Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Pollack (musician)

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. Stifle (talk) 15:49, 10 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Pollack (musician)[edit]

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WP:BLP of a songwriter and record producer, not adequately referenced to reliable sources for the purposes of getting him past WP:NMUSIC. While there are a few stray hits of media coverage about him that count for something, there aren't nearly enough of those to pass WP:GNG — instead, the article is very heavily reference bombed to sources that are not valid support for notability at all, such as primary source content self-published by record labels, online lyrics or credit databases like Genius or AllMusic, sales profiles on Amazon.com and user-generated videos on YouTube or DailyMotion. As always, when establishing whether someone is notable or not, we are not looking for just any web page that technically verifies a fact — we are looking for the amount of journalistic coverage he has or hasn't received about the fact in real media. But the amount of that shown here is not sufficient, and nothing stated in the article is "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to have more of it than this.
While this isn't a deletion criterion in and of itself, it should probably also be mentioned that this page has been bouncing back and forth between draftspace and mainspace repeatedly in the past few weeks, as other editors have been in sharp disagreement about whether it meets the criteria or not. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 15:56, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: A highly notable songwriter. The amount of songwriting work by this gentleman with artists of high calibre is mind boggling. What is the utility of our readers not knowing about this songwriter I don't know. Even after the elaborate technical explanations by colleague Bearcat. Songwriters usually don't get the media circus coverage singers or musicians do. This is very understandable. So we now use it against them and delete them out of existence? Even a basic search with our search engine, gives us tens of leads to Michael Pollack songs in various Wikipedia artist and song articles. The contributors made an overkill of references to try to keep the article. But apparently to no avail. We may lose this article. It's our loss and the profound loss of so many of our readers. werldwayd (talk) 22:39, 19 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The notability test for a person, regardless of his occupation, is not the things he's done, it's the amount of reliable source media coverage he has or hasn't received for doing the things he's done. Songwriters aren't handed an automatic notability freebie just because it's possible to offer technical verification in online lyrics databases and music stores that his work exists — the notability test requires either (a) that he won significant awards for his work, and/or (b) that journalists have paid independent attention to his work in the media by writing and publishing analytical or biographical content about him and his work.
And no, people are also not exempted from that requirement just because they happen to have a "behind the scenes" job that doesn't always get as much media attention as the singers do, either: in fact, in a situation like that it's even more critical that we tie notability to the quality of the sources, because if we waived the sourcing requirement and allowed songwriters to keep articles solely on the basis of primary source verification that their songs exist, then we would have to keep an article about every single songwriter who exists at all, regardless of their notability or lack thereof. So it's the media that tells us which songwriters are notable enough for Wikipedia articles and which ones aren't, not Wikipedians' subjective personal interpretations of how "important" an unsourceable or improperly sourceable statement may sound. Bearcat (talk) 15:48, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 18:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mild Keep Seems prolific enough, but the sources all seem to be about the songs, rather than him. Any awards he's won? Oaktree b (talk) 19:26, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Prolificacy isn't an exemption from having to be reliably sourceable. Bearcat (talk) 15:57, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:44, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as the co-writer of a huge top-10 hit, Memories. We have almost always kept the authors of major hits, even if they did nothing else with their lives. Bearian (talk) 22:03, 9 November 2020 (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.