Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Travis McHenry

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 whether the coverage passes GNG/BLP1E. ansh666 03:25, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Travis McHenry (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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The four references in the article are all junk. None of them are actually about McHenry; they're low-budget articles (in mostly low-budget publications) about micronations in general, which include passing mentions or directory-style listings of McHenry. I did my own searching and came up with no better.

I have a little bit of unused land behind my garage that I'm currently using as a compost heap. I'm thinking of declaring it to be "The People's Republic of Compostia". Do I get an article? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:05, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PS, this is also a WP:BLP1E. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:01, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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• Delete - There are definitely mentions, but they're all pretty much puff pieces that boil down to "look how silly this all is". I'm not really seeing anything that would begin to be serious coverage, and even non-serious coverage, as pointed out above, is mostly about micronations as a topic. Having said that, some of this may warrant incorporation into the main article on Micronation, but I'm not seeing a compelling reason to have a stand alone article on either the person or the "places". GMG^talk 15:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- does not meet WP:CS or WP:BIO --12.28.84.131 (talk) 17:13, 6 December 2017 (UTC)--EC Racing (talk) 17:14, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete- No one takes this guy seriously. He not notable, anyone can claim to have a fake country.--Rusf10 (talk) 17:34, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 18:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Doesn't matter if anyone takes him seriously or not. Doesn't matter if anyone can have a fake country. He has sources and meets WP:N. [1] is a fine source solely about him. Other sources in the article aren't solely on him, but certainly cover him. Over the WP:N bar by a fair bit. Hobit (talk) 18:07, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not really a fine source at all. It's pretty clearly a puff human interest piece, as is pretty much all of the rest of the coverage as far as I can tell. Human interest reporting is generally not as reliable as news reporting, and may not be subject to the same rigorous standards of fact-checking and accuracy (see junk food news).[2] Puff pieces on quirky PR stunts because "look how quirky this PR stunt is" don't really count as serious journalism, and as far as I can tell, this is pretty much the best source available, and the only one that I found that deals specifically with the subject in any "depth", notwithstanding the fact that the entire piece is making fun of him. GMG^talk 18:26, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eh, if you have reason to believe the source or the article has an error, great. But it seems to be a solid story from a reliable source. Again, the level of sourcing is well above most of our BLPs where no single in-depth article on the subject exists. Hobit (talk) 00:44, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have no reason to believe the LA Magazine article isn't factually correct. But, in addition to this just being a human-interest story, it's a local human interest story. LA Magazine is writing about it because it's happening near LA. This is the best source of the bunch, and it's not enough. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:59, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that LA Magazine covers the entire "Southland" region, which means it services the second-largest urban region in the United States, with about 13 million people. So "local" - which rather implies the Smithfield Courier-Gazette serving the Smithfield-Groversville-Hankerton area (population 9,472 and growing!) -- is rather a misnomer. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per very substantial coverage in reliable independent sources. Long live the ruler of Calsahara and Westarctica!!! FloridaArmy (talk) 21:16, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Hobit. Jclemens (talk) 06:30, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, sourcing which appears to show basic level of notability. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:43, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  @RoySmith: I don't think 1E applies, he's done it at least twice, maintaining the events over time. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:02, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep has been the subject of in depth coverage by third party reliable sources. I don't see how that fact that the best source is a human interest story by a magazine in the same region as the subject changes this. Hut 8.5 18:50, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep coverage is good enough, passes GNG. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:01, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. the only context in which the references could be considered sufficient is in the context of our prejudice for the absurd. We need to realize that we're actually supposed to be an encyclopedia DGG ( talk ) 23:27, 8 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete puff human interest pieces to fill a slow news day do not notability make.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:12, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, per WP:N they do. Hobit (talk) 04:45, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The news coverage isn't significant at all. Characterizing it as "very substantial coverage" shows a lack of judgement. Peacock (talk) 13:28, 10 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could you explain how, in your judgement, [3] isn't substantial coverage of the subject? I'd say it's purely about him and what he's done. What does "substantial" mean to you? Something you think is important? Hobit (talk) 14:09, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- BLP that lacks sufficient sources that discuss the subject directly and in detail, amounting to a promo piece. Wikipedia is not a tabloid. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:25, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The Micronations book is self-published via iUniverse, so it hardly counts for notability. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:32, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per DGG's well-made points. Stifle (talk) 10:31, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The coverage is not substantial and is not sufficient for the subject to meet WP:BIO. DGG hits the nail on the head. TimBuck2 (talk) 14:37, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. 3 substantial press mentions. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:00, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - a Google search turns up insufficient sources. My rule of thumb is that there should be at least 8-9 articles, among which should be contained enough biographical info to build a proper narrative. None of that is the case here so it fails WP:RS and WP:GNG. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:43, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suppose that's fine as a rule of thumb, but A) it isn't policy and B) at least 80% of our articles on people wouldn't get over that bar. And WP:RS says nothing of the sort. WP:GNG just says "multiple". Hobit (talk) 22:15, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Virtually none of the new articles about living people will pass NPP without that number of sources. The existing articles were all written before the guidelines tightened up. And you are right – RS clarifies what is a reliable source, not that there needs to be reliable sources. My bad. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 01:48, 15 December 2017 (UTC)÷[reply]

Do you have a link to the discussion where we agreed to "tighten up" these guidelines? I missed the discussion. If there was no such discussion, I'd think you should start one if you want others to accept your view as something other than just your opinion about how things should be. Hobit (talk) 14:04, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You can check my AfD and article creation stats if you question my experience and judgement. My delete vote still stands. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:48, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm questioning what you are claiming is the "new article" standard. Again, can you link to something that supports that claim? Hobit (talk) 19:08, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can't link to my rule of thumb - but you can see that I've been successful following it. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:51, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I agree with the editors that have characterized the references as "puff pieces" - the news coverage just doesn't appear to be significant or substantial enough to meet criteria in WP:BIO. Slideshow Bob (talk) 20:38, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep It doesn't matter than anyone can claim to create a fake country out of their compost heap, what matters are if reliable secondary sources report on said fake country. Don't know what google search other users are looking at but I have found enough after a quick search.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Some aren't great hence only a weak keep, but there is enough to justify keeping the article. There might be an argument for mentioning his two nations in List of micronations, but that is more an editorial decision not necessarily a notability one. AIRcorn (talk) 17:09, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Off-hand human interest or puff pieces only, not seeing the "significant coverage" as called for by WP:N. That is enough to see the article deleted outright. But also, IMO extra care should be taken when judging biographies of people who are desperately trying to claw their way to their proverbial 15 minutes of fame, and in cases like this where it is borderline, err on the side of not giving them their cherished spotlight. You all should be editors, not simply repeaters. Cull the noise. ValarianB (talk) 19:21, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep WP:RS on it - Bloomberg L.P. Westarctica Raison d’être: Nonprofit awareness To meet the enterprising leader of Westarctica, you'll have to travel to West Hollywood, Calif., where he works as a recruiter for a media company and advocates for climate change awareness. To reach the actual country—620,000 frozen, uninhabitable square miles of western Antarctica—you’d need a boat and a really good reason (think: climatology research, penguin films). "I have never been there myself, but we want to occupy that region," says Grand Duke McHenry, who founded the country (pop. 300) in 2001 when he noticed that the land hadn’t been claimed by legitimized nations. McHenry registered Westarctica as a nonprofit in 2014 and nationalizes “citizens” who electronically pledge allegiance to "freedom with the goal of creating a new country in the frigid ice of Antarctica"—and sign up for his newsletter. Custom-made metal and wooden Westarctican coins might have no real value (other than the U.S. dollars they might garner from curious collectors on EBay), but the Grand Duke hopes their sale will eventually allow him to colonize. "If we put people there permanently, we'll have a better platform to advocate for that melting ice," said McHenry. Haaretz Another world leader coming to MicroCon is His Royal Highness Travis McHenry. As grand duke of Westarctica, he rules over 620,000 frozen, triangle-shaped square miles (1,600 square kilometers) of Antarctica that no real country ever bothered to claim. Although his nation is nearly the size of Alaska, none of its 300 citizens actually live there. But then nobody else does either. "When I discovered there was a piece of Antarctica unclaimed by any country, I was just really inspired by that," said McHenry, whose day job is recruiting coordinator for a Burbank, California-based media company. "I just sort of took my imagination and decided to see if I could turn it into a legitimate country." He made it a nonprofit last year that advocates for protecting its native penguins and studying climate change's impact on Antarctica's ice sheet. He'll give a talk on "micronations that matter." "It's just sort of encouraging other micronations to become nonprofits so they're actually doing something rather than just walking around wearing fancy capes," he says. and Reader's Digest Westarctica Raison d’être: Nonprofit awareness To meet the enterprising leader of Westarctica, you’ll have to travel to West Hollywood, California, where he works as a recruiter for a media company and advocates for climate-change awareness. To reach the actual country—620,000 frozen, uninhabitable square miles of western Antarctica—you’d need a boat and a really good reason. “I have never been there myself, but we want to occupy that region,” says Grand Duke Travis McHenry, who founded the country (pop. 300) in 2001 when he noticed that the land hadn’t been claimed by legitimized nations. McHenry registered Westarctica as a nonprofit in 2014 and nationalizes “citizens” who electronically pledge allegiance—and sign up for his newsletter. Custom-made metal and wooden Westarctican coins have no real value, so the grand duke has turned to corporate fund-raising, hoping donations will eventually allow him to colonize, building “a better platform to advocate for that melting ice.”., The Independent Members included HRH Grand Duke Travis McHenry, the leader of the Grand Duchy of Westarctica, who in 2001 took command of an unclaimed chunk of Antarctica and In 2004, he exploited a loophole in the Antarctic Treaty to name himself Grand Duke of Westarctica on Marie Byrd Land – but the US Navy, which disapproved of its lieutenant's territorial claims, forced him to abdicate., Lonely Planet [13] - scanned pages 2 pages, else 2 pages --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 04:27, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Flogging the same garbage sources you tried to spam in multiple places isn't the winning strategy you seem to think it is. --Calton | Talk 16:09, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Bloomberg L.P., Haaretz, Reader's Digest - garbage sources? --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 05:20, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Independent - Basically the definition of passing mention, overall about micronations generally and not McHenry

Readers Digest - Three paragraphs about the "country", and not specifically about the person, in an article about micronations, and not the "country"

Hazretz - Four paragraphs about the "country", and not specifically about the person, in an article about micronations, and not the "country"

Bloomberg - A few mentions, one in an image caption, with the majority of the content a word-for-word copy/paste of the Readers Digest article (right down to the formatting)... Unsurprisingly, in an article about micronations, and not about this person, or this person's "countries"

So despite the wall of text above, this suggest that 1) we need to be careful about churnalism, or in other words, exactly the kind of thing we should expect from puff human interest pieces designed to fill up space and fish for clicks, and 2) this probably warrants mention in the main article on micronations, which is what I said originally, and there's otherwise no reason to have a stand alone article, and very little to write one with. GMG^talk 13:24, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To be picky, you got it backwards -- RD was republishing Bloomberg, not the other way around. They cite it in the byline. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 13:28, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Meh. I didn't bother to look really, because it doesn't change the point either way. GMG^talk 13:29, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. That's a strange new meaning of "in-depth coverage" being used above that I was previously unaware of. --Calton | Talk 16:09, 19 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete substantial WP:BLP1E, then failing WP:N. --Vituzzu (talk) 18:37, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per RoySmith and DGG and fails WP:BLP1E and lacks significant coverage see more of churnalism.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 19:31, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, obviously. Coverage in reliable sources including Los Angeles Magazine, Bloomberg, New York Daily News cited within article. --Doncram (talk) 01:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Dismissal of McHenry's micronations, or the coverage of them, as not "serious" betrays some very serious misconceptions about the relationship between the serious and the absurd, starting with the idea that attention for its own sake is the only possible motive for outrageous actions. Review the Wikipedia articles on Diogenes the Cynic, John Cage, performance art, and surrealism, to name just a few, for extreme examples to the contrary. Diogenes has been honored in painting and statuary two millennia after he lived, and was a major influence on Stoicism—for doing things far more outrageous than anything McHenry has done. While I can't read Thomas Harlander's mind, I don't see his lengthy biographical article as simply laughing at McHenry; he notes McHenry's formal training in method acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute. The role of micronations as satirical commentary on the nation-state system comes through clearly in Harlander's article; he even mentions how McHenry's work as a military intelligence analyst contributed to his perception of nations as absurd. The joke isn't on McHenry. Imposing a view of Harlander's source as purely a frivolous "puff piece" or a lampoon of McHenry, or a view of McHenry himself as purely a publicity seeker, does violence to the source material available. Deleting this article on such grounds would be a violation of WP:NPOV, which is all about letting Wikipedia reflect, without bias, the sources on which it is based. Only hindsight prevents such an approach from dismissing Diogenes as readily as Travis McHenry.

The nominator's dismissal of McHenry's actions as trivial is also misguided to say the least. It's easy to speculate on the possibility of declaring one's own micronation, or even to make an actual such declaration (in a Wikipedia AfD?) without taking any further action. It's another matter entirely to get in trouble with one's boss by corresponding with foreign governments to seek recognition, to name only one of the lengths to which McHenry has gone. Maybe anyone could declare a micronation and run with the idea as far as McHenry has done, but very, very few actually do, and it is easy to see why they don't.

The above merely scratches the surface of the numerous problems with the "delete" arguments in this AfD. For example, trying to claim that the guidelines have "tightened up" on the basis of evidence from past AfD discussions is problematic to say the least.

—Syrenka V (talk) 12:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above is little more than WP:OTHERSTUFF, honestly. ValarianB (talk) 13:19, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Misreads both my own arguments above and WP:OTHERSTUFF, which specifically warns against blanket use of that essay section to dismiss all arguments involving comparisons.

—Syrenka V (talk) 13:46, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, good luck with that assessment. ValarianB (talk) 19:49, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• To sum up: I'm pointing out that the above dismissals of McHenry, his projects, and the relevant press coverage as "junk", "puff human interest pieces", "people who are desperately trying to claw their way to their proverbial 15 minutes of fame", "noise", and all similar pejoratives, are without exception based on unexamined and unjustified assumptions about human psychology and the philosophical significance of outrageous actions. I cited other Wikipedia articles to support that point—not to claim simplistically that because these other articles exist, McHenry must have one. WP:OTHERSTUFF itself warns against extending its strictures to indirect arguments of this kind. And without the dismissals of McHenry's actions as trivial and the press coverage as junk, there is no defense against a WP:GNG case for notability.

—Syrenka V (talk) 23:53, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - It's a pretty close call, but I'm seeing a couple sources dealing substantially with this subject. We may think his micronation projects (multiple) absurd, but they and he have been independently and substantially covered in the press and that is what GNG requires. Carrite (talk) 18:44, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep It seems the argument for delete largely focuses on the guy's absurd or notworthy venture. But clearly he is notable. And the coverage is enough to meet WP:GNG. Though I wouldn't object if the content is merged to Micronation but After AfD. –Ammarpad (talk) 03:18, 22 December 2017 (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.