User talk:Minfrin

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Notability of Al Prodgers
A tag has been placed on Al Prodgers requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done because the article, which appears to be about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable. If this is the first page that you have created, then you should read the guide to writing your first article.

If you think that you can assert the notability of the subject, you may contest the deletion by adding  to the top of the article (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on the article's talk page explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would confirm the subject's notability under Wikipedia guidelines.

For guidelines on specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for bands, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Crusio (talk) 17:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, I proposed this article for deletion, but as I am not an admin, I did not delete it. If you would like to have a copy of the article, you can ask any admin (but preferably the one who deleted the article) to "userfy" the article (that is, copy it to your userspace/sandbox) so that you can work some more on it. To help avoid future deletions, make sure articles are well-sourced with references to independent third party sources and that the subject satisfies the notability criteria. Happy editing! --Crusio (talk) 15:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No problem, it will shortly be here jimfbleak (talk) 16:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I've tidied the sandbox stub a bit, and I found the talk page for the deleted article, which will of course soon go itself. Writing stubs is not the best approach, better to concentrate on one at a time. If an artist has had a significant career on national TV, film or stage in his own country, that should be relatively easy to show from an independent source, such as the TV channel or national newspaper reviews. You don't need to have verifiable references for everything you say unless you are aiming for GA or FA, but you do need to show that this guy is big in SA. jimfbleak (talk) 16:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

If you were adopting the cathedral approach where one person spends ages doing all the work themselves and on their own, then sure. Wikis however work through collaboration, and in this case, it will only be through collaboration that these entries get fleshed out.

As to the idea that it should be "easy" to find independent sources of information, I think you're making broad assumptions about the penetration of the internet and the availability of online archives in other parts of the world.

Until 1994, South Africa was controlled by a regime that exerted tight control over its citizens, and the information available to them through strongly enforced censorship, akin to that suffered by countries within the former USSR. Unfortunately a lot of this culture of control has passed from the old government to the new government, and this has caused a massive underinvestment in hard internet infrastructure, as well as in businesses and media moving online, to the point where South Africa is listed at the bottom of internet connected countries in Africa.

The major media sources remain largely paper based, with very thin or no online access to archived data. Researching in this environment happens through word of mouth: a particular person points out the existence of a particular book, or of interviews they have in their archives, which then has to be cross referenced back to the source, so that it can be then listed as a proper reference on Wikipedia. And as I live in the UK, popping down to the local newspaper office to browse the archives is not possible.

The practice of arbitrarily deleting stubs leads people who might want to flesh out the article to say "why bother", to the detriment of Wikipedia as a whole. Minfrin (talk) 13:40, 28 January 2009 (UTC)