Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jonathan Desbiens (2nd nomination)

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. Consensus seems to be that there are enough sources to merit an article. Remember that the outcome at AfD generally depends only on the existence of sources, not on their presence in the article - that's an editorial matter, not a notability one, and there's plenty of time to add them in. ansh666 19:19, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Jonathan Desbiens[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Jonathan Desbiens (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This had been deleted at an earlier AfD, then brought to review at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2017 September 28. The result of that review was to endorse the close but relist at AfD, given the new sources. This is a purely procedural action; I offer no opinion on the outcome. Winged Blades of GodricOn leave 15:46, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. MassiveYR ♠ 17:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. MassiveYR ♠ 17:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I haven't found specific notability guidelines for video directors or music video directors. As stated by TonyBallioni in the deletion review, Juno Awards nomination may serve to verify notability for musician under WP:NMUSIC 8. I guess this could also serve here. I hope the provided awards and nominations references may also help.DanielFarad (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The notability standard for music video directors needs to be, and is, that they're the subject of enough reliable source coverage to properly support the article. It is not enough that directories and unreliable sources and glancing namechecks of his existence in coverage of the musicians he worked with nominally verify that he did the claimed work; the requirement is that media coverage exists about him. And even for a musician, a Juno Award nomination would still depend on their being the subject of reliable source coverage — it would not make a musician notable enough to be kept if they were so unsourceable otherwise that nominal verification of the Juno nomination in the Juno Awards' own self-published database of its own nominees was the strongest source that was actually present anywhere in the entire article. But this isn't based on reliable sources; it's based almost entirely on unreliable and namecheck sources, not reliable source coverage about Jonathan Desbiens. No prejudice against recreation in the future if someone can do better than this, but this as written and sourced still ain't good enough. Bearcat (talk) 20:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Bearcat have you considered the Journal de Montreal article? The "largest-circulating newspaper in Quebec, and the highest-circulating French-language daily newspaper in North America".DanielFarad (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • WP:GNG requires multiple reliable sources, not just one. That source is the reason I said this was almost entirely, rather than completely, based on unreliable and namecheck sources, but it's not enough to get him over GNG all by itself as the article's only substantive and non-garbage source. Bearcat (talk) 14:45, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I brought AfD1,at a time when the article was extremely scanty and almost unsourced. there seem to be many more sources now, and as a non-expert, I wouldn't now have thought it clear enough to take by myself to AfD. Those who know more should decide. DGG ( talk ) 00:28, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - I'm going to reiterate my earlier delete vote. There are not enough reliable sources to suggest sufficient notability. I know very little about him after reading the coverage that is there now. Were he more notable, there'd be more biographical info. Most of the coverage focuses on the subjects of his videos, but not him. There is a mention of an upcoming feature film, so perhaps this is WP:TOOSOON. The article also suffers from WP:OVERCITE, which I suppose is an unfortunate side effect of trying to pad the reference section for the deletion defense. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 22:17, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep The guy has worked with the biggest artists on the planet and gathered hundreds of millions of views on Youtube. He has received awards and nominations all around the world. He is cited by the most renowned magazines in the field (shots.net, Indiewire, Short of the week, i-D). Keep in mind that music video directors are not mainstream superstars. You will never have the kind of coverage you guys are asking for. I have been browsing through the Category:Canadian_music_video_directors trying to understand what more you guys would like to see here but that just doesn't exist. This is one of the most extensively sourced article.DanielFarad (talk) 23:59, 9 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This is not even close to being "one of the most extensively sourced article" — and no matter what notability claim a person may have in theory, he does not get to claim an exemption from our reliable sourcing requirements just because his field doesn't get the depth of media coverage that WP:GNG requires. One of the reasons we insist on reliable source coverage is that as an encyclopedia that anybody can edit, our articles are regularly edited to add information that's wrong or even inflammatory (e.g. allegations that the article subject committed a crime) — and without reliable sources, we have no other way to determine what's right or wrong. So we insist on verifiability in reliable sources in order to protect the article subject from the harm that having a Wikipedia article can cause, and if the required depth of reliable sources simply doesn't exist at all then a Wikipedia article doesn't get to exist either. Having a Wikipedia article is not an entitlement — the presence or absence of reliable source coverage is the be-all and end-all of whether a person qualifies to have a Wikipedia article or not, and a person can never accomplish anything that ever exempts him from that just because it's been asserted. Even a president of the United States would not get to have an article if he somehow managed to not get any media coverage for being president of the United States. Bearcat (talk) 17:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Take an honest look at Category:Canadian_music_video_directors. This article is easily on the top half of best sourced and referenced articles. Take a special look at Jamie_M._Dagg, Lyne_Charlebois, Glen_Hanson or Kevan_Funk for example. None of these articles meet the requirements you are invoking above and yet, you have created these articles yourself... What is going on here? DanielFarad (talk) 01:21, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a shot at this. Three of the four are award winning directors with films that have been released. That's why I voted this one as WP:TOOSOON. The fourth, Glen Hanson, is poorly sourced and so I hatnoted it for needing more refs. If you want to challenge any articles you can nominate them for deletion, but based on film output the other three directors seem more notable for now. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 17:10, 11 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your answer TimTempleton. For the sake of completeness, here are 4 other articles I found in the same category that have been created by Bearcat and that do not meet his reference requirements: Andrew_MacNaughtan, Jeffrey_St._Jules, Jeth_Weinrich, Gabriel_Pelletier. Now, I'm not saying that these people aren't notable and I don't want to change the aim of this discussion. And I surely don't want to propose deletion for any of those. The current article may also very well be WP:TOOSOON like you're suggesting, although I would have thought that his award and nominations would be of some importance. My point is that, from what I understand from Bearcat posts, awards and nominations aren't enough to make someone notable. "The requirement is that media coverage exists about him" and "WP:GNG requires multiple reliable sources, not just one". These 8 articles of his would fail that test. You guys are power contributors, and I admire you guys for that. You guys know all the codes, conditions, terms and stuff. You're impressive. But with all due respect, it is clearly a common practice for Bearcat to create stubs with too few and too week references, not meeting the requirements he's imposing here. Wikipedia is supposed to be objective and clearly subjectivity is screaming here. How can a simple user like me understand? An article is being deleted on a 2 against 1 vote with such a subjectivity? DanielFarad (talk) 01:17, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
One of the most frustrating thing about Wikipedia is something called WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. In a nutshell, each article has to be judged on its own merits, and there are lots of lousy articles that should be off the site - people just haven't got enough time to clean them up. Standards are much higher now that there are +5M articles and so many editors. Editors try to create formal guidelines to help others determine notability, but sometimes there's a bit of instinct that comes from experience that's not obvious to newcomers. In this case, it's clear as you noted that the other articles don't have as many sources, but with the few I looked over, the fact that there are released films and notable awards in the limited sources that we can read makes their notability higher than what I'm seeing for Mr. Desbiens. Don't get discouraged - a career is a marathon, not a sprint. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 03:23, 12 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I still think this is very subjective. Instinct is also very subjective, and the reference argument invoked here is totally artificial. I have also been looking at tools.wmflabs.org/langviews/. This article has gathered more views this year than any of Bearcat articles listed above. In a +5M articles contingency plan, I don't see any reasons why this one should go first. For what it's worth, I will proudly stand by my original vote. And for the record, he is a music video director. He does not do films and he should be judged accordingly.DanielFarad (talk) 01:44, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, Funk, Dagg, Charlebois, St. Jules, Pelletier and MacNaughtan are all properly referenced to real reliable source coverage in real media — every single one of them cites multiple real reliable sources. So I don't know where you're getting the notion that none of them meet the standards I invoked above, because every single one of them most certainly does fully meet the standards I invoked above: real coverage in real reliable sources is present to support them. Sure, they could stand to have more sources added, just as any article always could — but they already have enough to cover off basic notability, and more sources would be just bonus material. We measure the quality of the sources when assessing whether an article is properly referenced, not the raw number of footnotes — an article can cite just one high-quality source such as the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and still be considered better referenced than an article that cites ten sources of low quality such as blogs or IMDb.
Weinrich, I'll grant, is problematic — that article was created a full decade ago, when we didn't insist on sourcing to the same degree that we do now because of all the hard lessons we've learned since then about what can happen if we don't insist on proper sourcing. And that's also an article that has had conflict of interest problems, because Weinrich himself has edited in the past to advertorialize it into his preferred PR version — so what you see now is in no way representative of the quality of my Wikipedia editing skills just because I was the page's original creator. But he's also repairable, because even if the article itself isn't adequate right now the depth of reliable source coverage about him needed to get it back up to scratch does exist out there in the real world. So he's still not comparable to a person who has virtually no reliable source coverage at all.
And secondly, Wikipedia does not measure notability by how many page views an article does or doesn't get — I could get a million page views for an article about me, if I stuck my name at the top of Beyoncé's article so people were clicking on it to find out more about why it was there, but that wouldn't make me notable in and of itself if I hadn't cleared WP:GNG for anything. We measure notability by whether the person has or has not been the subject of enough reliable source coverage in media to clear GNG. Which St. Jules, Weinrich, Pelletier and MacNaughtan all have — but which you have yet to demonstrate that Desbiens has. And we don't give a flying fig how many views his work has on YouTube, either. YouTube is not a reliable source, and notability lives or dies on media coverage, not on how many people did or didn't click "like" on a social media platform — a person with no YouTube views is notable if he's gotten media coverage, and a person with a million YouTube views is not notable if he hasn't gotten media coverage. Bearcat (talk) 01:52, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat I don't agree with you. References are given to 3 newspaper articles talking about him (Journal de Montreal, La Presse & l'hebdo du St-Maurice) and according to reliable sources, journals and Mainstream newspapers are reliable sources. Now the required number is up to your personal feelings. As an example, for Jamie_M._Dagg, which you stand by, you gave 2 and these 2 references are absolutely not more solid or reliable than the 3 given here for Jodeb. Please, take an honest look at the references provided. DanielFarad (talk) 01:30, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter whether you agree or not — opinions don't trump objective facts. This is the way notability works on Wikipedia: if you're going for "notable because he passes a subject-specific inclusion criterion, such as winning a notable film award", then one, two or three sources are enough to get there as long as they specifically verify the passage of said criterion. But if you're going for "passes WP:GNG just because media coverage exists", then it takes more than three sources to get there. Three pieces of media coverage exist about my mother's neighbour who once found a pig in her yard, and three pieces of media coverage exist about me — so that's not enough to constitute a GNG pass in and of itself. If one, two or all three of those articles actually verified anything about him that passed an automatic must-include criterion, like winning a Canadian Screen Award as Dagg did, then three newspaper articles would be enough coverage — but if you're going for "he's notable just because media coverage of him exists", then you need much closer to nine or ten pieces of media coverage about him to actually pass that hurdle. Bearcat (talk) 01:41, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
He can't win a Canadian Screen Award, he's a music video director. He won the Berlin Music Video Awards and has been nominated for 5 other awards. The Journal de Montreal article also cite both Berlin and Juno awards nomination. Are the Berlin Music Video Awards, Juno Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Antville Music Video Awards and Much Music Video Awards not notable to you? They're the best in the field... What's the difference with your Canadian Screen Award for a video director?
Nobody said music videos had to (or could) win Canadian Screen Awards; I was addressing the CSAs in relation to why your comparison to Jamie Dagg didn't wash. And at any rate, firstly, there's a big difference between winning an award and merely being nominated for one — winning a CSA or a Juno automatically makes a person a topic we must include on just one legitimate source even if the article is still technically inadequate, while getting nominated for one makes a person a topic we can include if the sourcing is solid, but is not an automatic inclusion freebie that exempts them from having to pass GNG.
And as for the Berlin Music Video Awards and the Antville Music Video Awards, Wikipedia doesn't have an article about either of them and thus it's impossible for me to assess their notability or lack thereof. What determines whether an award is notable enough to make its winners notable for winning it or not is whether the media cover the granting of that award as news in its own right. It is not enough that the award gets glancingly mentioned as background information in an article that isn't about that, because self-promoting people can and do overplay non-notable awards in their PR bumf — the award win has to be sourced to news coverage about the awards themselves to count as a notability-conferring award win. (For another comparison — again, for similarity's sake and not because it has a direct bearing on Jonathan Desbiens per se — there's a reason why there is not a single redlinked writer in Giller Prize, but tons of redlinked writers in ReLit Awards: the awards aren't equivalent in how much media coverage they actually get. The Gillers are highly sourceable as a thing the media cover like kudzu, so even a nomination counts as a notability claim for a writer, while the ReLits get such spotty coverage that sometimes we can't even properly source the winners anywhere but the ReLits' own self-published website.)
So find me a source which is about Jonathan Desbiens winning the "Berlin Music Video Award", whatever that is, and we'll be getting somewhere — but it's not enough that an article about something else entirely just says he won an award, if we haven't actually established that said award is actually a notable one by virtue of coverage that's specifically about him winning Berlin Music Video Award. And same for the Junos and MMVAs: source them better, and we'll be cooking — but merely being nominated for either of those awards is not an automatic freebie that exempts Desbiens from still having to be sourced better than this. The rest of the article is still refbombed with sources that aren't aiding notability at all, which were added out of a mistaken perception that we assessed footnotes by their quantity rather than their quality — and many of them still need to be replaced accordingly. Bearcat (talk) 02:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, Bearcat's comments are exactly how I see notability. One decent source that says something was done that is notable and that few others have done, is sufficient to judge notability. If the item being mentioned is not that notable, no number of middling sources reporting on that item will move the needle. And if an award can't pass a notability discussion to get its own article, it's not considered notable. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 00:01, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 06:00, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, A Traintalk 07:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.
    1. Godin, Sandra (2017-02-19). "Un autre réalisateur québécois fait sa marque" [Another Quebec director makes his mark]. Le Journal de Montréal (in French). Archived from the original on 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2017-10-23.

      From Google Translate:

      But another Quebec director is making his way onto the world stage. After making a name for himself three years ago for the production of Imagine Dragons' video clip I Bet My Life , Jonathan Desbiens has just won a Juno nomination for the short film he directed for Skrillex, the star of electronic music.

      The road map of Jonathan Desbiens aka Jodeb, who lives in Bécancour, is long. It includes video clips for Cypress Hill, Marie-Mai, Imagine Dragons and three for DJ Zedd. The one for the song Clarity has 189 million views on YouTube, and for Beautiful Now , 91 million.

      This fall, he shot an ad for Europe's largest organic milk company, Arla, which will be broadcast in the coming days across the continent. The director also shot a short film with Karine Vanasse, for a project that must remain secret for some time.

      Jonathan Desbiens has just signed with Prettybird, one of the largest production companies in the world, which will bring him other major projects. Prettybird has just won the Grammy for best music video with Formation , Beyoncé. They have produced recent clips of Coldplay, Drake, and the Rolling Stones (with Kristen Stewart).

    2. Montminy, Marie-Josée (2010-09-18). "La passion de l'image, pour Jonathan Desbiens" [Passion for the image, for Jonathan Desbiens]. Le Nouvelliste (in French). Archived from the original on 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2017-10-23.

      From Google Translate:

      This weekend, Jonathan Desbiens is in Toronto to shoot a music video for the American group Deftones. He had made a round trip Thursday for locating places, between filming and editing a car advertisement in Montreal. Jonathan Desbiens is 24 years old and traces his way in the world of the realization.

      ...

      Barely a year after graduating from UQTR with a degree in Fine Arts, Jonathan Desbiens can include in his resume the production of commercials for Ford, Bell and the Régie du Cinéma, as well as the signing of two clips for The New Cities and the duo of Marie-Mai and David Usher. Among others.

      But when one mentions his bachelor's degree in plastic arts, it is not to name the training that taught him his craft in its technical aspects. He chose it more to draw theoretical references and depth that he could integrate into his approach to the image.

      Same principle with his college diploma in Communications, Arts and Literature at Laflèche College.

      ...

      After his refusal at Concordia, he bought the camera with which he began making clips for bands in the area, including CloseDown and Aksys. Subsequently, he also directed the first two New Cities clips ( Dead End Countdown and Leaders of the Misled ) - and devoted his last Monday to the shooting of the fourth group.

    3. Bois, Anne-Sophie (2014-12-30). "Jonathan Desbiens, l'homme derrière de nombreux vidéoclips" [Jonathan Desbiens, the man behind many video clips]. L'Écho de Trois-Rivières (in French). Archived from the original on 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2017-10-23.

      As noted at Media in Trois-Rivières, L'Écho de Trois-Rivières is a print source.

      From Google Translate:

      Since the release of Imagine Dragons' last music video, I Bet My Life , on December 12, the whole of Quebec is talking about its director Jodeb aka Jonathan Desbiens. However, this Shawiniganais has been producing for many years in both Canada and the United States.

      ...

      For this project, Jonathan Desbiens surrounded himself with a few people to complete this project, he who had only three weeks for editing.

      ...

      So far, the music video for the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, posted on December 10, 2012, has been viewed more than 271,415,231 times on the YouTube platform.

      As of December 29th, the video of I Bet My Life has been viewed more than 4,259,982 times.

    4. Beronilla, Pola (2015-07-24). "Jodeb: Double Exposure". Status Magazine. Archived from the original on 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2017-10-23.

      The article notes:

      Canadian filmmaker Jonathan Desbiens a.k.a. JODEB journeys across the universe to tell four-minute stories of surreality through his music videos. Whether it’s reloading dragons and Game of Thrones-esque action sequences with Sebastian Ingrosso and Tommy Trash or creating worlds grounded neither in fantasy nor reality with Dane DeHaan and Imagine Dragons, people might call his videos too ambitious–but maybe he’s just a zealous guy.

      “I got turned down by the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal, but I decided to keep on working on my craft while studying fine arts instead. I was a filmmaker without really believing it or understanding it,” recalls Jonathan Desbiens, who also shoots under the name Jodeb. “Paradoxically, now that I’m acknowledged as a filmmaker, I try to find that same spirit I had back then when I was doing it for naive reasons.” Hailing from Shawinigan Falls, Quebec, the film director got his break at 19 years young, shooting a music video for Closedown, an electro-hardcore band from his hometown. Though he didn’t make the director’s cut at university, his first serious attempt at filmmaking got on heavy rotation at MuchMusic in Canada, which eventually reeled in a nomination at Much Music Video Awards.

      Since first hitting that record button, he has been on an honorable roll, filling his portfolio with giants from every other genre. Collecting music videos from the likes of hip-hop veterans Cypress Hill, alt-metalheads Deftones, R&B songstress Tinashe, and Harelem-bred rapper A$AP Rocky, Jodeb has come a long way since his first reel experience. “I just turned 29 last month, and that video actually happened when I was 19, so it’s already been ten years,” he recalls.

    There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Jonathan Desbiens to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

    Cunard (talk) 03:33, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: to discuss the newly presented sources
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, SoWhy 11:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Thanks Cunard for finding more sources. They flush his biography out a little bit better, but there's still not enough mainstream media coverage to hit my threshold for notability. I like to see 8-9 reliable sources, including a few in-depth pieces mixed in to build a decent narrative. The ones there and the ones you found are somewhat light in biographical content. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 17:55, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Final relist.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, – filelakeshoe (t / c) 14:42, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Cunard's sources are enough to qualify the subject on notability (hats off to him, as always). Contrary to what is mentioned above, one doesn't necessarily require mainstream media sources to prove notability; one requires reliable sources – and all sources provided by Cunard seem reliable. WP:BASIC applies here quite appropriately. This Afd should be closed at this point. Lourdes 15:09, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Per Cunard's reliable sources. While a particular editor is within their rights to prefer to see 8 or 9 sources, that's not required by policy. --Arxiloxos (talk) 20:19, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment; as it stands right now it consists of 1 (one) sentence and then a list of stuff. It's not an article. Cunard's information is compelling, but I'm not about to lean one way or the other until it's moulded into an article that tells people about the subject. PKT(alk) 16:57, 5 November 2017 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jonathan_Desbiens_(2nd_nomination)&oldid=1220479411"