Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barbara Meneley


 * 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 no consensus. Opinions are divided about notability. The quality of the discussion is notably poor, with most opinions merely asserting that the sources are, or are not, sufficient, but there's no analysis of the existing sources and discussion of why they are, say, reliable enough, or not independent. On that basis, I can't assess the weight of the arguments made, and so we are left with keeping the article for lack of consensus.  Sandstein  19:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Barbara Meneley

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Notability not established by text or sources. — swpb T 20:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:50, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:50, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:50, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. Negligible sources. Instructor is far WP:Too Soon. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:51, 10 March 2016 (UTC).
 * @98.69.237.118 Please do not alter contributors' edits. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:24, 13 March 2016 (UTC).


 * Probable delete - can't see any real evidence of notability and the article is full of unsupported POV comments.Deb (talk) 22:57, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - I agree. it is WP:Too Soon.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  05:31, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. Seems to have been a recent mass-creation of similar articles on artists from the same institution/area by several different SPA accounts all on March 8, 2016: see also Carmen Robertson, Amber Dalton, Leesa Streifler, Iris Hauser, Marsha Kennedy, Jo-Ann Episkenew, Marilyn Levine. There may be others. Agricola44 (talk) 17:07, 11 March 2016 (UTC).
 * Comment. This article, along with many others on seemingly non-notable individuals (several listed above), seems to trace back to Regina Art & Feminism Meet-up. All articles listed there should probably be examined. Agricola44 (talk) 17:15, 11 March 2016 (UTC).
 * Indeed, because surely we know the notable members of the feminist art scene of Regina better than they do? :-) Expert knowledge matters; edit-a-thons do tend to produce single purpose accounts; that's how they recruit new editors. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 03:49, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Expert knowledge does not matter to the degree you're implying. A fitting topic for an encyclopedia has, by definition, lots of sources that anyone could read and subsequently use to create a solid WP article. That fact that these editathon individuals don't have such sources should give you pause. Maybe there just aren't that many notable members of the "feminist art scene of Regina". Please see broader comment below. Agricola44 (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2016 (UTC).


 * Keep Sources indicate that she is a well-established artist.  Gamaliel  ( talk ) 15:36, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Clear Keep Sources on page indicate signicant notability, and substantial coverage in other sources if you do a very quick Google search: nominators for deletion need to do a minimimum amount of dilegence in checking for sources.Sadads (talk) 17:24, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep the usual BS avalanche after the art+feminism editathon --ChristopheT (talk) 22:37, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Your reasons based on policy? Xxanthippe (talk) 22:51, 12 March 2016 (UTC).
 * I don't propose to spend my valuable time, or waste yours, on giving you a course on etiquette and manners, nor on combing through your XFD contribs. However, my advice would be, other than the obvious one of sticking to the spirit of WP:CIVIL and not just the letter, would be to try to minimise the amount of "rebuttals" you are making in discussions that are really obvious. On this AFD for instance, closing admins are perfectly capable of appropriately weighting !votes with no rationale, or on interpreting core guidelines like WP:GNG. You're not technically incorrect here, I think you'd have a lot more impact and come off as less of a badger if you made your arguments well constructed, comprehensive in the first instance, and preferably comment only once unless you have some specialised knowledge to contribute. --ChristopheT (talk) 04:18, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * And yet, after a long lecture, the panel still does not know what your policy-based reason is for your !vote. Agricola44 (talk) 16:00, 14 March 2016 (UTC).
 * I confess that I am really mystified by the growing deletionist "cabal" here on WP. I happened to notice your account because of your lobbying for deletion of the biographical article about me. What's that about?! I mean, a !vote is fine, but arguing with every other !voter out of an apparent animosity? It's a strange urge, I think.Now I recognize that my notability is borderline (as described on the AfD; where indeed I provided a bunch of possible sources, per Pcap's request there). Some of your comments are weird; people in professional communities do, y'know, talk with each other, so finding some evidence that I've previously interacted with colleagues is hardly the disparagement you try to draw out of it (e.g. yes, I do "know" Danny Yee–in a virtual way–because I wrote him after he reviewed my book, some years ago). But it made me wonder whether this animosity was personal to me in some way. So I took a look at the Academic deletion sorting page (which I've looked at before, but not recently).On those academic AfD's, I definitely notice a strong deletionist bias in your !votes. It's not unreflective, I readily acknowledge. You !vote both ways, and give reasonable descriptions of your motives. What got me into more active monitoring and participation in deletion discussions in the last weeks or months was having noticed some truly rabid deletionists on software-related articles. The nominator of the bio of me is one (who has had some truly abusive behaviors associated with that deletionist mania--since long before I ever heard of him), and there are a couple others who always !vote "Delete" on anything about software (but especially FOSS). I think I really need to start watching the academic or biography AfDs too, though it becomes time consuming, of course.What I wonder is wherefore the sentiment that WP should be as small as possible, or not include anything that Brittanica does not? If some academic has published a few books on "good" academic presses, and has moderate amount of cited biographical information, why do we need to delete that article?! Sure, maybe that person is not the "leading figure" in their particular discipline, but disk storage is cheap, and there is some number of readers who might be interested in learning about that person (they encounter them professionally, read those books in obscure corners of knowledge, see them cited in some other work, whatever). Or similarly (but outside your area of interest I think), what's the harm in having a cited article about some software tool used by tens of thousands of people?! Sure, it's probably not a household name, and the user community is a pretty small minority of computer users/developers. But someone finds it useful to research that particular tool, whether to compare it to other tools, evaluate using it, learn about its capabilities or creators, etc.It's not like I don't know that there are silly vanity articles created of strictly-local musicians, or of just-released one-developer software products. Or even of the professor that some student liked, but who never really published or did that much or wide renown. There is some threshold to judge. But compared to 3 years ago, or 6 years ago, this threshold seems to have been pushed upward to to point of absurdity. I really cannot understand the motives for this... including yours (but likewise of dozens of other editors I've seen recently with similar attitude). All the best --ChristopheT (talk) 21:20, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I would be glad to talk about details of your bio elsewhere, though I don't actually see any record of it, and a general rant about how notability guidelines are too high also belongs elsewhere. I'm still not sure I see anything relevant to this case. Agricola44 (talk) 08:22, 21 March 2016 (UTC).


 * keep. Sources seem fine and support a quality article.  Notability clear and well established.--98.69.237.118 (talk) 00:23, 13 March 2016 (UTC)98.69.237.118 — 98.69.237.118 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * keep. She has participated in both solo and group exhibitions, as documented by the sources given. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 05:25, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. meets neither WP:GNG nor WP:CREATIVE on the basis of the present article. Where are the works in the permanent collections of museums? Where is the substantial published criticism of her work? There are two scholarly articles listed, one she wrote, one is a article contain sections written by different artists, one of which is her. Neither of these are about her. I se local newspaper articles about a local artist--this never meets the GNG because it is not sufficiently selective. I see various blogs and informal publications, none of which show notability. I very much support the goals of art+feminism, and helped lead with some of the NYC workshops. I advised the people there to work first on the unambiguously notable, specifically in order to keep the work from being not just rejected, but even questioned,  and i would certainly have advised against the creation of this article. I almost never mention at AfD am editor's style of commenting, but I find it ironic that to a question "What are your reasons based on policy" the response is "I'm not going to waste my time giving you a course on etiquette and manners"--this from someone whose previous comment was "the usual BS avalanche"  DGG ( talk ) 07:35, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * if you have to quote do it right : "I don't propose to spend my valuable time, or waste yours, on giving you a course on etiquette and manners" --ChristopheT (talk) 20:51, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment the assertion that local sources are less than reliable is not based on Wiki policy. This is an argument I see crop in in AfD often and I wish editors would quit resorting to it. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:24, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep This article is a little difficult because artist-researchers are not a routine conceptual category that we frequently think about. However, WP:CREATIVE provides different listed ways in which a topic can meet the threshold. The topic satisfies criterion 4b, by way of curated exhibition; the media of expression include curated installations and intermedia video that has been screened on multiple occasions, so this is the apposite benchmark. I do appreciate that 4d is probably the most frequent consideration for many artist articles, but permanency is not a relevant policy-based question here, as permanency is a component of criterion 4d but not of 4b. In addition to meeting 4b, maybe you overlooked the article's citation of Horowitz's editorial about Meneley (and others). The editorial addresses some of the conceptual challenges when categorizing intermedia artist-researchers. The editorial is top heavy with jargon and insider academic polemical perspective, and is further confounded by a dense writing style. However, Meneley notably receives conceptual attention and her methodological approach is discussed, albeit somewhat trenchantly. (In some ways, I suppose it's nice that artist-researchers are maybe just as complex and specialized as scientist-researchers.) FeatherPluma (talk) 01:26, 14 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep per Gamaliel, Sadads, 98.69.237.118 and ChristophThomas. I too am dismayed that, yet again, we see an attempt to combat systemic bias resulting in 10 AFDs from 12 articles. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 10:12, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, 22 of 24 articles created were AfD'd in some way -- if you check the links and the page histories at Meetup/Regina/ArtAndFeminism 2016/University of Regina, the ones that are now red links were created, not just suggested. A number of the ones that were marked AfD no longer seem to be so, and the talk pages don't always indicate the result,  but you can see the deletion attempt in the article history.  The editathon drew 48 people, based on the page's list of attendees. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 14:42, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Eurgh, we really do suck at this. Thank you for your efforts in trying to counter that. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 19:35, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep per Gamaliel, Sadads, 98.69.237.118, ChristophThomas. She exhibited a lot, has quite a huge list of awards and publications. No reason to delete at all. Arthistorian1977 (talk) 10:30, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Many citations and verifiable information presented. While this was one of the articles from the Regina Art & Feminism Meet-up, most flagged for deletion were then selected to keep. --Chittah (talk) 18:34, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep There are enough citations for notability. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 00:53, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep Sources indicate she is notable. - Variation 25.2 (talk) 04:09, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. Many of the comments here amount to WP:ILIKEIT. I think that these editathons, in the end, will have been detrimental to WP because, rather than having a mission of building an encyclopedia (meaning an organized set of articles on encyclopedic toipics), their purpose is essentially political. That is to say the goal is to create articles on people that some group feels is under-represented, rather than letting the organic process of article creation happen naturally. The result, in many cases, is a raft of new bios on increasingly obscure individuals. This phenomenon and others like it (e.g. paid editing) are gradually reducing WP to nothing more than an online directory. Agricola44 (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Is "Sources indicate she is notable" different from "Negligible sources" or "I agree, Too Soon" in terms of the quality of argument? -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:51, 14 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. I agree with DGG that the subject of the article is not notable.  WP:CREATIVE cites as evidence of notability that the artist should have pieces in permanent collections, or at least "significant critical attention".  Mere discussion in local press does not rise to the level of significant critical attention demanded by this guideline.  Further evidence of lack of notability is the lack of GS hits, as DGG also notes.   S ławomir  Biały  10:49, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
 * (Courtesy note: I have already commented above.) Policy-based input is always welcome. With all due respect though, this comment selectively quotes the guideline. Linguistically, WP:CREATIVE's section 4 affords four separate options. This comment arbitrarily reduces that to 2. Since 4b compliance has been put forward multiple times in this discussion (explicitly and also implicitly by description), the issue is not to then point out again that she fails 4c or 4d: that's correct but is not in contention. The meaningful pivot point would be to argue whether 4b is really met or not, as 4b is a subjective criterion. I explained why I came to the opinion that 4b is met by this article ( --a) curated public exhibition and --b) type of media), but others could differ on that relevant question (e.g. did not go on a formal national or international circuit -- although in fact one of the video works has been showcased in several locations in Ontario as well as her home province). FeatherPluma (talk) 13:20, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The criteria 4c/d listed at WP:CREATIVE are illustrative of the kind of substantive impact that an artist is expected to have in order to meet the notability standard set out there. This clearly goes beyond mention in local press or local exhibitions, for which essentially any artist at all would be "notable" by this very weak standard.   S ławomir  Biały  14:25, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
 * If that is the argument, I can very reasonably appreciate the point being made. I absolutely agree that 4b is flimsy in comparison to the other "safe harbors". Maybe 4b shouldn't exist at all? I would politely say that making the initial case by misquotation of the guideline is problematic. However, let's move on. Since we agree that 4b is less weighty than the other benchmarks, the concern becomes whether we are committed to spending time and effort deleting articles based on interpreting guidelines "illustratively" i.e. synthetically and in divergence from their literal articulation. This updated explanation also continues to push the erroneous contention that coverage was local only, dismissing (by failing to even acknowledge) the Horowitz editorial. Of course, I agree that the editorial isn't HUGELY convincing, as it obviously is to some degree an "insider" discussion of academic artists. I see the article as fence-straddling and difficult to categorize rigorously. But when we set about criticizing editathon work product after the fact for not intuiting some higher unexpressed standard, we are lining up for public explanation of how and why the language of our written standard isn't to be relied on. It seems to me that deleting this article would fall into the "Give us your time, do the work, but please be ready to be told we find it's all of no importance whatsoever, and will be completely discarded because ultimately "we" know what matters and what doesn't, and we do this by interpreting our guidelines as we wish." I think I see a possible circular argument: if the article is quickly adjudicated as less weighty, a policy is post facto marshalled to justify the shoehorning. FeatherPluma (talk) 14:56, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm not proposing that we throw out that part of the guideline, but words like "substantial" need to be read in context. Substantial in other contexts generally means the subject of peer reviewed scholarly work, not mention in local press. The guideline isn't meant to be read in a vacuum. Arguments about misguided edit-a-thon attempts are not policy-based, and carry zero weight in this discussion.  S ławomir Biały  15:22, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. In short: No proper counterpoint has addressed why we should ignore the referenced scholarly national editorial about Meneley's methodology, despite being "peer reviewed scholarly work" as subjectively demanded. In detail: As a courtesy, I added your name to your initial reply from the page history - it wasn't showing properly. Sorry for this lengthy reply. However, there are several points. 1) If mentioning the editathon is not relevant, that cuts both ways - several others introduced and made something of that as a theme before I touched on it. In fact, without pointing fingers, take a look: one delete rationale, as overtly expressed, is based exclusively on it, and others do point to it as well. More generally, my comment isn't really about the editathon specifically: it is about the way in which certain articles which meet a particular written standard are nonetheless subjected to hurdles that are possibly arbitrary or, if not arbitrary, are undeniably subjective. 2) In any event, I observe that this updated explanation, presumably still in favor of deletion, seems to continue suggesting that coverage was local only, dismissing (by failing to even acknowledge) the Horowitz editorial, an academic source, which you seem to indicate would count "in other contexts". Of course, I would try to bring some sense of equipoise and cognitive balance to things by pointing out that the editorial, while reasonably persuasive taken along other considerations, isn't in itself completely convincing, despite being, let's say, pitched at a national Canadian audience: it is to some degree both fairly brief and an "insider" discussion of academic artists by an academic artist. But notice also how the editorial explains why a traditional review of the individual artists is not appropriate, as was discussed by the academic editorial board. Horowitz explains in the editorial that this was the agreed collective opinion of the editorial oversight team. 3) My comment saw the article as fence-straddling and difficult to categorize rigorously. I continue to carefully judge that the article complies with WP:ARTIST 4b, to which I do not see any objective rebuttal, even though I might well also point out that that may be an inapplicable yardstick for an artist-researcher. I took a lot of time deciding about the input. I do not read anything in a vacuum, and I do not normally have much truck for overly literal approaches. But I do notice when a subjective position is based on pounding "local only" when it's objectively not local only, even after that has been stated repeatedly, but not acknowledged. Anyway, I put forward the consensus proposition that we both seem to think that a policy-based determination of the merits of this article relies on subjective contextual evaluation of "substantial", which for me is influenced by publically curated solo and group exhibition(s) (which is objectively not "any exhibition"), video screenings (in various sites in Alberta and Ontario, not just her own "local" province), and the academic editorial. I read the article differently to you, based on these "fine point" distinctions. I also admit a tendency on my part to a mildly inclusionist stance in general, so I can relate to where you are coming from. 4) The closer will see that there has been no proper counterpoint that even tries to address the editorial reference - none. I don't want to hog the airwaves, so I will stop at this point, and let you chose whether you'd like to have the last word. Again, thanks for the replies. FeatherPluma (talk) 14:56, 15 March 2016 (UTC) (subsequent tweaking after initial posting) FeatherPluma (talk) 05:21, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Weak delete. There is some in-depth coverage of this artist in a local newspaper, for instance . If we had more sources like this, from a wider range of higher-profile publications, I think this could be a keep, but I searched but couldn't find them. Instead we have (no doubt added in good faith by new editors who didn't know better) a lot of WP:WIKIPUFFERY: material by the subject rather than about the subject or her works, exhibit announcements rather than exhibit reviews, multiple copies of the same text in differently-published exhibit announcements indicating that it is most likely from the artist rather than written independently, etc. I don't think it's enough for WP:ARTIST. And although I am sympathetic to the idea that we should be nice to new editors and/or try to combat systemic bias, I don't think that filling out our categories with low-notability articles is the right way to do that. The lesson for future edit-a-thons should be: put more care into the selection of topics rather than encouraging new editors who don't know our standards to pick topics which are likely to be quickly deleted. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:53, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment I added the list of exhibition catalogues in an attempt to address the assertion that Meneley wasn't included in group exhibitions -- it therefore seemed reasonable to list some catalogs as evidence of her presence. If people feel that it is more appropriate to include the information in some other form, rather than as a separate section, I'm fine with that. Mary Mark Ockerbloom (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - not enough in-depth coverage from reliable, independent sources to show they pass WP:GNG.  Onel 5969  TT me 12:24, 22 March 2016 (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.