Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Wilt

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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 no consensus. Technicality there was a plurality in favour of incubating it in draftspace, but as the author as indicated that they would not work on it further there, that would serve no purpose. – Joe (talk) 07:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

James Wilt

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James Wilt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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WP:BLP of a journalist and author, not properly referenced as passing our inclusion criteria for journalists and writers. Nine of the 14 footnotes here are not support for notability at all -- five staff directories on the self-published websites of his own past or present employers, two Q&A interviews from podcasts in which he's the speaker and not the subject being spoken about, one piece of his own bylined writing, one glancing namecheck of his existence in a source that isn't about him, and one piece of purely tangential verification of a stray fact that completely fails to even namecheck him in conjunction with it at all. And while the other five footnotes are actually third-party reviews of his books, they all come from minor special-interest magazines that aren't widely distributed or read -- so they'd be acceptable for use if the other nine sources were better than they are, but they don't represent enough coverage to secure passage of GNG on their own if the article is otherwise relying entirely on bad sources.
Nothing here is "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to have more coverage about him than this shows. Bearcat (talk) 17:46, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I almost never write bios, and only wrote this one to remove a redlink from an article I'm working on. So I may well not be familliar with the requirements here (though I did look them up first). I'll go through and explain what I was thinking, and trust I will be told where I'm wrong.
Most of the sources obviously don't establish notability. The staff-directory sources were used only to list publications he had written for (and that he has a journalism degree). While the sources obviously aren't RS, the statements seemed like non-controversial claims of the sort for which policy allows non-independent sources. The Q&As are both rather popourris of topics; they seemed to me to be more about interviewing him than discussing a specific subject, but I cited them only for the fact he's been involved in radio. The glancing mention of him was about the piece of his own writing (which also I cited just because it seemed a useful link to supply the reader with). Obviously neither establishes notability, though both are RS about the event in question, as is the third source that doesn't mention him. Is in necessary that every source in a bio, even the ones for background info or context, mention the human subject of the article?
When I looked up the notability requirements at WP:Author I read that a person is notable if:
"The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews"
I took this to mean that the existence of multiple RS reviews of books that someone has authored establishes notability of the author. Looking again, I realize that the grammar means that "significant or well-known" is a seperate critereon, but no explicit test for meeting it is given.
I don't recognise the publications which reviewed the books, and many seem to be regional Canadian publications. So they may well be "minor special-interest magazines that aren't widely distributed or read". I was not aware that this matters, if they meet the RS criteria. If it does matter, can this be made explicit in the notability criteria, so I can know for sure if someone is notable before writing a bio about them? HLHJ (talk) 18:36, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would adding these sources be enough to establish notability?
Laforest, J. (2021). Review of [James Wilt, Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars?
Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk (Toronto: Between the
Lines Press 2020)]. Labour/Le Travail, 87, 203–205.
https://doi.org/10.1353/llt.2021.0012
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/llt/2021-v87-llt06143/1078658ar.pdf
Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars: Walking dreams of public transit
by Adya Afanou, April 9, 2020
The Charity Report
https://www.thecharityreport.com/literary-circle/walking-dreams-of-public-transit/
Big Alcohol vs. Working Class Joy / James Wilt
2022-09-14
(an interview with the author about his book)
This Is Hell! (broadcast in Chicago on WNUR-FM, thrice weekly[1])
https://player.fm/series/this-is-hell-83405/big-alcohol-vs-working-class-joy-james-wilt
Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber and Elon Musk
August 4, 2020 - 4:00pm PDT Toronto
"For the Word on the Street festival's fourth City Imagines panel, EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow speaks with James Wilt, author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? Public Transit in the Age of Google, Uber, and Elon Musk."
https://www.eff.org/ja/event/public-transit-age-google-uber-and-elon-musk
HLHJ (talk) 18:58, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Labour/Le Travail journal would be a start, but not in and of itself enough; none of the others help at all, as The Charity Report is not a GNG-worthy media outlet, Q&A interviews in which the topic is speaking about himself in the first person don't help to establish notability, and mere event calendar listings don't help to establish notability.
To help establish notability, a source has to represent third-party analysis and coverage in which James Wilt is the subject being spoken about and analyzed by other people, and notability cannot be established by sources in which he's doing the speaking or sources that just mention his name without substantive analytical content about him (unless said source is verifying that he's been nominated for a major WP:AUTHOR-passing literary award, but that's not in play here.) And we have some flexibility about what kind of sources can be used — like I said, the reviews present in the article now would be fine for use if the other sources were better than they are — but there still needs to be at least some evidence of coverage about him in more prominent media sources, such as daily newspapers or the news divisions of Canada's main television networks. And that has to be coverage about him, not pieces bylined by him, so the fact that he had a byline in The Globe and Mail doesn't help.
The mere fact that his name was present as a red link in another article, further, is not in and of itself a basis for notability — since anybody can wikilink any name or word in any article at any time without regard to whether that represents a topic that would actually pass our inclusion criteria or not, sometimes the most appropriate response to a red link is unlinking it rather than starting a new article. Just because his name appears in another article is not an automatic exemption from his still having to pass Wikipedia's inclusion and sourcing rules. Bearcat (talk) 21:13, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I thought interviews by third-party new outlets about someone's book or the topic of someone's would probably count a lower than reviews, though they seem to be the form of book review most common on radio and television.
How do I identify a "GNG-worthy media outlet"? Are these limited to "daily newspapers or the news divisions of Canada's main television networks"?
Would another review or two like the Le Travail one establish notability? Or are you saying that no number of reviews of an author's books will make an author notable unless people also write about the author, not just the author's books? WP:author strongly gave me the opposite impression. I'd really like a clear understanding of what the rules are.
I am quite clear that neither the existance of a redlink, nor a non-third-party source used to cite non-controversial content, establishes notability. That isn't specific to bios. It's pretty obvious that a work by him isn't a third-party source for information about him, too. Apologies for taking so much of your time. HLHJ (talk) 22:08, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've added some more sources to the article, including one with a different political perspective for once. They are a bit monotonous.
On reflection, I think perhaps wp:author's liberal notability standard makes sense; if an author required more than multiple RS reviews of their books to be notable, then we would have a situation in which the author is not notable and the books are, which seems silly and in this case would simply split the article in two and duplicate a small amount of background on the author.
The "News journalism" section still doesn't contain independent, notablity-establishing sources, with the arguable exception of the radio interviews, but the content is also fairly non-controversial, basically characterizing the subject as a journalist; I added it because the article otherwise lacked this fairly basic info. Ignoring that section, the remaining sources (nine book reviews, mostly from smaller leftist publications) seem to me to establish notability.
If I'm wrong, I would very much appreciate corection in enough detail to propose a revision of the WP:author and WP:GNG guidelines to provide better guidance. I've been editing for over a decade and a half, and I don't care deeply about the article, so if I can misunderstand the documentation, a less-experienced editor has no chance, and having an article deleted is a really bad experience for a new editor. HLHJ (talk) 19:58, 22 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 20:06, 26 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Draftify. This article was less than 40 hours old when nommed for deletion. Perhaps page creator should have kept this in draftspace before publishing, but IMHO there's marginally enough RS applied and available to sustain a BLP on this relatively young journalist subject. I'm seeing a number of reviews in RS for both works. Let's draftify and give this longtime good faith contributor a chance to improve the work instead of deleting. No offense to nominator, but I might have talked with the page creator before nominating a freshly published work from a long time wikipedian. BusterD (talk) 19:13, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Draftify I am willing to let the article's starter see if they can add RS. No harm and a draft is cheap. Bruxton (talk) 02:28, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Legoktm (talk) 02:40, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everyone for the kind words and helpfulness. To be honest, I'm not that concerned with the fate of this minor article; I'm far more concerned with the WP:Author notability requirements. In some ways I'm actually glad it was nommed promptly, since I wasn't planning on putting more work into it, and have added more RS as a result of the nom. While I realize there are practical considerations, personally I'm fine with being treated with less caution than a new editor with no record of good faith, as I have the knowledge to do better with less guidance and the self-confidence to get the guidance I need.
I judged the subject to be notable, or I wouldn't have wasted my time writing it, and Bearcat, with far more relevant experience, judged it non-notable. I read through some of the other deletion discussions and found articles on authors of much more notable works (works that won awards), which still got deleted because the sources were about the works, not the creator. So it seems Bearcat's view has support from precedent in deletion discussions. But of course I didn't look up precendent when deciding whether to write the article; I looked up the subject-specific notability guidelines. The two don't obviously match, and they should ideally match so clearly than any outraged newbie will, however grudgingly, agree that they match. Please chime in with any options I'm missing, but I think the choices are:
  1. A sole creator of notable works is not automatically notable, and such articles should be spilt into an article for each work, or renamed "Works by X", or whatever the sources do.
  2. A sole creator of notable works is automatically notable, and if they have created more than one notable work and all our content on their works fits comfortably in a single article, it is permissible or preferable, but not mandatory, to have it in one article under the creator's name.
In this case, the first option splits this article in two, and the second leaves it in its current state. For authors with more notable works, option one might split an article into three or more parts. There are cases where the second option might leave us with full-length articles on some of an author's works, and stub-length content on the remaining works, with the stub-bits and summaries of the major works being sections in a single author article. What would be preferable? How would we best edit WP:author to clarify? Should we post to Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) andor WT:WPBIO for more opinions? HLHJ (talk) 01:01, 8 December 2022 (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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