Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boyan Slat

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. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:59, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Boyan Slat[edit]

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Contested WP:PROD. Not notable independently of The Ocean Cleanup. Journalistic coverage of him personally is sparse and not sustained. The page's main purpose seems promotional, and is entirely about his work with the one entity. FalconK (talk) 03:32, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. FalconK (talk) 03:32, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. FalconK (talk) 03:32, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The nomination seems to be based on a misconception – that people need to have notability separate from their achievements or that they need to be prominent in multiple fields. But that is false. Did you know that there's only one person who has won both the Nobel Prize and an Olympic medal? We have have articles about those awards but we also have articles about the people who win them, even if they win only one. But note that our subject has received multiple prizes and awards.

The nomination also claims that journalistic coverage is sparse and not sustained. This claim is clearly false. The article was started six years ago following coverage by the BBC. Checking again, we find fresh coverage in Paris Match, just 3 hours ago. Such coverage is very personal and biographical – Paris Match even has a picture of the subject as a baby – it doesn't get much more personal than that.

So, what's going on here? It appears that the nominator is on a spree - proposing deletion of other young prodigies who have won awards like the Thiel Fellowship. Well, I must declare my interest – I like cleaning up junk too. In the physical world, I help clean our parks and rivers. On Wikipedia, I help dispose of the tide of trash too. Of course, the trick is deciding what's trash and what's treasure ...

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:41, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- We should evaluate each of these on their merits. I nominate a lot of BLP articles about company executives or investors and pages written about early-stage startups because they tend to rely on coverage that isn't sustained - a profile here and there, a bunch of puff pieces, but nothing that makes them notable individually. In this case, his company is quite likely to be notable - it even has a page that isn't being nominated for deletion. But notability isn't generally inherited, and the criterion laid out in WP:1E bears heavily. And being placed on x under y lists from Forbes or receiving young entrepreneur awards - or a Thiel fellowship - isn't notable either. FalconK (talk) 05:15, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - FalconK fails to address the merits of the specific subject in this case, retreating to vague generalities. My !vote stands. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:45, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Both the Paris Match and the BBC article you've cited here are predominantly about The Ocean Cleanup, which is indeed notable. This kind of run-of-the-mill coverage is written about a lot of corporate founders, and in general this is within the spirit of WP:1E. There's already an article on the company. We don't need to publish the resume of every young company founder; Wikipedia is not LinkedIn. FalconK (talk) 06:20, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      - These assertions are false too. The headline for the BBC article starts "The Dutch boy..." while the Paris Match headline starts "Boyan Slat...". Both articles have multiple pictures of Boyan Slat making it quite clear that he is their subject. WP:1E is quite irrelevant because neither the person nor their foundation is a single event and the coverage extends over six years. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:46, 19 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Some of the IRS references are about Slat himself.[1][2][3] We do not use our own speculations as to why journalists choose to write about the topics they do. References are not required to be entirely about the topic in question – they are just required to have substantial content on topic. It does not matter if the motivation for producing the reference was to discuss some other matter. Thincat (talk) 15:38, 24 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 01:45, 25 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

- The latter two links are the same article at MSNBC, which purports to be about him but is really about his company. The sum total of personal independent coverage in that article is that he has brown hair, studied aerospace engineering, and dropped out. Hardly significant, and on top of that the article seems to mainly use an interview with him as a source and therefore its independence is in question. The first link to Readers' Digest is X of the year coverage, and also relies heavily on interviews with him and thus has questionable independence. But it also mainly describes him in relation to his company, plus a minimal discussion of his general appearance. WP:BASIC requires the sources be independent - WP:INDY clarifies that the point of this is to prevent undue reliance on the subject's own views, which a couple interviews with Boyan cannot possibly satisfy. I suggest a review of the policy at WP:PSEUDO, in particular the discussion around cases where "the person mentioned only in connection with an event or organization", to explain my application of WP:1E here. FalconK (talk) 01:29, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 21:42, 2 January 2021 (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.