Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anthony Holland (composer)


 * 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   delete. SarahStierch (talk) 00:29, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Anthony Holland (composer)

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The article makes claims for the subject of the article which would pass notability criteria. However, I feel that these claims are not backed by reliable sources. I am nominating this article for deletion based on lack of reliable sources. Persons contesting this would be making a strong argument by pointing to 2-3 sources each of which document some claim to notability.

See the talk page of this article for discussions about sources. It seems that several people including me have questioned them.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   13:17, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. Lacks in-depth coverage; insufficiently notable. Alexbrn talk 13:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. &#9733;&#9734;  DUCK IS JAMMMY &#9734;&#9733; 14:27, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. &#9733;&#9734;  DUCK IS JAMMMY &#9734;&#9733; 14:27, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ohio-related deletion discussions. &#9733;&#9734;  DUCK IS JAMMMY &#9734;&#9733; 14:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. Definitely does not meet the notability requirements for a WP:BLP. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salimfadhley (talk • contribs)
 * Delete. Fails notability per WP:ACADEMIC (for the fringe theory section, which was apparently restored) and I don't see it satisfying WP:notability (music) – Seppi333 (talk) 20:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, this has been a somewhat frustrating experience for me, to say the least! Holland is of marginal notability.  There are two independent, reliable sources about his work as an amateur scientist on some fringe medical theories, one of which (the Ira Glass piece) should certainly qualify as in-depth coverage.  The article currently has very little in the way of sourcing on anything else about him; there's a page at his university whose authorship is unclear (some parts are written in Holland's voice, others are written in the third person) that provides biographical information.  It would be nice if there were more coverage of him as a musician/composer/academic in truly independent sources; Google is able to find a couple things, perhaps the best of which is this.  If the Skidmore page and/or the article linked in the previous sentence are third party RSs, then I think there is clearly enough information to write a decent two-paragraph plus lead article about Holland (essentially, the article we already have); if not, then there's only his scientific stuff.  I personally think that he's an interesting-sounding guy, that there's the material there for a short biography, and that he should be considered (just barely) notable.  --JBL (talk) 22:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
 * , I regret that you find any part of this frustrating and I wish that upon seeing this article you would have known that a deletion discussion was a likely outcome. The community here strives to review content in a consistent way, and it is a failure of the infrastructure here when people expect one outcome and get another. I hope that your frustration is lessened by seeing what a huge amount of discussion that multiple volunteers have spent talking about a person that perhaps none of us recognize, and I hope you recognize that this could only be so quickly and orderly managed on Wikipedia. WP:NOTABILITY is a defined term; consider reading WP:PROF, WP:CREATIVE,and WP:GNG as user:DGG suggested to on the talk page of the article. If the subject of this article met any of these, then the article would be kept. His university-published biography is considered self-published regardless of its authorship. His university has a financial relationship with him and is compelled by their own interests to portray him in a way that makes them both look good, so this is not a reliable source. The Saratogian newspaper article is a copy/paste sort of journalism and not a media description of a person's life work which establishes notability; it is a promotion for an event and whoever wrote the article seems not to have interviewed Holland or investigated more deeply than finding his basic bio somehow. The Ira Glass piece could be good if it makes any claim which would establish this person's notability, but this source was not used as a citation for a statement of that sort.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comment. It was clear to me that Holland was a candidate for deletion; on the other hand, it is often the case that articles on non-notable subjects survive a long time, especially if they are decently written.  I am not nearly so invested in this article that I am going to go through thousands of words of notability guidelines to find spots where my overview above can be propped up by a direct policy-citation.  I just think it's too bad that this (basically decent if necessarily stubby) article is going to be deleted for no really crucial reason.  --JBL (talk) 14:25, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. The only claim to fame is having a piece on him in This American Life, but ordinarily that one thing would be good enough for me. In this case, though, that one thing is medical research that clearly is non-mainstream, sourced only by sources that clearly do not meet WP:MEDRS, with no mainstream assessment of whether what he's doing makes any sense. As such, reporting on this work only from advocacy pieces as we do now clearly violates WP:NPOV and WP:FRINGE, and risks endangering real lives by leading cancer victims away from more proven attacks on the disease. But removing this material from the article leaves nothing of note. And the fierce defense of this fringe material by its proponents (restoring it after DGG's strong warning not to, and repeated removing the fringe tag from it) does not bode well for our ability to keep the article neutral. I think the only solution is to not have an article until such time as he's achieved enough fame that the mainstream is forced to take note of him and provide sources we can use (if it ever does). —David Eppstein (talk) 08:41, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * 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.