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. – bradv🍁 15:30, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nana aba Duncan[edit]

Nana aba Duncan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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WP:BLP of a radio broadcaster, not properly referenced as passing our notability criteria for radio broadcasters. As always, every radio personality is not automatically entitled to have a Wikipedia article just because she exists -- notability for radio broadcasters requires things like winning significant awards, or at least being the subject of enough reliable source coverage, in sources independent of herself, to clear WP:GNG. But none of the seven footnotes here represent what's required: two are from her own employer, and thus aren't independent of her for the purposes of establishing her notability; two are from WordPress blogs that aren't reliable or notability-supporting sources at all; one is a glancing namecheck of her existence in a primary source press release from a directly affiliated organization; one briefly mentions her name as having modelled for a photograph in a community art show, in a source that's otherwise about that art show and not about her. And the only one that actually passes all of those tests, by being all of "independent of her", "genuinely about her" and "from a real notability-assisting media outlet", is still just a 76-word blurb -- so that source isn't substantive enough to get her over GNG all by itself either, if it's the only GNG-worthy source that can be shown.
To be clear, this is not an "I've never heard of her" argument, because I have heard of her -- in fact, I live in Toronto and listen almost exclusively to CBC radio, so I literally wake up to her every weekend -- but the notability test for people is the quality and depth and range and independence of the sources that can be provided to support the article, and these just aren't the sources that would get her over the bar. Bearcat (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Radio-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 23:57, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• KEEP: Everything outlined above is a case study in the structural and systemic issues that prevent equitable representation of BIPOC on Wikipedia. Nominating the page for deletion based a black and white interpretation of a guideline - during Black History Month, no less - is a misguided and overly pedantic interpretation of notability requirements. --Dnllnd (talk) 00:05, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Dnllnd, see WP:RGW and remember to format your AFD votes properly. ミラP 00:09, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• If we're going to link to things to justify overly rigid interpretations of guidelines for someone who hosts a province wide radio show, let's at least try to balance things out by including Gender bias on Wikipedia and Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red.--Dnllnd (talk) 00:18, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Hosting a provincewide radio show is not an instant notability freebie that exempts a person from having to have reliable source coverage, in unaffiliated media outlets other than her own employer, about her work as host of a radio show. She would have to host a national show, heard literally coast to coast from Vancouver to St. John's, before she had a chance to be considered "inherently" notable — and even then, she would still have to show some evidence of media coverage from sources other than her own employer — but anything less than that lives or dies on the quality of her sourceability, not just on stating that she has a job and sourcing the fact to her own employer's own self-published website. Bearcat (talk) 05:05, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• As important as it is to improve our coverage of people of colour and women, we do not do so by waiving our notability and reliable sourcing rules so that members of minority groups get into Wikipedia on weak quality sourcing, while only white men have to actually meet any of our stated notability standards. We do so by identifying the women and people of colour who do meet our existing notability standards and are getting overlooked, not by waiving the notability standards so that only white men actually have to meet them at all. Bearcat (talk) 04:55, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep: Saying that the CBC article isn't a notability-supporting source because she works for the CBC seems a bit unfair, essentially penalizing her for working for a broadcaster. Both LocalLove and byblacks are blogs, but they both have editorial teams, and byblacks is funded by a grant from the government of Canada. Hosting an event at the Toronto International Festival of Authors also suggests that Duncan is well-known as a broadcaster in Toronto. -- Toughpigs (talk) 01:20, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Broadcasters who work for the CBC are not "penalized" by the fact that self-published content from their own employer is not clinching of notability — many CBC employees have no problem showing outside coverage from sources other than their own employer. Matt Galloway has independent coverage, Anna Maria Tremonti has independent coverage, Carol Off has independent coverage, Ian Hanomansing has independent coverage, Rosemary Barton has independent coverage, and on and so forth. But a broadcaster who cannot show independent coverage is not deemed notable just because their own employer "covered" them internally — if content self-published by a person's own employer were all it took to establish their encyclopedic notability, then we would always have to keep an article about every single person who ever worked for any radio or television station at all, because every radio and television personality always has a staff profile on their own employer's self-published website. And if that were how notability worked in any other field either, then we would always have to keep an article about every single person who has a social media profile on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn. Notability for all people is always determined by the extent to which sources that don't have a vested interest in the person's career have chosen to invest their editorial resources into creating and publishing unaffiliated content about the person's career accomplishments. It's the same way it works for newspaper journalists: a Toronto Star journalist is not notable on the basis of content published by the Toronto Star itself, but probably is notable if the same accomplishment leads to a story in The Globe and Mail or the Ottawa Citizen.

And blogs are not accorded special status as "reliable sources" just because they got a government publishing grant — the definition of a reliable source is not where the money came from, it's how much established status the thing does or doesn't have as a media outlet. And hosting an event at a local festival doesn't establish notability either — the notability test for broadcasters is not "well-known in her own city", but requires a nationalized profile, national awards and/or reliable source coverage in real media outlets. And furthermore, if you have to rely on the Festival of Authors' own self-published website for the claim that she hosted an event, then that automatically isn't an article-clinching notability claim either — nothing you can say about any person, regardless of their occupation, ever constitutes a valid notability claim until you can reference it to sources that are fully independent of the claim being made. If you have to cite a directly affiliated organization or company's own self-published content to support the claim, because independent coverage of the claim in unaffiliated sources does not exist, then by definition it's not an article-clinching notability claim — nothing is ever a notability claim until unaffiliated media outlets have been motivated to write and publish independent journalism about it.

And also, a source has to have her as its subject, not just briefly mention her name one time in the process of being fundamentally about a subject other than her, before it helps to support her notability. Bearcat (talk) 04:55, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Toughpigs: Not the first time Bearcat wouldn't count a reputable blog with editorial oversight as GNG support just for being a blog. ミラP 02:09, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's because Bearcat is correct that blogs do not count as reliable sources for establishing notability. A blog is not automatically "reputable" just because it has "editorial oversight" — even garbage sources like Breitbart and The Blaze have editorial chains of command, but that doesn't inherently prove that they're "trustworthy" or notability-supporting sources. The definition of a "reliable source" is not just the ability to locate the real names of one or more people who are associated with it — it is a question of whether the outlet in question has an established reputation as a trustworthy media outlet or not. And because websites sometimes can and do go out of business, and weblinks actually do die, the definition of a reliable source also requires the permanent ongoing ability to recover the source, from library microfilms or an archiving database like ProQuest or newspapers.com, if the existing weblink ever dies. If you cannot be 100 per cent certain that even if the website permanently died tomorrow, its content would still be recoverable forever, then it is automatically not a notability-making source in and of itself — the very definition of a reliable source requires that there be some form of offsite paper or database backup that can be accessed separately from the publication's current web presence, so that the content remains verifiable in perpetuity, regardless of what might happen to the publication's current web presence. Bearcat (talk) 04:55, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat: No problem! Both byblacks and Local Love are archived by the Internet Archive. In fact, there's a bot running on English Wikipedia that automatically notifies the Internet Archive when a new external link is added, so the Wayback Machine can make sure to crawl and save it. So that's okay about the in perpetuity thing. -- Toughpigs (talk) 05:01, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nope. Archived in a different format — because firstly, what happens if the Internet Archive also dies, and secondly, the Internet Archive also "archives" unreliable source webhits just as readily as reliable ones, so it proves nothing about a source's reliability at all. Allow me to rephrase myself: there's no such thing as any reliable source that doesn't have some form of publicly accessible paper or microfilm backup that can be accessed off-web if necessary. Bearcat (talk) 05:08, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is that written down anywhere? The Internet Archive is pretty stable, and I'm pretty sure nobody's backing up every article on CNN.com on microfilm. I looked at WP:GNG and WP:RS and they don't mention paper or microfilm backups. -- Toughpigs (talk) 05:19, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough, CNN is a television channel, with content backup on video that can be accessed off-web in video libraries. And guess what else I see all the time in the news archiving databases I use when I need to locate deadlinked, paywalled or pregooglable news coverage: transcripts of television newscasts. It's simple common sense: weblinks can and do die, and we run into that problem all the time. So if we don't possess the ability to recover a dead reference to verify what it said, then the content is not referenced anymore. Bearcat (talk) 05:35, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Again: Where is the policy that says that all sources must be backed up in a way that's accessible off-web? -- Toughpigs (talk) 05:50, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a question of "policy", it's a question of "anything that meets all of our requirements to be considered a reliable source will, by definition, always automatically have that by virtue of the way the world works". Newspapers, by definition, have or had print editions — even the relatively few newspapers that have recently gone fully web-only, if they have any accepted status as real or trustworthy newspapers at all, still get archived in the same databases that their old print editions are archived in. Magazines, by definition, have or had print editions that can be found in libraries. Books, by definition, have paper copies that can be found in libraries. Television network newscasts, by definition, have video archives and paper transcripts that can be found in libraries. It's not that we have a policy demanding archiving as a condition of being a reliable source — it's that archiving is a thing that automatically happens to any source that is actually reliable. It may sound a bit tautological, but it's actually the truth: making backup copies is a thing the world automatically does with all genuinely reliable sources as a matter of course, so anything that meets our conditions to be considered a reliable source will have backups because backing up reliable sources is just an automatic feature of how the world works.

The Internet Archive, on the other hand, just scrapes everything on the web whether it's a reliable source or not, so a blog doesn't magically turn into a reliable source just because you can retrieve it from there. If it were a valuable or reliable source, there would be a paper copy somewhere, because ever since humans learned the hard way that reliable sources can be lost if we're not careful, trying to ensure that sources exist in both digital and physical form, and backing them up in multiple places so that if one copy does get lost or destroyed others still exist, is what the world does with sources that are reliable enough to preserve. Bearcat (talk) 06:24, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You cited five policies in your nomination: WP:BLP, WP:RS, WP:GNG, WP:BLOGS and WP:PRIMARYSOURCES. None of those policies mention hard-copy backups on paper or microfilm. The most relevant policy, WP:BLOGS, says that editors should avoid using personal blogs, because they're self-published; it doesn't say anything about digital media being inherently invalid. Your assertions are not backed up by policy. -- Toughpigs (talk) 06:33, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nice strawman. I specifically said it's not a policy question we're talking about — archiving of reliable sources is simply a basic feature of how the world works. Nothing that is a reliable source ever lacks hard copy backup, because hard copy backup is what the world automatically always does with its reliable sources as a matter of course. Bearcat (talk) 06:40, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As a digital archivist I'm going to tap in here and say, "hard copy backup is what the world automatically always does with its reliable sources" is not universal or achievable. It's also patently false. We're losing born digital resources at an incalculable rate not because they aren't reliable, but because the resources and infrastructure don't exist to maintain them or recreate them in hard copy. And that's completely ignoring the threat climate change and war pose to the viability or archived records of value stored blow current sea levels or in vulnerable geographic locations. This discussion has descended into philosophical navel gazing and is taking away from the issue at hand. Nana aba Duncan is notable regardless of whether or not you like how it's been supported. If I'm going to have RGW thrown at me for pointing out the obvious, I'd like the record to show you're doing the same with your black and white approach to notability and long-term verifiability. We'd all like the blue sky scenario, the reality is we don't have it.--Dnllnd (talk) 14:23, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat: You're Bearcat. ミラP 05:58, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You say that like I didn't know it. "Illeism is sometimes used in literature as a stylistic device." Bearcat (talk) 06:24, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per Toughpigs, but my RGW argument still stands. ミラP 02:08, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Meets GNG. —Мандичка^YO 😜 11:31, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:GNG. As a writer, I think the argument that all reliable sources will be backed up on microfilm or paper hilarious. Sadly, neither of those things last forever (just like web links) and they get lost (!) so it seems ridiculous to require these. Sometimes digitized copies are all you can find. I actually write for wholly digital publications that are nonetheless published by editorial teams, backed up by trustworthy sources, and considered reliable by universities and other institutions. It's not RGW to follow Wikipedia's guidelines, rather than go off on a tangent pursuing vague notions of a complete, easily navigable physical library for all sources, that will be magically accessible to all of Wikipedia's present and future contributors. IphisOfCrete (talk) 04:04, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The only GNG-eligible sources present in the entire article come from her own employer. There is not a single other source in the entire article that is both (a) reliable, and (b) about her (which is not the same thing as "glancingly mentioning her in the process of being fundamentally about something else") — but journalists don't get into Wikipedia on the basis of content self-conferred by the issuer of their own paycheques, either: they get into Wikipedia when they've been the subject of coverage in sources other than their own employer, so her own employer can't magically GNG her all by itself if there are no other GNG-worthy sources anywhere else in the article. Bearcat (talk) 19:28, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep meets WP:GNG Tealbrain (talk) 00:39, 24 February 2020 (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.