Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/L'Étranger (band)

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. Keep per WP:SNOW: knowing notability guidelines and looking at the sourcing, and on top of that looking at the comments by well-established editors in the AfD, I can state with confidence that there is no way this article will be deleted. Drmies (talk) 00:16, 4 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

L'Étranger (band)

L'Étranger (band) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Non-notable subject. References are unreliable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djjdwetherspoon (talk • contribs) 05:54, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Bands and musicians, Music, and Canada. Skynxnex (talk) 23:50, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as the references in the article are reliable such as newspapers The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and well known music website Exclaim and they show significant coverage about the band so that WP:GNG is passed and deletion is unnecessary in my view. Also note that the nominator created Draft:L'Étranger (DJ) so they have a purpose of removing the band to maximise search results, Atlantic306 (talk) 02:31, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: a sufficient number of reliable sources support the article, and there are a few more I found via a ProQuest search. As indicated above, the nominator created the currently declined Draft:L'Étranger (DJ), so this nomination appears suspicious. Mindmatrix 12:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I'm not too clear on what the nominator is talking about, either. I do see one footnote here that's admittedly not good ("Canuckistan Music"), and one that's a dead link in need of replacement, but all of the other sources are solid and reliable ones, largely from gold standard publications like The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star and Maclean's and Exclaim!, and as noted above other sources are available to replace the weak or dead ones with. The article already plainly documents, and properly sources, that they pass more than one criterion in WP:NMUSIC — the most obvious mic drop of all being #6, "an ensemble that contains two or more independently notable musicians" — so this ain't going nowhere. It's obvious that the nominator is simply trying to clear the decks for their own personal pet topic by getting other things with similar names erased under false pretenses, so this should probably just be speedy closed on snowball grounds. The plain title L'Étranger is a disambiguation page anyway, so even if the draft does get accepted (which I suspect it won't be, given that it's mostly relying on streaming services instead of media coverage for sourcing) there still won't be any conflict here. Plus I've already ditched the bad Canuckistan and dead Canoe sources, and replaced them with some more ProQuest retrievals. Bearcat (talk) 14:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  It's a shame you have that viewpoint. I've been nothing but objective about both topics here. For my sources I've listed a national newspaper, national music magazines such as DIY, Clash, ComplexUK, Resident Advisor, Vice where the topic has received coverage.

  Which "streaming sites" do you speak of? Are you referring to the fact L'Etranger has had exclusive Apple Music DJ mixes? This only adds to the notability of the topic.

  It seems to me that a large percentage of editors like yourself on here are elitists on an ego-trip to dismiss legitimate subjects for whatever personal grounds.

  The references the topic are as legitimate as the ones used on this page. And from an objective point of view, L'Etranger the musical artist is far more notable than a short-lived punk band from the 1980s Djjdwetherspoon (talk) 17:26, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, for starters, if your guy has coverage in Vice, you certainly haven't actually cited it at all — and what you've cited from Complex is not coverage about a DJ named L'Étranger, but coverage of other people which tangentially verifies that those other people exist while completely failing to even mention your guy by either his real name or his stage name. A source clearly can't support your guy's notability if it doesn't even mention him at all.

And an Apple Music DJ mix doesn't constitute a notability claim if your source for that is the Apple DJ mix itself — you don't make a musician notable enough for Wikipedia by sourcing his music to its own presence on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud or iTunes, you make a musician notable enough for Wikipedia by sourcing his music to third party analytical coverage about him and his music in media.

As noted above, the sourcing in this article comes from The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Maclean's and Exclaim!. In British terms, to match that level of sourcing for your other guy you would literally need to be citing The Times of London, The Guardian, The Economist and New Musical Express — that's literally the calibre of sourcing that the Canadian band actually has, but needless to say, you haven't even come close to that in your draft.

Wikipedia is not just a directory of current topics, where people or bands lose their notability just because they aren't still as prominent today as they were 30 or 40 years ago — this is a band that had a legitimate notability claim in their day, and has gold standard media sourcing to support that they pass WP:GNG for it, which means their notability isn't up for any debate. Bearcat (talk) 21:04, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do appreciate the clarification on why some of my sources could be deemed unsuitable. The other sources you are referring to reference aliases he has released under, and an artist he produced a record for. The sentences in my draft explain that.

I agree that the members of the band L'Etranger are notable in their own right, but that is only due to the fact two of their members went on to become members of parliament isn't it. Their individual pages would have sufficed.

The band itself wasn't notable in their day outside of Toronto and I suspect the article only exists because it pre-dates the draft system.

The band clearly must be a source of great national pride and you seem to enjoy splitting hairs - so I'll leave you to it. Djjdwetherspoon (talk) 22:18, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, while it's true that they both went on to become members of parliament later on, they were both notable as musicians — Andrew Cash had several chart hits as a solo artist after L'Étranger broke up; Charlie Angus had several chart hits with another band after L'Étranger broke up, and then started a notable magazine and then became a noteworthy activist and writer; and I notice that you didn't even try to tamp down the notability of Tim Vesely (presumably because you couldn't even pretend his continued notability had nothing to do with music.) Bearcat (talk) 22:32, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is all true. They had music careers and became notable musicians after the band broke up. The band L'Etranger wasn't notable in the 1980s outside of Toronto and the page only exists because it pre-dates 2011.

Your personal investment in the topic is showing here mate and I'd argue it's hard to be objective otherwise. Djjdwetherspoon (talk) 22:42, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The band had GNG-worthy coverage about it, in gold-standard calibre sources like the two most important newspapers in Canada, in its own time, clearly passing WP:NMUSIC #1. Three members of the band stayed independently notable, clearly passing NMUSIC #6. Their most successful single was placed in rotation by MuchMusic, clearly passing NMUSIC #11.

It's over and done, and you're the one who's clearly got a personal investment, not me. You want this to go away because you think it's interfering with another topic you personally care more about, and are clutching at straws to pretend that the band doesn't have the ten hits of GNG-worthy reliable sourcing it has or the three NMUSIC notability claims it has. But also, please read WP:BLUDGEON, because you're dancing perilously close to it. Bearcat (talk) 22:48, 3 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm open to having a dialogue about the notability of the subject and have listened to your points and agree with quite a few of them. We've exchanged an equal number of comments at this stage so I'm a little perplexed as to how I could be bludgeoning the argument?

It would be interesting to hear from a few non Canadian-Indie heads however because I suspect that could be influencing the decision. Djjdwetherspoon (talk) 23:24, 3 April 2023 (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.