Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Don Smith (author)

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 keep. No arguments were made to delete the article outside of the nominator's. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 16:19, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Don Smith (author)[edit]

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WP:BLP of a writer, with no strong claim to passing WP:AUTHOR and no strong reliable sourcing to carry an article. The notability claim as a writer is that he and his work exist, which is enough if the person can be sourced over WP:GNG for it but not enough in and of itself to exempt him from having to pass GNG — but five of the seven references are to unreliable sources, like Blogspot blogs or the sales pages of his own books on the website of their own publisher, which cannot support notability. And of the two citations that are actually to published books by other writers, one book just contains a glancing namecheck of Smith's existence on one page without being in any way about him — and although I admit that I'm unable to verify whether or not the other says enough about him to start getting him over GNG or not (it has a page on Google Books but its text is not searchable), even if it does it still takes quite a bit more than just one GNG-worthy source to finish getting him over GNG. Which means he simply isn't sourced anywhere well enough to pass GNG in lieu of not having a strong AUTHOR pass. Bearcat (talk) 00:10, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. WeAreAllHere _talk 00:27, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada -related deletion discussions. WeAreAllHere _talk 00:27, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I researched and wrote the article after coming across a novel by Don Smith, googling the author and obtaining near zero relevant results. (Granted, the popularity of his name and surname do not help.) The article exists in the French and Swedish versions of Wikipedia since 2014 and 2016 respectively. I did not translate either version; I wrote the article from sources I could verify, using the short biography from a French book cited in the French article (which I could search, and corroborated to be accurate), and the scraps of supporting info in the form of work lists and amateur reviews in blogs--which, even if not reliable, might constitute an argument in favor of the notability of an author who published mostly in the 60s-70s, as does the existence of the French and Swedish articles (author wrote solely in English). WP:AUTHOR #3 requires the subject to have "created ... a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of ... multiple independent periodical articles or reviews". I think that over two dozen books (that we know of) in well-known mass-market paperback presses, translated to at least three languages (again, that we know of) and generating discussion even among bloggers three decades later is a body of work worthy of consideration. And it's safe to assume such work has generated articles and reviews as well (if nothing else, the blurbs on the novels' covers prove so: two different ones from The New York Post and from Adam Hall and Edward S. Aarons). I must disagree with the idea that the article doesn't have a strong AUTHOR pass; as mass-market paperback authors go, it is quite strong. I understand inclusion policies must be more strict for a WP:BLP (assumed, for the subject was born in August 1909 according to all sources, 6 years short of WP:BDP), and I see the flaws pointed out; there's miles of room for improvement and I hope to work more on it (I already am). However, I don't see the benefit of deleting the article altogether, hiding the subject deeper into the pool of Don Smiths in the internet and thus making it more difficult for someone with reliable information on the subject to provide it. SonnyHEL (talk) 04:41, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@SonnyHEL: can you add the New YOrk Post reviews and other sourced to the page?E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Blogs are inherently unreliable sources that cannot be used to reference Wikipedia content at all. They are not reliable or trustworthy support for claims of fact, and they are not evidence of notability. And a person does not get a free exemption from having to clear WP:GNG just because he's an obscure topic with a common name who might get "lost" in the crowd — he has to have a credible claim to passing WP:AUTHOR, and he has to have more reliable source coverage to support it than you've shown here, before he gets to have a Wikipedia article. We do not create special carveouts from our notability and sourceability standards just to help publicize the work of a person who doesn't pass them — we're not a free publicity venue, and it's not our role to help undercovered or unsung topics create a media presence. We do not keep an article about a person who has neither a strong notability claim nor strong sourcing just because it's theoretically possible that somebody might come along in the future with better sourcing to support it, because it's also possible that somebody might not — if you want the article to be kept, then it's your job to find enough reliable source coverage to make it keepable before you create it at all. Bearcat (talk) 05:21, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article's creator makes a very good case for keeping this article; particularly since it exists in several languages on Wikipedia. ErieSwiftByrd (talk) 05:18, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Nothing stops anybody from creating an article about anything, so whether a person has an article on another language Wikipedia is irrelevant to notability or lack thereof — the other articles may also need to be deleted, and just hadn't gotten noticed until they were brought up. That kind of argument actually tends to backfire more often than it succeeds — it's more likely to cause the deletion of the other language articles, if they aren't solidly sourced either, than it is to make the English article survive. Bearcat (talk) 05:21, 21 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 06:55, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

leaning keep, will do a little sourcing.E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:19, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the reviews! Sadly I don't have access to the ones in The New York Post; I only know they exist because they are blurbed on the paperbacks. Chances are the review(s) was on the whole series, not on one book. Also, author is dead according to a living relative, but I haven't been able to find a quotable source on that. He is said to have lived in Europe while he wrote.SonnyHEL (talk) 02:41, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note that I have added several book reviews from major newspapers, a tedious process due to author's very common name and the fact he uses titles filled with common names and phrases like "Out of the Sea" that generate hits on a large number of stories about other stuff. Nevertheless, there is more than enough to establish that this was a very popular author. Not also that Smith's thrillers have been written about (albeit briefly) in at least ~~two~~ three (just added another) recent books (sourced on page).E.M.Gregory (talk) 10:33, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It is clear that Smith was a very popular author. Also, because' that this is a new article, Nom could have tagged it for better sourcing, but taking it immediately to deletion was hasty and ignored indications (publishers don't keep publishing novelists who lack sales) of novelists notability. There are probably more books that mention him and there are certainly snippet views of passages mentioning, discussing these novels in older books and magazine articles that are not online but that come up in snippet views. I am persuaded not only that more sources can be found by diligent searching, but that Smith's oeuvre makes him NOTABLE. Passes WP:AUTHOR.E.M.Gregory (talk) 10:53, 7 May 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.