Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barbara Plett

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 Criticism of the BBC. No demonstration of independent notability. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 10:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Barbara Plett[edit]

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I don't think that the subject meets the general notability guidelines, and the article certainly doesn't establish how she does if she does. I spent some time independently looking, and came up empty - but I'm not very accustomed to applying the people-related notability guidelines, so please point out if I am wrong. Additionally, my understanding is that in general wikipedia's policy is that individuals who are noted only for specific controversies should not have independent articles about themselves, and also that articles should not exist primarily to disparage their subjects, and I think this article is probably running afoul of both of those guidelines. (Relevant policies probably include wp:blp and wp:coatrack. Mention of the commentary may belong on Criticism of the BBC or a similar page, but it seems inappropriate for a standalone biography. Unless independent notability can be established, I think the page should be deleted.Kgorman-ucb (talk) 01:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the person who first raised the wp:NPOV issue re this article. I would rather it be deleted than languish in its current, biased form but regarding Ms Plett's notability, I would observe that 1) she has obvious notoriety and 2) Lyse Doucet, Ms Plett's contemporary and likewise a Canadian journalist with a career history as a BBC foreign correspondent, already has a modest biosketch devoted to her. 87.86.118.227 (talk) 17:29, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The article is an obvious WP:COATRACK, and has little on the subject herself - those who have edited the article seem to have expended little effort in attempting to find any either - or if they have, they have failed. WP:BLP1E seems thus to apply. If it was established that the subject were notable, the single event that seems to have led to the article creation would seemingly merit little weight in any case. It belongs instead in Criticism of the BBC, as noted above. In response to the posting by 87.86.118.227, above, I'd point out that over the years Wikipedia policy regarding biographies has been changing, and what may have been acceptable in the past may not now be so. I'm sure both journalists are creditable professionals, but that in itself may not establish 'notability' by current Wikipedia standards. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:20, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate Wikipedia's desire to raise the threshold for including a given journalist's biography on the basis of notability but if the 'public recognition' factor means anything (and I'm sure it does), Lyse Doucet and Barbara Plett are notable, as BBC World News correspondents, for appearing on hundreds of millions of TV screens (and on BBC World Service radio) around the globe every time there's a crisis in the Middle East and at the UN to be reported (as right now, during the Arab Spring - this is what prompted me to look up Barbara Plett's biography-cum-coatrack on Wikipedia in the first place). Surely in their cases, there are enough news junkies wanting to know the backgrounds of those who regularly report world-shaking events to them, to warrant Wikipedia publishing their biographies (not least to allow one to guage their journalistic credentials and perspectives - and to this end, I advocate semi-protecting a balanced, modest, well-referenced treatment of Plett's Arafat episode in non-edit mode so it can't be maliciously deleted, while crucially leaving the remainder of the expanded biography open for editing). Barbara Plett and Lyse Doucet are not your local 'cub' reporters: as long-serving and respected BBC foreign journalists, they're at the top of their profession in one of the most well-known news organisations on the planet. In short, they're the epitome of 'reality TV' - no grandstanding, fly-by-night celebrities these! 87.86.118.227 (talk) 17:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom and also based on WP:BLP1E. CordeliaNaismith (talk) 02:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Either fix or MERGE to already-existing subsection of Criticism of the BBC -- I think Barbara Plett is notable enough to have a full article written about her, but if after four years no-one is going to write anything except on the Arafat affair, then maybe it's time to give up vaguely hoping for future expansion. If it is decided to eliminate it as a separate article, then relevant useful content should be transferred to the already-existing subsection of page Criticism of the BBC... AnonMoos (talk) 03:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AnonMoos, thanks for the above contribution to the debate but to clarify, the reason no one added to the Arafat episode is that, outrageously, the author of this coatrack - masquerading as a complete biography - was allowed to manipulate things by completely eliminating the 'edit' function, so no one could! (Till now...) 87.86.118.227 (talk) 17:33, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

note - I made an edit to what looks to me like a better version that the one that was there, an IP made some edits that look like improvement to me but they were all reverted by user Neutralhomer who called them vandalism. They clearly were not vandalism at all. Off2riorob (talk) 11:50, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your efforts, Off2riorob. (Why am I not surprised that a reverse-evolutionist crawled out of the woodwork to allege vandalism of Barbara Plett's living biography?) To Wikipedia's editors: I respectfully submit that you owe it to Ms Plett - whose journalistic reputation has been unfairly denigrated for years by this heretofore-uneditable, coatrack snippet on your website - to research, post and archive a balanced, modest biography of her. (If it becomes vandalised, then if necessary administrators should restore, page-protect and maintain the biography in non-edit mode, with a public note that the protection is due to a prior history of vandalism and coatracking.) 87.86.118.227 (talk)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 14:58, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Improve or merge to already-existing subsection of Criticism of the BBC -- As User:AnonMoos said, "I think Barbara Plett is notable enough to have a full article written about her, but if after four years no-one is going to write anything except on the Arafat affair, then maybe it's time to give up vaguely hoping for future expansion". Off2riorob (talk) 18:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Off2riorob, you overlooked my earlier reply to AnonMoos (above): No one was allowed to expand this biography ~~for four years~~ because it was (ill-advisedly) fully page-protected! (I'm losing the will to live...) 87.86.118.227 (talk)

Hi, I looked for that in the logs (see here) but didn't find anything , that doesn't mean your not correct though, as a note - I am leaning towards keep and improve. In regard to losing the will to live - please don't do that, wiki can do that to you though, we usually get there in the end and it can seem a little bemusing and process blinded sometimes.Off2riorob (talk) 20:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, Off2riorob. The biography was page-protected because I found it that way: the page's Edit tab had been removed without explanation, so I couldn't update it with the subject's current role as UN Correspondent, or anything else. (The BBC on behalf of Ms Plett got the protection removed, earlier this month.) My experience suggests that Wikipedia was the unwitting participant in a coatracking exercise: the site-administrator who protected the page in its entirety (perhaps at the request of the coatracker) showed poor judgement at best, and bias at worst. If I'd been in their shoes, after verifying the passage on the Arafat incident I would at most have semi-protected it and left the rest of the page open for editing, for fairness' sake. 87.86.118.227 (talk) 21:00, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

87.86.118.227 -- I really don't understand your complaint. From just the editing history, the article could not have been fully protected for even six consecutive months (let alone four solid years), and anonymous IPs seem to have edited from time to time, including yourself in June 2010... AnonMoos (talk) 06:06, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AnonMoos, my complaint is this: between 21 February and 5 March 2011 at a bare minimum, Barbara Plett's biography on Wikipedia was page-protected as a wp:coatrack (and before you ask, both Kgorman-ucb and AndyTheGrump will back me up on the latter characterisation). This injustice might have continued ad infinitum had the BBC not complained to Wikipedia. The website has to take some of the blame because as I understand it, only a site-administrator can page-protect a biography. Under these circumstances, and given Ms Plett's longstanding, high public profile worldwide as described above, for Kgorman-ucb to put her biography on death row seems harsh, no? (Btw, I don't recall editing this biography before yesterday, and then only to correct her surname from Plopp(!) to Plett. Character-assassination by a thousand cuts... ) 87.86.118.227 (talk) 09:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting that another BBC foreign correspondent, Orla Guerin, also had a 'Mideast moment' not unlike Plett's. 87.86.118.227 (talk) 00:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The best way to get an article kept is to improve it. If the subject has received notable awards and add any articles that discuss her. Off2riorob (talk) 00:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Off2riorob, with respect I'm not plumping to be Barbara Plett's biographer. All I did was point out an obvious injustice that highlights a possible systemic weakness in Wikipedia's publishing protocol, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Barbara_Plett. Someone else proposed deletion as the solution and if the upshot is that her biography gets wiped from the Wikisphere then I'd be content, if not in agreement. 87.86.118.227 (talk) 00:22, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this wikipedia is far from a perfect place, things happen that are against policy, some users vote as they like without consideration to policy and guidelines. Some users care and some don't, some users here don't even like the project and attempt to destroy it from within. Some users are 10 year old children. Some users are only here to attack and add as negative content as possible about their real life enemies. Off2riorob (talk) 10:54, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're right on the money, Off2riorob! Wikipedia needs the cyber-equivalent of a smart-bomb to stop this mischief. :) 87.86.118.227 (talk) 03:19, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep A comparison of the plump talk page to the emaciated article is evidence that some WP editors would rather fight than work, and diversion of attention from content to balance on this article has has led to nothing but an AFD that should never have happened. Anarchangel (talk) 02:01, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Content disputes are not a good reason for deletion. The person is decidedly notable. Collect (talk) 08:06, 23 March 2011 (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.