Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Patrick Zipfel

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. Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:20, 3 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Patrick Zipfel[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I realise that WP:GHITS is only a rough metric, but for a sports personality - with an article on Wikipedia, which will inflate the count - to only get "About 1,970 results" is pretty bad. Hell, googling myself and friends shows about an order of magnitude more of a web presence for every single person I tried.

But let's look at quality. The news reports are mostly on different people of the same name; the few ones that are on him look to be trivial mentions. Google Books shows one off-topic result, and one reference book that includes him in a list. Once. Scholar has no results; we wouldn't really expect them, though.

Sourcing in the article does not show more notability - the only good source I see is the ESPN interview, which primarily on his job, and which begin by describing him as a highly unnotable person, because the job is one noone pays attention to. Of course, the article skips past that and instead quotes the usual bit of puffery you get in the introduction to an interview. The only other source with any substantial content is his hometown paper also interviewing him about his job. (Tagline at bottom: "Catching Up With" is a weekly online feature that runs Sundays on lehighvalleylive.com. The subjects are former local high school or collegiate athletes who no longer live in the region...) Fails WP:GNG, as he just hasn't gotten substantial coverage in multiple independent sources. Oh, and it's also one of the Expewikiwriter paid group account articles. 86.** IP (talk) 07:47, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete lacking significant coverage as per nom. Note that I also searched factiva and there are 0 articles even mentioning him - normally I can find more and better sources using that. SmartSE (talk) 17:01, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Basketball-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 16:49, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. — Frankie (talk) 16:49, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Seems notable enough to me. He's been an assistant coach or scout with several NBA teams, and a college and minor league head coach; altogether, I think that's good enough. More material is available if you search for "Pat Zipfel". This might be good, though I can't access it. I also found a couple additional articles that discuss him at ProQuest:

Amick, Sam. "Scout's honor: In the NBA, the lookouts who could make the difference between victory and defeat sacrifice greatly for the sport they love". McClatchy - Tribune Business News [Washington] 16 Apr 2006: 1
"Zipfel is set for a homecoming". Intelligencer Journal [Lancaster, Pa] 06 Feb 1996: C-4.

The author of the wiki page is irrelevant, as far as notability goes. Zagalejo^^^ 00:01, 13 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I presume from your comments you haven't actually seen the text of them? Because that makes it rather hypothetical; it's basically saying he's notable because these sources might meet the requirements of the WP:GNG and WP:NRVE. Also, the author is somewhat relevant due to WP:NOTADVERT - articles written by paid individuals to promote their clients are decidedly advertising, and, while maybe some might be salvageable, the presumption should probably be to lean delete in such cases (particularly as this paid group account is known to abuse sources, meaning we'll have to stubbify if it is kept). I'll leave a message on your talk page, in case my assumption is wrong. 86.** IP (talk) 16:24, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can access all the ProQuest sources - and indeed, it seems that I forgot to mention one ("Zipfel has big hopes for Bucks men's basketball". Fite, Joe. Philadelphia Inquirer [Philadelphia, Pa] 09 Dec 1998: B.4). The Sam Amick article is about scouts in general, but discusses Zipfel at some length. The other two are primarily about Zipfel. All come from mainstream newspapers, which would normally be acceptable under the notability guidelines. I could email them to you, if you want. With regards to your other comments, I still think we should try to judge each page for what it is. I don't see anything particularly controversial here. Zipfel's biggest claims to fame are all easily verifiable. Zagalejo^^^ 23:42, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually.... comparing those sources to what's in the article now, it does seem the timeline from that Lehigh Valley article is a little off. I'm going to remove a few dates right now, then maybe fiddle with things later. Frankly, I don't care if you do stub the article now, as long as we can establish that the subject is a notable topic. Zagalejo^^^ 00:00, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've fixed the dates; what we have now matches this, which looks like his resume or something. Zagalejo^^^ 00:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You make a very good argument for Keep, I must admit, by finding good sources. My comment about the sources above were based on false assumptions, so I'm very glad I checked them with you. 86.** IP (talk) 02:50, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 02:55, 18 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 16:26, 26 April 2012 (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.