spotty on some areas) that company offers. I did not "just make up" my interpretation of NAUTHOR, you selectively quoted it to make the presence of reviews seem a stronger point. That's again not very important because those supposed reviews you posted don't check out. To the extent they are verifiable, they are about Madoff with Kirtzman being mentioned in passing or as a SME, they are not about Kirtzman or his book. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 16:42, 2 April 2018 (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.