Talk:Chrysti the Wordsmith

TAG cloud
A cloud of tags was added to the article, claiming that the article is improperly referenced. Let's check the refs and external links.

References
 * Becker, Michael (April 30, 2012). "Word has it". Mountains & Minds, The Montana State University Magazine. Retrieved September 14, 2016.
 * University owns both the magazine and the radio station, but I think we can assume that the radio station does not control the magazine
 * Doesn't matter if the radio station directly controls the magazine or not: if they're both university-oriented media at the same university, then they're still affiliated with each other by virtue of shared ownership, and thus not independent of each other. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "Chrysti the Wordsmith". PRX. Retrieved September 14, 2016.
 * PRX distributes the program, but is not related to other public broadcasting entities like NPR
 * If PRX is the program's distributor, then PRX is an affiliated source by virtue of its relationship to the program; its relationship to NPR is irrelevant, because NPR is not the subject that PRX is being cited as sourcing for: the program is. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Ferguson, Mike (May 21, 2015). "Chrysti the Wordsmith dives deep into the history of words". Billings Gazette. Retrieved September 14, 2016.
 * Billings Gazette is completely independent of the radio program. Definitely a reliable source for most things Montana
 * That's one reliable source. But one reliable source is not ''enough. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "Chrysti the Wordsmith (blog)". Biographies. Retrieved September 14, 2016.
 * controlled by Chrysti the Wordsmith
 * "Controlled by her", by definition, means that it's a non-independent source that cannot assist notability. Reliable sourcing in a Wikipedia article must be fully independent of her, so her own blog does not and cannot speak to her or the program's notability at all. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "Chrysti the Wordsmith". Distinctly Montana. June 22, 2016. Retrieved September 14, 2016.
 * Independent of Chrysti the Wordsmith. Given the size of the Montana population, a fairly informal website like this might be considered a reliable source.  Otherwise we will be very limited in our coverage of Montana
 * A Proust Questionnaire-style interview does not constitute substantive coverage about her. It constitutes her talking about herself, and thus remains a non-independent source regardless of whether the site publishing it is accepted as a reliable source or not. And Montana is most certainly not lacking for conventional media outlets that would count as reliable sources — there are 19 newspapers listed in, for instance, which is not an abnormally low number — so our ability to cover Montana does not require us to suspend our rules for what constitutes a reliable source so that substandard sources would count for more than usual. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

External links
 * Blog and archive
 * see above
 * As per above, her own blog is not independent of her. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "Chrysti The Wordsmith: Clean as a Whistle”, KGLT, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC
 * Archive started by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but now an independent institution run in part by the Library of Congress

So, in short
 * 2 independent reliable sources (in the context of Montana)
 * 1 source semi-independent
 * 1 from the program's distributor
 * 1 from the subject of the article

plus an external link run in part by the Library of Congress. What else would you like to have here?
 * No, we have one independent reliable source that speaks to notability, and four that don't contribute anything at all toward meeting WP:GNG. And at any rate, "external links" are not referencing. The external links here are both perfectly acceptable ones, but they don't assist in referencing the article over GNG. Bearcat (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Please explain rather than do drive-by tagging.

Smallbones( smalltalk ) 20:21, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * An article's base notability claim must be supported by reliable source coverage, not by primary or affiliated sources. The latter kind can be used sparingly for some supplementary confirmation of facts (e.g. Chrysti's biographical details) that don't have a direct bearing on the notability claim — but the notability claim itself must be supported by fully independent media coverage. And of the five sources present here, only one of them actually qualifies as fully independent media coverage, for the reasons I explained above — but you need at least three or four pieces of real, fully independent media coverage to satisfy or pass WP:GNG, not just one. Bearcat (talk) 20:54, 21 October 2016 (UTC)


 * This is absolutely ridiculous! This is a nationally-broadcast radio show that's been around for at least 30 years!!! Footnote 1 verifies factual information, footnote 2 is PRX verifying that PRX distributes the program, footnote three is an article in the lead newspaper in the largest city in Montana, footnote 4 verifies basic biographical info, for which the person's own blog can be appropriate (Presumably they know where they went to college), 5 is an obit in a newspaper, quite reliable for what it is sourcing, and footnote 6 to Distinctly Montana is not just a website, it is a well-known lifestyle magazine about Montana (think something like Sunset magazine in comparison).  That is three completely independent sources (two major newspapers and a magazine), a source that verifies her notability simply by the fact it (PRX) distributes the program in the first place, and source material is stored by an affiliate of the Library of Congress.  The MSU magazine is all about highlighting notable alumni, staff, and projects, so it's not like she can make them pay attention to her -- so the MSU and PRX citations establish notability in a manner certainly independent of the subject. Sheesh.   Montanabw (talk) 00:49, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There's nothing remotely "ridiculous" about it whatsoever. Notability on Wikipedia is always a factor of the degree to which sources that are fully and completely independent of the subject have chosen to cover it. A person's own website does not make her notable, the website of her show does not make her notable, the website of the radio network that airs her show does not make her notable, and on and so forth — if primary sources were enough in and of themselves to get a person into Wikipedia, we would have to keep an article about every single person who ever posted their résumé to LinkedIn, and every single person who has an account on any social networking platform. Notability on Wikipedia is a factor of the degree to which sources which are fully independent of her, with no form of relationship to her whatsoever, have chosen to devote time and resources to covering her — it cannot be gamed by her own employer's self-published coverage of itself. Bearcat (talk) 22:34, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Bearcat, she is not an employee of MSU -- KGLT radio is a student station run mostly by volunteers, some of whom are students, and may of whom are community members. That PRX chooses to carry her program is itself an indicia of notability.  You seem to be confusing  references used for verifiability (which do not all have to be independent) with references that establish notability, or which we have enough that are of adequate independence (again, two newspapers and a magazine).  You also are exaggerating the criteria... now shall we just move on to something we can agree on, perhaps the notability of minor league cricket players?   Montanabw (talk) 05:04, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not misrepresenting or confusing anything: what we have here for referencing is not adequate to prove notability.
 * For one thing, local media coverage in a person's own local area is not, in and of itself, enough media coverage to pass WP:GNG — as I've pointed out before, if all it took to get a person over GNG was the existence of two pieces of media coverage, Wikipedia would have to keep an article about the woman who lives a mile down the road from my parents who got into the city's local media for finding a pig in her front yard one morning. But we don't, because we do care about variables like the context in which the coverage is being given and the geographic range that the coverage encompasses. If the show is syndicated beyond Montana alone, then where's the media coverage beyond Montana alone?
 * And for two, the issue here is that the local RSes are being used to support inconsequential statements like "Words covered include those with origins in antiquity such as titanium, and modern words, such as squeaky clean and chillax" and "Smith was born c. 1960 to Carol Gorton Smith and Edward "Bud" Smith" that have no bearing whatsoever on her notability or lack thereof, while the stuff that actually constitutes a notability claim is resting entirely on primary sources. But that's exactly bass-ackward: while it's true that we're allowed to use primary sources for additional verification of content, we're allowed to use it for the fleshing out of the secondary biographical detail and not for the carriage of her basic notability claim. You can't use primary sources to support the notability claims and then use coverage in the local media solely to support the supplementary biographical details, for the same reason that the CEO of a company doesn't get a Wikipedia article just because he has an "our CEO" profile on the website of his own employer or a résumé on LinkedIn — the statements that are relevant to whether she qualifies for an article or not must be sourced to and carried by the media coverage about her, and the primary sources can be used to support the names of her parents and the titanium-squeaky clean-chillax. Not vice versa. Bearcat (talk) 15:34, 16 November 2016 (UTC)