User:Cullen328/Sandbox/Fletcher

Thanks to Jethrobot for taking the time to dig out the best sources on Phil Fletcher. I am not hostile toward Fletcher, and wish him every success. The issue here is whether these five references rise to the level of significant coverage. Here's how the General notability guideline defines it: "Significant coverage means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material."

The footnotes in the GNG give the following examples: The 360-page book by Sobel and the 528-page book by Black on IBM are plainly non-trivial. The one sentence mention by Martin Walker of the band Three Blind Mice in a 1992 biography of Bill Clinton Tough love child of Kennedy published in The Guardian, which says "In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice." is plainly trivial.

Let's look at the five sources (3 through 7) identified by Jethrobot: Source 3 is a commercial blog for another puppetmaker who entered a contest. Source 4 is a contest information blog. Both mention Fletcher in passing as a judge of a non-notable puppet making competition. There is no detail whatsoever. Another judge is discussed in a bit more detail in source 3. Neither of these is a reliable source, and neither provides any detail about Fletcher. Both are trivial.

Source 5 is the nomination for the children's TV awards for BAFTA, which describes his comedy partner Iain Stirling's and his act: "Making entertainment out of links is a real skill. Iain and Hacker are funny, engaging and endlessly inventive". Two sentences for the two of them. Is that addressing the subject directly in detail? It mentions the character he plays, which he didn't create. By the way, they didn't win that clearly notable award. However, notability is surely not inherited by the losing nominees.

Source 6 mentions him in passing as a "BAFTA nominated puppeteer", which is not significant coverage, and is trivial.

Source 87 is significant coverage of his comedy partner, Iain Stirling, but not of Fletcher. Stirling is quoted as calling Fletcher "the funniest man I know after Daniel Kitson". That's it. An eight word quote by his partner is neither independent nor significant coverage. It's trivial.

I like puppeteers, especially the followers of Jim Henson, who I saw perform back in 1968 before he became a big star. However, I am forced by the evidence to conclude that this young puppermaker and puppeteer has not yet received the coverage needed to be notable by Wikipedia's standards. Right now, he's about as notable as Bill Clinton's high school band Three Blind Mice, which doesn't have a Wikipedia article. However, he may well gain attention as his career progresses, and the article can be recreated at that time.