Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Haviah Mighty


 * 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. Despite the reams of text, nobody actually expresses a "keep" opinion.  Sandstein  19:57, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Haviah Mighty

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

WP:BLP of a musician, who has neither a strong claim of notability under WP:NMUSIC nor strong enough reliable source coverage to carry it. The strongest notability claim here is that "her song" was featured in an episode of a television series, but the reference for that claim reveals that it wasn't actually her song, she was just a guest musician on somebody else's. And of the seven references here, nothing's really helping to get her over WP:GNG: one is a Q&A interview in a university student magazine, five are unsubstantive blurbs, and the only one that even starts to count as a data point toward GNG is a piece of local coverage in her hometown community weekly. Which means that this is not enough coverage to get her over WP:NMUSIC #1, and she doesn't have a strong claim to passing any other NMUSIC criterion either. As always, no prejudice against recreation in the future if and when the notability equation changes. Bearcat (talk) 18:55, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 19:29, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 19:29, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 19:29, 19 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment -- the nomination states, in part, "...And of the seven references here, nothing's really helping to get her over WP:GNG..."
 * I suggest the nomination is using the wrong yardstick. Surely anyone with experience here has come across articles, particularly new articles, that are weak, poorly written, or poorly referenced, or both -- which yet were written on highly notable topics.
 * It is for this reason that nominator are supposed to conduct their own web search, so that if they decide to bring the article to AFD, they are doing so after making their own independent analysis as to whether the underlying topic is itself notable. Weak articles on notable topics are supposed to be improved, not deleted.
 * In my opinion, after a nominator has conducted their own, independent, meaningful review of all the available references, their nomination should address all the available references. Some people who weigh in at AFD rely on the nominator, trust the nominator, and don't take even a minute to perform their own web search.  For this reason, I think a nominator who did the work necessary to meaningfully comply with WP:BEFORE then has to mention the references that the article is not currently using.
 * Right now seven of the references the article currently uses includes one reference to Now magazine. Now is a serious publication, with a long history of serious investigative reporting.  A couple of years ago I added material to an article on a municipal politician in Virginia, who opposed a Virginia streetcar route, who naively quoted the criticisms of streetcars of, wait for it, Rob Ford.  The main reference I used was an article from Now, written by Ben Spurr.  The other contributor then naively assumed that NOW was just a bunch of unresearched, non-journalistic fluff pieces, wrapped around entertainment ads.  Now is a free weekly publication, largely supported by entertainment ads -- but one which published serious, reliable articles, drafted by writers who do real research.  Spurr, who they mocked, was soon hired by the Toronto Star, specifically to cover transit issues.  So, he did know what he was talking about.
 * I did my own web search, and I will list here references the article could use, which it isn't currently using. Preview, there are two more articles about Mighty from Now, several by Exclaim! and a bunch from Brampton publications.
 * I am going to repeat that, in my opinion, it is a mistake for any nomination to confine itself solely to the references articles are already using, and to ignore the existence of the references the article is not yet using. Geo Swan (talk) 22:47, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The question isn't about whether Now is a serious publication or not — the problem is that the citation to Now is not substantively about Haviah Mighty for the purposes of helping to get her over WP:GNG — it's a mere 100-word blurb about her in a "many blurbs about many people" listicle, which states nothing about her that would pass any NMUSIC criterion, and therefore contributes nothing toward helping to make her notable enough for an encyclopedia article. Not because it's Now, but because it's unsubstantive and verifies nothing notability-making about her.
 * You've had to have it explained to you more than once in the past that there's a distinction between "sources which verify that the topic exists" and "sources which actually help to make the topic notable" — and you clearly need to have that explained to you again, because none of your sources below are improving the case for inclusion at all. A person is not automatically notable just because her existence gets namechecked in articles that aren't substantively about her, and a person is not automatically notable just because her own hometown hyperlocals (In Brampton, Bramptonist) have covered her doing things of purely local interest — a musician becomes notable enough for a Wikipedia article only when substantive coverage about her qua her exists in the context of her accomplishing something that satisfies an NMUSIC criterion.
 * If she doesn't have nationalized coverage of a nationalized accomplishment, like a hit single on Billboard or a national tour or making it into rotation on CBC Music or getting a Juno Award nomination, then local coverage in her own hometown media paired with glancing namechecks of her existence in articles that aren't about her is not enough coverage to hand her "notable just because media coverage exists". Every possible Google hit on her name is not automatically a notability-assisting source — only certain specific kinds of coverage actually help to build notability under WP:GNG, not every single web page that includes her name in it at all. Bearcat (talk) 16:40, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Please clarify. Do you accept that policy require nominators to make a reasonable effort to consider all possible references, not just those that have already been included in the article?
 * Your initial nomination states: "The strongest notability claim here is that "her song" was featured in an episode of a television series, but the reference for that claim reveals that it wasn't actually her song, she was just a guest musician on somebody else's." Hmmm.  Unfortunately, you didn't specify which reference said "...she was just a guest musician on somebody else's."  Care to clarify which reference said that?  I won't claim to be an expert on music, but I suspect you may not have given the references to an article on an artist you don't respect enough attention to really understand what they say.  I found multiple references that talk about one of her songs being used in an episode of Insecure (TV series) Insecure.  I didn't see any of them say she was merely a guest musician.  They said the track was produced by someone named "Book".  I won't claim to be an expert on music, but I do know there are some famous music producers, Daniel Lanois, Phil Spector, Mutt Lange.  Music smarty-pants routinely said Shania Twain was a nobody, until she met, and was taken under the wing of her future husband, Lange<.  Music smarty-pants said he took her songs, essentially keeping her lyrics, and her melody, but transforming her sound, by, I don't know, adding supplementary instruments, and studio tricks, like, I don't know, reverb.  Music smarty-pants may recognize the style and significance of a music producer, but without stripping the song's authorship from the original song-writer.  I think there are instances where music producers are listed as co-writer, and other instances where music producers who no one would begrudge a co-writing credit, forgo that credit -- knowing their peers will recognize their style, and the songwriter's fans couldn't care less about their role in the song's sound.  I am not a music smarty-pants, but I am extremely skeptical that music producer try to supplant the intellectual property rights of song's songwriters.  Is it possible you didn't read the references closely enough, and made the mistake of thinking that Mighty was merely the guest musician on a song she wrote, because her music producer was also mentioned?
 * You use the phrase "mere 100-word blurb". One hundred words is not a "passing mention".  Meaningful detail can be packed into one hundred well-written words.  And if multiple references each devote something one hundred well-written words, but each pack different details into their 100 words...
 * You refer to "glancing namechecks of her existence in Exclaim! articles that aren't about her". The third reference I offered below is from Exclaim!, and devotes over 200 words to her most recent release.  The fourth reference devotes 171.  The fifth reference devotes 268.  So what do you mean by a "glancing namechecks"?  How are these article not about her?
 * You wrote: "If she doesn't have nationalized coverage of a nationalized accomplishment..." I am going to include the first criteria from WP:Notability (music). I don't see it requiring "nationalized coverage of a nationalized accomplishment".  I see it explicitly specifying publications, like student newspapers, that don't count.  I don't see it explicitly discluding local newspapers.  Geo Swan (talk) 02:54, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I never said otherwise at all. However, that policy does not mean that we just count the number of Google hits a person's name gets, and keep anybody who meets or exceeds some arbitrary number of footnotes while paying no regard to notability factors like how substantive any given source is or isn't, how nationalized its geographic range is or isn't, and whether the context of what they're getting the coverage for verifies a valid notability claim or not. I did "consider all possible references, not just those that have already been included in the article" — and the other possible references just aren't cutting it.
 * You're clearly not a music smarty-pants. In electronic dance music, the producer is considered and credited as the primary artist on the track, with the vocalist either relegated to "feat." status or not named in the artist credit at all — for example, "Wake Me Up" is labelled as an Avicii song, not an Aloe Blacc song. The reference I checked was the reference that's being used to support the statement — and it makes quite clear that the primary artist credit on "Vamonos" is to Book. Please also note that NMUSIC does not actually extend notability on the basis of song placements at all — creating and recording the series theme song to Insecure would be a valid notability claim for a musician (but even then, NMUSIC explicitly states that a person who has that as their only notability claim fails WP:BLP1E and therefore gets a redirect to the series rather than an article). But placing one song in one episode is not an article clincher in and of itself, not even for Book as the primary artist.
 * Short blurbs do not count toward getting a person over WP:GNG. It's not a question of evaluating whether the blurb "packs" meaningful detail or not — anybody can simply claim that any blurb is "meaningful" — a blurb is inherently less substantive than a feature profile, and thus blurbs count for much less toward establishing GNG than coverage that expands beyond blurbness does.
 * The problem with the Exclaim! references is that they're covering her only in the context of playing shows in Toronto. But for a musician from Brampton, Toronto is still the local market, not evidence of passing NMUSIC's touring criterion. Literally every band or artist playing the Toronto bar scene at all can always eventually show reviews in Exclaim! or Now or the Toronto Star or Eye/The Grid before it went belly-up or Torontoist or BlogTO, so the existence of reviews of local shows in what's still the artist's own home market is not a magic GNG pass for an artist who can't show concert reviews outside her own home market as proof that she passes the touring criterion. That's completely separate from the "glancing namechecks" issue, which has more to do with the fact that she doesn't magically pass GNG just because her name gets briefly mentioned in a Billboard article about TIFF. If and when Billboard writes and publishes a whole article about her, that will count as evidence of notability — but simply having her name mentioned in a source about something else does not help her get over GNG.
 * Local coverage is not strictly banned from being used at all in articles — it's absolutely allowed to be used for verification of facts. But it does count for significantly less in terms of helping to establish that the topic is notable under GNG than nationalized or internationalized coverage does. As I've pointed out many times before, if GNG paid zero attention to the geographic range of coverage, and simply kept every article that technically surpassed an arbitrary number of media hits regardless of the "local vs. national" balance, then a lot of topics that we do not currently accept as notable would have to start getting kept: city or town councillors in every city or town that has a council, school board trustees, non-winning candidates for office, winners of high school poetry contests and battle of the bands competitions, owners of local businesses and food trucks, presidents of parent-teacher associations and community organizations and condo boards, organizers of local events, child actors who get human interest pieces in their local media as soon as they get cast in their first-ever bit part, my mother's neighbour who got into the local papers a few years back for finding a pig in her front yard, everybody who ever got profiled in the real estate section for their house-hunting process and/or their unique taste in interior design, and me, are among the topics that we would have to keep articles about if "the existence of purely local media coverage automatically gets them past GNG and therefore exempts them from having to actually have any real notability claim of enduring nationalized significance" were a thing. So no, a person from Brampton getting covered in the Brampton Guardian or Bramptonist or the Toronto Star or Now, in purely local contexts that don't pass any NMUSIC criterion in and of themselves, does not assist in helping her get over GNG in lieu of not passing any NMUSIC criterion — and even Exclaim! doesn't automatically reify into GNG-passing coverage, if the context of what it's covering her for is still localized and fails to satisfy an NMUSIC criterion. And also, incidentally, you acknowledge that NMUSIC explicitly specifies "publications, like student newspapers, that don't count", and yet you're listing the Algonquin Times, a student newspaper, as supporting notability below?
 * The bottom line is, we do not just hand an automatic GNG pass to every single person whose name happens to surpass a certain arbitrary number of media hits — we do evaluate factors like the geographic range that the sources do or don't represent, the depth of coverage that any given source does or doesn't offer, and whether the context of what the subject received coverage for passes the notability criteria for their field of endeavour or not, before we deem a person as passing GNG. Bearcat (talk) 15:35, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
 * {| class="wikitable"


 * Has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, published works appearing in sources that are reliable, not self-published, and are independent of the musician or ensemble itself.
 * This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, magazine articles, online versions of print media, and television documentaries except for the following:
 * Any reprints of press releases, other publications where the musician or ensemble talks about themselves, and all advertising that mentions the musician or ensemble, including manufacturers' advertising.
 * Works consisting merely of trivial coverage, such as articles that simply report performance dates, release information or track listings, or the publications of contact and booking details in directories.
 * Articles in a school or university newspaper (or similar), in most cases.
 * Articles in a school or university newspaper (or similar), in most cases.


 * }
 * {| class="wikitable"


 * + some references not yet used in the article...
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }


 * Delete This article fails WP:NMUSIC and WP:GNG because the WP:ROUTINE sources in the article and provided in this AfD do not constitute WP:SIGCOV of notability. She is a run of the mill artist trying to make it big, but hasn't yet and per WP:CRYSTALBALL this article does not get to stay until we find out how her career turns out. It can be recreated in the future if she becomes notable. Newshunter12 (talk) 10:01, 26 September 2018 (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.