Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D. Jeffrey Wright

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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 delete. First, I'd like to acknowledge that this is obviously a contentious debate with fairly strong opinions presented. With that said, in terms of numbers, there is a majority of editors opining to delete the article, in addition to at least one comment regarding the lack of online sources that can be used to back up the article's content. We must be especially careful with WP:BLP articles, and this entry seems to suffer from considerable violations of core content policies. All things considered, consensus endorses deletion. –Juliancolton | Talk 01:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

D. Jeffrey Wright

D. Jeffrey Wright (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Vanity article by subject's spouse. Orange Mike | Talk 03:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • comment another article that I tried to fix by removing the worst of the unsourced material, but which the author insisted on returning to the original state. Another person helped also, and was met with a personal attack against him by the author on my talk page. It might be fixable and defensible. In the past I have sometimes tried to rescue an article nonetheless after something like that, but this time I'm not going to try--there's too much else that needs doing. If anyone manages to make an acceptable article out of it, I'd have no objections. DGG ( talk ) 03:50, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - aside from the fact that the article was written originally by the subject's spouse (in my opinion), it appears to be an inflated, self-serving page designed to legitimize the subject's endeavors in soliciting participants for various "Ambassador" groups on Facebook and elsewhere.
I don't contend that the subject distributed trees to the public - as thousands (if not millions) of people have - but this fact alone does not warrant an article here. In light this, and of all of the other unreferenced claims in the article, I believe that it should be removed.
Over the past several weeks I have endeavored to edit the article and ask for citations and references to the claims. The article is littered with claims of 'prominence' and 'notoriety' but these are subjective and certainly not verified. On two occasions, all edits to the article were summarily reverted by Ingenosa without discussion. Lacbolg (talk) 04:00, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - my attempts to discover any significant reliable sources on the web have failed. Long-time editors of course recognize that web-available resources are not an absolute requirement for notability, but it does raise modest concern. I searched on several variations of the subject's name, and several organizations mentioned in the article. What I found were essentially trivial or minor references - blogs, social media, organization directory listings, etc. etc. I also attempted more extensive search for some of the references mentioned in the article, which did not contain links. Most of these searches passed reasonable cross-checks but either came up empty (and it was expectable - NPR and Smithsonian magazine for example do not have a deep archives online), or hit content pay walls (e.g. an old Washington Post article is here). However, I did find the more recent article on the Arbor Day dispute in the LA Times online (and updated Wikipedia appropriately). Also, online sources indicate that Kentucky did have a "Rio to the Capitals" conference, at which Gore gave a keynote speech. However, the minor sources I found did not indicate who was responsible for the event, beyond "the State of Kentucky". In summary, sources do not seem to establish notability; while we have some sources for a small portion of the facts asserted, or a good faith belief backed by some evidence that the sources exist, the content of those references that I can review does not meet our requirements, and from the titles and works mentioned in the non-reviewable sources, it seems unlikely that they would be sufficient for notability either. It appears that Wright is a hard-working activist who has been referred to by some local press, but without meeting the requirements of notability or reliable sources, we must delete. Studerby (talk) 06:34, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the primary editor of this article has been Ingenosa; subject of article appears to have a Wikipedia account as User:Problemsmith. I have no idea why nominator asserted Ingenosa was subject's spouse (I've seen inconclusive contrary evidence), however edit history of Ingenosa and Problemsmith shows Ingenosa to essentially be a subject-related single purpose account (which would be fine, with appropriate conflict of interest caveats, if we could establish notability to standard). Studerby (talk) 07:04, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've stricken the assertion (should have sought a better cite); still no solid evidence of notability. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out that Lacbolg is also (to date) a subject-related single purpose account, which, as previously noted, is fine if policies are complied with. Noted because (IMHO) SPA status can be relevant to the closing admin in deletion discussion. Studerby (talk) 20:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Playing Dirty

LACBOLG IS DELETING COMMENTS 'Reposted Comment over Article' Use the History I posted this yesterday here and a similar post to User:Lacbolg's page it is obvious to me after seeing it erased from Lacbolg's talk page and after being suppressed here that there are not neutral editors here and Administrators are being manipulated. So now I re-post the comment below. It looks like this article qualifies to be restored and LOCKED because of the controversy and tainted opinions of the Administrators involved and Lacbolgs actions of supressing data and making personal contacts with Wikipedia administrators. Rokrunestone (talk) 06:54, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Redacted

For the second time, this comment has been removed and suppressed as it contains material in violation of the Oversight policy. Reposting Oversighted content is grounds for escalating sanctions. Phrase your concern in a fashion which does not breach Wikipedia policy, or you will be blocked. Happy‑melon 09:44, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - finding sourcing that backs up the article is arguably difficult given the common name (there's an actor, a NYTimes photographer and a basketball player all named Jeffrey Wright just for starters). None the less, I was able to verify several of the references currently in the article and found that they were less about the man and more about his work, but non-trivial in nature. Others, the Smithsonian Reference in particular, were trivial but do verify the text. Would appear to have some notability as an environmentalist, so a search of journals in that field might turn up more. I have to say that I see little use for most of the tags at the top of the article, but perhaps the article has been recently improved. Shell babelfish 12:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • 'Weak Keep -- Shell, could you add th links forthose you did identify? I think he's notable for the turtles & the trees, & we could remove most of the rest. Ruslik0 has already done some of it. DGG ( talk ) 15:47, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - On notability and as to whether this article should appear in Wikipedia, the subject is notable as said previously for his work with turtles and the following 10 years with the environment, stuff about social networking should not be included nor should his personal life be included unless it can be shown to bear upon what he is notable for, he is not a politician where his moral values or personal life ever made it to the print media, his education does not even really bear upon his deeds and work except his non-profit management certification in 1989. I see several references were removed by User:Lacbolg in February, without clear reasons and I question his motivation. More references should be found especially since so many are available, over 100 in the print media. The subject was involved in making sure the Arbor Day observance remained in the public domain and I see he fought in Federal Court for this, it should be expanded and developed better regarding that court battle, I also think that several articles from the Wilmington News Journal articles confirming his work with turtles in 1989 should be cited and because the subject was working with children, schools and on habitat protection throughout the Mid-Atlantic. It also looks like in March of 1990 his Earth Day efforts clashed with the corporate world in a struggle with Dupont where he refused grants from the corporate community. These are important points because they demonstrate he is an activist, conservationist, environmentalist, and an educator, none of which have anything to do with his degrees or other achievements claimed by the original article. I will look forward to seeing a good editor or bio writer develop a good article over Wright. 201.209.205.71 (talk) 08:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)— 201.209.205.71 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

After reading the commentary here I looked at the history and agree that LACBOLG is acting in an emotional and over critical way and has made and deleted frequent comments which can be seen in the histories of the article and even here at the deletion discussion, something is really fishy and this should be followed up by administration, he must know the subject very closely or is acting in a retaliatory way to get revenge for something the subject did in real-life. That is really ashame. 201.209.205.71 (talk) 09:03, 16 March 2010 (UTC)— 201.209.205.71 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

First, there is no requirement that editors themselves be neutral; the requirement is the written articles comply with the Neutral Point of View policy. Second, there are relatively strict sourcing requirements for biographies of living people, as per policy. It is perfectly correct editorial practice to ask for a reference to support a fact or opinion in an article, especially a biography of a living person. Third, in a rant now deleted, I and others were accused of "laziness" by for not running down non-web or pay-to-view references on the subject. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of Wikipedia policy on the standard for inclusion of an article in the encyclopedia, the notability guideline, versus the standard for inclusion of material within an article, the reliable source guideline, in support of the verifiability policy. The basic notability standard is "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." The key part is significant coverage, which does NOT mean, "subject has a big clippings file" where his name is mentioned, but rather (as stated in the guideline) ""Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material." While somewhat clarified, this is clearly a subjective standard. The material I have been able to access, I judged as essentially mostly "in passing" references to the subject in articles whose primary focus was not subject; essentially a name got mentioned in the paper, or a quote was attributed to subject. From the titles of the known sources that I was not able to access (and several years of editing experience), I judged them similarly, and concluded that the notability standard (probably) hasn't been met. On the other hand, in assessing "significant coverage", both quantity and weight do count somewhat; and subject or organizations he's associated with have been mentioned in news media more than once. It's a borderline case, which is why we're having an active deletion discussion. Making personal remarks in the discussion doesn't help. Studerby (talk) 19:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per Studerby's studious examintion of the sources against our notability guidelines, which I find particularly compelling. It appears highly unlikely the subject (as opposed to the activities of the groups with which he associates) has received significant coverage in reliable sources. --Mkativerata (talk) 02:39, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment/question. Sourcing aside, some of this article is most odd. Sample: As a result of filing his publication in the Library of Congress several months later (unsourced) -- what does it mean for an author to file a publication at the LoC? (To donate it, perhaps?) -- Hoary (talk) 04:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Looking in Google Books for the combination of "jeffrey wright" and any one of "earth expo", "earth day" and "delaware" brings no relevant hits that I can see. -- Hoary (talk) 08:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Do Wikipedia editors and admins only use free sources of information? Am I the only one that has access to the news archives? I am a researcher not an editor, I have found quite a number of sources, but this is because I work with several people and have access to more than most, I would think responsible writers of news and bios, etc should have access to extensible resources. After doing a bit more research I see the problems involve more confusion because the subject was called Jeffrey D. Wright early in 1989 when he was working with turtles which shows in a number of articles in Wilmington, Dover and South New Jersey. Then later it looks like the subject used D. Jeffrey Wright. Aside of that, all indications are that he had established 2 wetlands reserves in Delaware, cleaned up Nonesuch Creek with Governor Mike Castle, developed the first captive breeding program involving the spotted turtle and the bog turtle, and became involved with trees distributing 100's of thousands of trees in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Chicago, Reno, Lexington, Raleigh, Winston-Salem. I do not think any of the information about strategist or his work with policy institutes is significant or even his education or the fact that he was a pastor for a short time. But there is indeed significant information to be found. Citable, reliable third party sources all concentrated on him distributing trees from the LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, as I said in my previous comment over 100 sources but it doesn't look like Wikipedia editors want or have done enough qualified or reliable research because of the time it may cost them and much of the criticism here I think is based on general pessimism and one person raising points of contention, an administrator should really come in and clean this article up based on the references originally inserted by User:Ingenosa and knock it down to about 400-500 words. I reviewed a considerable number of bios in recent days and there are hundreds if not thousands that should be eliminated for lack of sources, but this is not one of them. There is plenty of print media about this subject and his work as the creator of special environmental efforts is not only notable but extremely impressive comparing it to all the junk that is on wikipedia and the stub articles that occupy space. User:Hoary is off base I see that the publication, Chelonian Conservationist was registered here in the LoC had an LCCN number and I think it means that Wright registered the publication here, Looks like many wikipeople like to assume stuff instead instead of getting to the heart of the matter. I really think this person is more important to our society as a whole for his work and accomplishments with trees than most single role actors and actresses so I will contact the User:Ingenosa and inform her of this entire resource list I have so she can fix the article and add the references she needs to, but all this pessimism here on Wikipedia, the short fused administrators, the stub article about people with no references at all is all ridiculous, makes me wonder if the LoC should block Wikipedia, but I guess we won't because Wikipedia is probably the second or third most useful resource we have for research. 201.209.205.71 (talk) 09:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do Wikipedia editors and admins only use free sources of information? / No, but most prefer it. ¶ Am I the only one that has access to the news archives? / No, I am sure that at least one other person hereabouts has ample access to news archives; but I'm just as sure that he has more important things to be spending his time on. ¶ Citable, reliable third party sources all concentrated on him distributing trees from the LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, as I said in my previous comment over 100 sources [. . .] an administrator should really come in and clean this article up based on the references originally inserted by User:Ingenosa and knock it down to about 400-500 words. / Whether or not a particular person is an administrator is utterly irrelevant. Instead, you could do this, complete with clear references to precisely specified articles in those newspapers. ¶ I reviewed a considerable number of bios in recent days and there are hundreds if not thousands that should be eliminated for lack of sources, [...] / Very true. See "other stuff". ¶ There is plenty of print media about this subject and his work as the creator of special environmental efforts is not only notable but extremely impressive comparing it to all the junk that is on wikipedia and the stub articles that occupy space. / Oh I think he merits a place if the veracity of the claims can be confirmed. (But please try not to be rude about all the junk, because creating it keeps people off the streets.) ¶ all this pessimism here on Wikipedia, the short fused administrators, the stub article about people with no references at all is all ridiculous, makes me wonder if the LoC should block Wikipedia / Well well. I wonder what it would mean for the LoC to "block Wikipedia". -- Hoary (talk) 10:14, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I've been quiet on the discussion since my original post - mostly because many comments were more of a discussion of my motives rather than a discussion about the article. I'm compelled to comment now because a previous (anonymous) editor made a statement that is a wonderful example of one of the problems I have with the article: "cleaned up Nonesuch Creek with Governor Mike Castle". This type of statement, (along with: "his captive breeding program as requested by President George H.W. Bush for his grandchildren" taken from the article) give the reader the image of the Governor or the President actually communicating and collaborating personally with the subject. I have done a great deal of research on the subject and have found no evidence of this. Now, I'll concede that the Governor probably called for volunteers to clean up creeks and such for Earth Day, and the President might have made public statements about the need for captive breeding programs, but that can't be used as justification for the notoriety of the subject as there is no referenced personal involvement between them. It's the writing that is misleading and inflates the status of the subject. There have been many comments made about hundreds of articles written about the subject but none have been added to the Wikipedia article about Mr. Wright. If he distributed over 10 million trees in 7 years perhaps he should have an article.. but simple addition of the numbers taken from the article put that figure much lower - and still unverified other than newspaper advertisements of the giveaways.Lacbolg (talk) 11:01, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Author of the Article

I still have doubts, but on March 15, the subject of the article, Mr. Wright, posted in a discussion forum on Google Groups that the article was written by "my wife's cousin who wrote the article about me as part of a school assignment". Though Wikipedia guidelines suggest that it is still possible to write a factual, unbiased article about a relation, it does explain the problems with point of view.Lacbolg (talk) 19:49, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Coverage does not appear to be substantial and subject seems to be tangential to sources topic.--PinkBull 23:33, 21 March 2010 (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.
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