Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur H. J. King


 * 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. Kevin (talk) 21:54, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Arthur H. J. King

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This article has previously been deleted due to an expired PROD. My concerns with the subject matter are two-fold:


 * 1) Notability: Google News (and its archives) are bereft of mentions of an "Arthur H. J. King".  Google Books produces two results: both are the book Awheel to the Arctic Circle by Arthur H. J. King (1940, sometimes listed as A Wheel to the Arctic Circle). Turning to ordinary Google, it seems that both King and his book lack significant coverage in third party sources, having mainly trivial mentions on the websites of antiquarian booksellers or databases of out-of-print books and the like.  Thus far, I can find only two potentially suitable sources: Bicycle Travel and Touring Resources (which briefly describes the book) and the Yorkshire Post obituary from 1999, already present in the article (not available online).
 * 2) Possible copyright problem:  The article strongly resembles a newspaper obituary, opening with "Arthur H J King, who has died aged 84" and containing the phrases "Son Ian King told the Yorkshire Post" and " Mr King is survived by his wife an eight children".  This leads me to suspect that the article may be a direct copy of the Yorkshire Post obituary cited in the article. (I cannot prove this, not having any 10-year-old copies of the Post lying around, which is why I'm bringing this to Articles for Deletion instead of trying another process.) --Dominic Hardstaff (talk) 18:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. He appears to be notable. If there is a copyright violation, that can be dealt with by stubbifying this article. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 21:56, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * How so? Specifically, how does he satisfy the General notability guideline? --Dominic Hardstaff (talk) 22:21, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that this just squeaks by WP:CREATIVE, based upon the Yorkshire Post obituary. It seems to me that retaining this article (bereft of copyvio problems) would be harmless, and would be of benefit to the project given our tendency to over-saturate the latest video games and such. If there is a person dedicated to bring this article up to snuff, I say good luck to him or her. We need more articles on authors of books that shed an interesting light on that era. If this does not meet notability guidelines, than I would ask that we ignore all rules. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 22:53, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete On further consideration, this is just too weak to keep.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 22:51, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete The only two papers whose obits we accept as definitive proof of notability are the London Times and the NY Times--possibly we would for similar newspapers in other countries if we knew about them. In practice, other papers have a tendency to devote some of the articles to local people who may be well known locally, but not notable. So this needs additional evidence, such as reviews of his book, not just listing of it. The publisher is a minor UK firm that was   primarily a printer--the book is either self-published or very close to it.   As for copyvio, the article is so clearly a copyvio that I think it could be deleted on the grounds alone. If the person is clearly notable, we'd stubbify, but there is no reason to think that.    DGG ( talk ) 02:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. His 1940 book, Awheel to the Arctic Circle does not turn up in the British Library or COPAC catalogues. Aside from the issue of reviews, we don't even seem to have copies on deposit in major libraries. --Paularblaster (talk) 22:28, 5 October 2009 (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.