Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Claire Loewenfeld


 * 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.

Claire Loewenfeld
The result was keep as withdrawn by nominator.


 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

This article is well written and researched&mdash;it is neither a vanity article nor a promotional one. While it is original research / synthesis, I am not nominating it for deletion on that basis. Rather, despite the verifiability of the assertions in the article, there is simply no basis asserting the notability of the subject.

The references provided are:


 * Paul Tillich, His Life & Thought: Mention of personal friend in diary of a friend. Not independent, not significant coverage, not reliable source of purposes of establishing notability.
 * Vitamin C from Rose-hips in BMJ: letter to editor
 * Fruit Dishes And Raw Vegetables: Personal acknowledgement in Preface to book.
 * The House in the Sun: No information on depth of coverage or nature of source.
 * Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society. No suggestion of significant coverage.
 * In brief in BMJ: One paragraph blurb on posthumously published book
 * Paul Tillich Travel Diary: Mention of personal friend in diary. Not independent, not significant coverage, not reliable source of purposes of establishing notability.
 * Telephone directory entry: Not significant coverage for purposes of establishing notability.
 * The British Library general catalogue of printed books. Coverage would not establish notability.
 * New scientist. No suggestion of significant coverage.
 * Rural life in eighteenth-century English poetry. Less than passing mention.
 * New Diet for Coeliac Disease: Two passing references (one literally a footnote).
 * Vitamins in Rose Hips": No suggestion of significant coverage.
 * The spectator. No suggestion of significant coverage.
 * Notes on Books in BMJ: One paragraph blurb on leaflet by Loewenfeld.

None of her numerous books appears to have been widely cited, widely reviewed, or reviewed in depth.

The main test for notability is significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. There is no evidence for that (either in the article or through my own searches). Domain-specific guidelines provide other criteria for notability not based on significant coverage, but instead of verifiable facts. For example, receiving a prestigious academic award gives rise to a conclusion of notability per WP:PROF. Per WP:OUTCOMES, most AfD discussions for authors whose works have been widely reviewed determine that the author is notable despite the lack of coverage of the author per se.

However, there is no evidence that the subject of this article meets any of the explicit criteria of WP:PROF or WP:CREATIVE (if there are other domain-specific guidelines that someone thinks apply, please do say so). Neither does the subject seem to fit the consensus identified in WP:OUTCOMES either under "Literature" or "People".

Some have argued in the past that availability of any online sources for topics predating widespread electronic recordkeeping should be subject to a lower standard of evidence for notability than enunciated in the guidelines. This position is not logical&mdash;there are scads of electronically available passing mentions of individuals in all walks of life in the form of census data, church records of births and deaths, tax rolls, property records etc. dating back since the beginning of recorded history&mdash;while the record is spotty, it doesn't mean that the sampling is of notable people any more than a sampling of currently-created data would include notable people. Google books and similar services (as this article demonstrates) are adding historical hits for millions of non-notable from decades past. In this case, the subject was active in a period of history for which ample record was kept, and has not been lost to posterity in any way.

This nomination is not intended to denigrate the subject of this article in any way. There are many people who make valuable contributions to all human endeavors who simply do not merit encyclopedia entries. This is one of them. Bongo  matic  04:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. I can see no reason to delete this. Being one of the first or founding members of the Soil Association makes her interesting enough. In addition, she was the driving force, or one of them, behind Britain's adoption of rose hip syrup for children during and after the war; she developed a diet to treat certain diseases in children; and she's the author of several books on the subject. I have queries in with the Soil Association and a couple of British government departments to try to find more sources about her, because this is not the kind of thing that's necessarily available on the Web. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 06:13, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * These arguments are valid reasons to write a book, or a magazine or journal article on the subject, but do not reflect "notability" in the Wikipedia sense.
 * The materials cited do not qualify what "behind" means (there are lots of people "behind" every successful endeavor, some notable, some not). Being an early&mdash;or even founding&mdash;member of the Soil Association is equally not a reason for inclusion. While it is a notable organization, it is not so overwhelmingly significant that every person who had an important part in its history or foundation is automatically "notable" in the sense of the guidelines.
 * Likewise her other accomplishments. Developing a diet for treatment of a disease is laudable and important, as is increasing the availability of vitamin C. However, the key for notability for Wikipedia is that other reliable sources have found various milestones worthy of significant coverage, not verifiable milestones are is intrinsically worthy of coverage. The guidelines (other than the exceptions noted in the nomination) are about third-party coverage of individuals and their accomplishments &mdash;there is no guideline for inclusion of individuals who "did some important thing". Bongo  matic  06:30, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep it meets the standard of notability and verifiability. I dont see OR. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:57, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete the nominator has made a careful and one of most detailed analysis I've seen. whilst she is an author, she fails WP:AUTHOR in my opinion, in particular criterion 1. whilst on face value, it seems to have a lot of references, it basically tells a life story with nothing that pushes her above WP:AUTHOR or WP:BIO. LibStar (talk) 07:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep for now. Seriously, if it's this good after one month just imagine what a second may do. Are we concerned were misrepresenting something or otherwise causing damage to the world's collective knowledge? I'r rather encourage the editors to find more material on this subject to appease the notability concern. She appears t be a prolific author which may help. -- Banj e  b oi   10:50, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Three editors have opined to keep but only one has given any rationale that in any way refers to Wikipedia's notability criteria. My intention with the nomination was to address the characteristics of the article and the subject by reference to those criteria. It would be helpful for those opining to do the same.
 * Specifically with respect to Bejiboi's comment, the quality of an article is not a factor in determining the notability of its subject, so I'm not sure how it's relevant (the quality of the reporting was noted in the first sentence of the nomination). Bongo  matic  15:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep Per Slim Virgin, Benjiboi. A lifetime of apparently influential health and nutrition advocacy, several books, some coverage in the Tillich diaries. Positive evaluation of her career in a posthumous note in British Medical Journal ("Claire Loewenfeld, who died in August 1974, was one of the first members of the Soil Association, reintroduced the use of flavouring herbs in Britain, and worked out a vegetable and fruit juice diet for children with coeliac disease at Great Ormond Street Hospital. A protagonist of natural vitamins, and a sturdy campaigner against processed foods and the health hazards of added chemicals...") tips the scale in her favor to satisfy WP:BIO. Several other refs in snippet view may have significant coverage, such as New Scientist V78 1978. A book foreward called her a "distinguished food therapist." Satisfies verifiability, and hovers just on the positive side with respect to notability. Edison (talk) 16:23, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * keep - seems to get enough cites based on google book search for authors mentioning CL. Gets non-trivial mention in the New Scientist & the Spectator. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:14, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Not even borderline.  Eight books by reputable publishers.  Probably they all got  additional reviews in the periodicals of the time --UK reviews of the period are difficult to search  comprehensively, especially online.  Edison's refs settle it. The nomination may have analyzed the refs in the article, but made no effort at all to satisfy WP:BEFORE by looking for others.  Edison did, and he found them.  Furthermore, and what makes it a strong keep, is that I think we have normally accepted coverage in Contemporary Authors as firm evidence of notability as a selective encyclopedia. The nomination omitted to mention that one in his analysis, though it's right there in the article. And I'm not sure that when he says "no evidence of significant coverage for some of the refs,  that he's actually looked at them--I interpret "no evidence" as meaning that there was no quote on the article and he could not get to it on line.   Material published before the 1990s can not in general be evaluated without printed sources.  "Wikipedia , the encyclopedia that covers everything notable found in Google. but nothing else."  -- and the nom actually defends this!  The sort of thing he mentions as findable online historically are, as he says, "census data, church records of births and deaths, tax rolls, property records etc." -- and these are of course the every things that we correctly consider do not offer significant coverage, and are almost always primary sources  There's going to be a major gap in Google during the rest of our lives--the period after 1920 and before  the 1990s.  It's not that we accept weak online sources for this material. Its that we have to face up to using , first, the paid sources on the net ,  which are available free from libraries, and print.  I see this a a losing battle here, for I tend to get rather lazy about it myself, and prefer to try ingenious ways of finding the free information.    DGG ( talk ) 19:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Pretty strong keep - An accomplished author published by reputable publishers, many reputable references... she's pretty darn reputable. I also think she's a victim of her time period - the time gap makes a large amount of references less likely. If she had the same level of "fame" and was known among nutritionists and the like now just as much as she was 50 years ago, there would be plenty of sources around the internet, and it would be no contest that she would be notable enough for a Wikipedia article. Plus, the article supplies a lot of great information, for people who want to know information, which is the point of Wikipedia. Experimental Hobo Infiltration Droid (talk) 20:19, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If she were working now, she'd have her own television program, and a range of tasty tofu dishes produced in her name: Claire's Cuisine, or Loewenfeld's Lunches. :) SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 20:27, 2 September 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.