User talk:Marc Kupper/Notability FAQ

Mark_Prindle (2nd nomination)

From Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mark_Prindle_(2nd_nomination)

• Strong Keep Mark Prindle is notable. He's been quoted and printed in published books. He's had a biographical blurb in a published book. He's ran stories for Maxim UK and Spin. He's been on TV. Not as a one off "man on the street" interview. Not on public access. Not in some University production. He's been on Fox News's show Red Eye W/Greg Gutfeld. Not just once, multiple times. As such, he is being beamed into the homes of many people. He was given his own music segment. His bread and butter is his website. While much of it is humorous record reviews, he also acts as a de facto historian of the 1980's/1990's underground music scene (amongst others). He interviews artists important to the scene, that while notable enough for a wikipedia page, aren't exactly burning up the pages of Rolling Stone. As such, he too is notable. I hope that we can look past my relative inexperience on the site and discussions of the past, unreformed page and view this as the notable person it is. Thank you. Godgaverockandrolltoyou (talk) 05:55, 26 August 2009 (UTC) — Godgaverockandrolltoyou (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. See the user's userpage. Cunard (talk) 06:32, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Regarding "He's had a biographical blurb in a published book." The "[WP]" at the end of the blurb means it was taken directly from Wikipedia. See WP:CIRCULAR about this. Unfortunately, none of the other things you listed are what Wikipedia is looking for to see if the subject of an article is notable per the Wikipedia notability guideline. What I look for to see if something or a person is notable are reliable sources "about" the subject itself in detail. For people I also check to see if any of the points listed on WP:PEOPLE are met and that there are reliable secondary sources that back this up. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:54, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I appreciate the critique. However, I feel the fact a published book needed wikipedia to reference the man shows the need for the article, and his notablitity, even if said citation is circular. As for notability, I would note that the notability guidelines aren't law. If the consensus is that a man who has made frequent contributions to a music scene, been published in print multiple times, and had multiple established appearances on a show on a major cable network as a "music contributor" is that he's "not notable", I would state that the notability guidelines are broken. I understand the want against self promotion and the ascension of the trivial for personal gain, this is not a case of that. This is the creation of a reliable source of information about a notable man. As the internet grows and grows and the older established modes of information contract, more and more articles will be like this, therefore it is Wikipedia's standards that need to adjust, rather than deleting this article. Godgaverockandrolltoyou (talk) 20:41, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Had the notability stuff been understood and followed from the beginning then there would be no Mark Prindle article on Wikipedia and the odds are he would not have shown up in that book. :-) I believe the book was constructed from things like Category:American music critics and it's parent categories.

If Prindle is all the things you say he is then all you need to do is to prove it. That's done by finding independent reliable sources that state the things you have said about Prindle. I'll write more about your notability suggestions but not on this AfD as it should be focused on Mark Prindle. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

• Delete based on lack of evidence for WP:N. Only one reference in the article itself covers the subject of the AfD (Mark Prindle). It is an interview on a Latvian web site. As I don't know the language I have no way of evaluating this site's nor the interviewer's reputation for fact checking. Four WP:PEACOCK words in the lead paragraph is not reassuring. I then checked my local library's research database and got zero hits. Google Scholar, Books, and News (using the links at the top of this AFD) only dig up trivial references. --Marc Kupper|talk 03:56, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Trivial is subjective. Anyways, if it is an interview you need, I can gladly get one from him, I was talking with him through facebook, and he gave me a bunch of reference to things he was in. 24.125.10.58 (talk) 19:49, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that trivial is subjective. When I use the word it means the subject was mention in a single sentence (sometimes two) and then dropped. For example, many band articles may mention they were reviewed by Prindle. Those are trivial mentions.

Interviews are tricky in my mind as many of them are a glowing lead to hook the reader and then it's one sentence questions with the interview subject providing most of the content. Thus the word count is low when looking for the significant coverage that addresses the subject directly in detail. Take a look at Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)/Archive 11#Interviews and Wikipedia talk:Notability (music)/Archive 11#Interviews 2. I found those using this search. You may want to dig through the results.

Please keep in mind that even if the Prindle article is deleted that it will be instantly restored should someone come up with the solid evidence of notability that Wikipedia looks for. Thus while you may feel the AfD clock is ticking it's also not the end of the universe (or Mark Prindle) should the article get deleted. The reason I bring this up is that it takes a while to assimilate all those guidelines, policies, how they fit together, and how people are interpreting them. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:42, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Solid evidence suggests notability is law, which it isn't. It's culled from trends of Wikipedia, correct? I feel that while Mark Prindle does not meet the WP:N perfectly, he fits the spirit of it. Furthermore, he is part of the upcoming evolution of culture away from the dying MSM sources Wikipedia currently requires notability. Trends change, and this is a case where I feel the trend should change. If an oft-cited/quoted writer who regularly appears on a cable news channel in a creative capacity isn't notable, then notability of the problem. If people can turn on their TV set, look the man up, and come up blank on this site because of a static, legalistic approach, then the static legalistic approach is the problem, not the man's notability. 24.125.10.58 (talk) 18:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

You are right in that the notability guidelines are not law but they do reflect WP:CONSENSUS on what the people of Wikipedia are looking for. I haven't seen anything that's so compelling about Mark Prindle that an end-run around WP:N is justified. If people watching TV look the man up they will find plenty that's relevant.

These days with web sites you'd think there's very little reason to write an article about something or someone. I don't need to write about Mark Prindle as it's likely he's written about himself on his web site, Facebook, etc. However, that also means there's nothing special about Prindle as a billion other people also have at least a web page and a few million have web sites. How do we separate Prindle out from the billions? With Wikipedia it's done by seeing if people have bothered to spend a bunch of time researching Prindle, double checking facts, and writing about him. To guard against glowing reviews from Prindle's buddies being used as evidence of notability Wikipedia has standards on where the reviews can appear. WP:PEOPLE lists other things besides articles about the subject though the odds are if someone scores well on those other things they also have attracted sufficient interest that people will write about the subject.

Considering glowing reviews, it seems that for a while four bucks would snag you a review on Prindle's site.^[1] Could we use a review by Prindle as evidence of notability for a band? If all it took was $4 I'd suspect not. That's why Wikipedia seeks the sources that presumably take more than $4 to snag coverage.

We could use modern metrics such as "appearing on TV" or "Google hits" to establish notability but then you are really establishing that the subject is good at self promotion and search engine optimization. I've though about if the notability standards should be changed and every time I start running through the thought experiments I find that the current system is pretty good. Another benefit is that it works regardless on if you lived in the 1600s or are a fully wired teenager. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:57, 13 September 2009 (UTC)