Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ranjini Kalappa

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 moved to Draft:Ranjini Kalappa. This is a very close discussion, with some reasonable arguments being made in favor of keeping the page. There is also a numerical consensus in favor of deletion, asserting well-stated concerns about the sufficiency of sources used for this article. Consensus is not an exercise in head-counting, and some of these "delete" votes appear to be premised on the article needing additional development, rather than a certainty that the subject is completely non-notable. The article is therefore moved to draft to allow for the possibility of additional sources being discovered or developed and added to the article. If the article goes without improvement for six months, it will be deleted as abandoned, in accordance with the general policy for articles in draft space. bd2412 T 19:05, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ranjini Kalappa

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Fails WP:GNG. Non-notable individual. This is far from the depth or persistence of coverage demanded by even basic compliance with WP:ANYBIO. Accesscrawl (talk) 05:38, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Accesscrawl (talk) 07:14, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Accesscrawl (talk) 07:14, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. Accesscrawl (talk) 07:14, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment WP:GNG and WP:ANYBIO don't demand anything. They simply provide guidance. Thincat (talk) 10:06, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Artists-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:52, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:52, 23 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment here sister Brinda Somaya might be the notable one, or both articles might be promo spam.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 15:02, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Promo and fails WP:GNG. Agree with above that other related article needs to be checked for notability. Sdmarathe (talk) 14:09, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I just added three citations to books/journals. Key amongst them is "Wilkes, Joseph (1990). Encyclopedia of architecture: design, engineering & construction, Volume 5. Wiley. p. 323." Citation to another Encyclopedia is golden standard here. Please do a proper search WP:BEFORE you nominate something for deletion here. --Theredproject (talk) 14:54, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There are many other similarly non-notable architects listed there. Can't create article for each. Accesscrawl (talk) 15:53, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment @Sdmarathe and ThatMontrealIP: Kalappa's sister and partner Brinda Somaya is clearly notable, given she has received international awards for architecture, and is a named chair professor at Cornell. The page needs some work, and citations, but the notability isn't in question.--Theredproject (talk) 14:57, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I will agree then that the Brinda Somaya page is notable, per your insights. (Brinda's page is very difficult to read as it has been engineered to be a wall of CV items.) Still of the opinion that this page is rather thin notability-wise.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 17:21, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete after reading the article sources, it's clear that she is almost always mentioned in relation to her sister. Of the five sources given, only the Wilkes encyclopedia is more than a sentence long (and We cannot see it all as it is a GBooks snippet). Coverage is very glancing and not in-depth. WP:NOTINHERITED and WP:GNG apply.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 17:25, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- User:ThatMontrealIP: You can see the Wilkes encyclopedia by taking your person to a library that has a copy of it. Sources are not required to be online and "I can't see it" is not a valid argument for deletion. And you can read it online anyway by doing things like this and this. James500 (talk) 19:18, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - Hi James500, yes I know that sources do not need to be online! I guess I could have out that more clearly, as I meant that I did not think a single encyclopedia entry is enough, in the absence of other sources. Once I followed your snipped reading tip, I can see that the encyclopedia entry is three sentences. All it says is that she is an architect, she got a degree and returned to her hometown. It's not SIGCOV. I still have not seen SIGCOV of her as an individual architect. All of the coverage is primarily of her sister. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 19:29, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, well sourced. Gamaliel (talk) 19:00, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Satisfies GNG due to coverage in GBooks and elsewhere. James500 (talk) 19:18, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment for those that are claiming it is a well-sourced article, please look again at the sources, highlighted in blue here:

the first entry is a three sentence encyclopedia article: ""Ranjini Kalappa. After receiving a B.Arch. from J.J. College of Architecture at Bombay University, Ranjini Kalappa attended Pratt Institute in New York where she received a M.Arch. A few years of experience in New York offices prepared her for the return to her native Bombay where she and her sister opened their firm, Somaya and Kalappa."
the second source is one sentence about a project she did with her sister's firm.

the third source says only "Indian context: Ranjini Kalappa, architecture firm together with her sister Brinda Somaya."

the fourth cite duplicts the same entry, to wit: "Ranjini Kalappa. After receiving a B.Arch. from J.J. College of Architecture at Bombay University, Ranjini Kalappa attended Pratt Institute in New York where she received a M.Arch. A few years of experience in New York offices prepared her for the return to her native Bombay where she and her sister opened their firm, Somaya and Kalappa.""
the fifth source says "Brinda Somaya, 56-year-old Mumbai-based architect, set up her practice, Somaya and Kalappa, in 1978 with her sister Ranjini Kalappa. They started off working from home and now Somaya has three offices and over 50 professionals working for her." and goes on to talk about her sister.

So, you see, there is no SIGCOV here. All we know from the sources is that she is an Indian architect, educated in the US, she returned to Bombay and does projects with her sisters. It's not enough to meet WP:GNG or WP:CRESATIVE. If you are going to call it well-sourced, I am curious to see these good sources. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 19:49, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

All GNG says is that a particular 14 word random extract from a single source is not significant. It says nothing about a 59 word encyclopedia article. An encyclopedia article of any length is usually accepted as significant coverage. Moreover the "Women in Architecture" article (which seems to be an online reprint of the same article in the Wilkes encyclopedia) also says her partnership with her sister is "exceptional" and has a longer 280 word article on "Somaya and Kalappa" which is her firm. And when the encyclopedia is talking about "Somaya and Kalappa", that is coverage of Ranjini Kalappa, because she is one half of that. So what we are really looking at here is a 339 word encyclopedia article about Ranjini Kalappa. For the same reason it it is misleading to talk about "her sister's firm" because it is Kalappa's firm as well. Further, BASIC says "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability". So it is important to bear in mind that the sources do not give exactly the same information, meaning they can be combined. And there are other sources in GBooks and GNews. James500 (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Let's note first that the encyclopedia article is 339 characters, not 339 words. The encyclopedia entry is 56 words. I think it is extremely fair to say that the very minimal coverage above is not SIGCOV. I cannot extract anything more than the fact that she is an Indian architect who was educated in the USA and now works with her more famous sister in a firm they co-direct. There just isn't anything there that can be extracted without interpreting or synthesizing. There is no project coverage that mentions her contribution in-depth. There aren't even any interviews, which are not RS but would at least show us her role in the firm. Yes, "multiple independent sources may be combined", but these sources are nothing but passing mentions without any depth at all. As I said above, if you have independent in-depth coverage (a 3 sentence encyclopedia article is not), let's see them.Nothing remotely resembling in-depth coverage has been provided, as is clearly evident above. And of course, notability is not inherited from the firm she shares with here sister, as they do not talk about her contribution in any depth whatsoever. I think we have to agree to disagree here. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 02:06, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My reasoning was as follows: The encyclopedia article headed "Ranjini Kalappa" is 59 words long (by my count, treating abbreviations as separate words). The encyclopedia article headed "Somaya and Kalappa", which is further down the page, is 280 words long [1]. If you add those together, you get 59+280=339. That is where I got the number 339 from. By treating both of the two articles as coverage of Kalappa. I apologise if this has caused any confusion. If I said "two encyclopedia articles both about Kalappa with a combined total of 339 words between them", perhaps that would be clearer. James500 (talk) 02:51, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A 28 years old insignificant entry that can be found for many other non notable architects is clearly not significant in coverage. Accesscrawl (talk) 04:45, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

James500, OK i get it: you added a 28 year old encyclopedia article that totals 59 words to a separate 280 word encyclopedia about her firm, and called that a 339 word encyclopedia article about her. I'm not sure how that helps your argument. Again, the fact that she is a named partner in a firm does not make her notable. If the firm is notable, we would have an article about the firm. See WP:NOTINHERITED. For individuals we need in-depth coverage of the individual in multiple reliable sources. Her sister has that, but Ranjini does not. The plain fact that we cannot easily find out anything about her other than the very basics is ample evidence that she is not notable.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 04:57, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@ThatMontrealIP: I want to respectfully disagree with your interpretation of WP:NOTINHERITED here, as working as an architect always means working in a firm. The firm literally has her name. It is a proxy for her and her sister's work. It is not her mother's notability. The firm is not a subsidiary of a global firm that is the notable one. --Theredproject (talk) 21:27, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We'll have to disagree on that today. Virtually all coverage of this architect talks about her sister's role in the firm and not Ranjini Kalappa's role. The most obvious test here is to look at this page , and then her sister's. Somaya has many awards, honorary degrees and independent accolades. Ranjini Kalappa does not have any, as far as I can see.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 21:39, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Not enough sources to justify the creation. Sources are either passing mention or insignificant to ensure notability as MontrealIP's argument shows. Orientls (talk) 11:41, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I interlibrary loaned a copy of that section from the Wilkes encyclopedia. It just arrived. This encyclopedia, which appears to have been the authoritative encyclopedia about architecture at the time, only listed two architects for India: the two we have discussed here. The section I received back via ILL has 5 other architects listed. Every single one of them has a Wikipedia page: Signe Hornborg, Elsi Borg, Gae Aulenti, Solange d'Herbez de la Tour, Masako Hayashi. Accesscrawl Given that you earlier said "There are many other similarly non-notable architects listed there. Can't create article for each" and "A 28 years old insignificant entry that can be found for many other non notable architects is clearly not significant in coverage." it appears that those other architects are notable, and we have already created articles for each... so I don't think your argument holds here. --Theredproject (talk) 21:21, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that's a really strong argument. Four of the five architects you mentioned have pages with between one and three references. The interlibrary loan is impressive (and appreciated) dedication to the cause though!ThatMontrealIP (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Theredproject : I don't think why we should only observe the entries but not verify the GNG of the individuals listed in that book. Those you mentioned here are really notable contrary to Kalappa who's notability cannot be established. Accesscrawl (talk) 05:46, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nomination. Text that is "well sourced" does not automatically become a Wikipedia article. Nor does a subject's notability guarantee one, either. This is the biography of an architect who, as it happens, is but one among fifty thousand architects in India. (Source) We need something more than a solid career for an article. -The Gnome (talk) 10:15, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete More work on notability is needed than what searches show and what has been shown here. Not enough evidence for passing WP:GNG. GenuineArt (talk) 13:30, 2 September 2018 (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.