Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Family Forest


 * 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. -- Cirt (talk) 06:50, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Family Forest

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Fails Notability (WP:GNG, perh. WP:CORPDEPTH), self-publicity (WP:SPIP), neutrality (WP:NPOV) and perhaps conflict of interest (WP:COI). [AfD following removal of PROD, reason - "take to AFD please"] While Google Books turns up 8000 hits, when you remove the ones for which the owner is author, it drops to 1800, mostly irrelevant. Adding genealogy as keyword drops it to 88, and I didn't see any there that actually gave it coverage, as opposed to just using the trademark name. No hits in Google News. An orphan for over 2 years. Of the 11 references cited, all web URLs: 2 are redirecting to an irrelevant page, the original no longer being available; 4 are self-published or press releases; 3 (redundant) point to a page about George Bush being related to Hugh Hefner, and don't name the product/project/whatever it is; one is a review of a product on a non-notable blog; and one is in a reliable independent source, but it is an article about Sarah Palin being related to Alec Baldwin, only mentions Family Forest in passing, and consists almost entirely of quotes from the owner, so it debatably fails WP:SPIP. None of them give the Family Forest significant reliable independent coverage. The page was created and most of the material added by a single user, User:Ancestralmktg, whose activity has been limited almost exclusively to this one article. The whole thing just looks like an attempt at marketing publicity via Wikipedia. Agricolae (talk) 06:57, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:31, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:19, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Acather96 (talk) 07:05, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Keep with editing to remove unverified material and promotional tone. Contrary to nominator's summary, at least some of the references cited do appear to be substantial coverage from reliable sources . It's true that they mention the name of the company/project only once in the article, but the whole reference is about information derived from the project and quoting its founder/director. I believe this is notable; perhaps it could be renamed/redirected to the founder Bruce Harrison, who may be more notable than his company. --MelanieN (talk) 16:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The sum total that has found in reliable sources: "Bruce and Kristine Harrison founded the Family Forest Project in 1995, and since have mapped the ancestral histories of thousands of political leaders, celebrities and historical figures, as well as everyday people."  The other supposed reference doesn't mention Family Forest, but instead "a group called Millisecond Publishing which puts out a line of ancestral history CDs from Waimea, Hawaii. . . . Harrison said his ancestry research program now has enough data to map generation-by-generation ancestral pathways to the ancestors of up to 2 billion people." OK, let's commit a WP:SYN and conclude that this is really referring to Family Forest even though it doesn't say so. Even if I were to grant you that the whole articles are about 'the project', two whole articles over a 15 year period is not substantial coverage.  (My sister's curio shop has gotten reported in the newspaper more frequently than that.)  But I won't grant that. I don't accept that the articles are about the project, they are not.  They are also not about Harrison - what I listed above is all they say about Harrison, which does no better at satisfying WP:BIO notability. (And the quotes are just "Harrison says . . . " and "Harrison claimed . . . " which is no better than a press release in terms of fact-checking: they are admitting that they are taking his word for it.) Those two articles are about the findings, two entirely distinct findings. He sent out a press releases on a slow news day that said Politico P being related to Actor B, and later that Porn Publisher H was a distant relative of Politicos B and K, and someone said, "that's cute" and wrote a story about the relationships. The articles mention the project only to give context and called him up for some quotes, but there is no way you can call these two articles substantial coverage and have that term retain any meaning. (It is no different than when CNN reports on a scientific finding, and mention that the work was done by Joe Scientist in the Lab for Interesting Experimentation, where they have been studying the topic for several years.  That story is about the finding, not about the scientist and not about the lab group, and neither of the latter two gain substantial notability from two such mentions in 15 years.) From WP:CORPDEPTH, "Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject is not sufficient to establish notability. Deep coverage provides an organization with a level of attention that extends well beyond routine announcements and makes it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization." In those cites, that is all we get. Agricolae (talk) 17:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Whether it is the company or the person (and it looks to me like the person is more notable), they have generated a significant amount of press, and that is supposed to be the criterion here. Whether the stories were inspired by a press release or not is irrelevant; the stories were written by independent reliable sources. Whether their calculations are correct or not is irrelevant. "WP:Verifiability, not truth". When your sister's curio shop gets written up at MSNBC, CBS News, USA Today, and similar national sources, feel free to write an article about her. --MelanieN (talk) 23:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, significant coverage, in depth is supposed to be the criterion. Significant. In Depth. The company has been named in passing in one article.  The product in another.  The man gets quoted in both, but the same can be said of the guy who has a tornado hit his house.  Surely getting your name mentioned by a national news source twice in 15 years can't be how low the significance bar has dropped, can it? Again, the stories were no more about the project or about the man than a report about a scientific discovery (of the type found on CNN or BBC every week) is about the researcher or the lab - they always interview the graduate student who is the primary author of the study and that doesn't make the graduate student notable. Such coverage is insufficient to pass the WP:BIO bar, and that is all this guy got.  As to the project, everything about the project in those two articles cannot possibly produce more than a stub, and as we have already seen, that lacks the depth required by WP:CORPDEPTH. I am not questioning the accuracy of this particular bit of esoterica. I just don't see how 'mentioned once or twice, briefly, to provide context for a story about something else' can be considered significant coverage in depth of the type required for notability for the company, the product or the man.  The only thing that got notable coverage here was Genealogical relationship between Alec Baldwin and Sarah Palin, and Genealogical relationship between Hugh Heffner and Whoever, and we really don't need a Wikipedia article on a genealogical kinship. Agricolae (talk) 02:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. Just more genealogy hobbyists wasting our time. Srnec (talk) 19:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Not many "genealogy hobbyists" make the national news! --MelanieN (talk) 23:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * They seem to, with the same type of story, every election cycle. That and the "the candidate with the 'best' royal descent always wins" nonsense that gets reported every election. Just like the latest guy who claims to have Bigfoot's head in his freezer, or claims to have a perpetual motion machine, and we have a page on perpetual motion machines, but not on each guy making the claim even though his name showed up in the newspaper. Agricolae (talk) 02:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Firsfron of Ronchester  04:01, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Delete - insufficient notability to meet WP:ORG. References are principally who is related to who; some references return a 404. Blog entries cited as references. As noted above, WP:CORPDEPTH is not satisfied by any references or search results. --Whiteguru (talk) 12:17, 8 May 2011 (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.