Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D. W. Cooper


 * 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 userfied per request of the primary author. Now at User:Wfbrooks/D. W. Cooper. 28bytes (talk) 01:28, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

D. W. Cooper

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Subject fails WP:BIO. There is nothing here that suggests encyclopedic notability. Ad Orientem (talk) 19:20, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2014 September 14.  — cyberbot I  Notify Online 20:09, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:37, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Ad Orientem.

This is the second time you have proposed that D. W. Cooper be deleted. The first time (in January 2014) I responded, as requested, with a statement on Talk: D. W. Cooper justifying the inclusion of this article.

Before I respond again (but where? I've copied this note to your talk page), I want to be sure that you have read and understood my remarks there. If so, can you please explain further what reasons you have for proposing deletion for a second time?

Thank you. Wfbrooks (talk) 19:46, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Comment WP:BEFORE C3 states, "If an article has issues try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page, with the main contributors..."  I agree with the content contributor that the nomination has not sufficiently documented to the community the need for a community discussion.  I suggest that the nominator withdraw the discussion here (with WP:NPASR), and raise the concerns are on the talk page of the article.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:47, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Response As there appears to be some confusion, I will expand on my above nomination for deletion statement. The subject of the article does not appear to meet the standards for encyclopedic notability contained in the General Notability Guidelines and more specifically the notability criteria for biographies. The sources are almost entirely primary and thus do not lend themselves to establishing notability for the subject. There is little in the form of coverage from secondary or tertiary sources and certainly not enough to meet the standard of in depth coverage from reliable secondary sources. In short there is nothing exceptional about this person. He was a businessman, one of many tens of thousands, who engaged in the normal things that business people do. Although not a fatal issue, I also note that the article has an essayish tone to it. Most of these issues have been raised previously in the original PROD that was taken down in January in the hopes the article would be improved. I also attached maintenance tags which have been removed without evident correction of the problems cited. While there are many issues with articles that can be fixed, notability is not usually one of them. It's either there or it isn't. A Google has yielded nothing that rings the notability bell for this individual. I am happily prepared to reconsider the nomination if some evidence of notability is offered. But after nine months I see no reason to sit on this any longer. For now I !vote to Delete as the nom. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:18, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Response to response. Thank you for the clarification. I'm afraid that I'm rather new to Wikipedia, so I don't know all the jargon: what is a "PROD", please? and what are "maintenance tags"?

As for the substance of the question. . . The problem with secondary or tertiary sources, limited to historical publications issued in paper formats, is that they often do not reflect current thinking about a topic. This is especially true of the music industry, in which much scholarship until recently was constrained because archival collections were inaccessible unless one happened to be in the right place with the right credentials. In my view, public databases or archives (such as the Indiana and Brown online resources I cited) are the 21st-century equivalent of secondary sources like published anthologies or encyclopedias in, let's say, 1965. In fact, they're better: they offer a much more objective, quantifiable measure of importance—and hence of notability—than do historical studies written to further a particular argument and which thus (necessarily) take an editorial stance. I would suggest that if a publisher was responsible for a substantial body of significant music that is (nowadays) accessible to the public, as demonstrated in online archives, that publisher is "notable" and deserves an article. I'd also argue that if that publisher is noteworthy in part because his work contributed to the evolution of underrepresented regional or ethnic cultures in the United States, that further supports inclusion. D. W. Cooper meets both these criteria and should consequently remain in Wikipedia, it seems to me. As for an "essayish" tone, possibly that results from my inexperience. I'm very open to editorial advice; can you suggest what sentences or phrases impart this quality and how to improve them?

I've not encountered this process of proposed deletion before; as I said, I'm rather new. It all seems rather threatening and inhospitable, I must say! But your last sentence seems to indicate that some electoral body votes whether to include or remove. I would, of course, vote to include—if I'm a member of that electoral body. Presumably over the next few days others will weigh in on this matter, which at present seems to be mostly a discussion between the two of us (which I welcome, I hasten to say). There is a deadline, I believe, in a week. Could you explain (I do apologise for my ignorance, really I do!) how the voting is tallied at that point and what then happens? I don't find the wikipedia page very clear on that point. Wfbrooks (talk) 16:21, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi and welcome to Wikipedia (belatedly). I am sorry that your article is in danger of being deleted. It isn't personal. It's just that we have to enforce certain standards since Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. The term PROD refers to proposed deletion. It is one of the three commonly used methods for removing articles that may not meet our standards. You can read about it here WP:PROD. The other two are speedy deletion (WP:CSD) which is not applicable here, and articles for deletion WP:AFD which is what is going on now. In an AfD discussion interested editors will take a look at the article and discuss whether or not it meets our standards, and if not, whether or not it is fixable or better to just scrap it. Again there is nothing personal about it, although it undoubtedly sucks to have an article you worked on deleted. For now I am going to suggest that you talk to an ADMIN and ask him/her to move your article from the mainspace to a sub-page of your user account or perhaps your WP:SANDBOX. This will remove the immediate threat to your article and allow you time to peruse the notability guidelines linked above and make suitable improvements at your leisure. Then, if and when you think your article is ready, you can submit it to Articles for Creation for review by experienced editors before moving it back into the mainspace. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:38, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. If you will agree to this course of action I will withdraw my AfD nomination in consideration of your agreeing to WP:USERFY your article. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:44, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Response. Thank you for the response and the suggestion, though I'm still not very clear about the deletion process. Isn't what you suggest effectively equivalent to deleting the page and starting again from the beginning for approval? I note that on the WP:USERFY page, section 3, this point is made explicitly: "Userfication of an article will effectively amount to deletion of an article, as in general, the redirect left behind will be speedily deleted. Userfication should not be used as a substitute for regular deletion processes." It would seem that the process you suggest to resolve this matter actually accomplishes what you apparently wish to have happen.

I would also really like to have your comments on the substance of my response—that is, the matter of assessing notability using 21st-century resources rather than published secondary sources from a previous century. It seems that a potentially valuable discussion is being diverted into administrative mechanisms that neither resolve the immediate question nor allow larger issues to be debated. But perhaps there is a better forum for the latter; it seems that we two are the only ones contributing to this page, and we seem only to be going round in circles.

In any case I have left a message on the talk page for User:28bytes, who is the first administrator on the list at List of administrators/Active and who, coincidentally, declares an interest in music articles. Perhaps this will move things forward. I'm heavily committed for the rest of this week, however, so I will have little time to respond further until the weekend.Wfbrooks (talk) 21:27, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * , on the article's talk page you referred to "on-line digital sheet-music repositories at Brown, Indiana, and other institutions". Are these the "21st-century resources" to which you are referring? If so, these are not sufficient by themselves to demonstrate the notability of someone (i.e. a piece of music does not tell us anything about the person who wrote it or published it). Do you have any contemporary sources that discuss Cooper and his impact on music? The article appears to reflect one person's assessment of Cooper based upon pre-1940 material. An important guideline relevant to this discussion is Notability (music). - Location (talk) 21:40, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * , not all Admins on the list are active on here. If you don't get a reply in a timely manner may I suggest dropping a line with ? He is quite active and I have found him to be extremely helpful with newcomers. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:58, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks to you both for the information and advice. I did in fact have a timely response, and I've replied on User talk:28bytes. I think there's nothing more to add here. Wfbrooks (talk) 06:10, 17 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Good, and apologies for not getting around to this - I noticed that this had been responded to but still should have noted that I saw it. Dougweller (talk) 18:54, 18 September 2014 (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.