- Simon Cooke (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
- Now at Simon Cooke (video game developer) for discussion only]]. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 19:14, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Simon Cooke (video game developer) (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (restore)
Sustained notability was shown in the UK videogames press during the period of the SAM Coupe home computer's popularity with multiple articles regarding the subject's work, and interviews with the subject themselves. The subject of the article has also appeared in multiple news articles, including on MSNBC in 1997, appearing on UK radio in 1995, and having their articles and reporting assigned as exercises at Queen's University Belfast in the early 1990s. More recently, articles in the press regarding their work while at Xbox (on ocular microtremors) splashed across the internet in December 2015, with multiple sites reporting on his work.
Slobberdan's arguments for deletion rather than cleanup are somewhat valid - WP:COI - but that ignores the fact that the person was notable in and of themselves: they were a regular columnist for a variety of well known print-magazines in the UK, writing the Spec Tec Jr column for Your Sinclair magazine, and writing the FidoNet column in Internet Today and Internet & Comms Today magazine. They did not write "web articles" as Slobberdan claims - their other work, including that on internet policy, was published in .net magazine, Net User, How To Get Online, Internet Today and Internet & Comms Today magazine - all print newsstand magazine. Furthermore, another person of similar pedigree (Crash writer and games developer Simon Goodwin) not having an article describing them on Wikipedia is not the standard of notability by which autobiographical articles should be held to; but may instead indicate that the person held up as an example may in fact also be notable but also not have been included in Wikipedia because their notability is from the 1980s and 1990s - an era which people still remember, but which isn't fully documented online. The world existed before AOL. (Some of Slobberdan's claims are also specious; "people with notoriety from similar work in larger publications" - the claims of a larger publication are questionable and not supported.
Finally, the page was nominated for deletion by a user (Slobberdan) who only created an account to perform this one action Special:Log/Slobberdan and has not been back to Wikipedia since, which makes this appear to not be an action in good faith.
Based on the criteria for notability used here, it is questionable whether many journalists in the industry would ever qualify, including many of those linked to Wikipedia articles on the Your Sinclair page. The same applies to many other people with autobiographical Wikipedia pages; very quickly the filter becomes "famous" / "business owner with yearly revenue > $X" / "first mover in industry X". It would be interesting to see if a Wikipedia user with more direct knowledge of the videogames industry, and/or of the home computer scene in the UK in the early 90s, considered this person to be noteworthy.
Furthermore, as Soetermans notes in the original AfD, WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP and a possible WP:COI is no reason for deletion. Ambrosiandelight (talk) 06:32, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Closer's comment: Contrary to instructions I was not contacted prior to this DRV. Had I been contacted with these arguments, I might have considered relisting the AfD. But since we're now at DRV, I recommend declining this review request because the AfD was unanimous (given that Soetermans didn't express a preference for or against deletion). Sandstein 07:41, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- By the way, the deleted article was about a British video game developer. The article has now been recreated to be about a different person, a New Zealand sailor. Sandstein 07:45, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. Should have been deleted. A new account nominating at AfD may well be a SOCK violation (alternative accounts are not allowed to be used in Project space), but may also be a long term IP who has only made the jump to registered editing due to wanting to do this AfD nomination. Here, they nominated an article that needed to be deleted. Minimally, WP:TNT applies, so do not draftify the deleted version. The references, WP:Reference bombed, are terrible. Advise User:Ambrosiandelight that if he wants to attempt a re-creation, do so with fresh sources, and follow the advice at WP:THREE. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:37, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Regarding fresh sources, many of the cited sources are print publications such as Your Sinclair magazine, Crash magazine, the Daily Mail, and more recently the Atlantic, The Statesman, the web magazine ExtremeTech, the BBC, and so on. Are these bad citations? I can understand some of them being unofficial (for example, company websites), but others - especially for to a niche home computer system that was primarily supported by fanzines and a few print magazines - may be the only concrete sources available. The press coverage at least seems to be concrete.Ambrosiandelight (talk) 09:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Ambrosiandelight, did you read WP:THREE? No, I will not give an analysis for every source you throw in the air. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- SmokeyJoe, I'm not asking you to. This is the first AfD I've been a part of, and I was getting confused between the requests to recreate the article from scratch using fresh sources vs. only using 3 sources period as per WP:THREE. Ambrosiandelight (talk) 19:57, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Ambrosiandelight, you are throwing into the discussion many vague references to sources that don't demonstrate notability. The subject looks to fail WP:Notability, and therefore cannot have a page. If you disagree, show us 2 or 3 sources that demonstrate WP:Notability. If the best two or three are not good enough, no number of more worse sources will help. The page has been deleted. If you want to make the case that the community has made a mistake, the onus is on you to identify the best sources for others to review. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:23, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Hmm. Slobberdan has made one other edit apart from the AfD for Simon Cooke, but that really does look like a one-AfD-only account. With all due respect for Sandstein's thoughts, above, I'm unable to detect any ambiguity whatsoever in what Soetermans wrote and we don't have a rule requiring him to type the word "keep" in boldface before his thoughts can be given weight.—S Marshall T/C 13:32, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- True, but I operate under the assumption that experienced editors know the conventions of AfD, and that therefore if they do not write "keep" or "delete", it is precisely because they do not want to make a formal recommendation (or "!vote"). Opinions by inexperienced editors are something else; these I normally count as "keep" or "delete" opinions (as the case may be) no matter what they write. Sandstein 14:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- By that logic, Cryptic has never made a clear vote in his life! :)—S Marshall T/C 14:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Now I can see that content, it was just dreadful. TNT-worthy. We could quibble the process that got us to "delete" but it was the right outcome.—S Marshall T/C 21:58, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I have done a tempo undelete to Simon Cooke (video game developer). If this is overturned, or relisted with a keep result, a disabiguation page or a pair of hatnotes will be needed, as neither this nor the sailor seems likely to be a primary topic. @SmokeyJoe: DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 19:05, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse but Dratify. Slobberdan gave a through and policy-based argument for deletion. I may not agree with it, but the AfD argument thoroughly reviewed the sources and made an argument that they do not add up to no0tability. I might well have taken a different view at the AfD, but the closer had no reason to discount this. soetermans refuted the original nomination reason of COI, but did not address the notability issues, so that is the weaker argument, and so the closer should have found, and apparently did find. However, there seems a plausible argument that Cooke is in fact notable, so draftify and allow soetermans or any other editor to try to find and add sou8rces to more clearly establish this. A relisting would also be not unreasonable. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 19:13, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm concerned about the process here given the AfD "drive by" but I cannot support restoring that article. WP:GNG is clearly not met. SportingFlyer T·C 23:42, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- yeah, bad discussion. Appears to be the right outcome. How about overturn to soft delete? But it really shouldn't be restored unless independent, reliable sources can be found. Hobit (talk) 01:06, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I cannot find anything wrong with the decision and I endorse it. Stifle (talk) 11:03, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- ENdorse- I'm with SMarshall on this one. The article was and is deplorable garbage. The correct decision was made. Reyk YO! 14:47, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse. Hi everyone, sorry for my late reply. With my initial comment in the AfD, I meant to say that Slobberdan's reasoning ("Not notable. Vanity page. The original author of the page appears to be the person. Many of the citations appear to be the authors own website, or works") should've been expanded. WP:VG has a well-kept list of reliable sources (see WP:VG/RS) and also maintains a custom Google search engine. I get barely anything on Cooke. I agree, it should stay deleted. soetermans. ↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A TALK 06:37, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse reasonable close of a unanimous, policy-based AfD. If there are sources that can justify notability, we have the AfC process. — Charles Stewart (talk) 09:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse I am the original person who nominated this for deletion and choose endorse as per process because it's the only relevant option, but this is a comment. I believe the original justification stands given the deletion review here is tantamount to an opinion having cited no new material or references that back up the reasons for review. I would add that the nature of that article was not at all encyclopedic, nor the subject notable and in my research, which I have again reviewed I found a number of issues. For the algorithm claim, I followed the two links one which was just to source code and the other, an article the subject himself authored. For the filmography credits, links to (a) What then (it's since been pulled) appeared to be a youtube upload the subject himself was involved with uploading. I would question why it has all of a sudden been pulled. (b) A broken link, an alternative to which, that I hoped mind provide the same indication of relevance I couldn't find. For research, I found links to articles the only citation from which was the subjects own blog site. There is no other reference to this research on the internet, thus I felt it was not widely cited enough to justify anything in particular. In order to review the journalism notability I found no articles that linked to or cited such works and I reviewed that peers who authored similar articles (and in my opinion were more widely known) are not noted on Wikipedia, or anywhere else for that matter. In reviewing video game development credits I note that most of the credits are for work from a support group, not the actual video game development team itself. The subject is not a notable video game developer, so it's ironic that the disambiguation has been changed to show that - especially as the claim to notability appears to be journalism. I personally don't feel that being known within the small user community even at the time for Sam Coupe expertize, is not notable. The Sam Coupe is notable as a product, only as a failure. I found no references to the subject on this matter and I note the original Wikipedia entry suggests the most 'infamous' work in the demo community...was never even released. In response to the accusation this was a 'drive by' deletion and/or my account was setup for the purpose of this deletion, I refer you to my user talk page where I point out (a) Ambrosiandelight who requested the deletion review appears to have set up their account on the same day as requesting the deletion and (b) Comments made by Ambrosiandelight about the setup of my account for this purpose are strikingly similar to postings on the subjects on twitter account and this person admits on their talk page to being the same national origin to the subject, also now living in the US. Thus I believe there is a conflict of interest in this deletion request.. I believe I did my homework on this one and I have tidied up the above, pushing less relevant comments into an explanation on my user talk page, which if you are further interested you may wish to read.Slobberdan (talk) 04:03, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- This is a collection of poorly thought through subjective value judgements, and you clearly don't understand the video-game industry in any kind of depth (a "TOOL" engineer? seriously). Several of the statements you make in this comment are veritably false - for example "zero results when searching for Spec Tec Jr on Google" is a lie. Most of your "evidence" given above is full of speculation. That all said your overall point holds, and on balance, Cooke is not notable regardless of any fond memories people (such as myself) might have for reading those magazines in that era, and I apologize for wasting the review committee's time. As for you, Slobberdan, I look forward to reading your future contributions to Wikipedia, and hope that they all show the objective attention to detail you've provided here.Ambrosiandelight (talk) 20:48, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Googling for Spec Tec Jr actually lists an entire page of bicycle helmets for me and I stopped reviewing at three pages in, which is reasonable. As such I think it's a little harsh to say 'for example "zero results when searching for Spec Tec Jr on Google" is a lie', especially given others also did similar searches and also found a lack of reference. I have done my research here, re-reviewed and added little new since the thorough explanation in the request for deletion. I don't think there is a need to make personal attacks. Slobberdan (talk)
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