Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henry Wheeler (signalman)


 * 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. A merge discussion can always continue on a talk page, if desired. (Non-administrator closure) NorthAmerica1000 02:40, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Henry Wheeler (signalman)

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This person is said to have been a signalman in the Royal Navy, a junior NCO roughly equivalent to an able seaman, above an ordinary signalman but below a leading signalman. His only claim to notability seems to be that, aged 20, he appeared as a guest on a BBC radio programme, once, in 1945. Admittedly Desert Island Discs is a rather popular and long-running series - each episode is essentially a long interview, with the added conceit that the guest could be cast away like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. Almost all of the "castaways" are notable in some other way, but this person was chosen to appear simply because he was a British serviceman on an island somewhere in Europe just after the Second World War. (Perhaps that lack of notability is notable of itself?) There is even an outside possibility that his name was not "Henry Wheeler", or that he was created simply for the programme and did not exist at all. There do not appear to be any independent reliable sources about him, apart from the transcript of the episode in which he appeared, and a book about the series which mentions it. Ferma (talk) 18:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Desert Island Discs. This person was not of sufficient rank to satisfy WP:SOLDIER and appears to only be known for having been a guest on this radio show. The only refs are regarding his appearance on the show, and as nom pointed out it's not enough to demonstrate that he existed at all. It might be somewhat notable within the premise of the radio show, but that's not article-worthy. If you spend a few minutes on Google you'll find a few forums where someone (possibly this article's creator) has gone to some effort to track down more information about Signalman Wheeler, but has turned up nothing besides what's here. Ivanvector (talk) 20:39, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Having an entire BBC radio programme, broadcast nationally, dedicated to him, is clear evidence of notability; and the BBC is an independent source. Furthermore, we have articles on every other castaway in the history of the programme (apart from a very small number of red links which I'm working my way through; but including a definitely-fictitious character)). Merging into the main DID article would not be sensible, as there have been several hundreds of such castaways and the article cannot mention them all. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:47, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep per BBC providing adequate grounds for notability, given the nature of other guests and the nature of the program itself. Also, per WP:RECENTISM, it is not easy to find material on "teh intranetz" about people who had their claim to fame almost 70 years ago, thus I consider it appropriate to give a nod to the indirect evidence of notability that appearing on a nationally-broadcast BBC program(me) implies.  (I also note, as an example, we have an article on Lawnchair Larry, an otherwise completely unnotable person who would no doubt have been forgotten once his 15 minutes of fame had ended were it not for "teh intranetz".  Certainly, without the internet, it would be hard to find evidence of his feat 70 years later by using traditional hardcopy sources.)   Montanabw (talk)  05:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Radio-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. BBC is an independent source. It would be undue weight to merge this article to the series article. (Did you know that we keep an article about a fictional opera? Why not this person who probably was real?) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:48, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect per Ivanvector. Doesn't meet WP:GNG (significant coverage in multiple reliable sources) or even WP:SOLDIER. This whole Desert Island Discs thingo is a bit of a stretch IMO. Several of the "guests" were marginally notable at best. With respect Gerda, your argument is WP:OTHERSTUFF, I'm afraid. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 14:47, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect. The subject fails the WP:SIGCOV part of GNG. It seems very much like WP:BIO1E. EricSerge (talk) 15:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Desert Island Discs per Ivanvector, Peacemaker67 and EricSerge and OTHERSTUFF. Doesn't meet our basic notability standards per Notability (people): "A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources which are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject."  I don't understand how WP:RECENTISM (an opinion essay) applies and trumps our notability standards. Does seem very much like WP:BIO1E at best.  Parabolooidal (talk) 17:55, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS specifically refers to sets of a articles (such as those about DID castaways, of which this is one) as a likely exception. To quote: "If someone were, as part of their reasoning for keep, to say that every other main character in Star Wars has an article, this may well be a valid point. In this manner, using an "Other Stuff Exists" angle provides for consistency.". There have been well over 2970 people (2992 episodes at the time of writing; a very small number of people have appeared twice) featured on Desert Island Discs. We have an article on each (with just a few still to be written; I did another four today). It would be farcical to have an article about all but one (or even all but a handful). Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:57, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this rationale. What's the point of having a bunch of short articles with little information? Are there nearly 2992 separate articles? It seems to me this fragments the information regarding this series.
 * Other stuff exists is an opinion essay, not a guideline reached by consensus. The page Nutshell states "Nutshell|A rationale used in discussions is that other, similar pages or contents exist and have precedential value. The rationale may be valid in some contexts but not in others: Other stuff sometimes exist according to consensus or Policies and guidelines, sometimes in violation of them."
 * The BBC website, when searched for Signalman Henry Wheeler states only "Broadcast | 24 Nov 1945, Soldier, Navy Signalman. BBC FAQs says: "The first Desert Island Discs was broadcast in 1942 when most radio programmes were live and generally not recorded. In the decades that followed many programmes were not retained in the archives because the cost of keeping (and storing) the discs on which they were recorded was high." FAQs indicates that starting in 1976 the BBC kept a more complete record, but "some programmes were never archived or may be missing for legal or other reasons." Parabolooidal (talk) 19:44, 30 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep I have no difficulty finding further sources, which I have added to the article, and so refuted the claim of the nomination. Having separate pages for such topics is sensible because:
 * It is our policy that "there is no practical limit to the number of topics Wikipedia can cover"
 * Having the subject's name as the page title is the natural way to index and search
 * Readers increasingly access Wikipedia on mobile devices with limited screen space for which large pages are unsuitable
 * Large articles provoke ennui - see WP:TLDR.
 * Andrew (talk) 18:17, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. In fact, one of those references, Magee, also shows that the programme was broadcast not only across the UK, but to mainland Europe, too. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Andrew Davidson added two sources to the three that were in the article when I nominated it for deletion. Both, however, simply mention his name without much more. We are still lacking significant coverage in multiple reliable and independent sources.

At the risk of WP:TLDR, the sources need more scrutiny:
 * One of the three original sources is a transcript of the radio programme in the BBC's archives; that is, a primary source, and some of the information about Wheeler comes directly out of his own mouth.
 * The second is the BBC's online record of the radio programme, which is still currently broken ("Apologies - there is currently a technical problem with the Desert Island Discs website"). Even when it is working, I suspect it will only serve to verify the very basic details of the radio programme: that it was indeed broadcast in November 1945, that Signalman Henry Wheeler was the "castaway", and possibly his choices of eight records; but not much about Wheeler himself.
 * The third is a book about the radio series. This is the only substantial coverage about Wheeler outside the programme, but the book is only semi-detached from the BBC: Sean Magee and the BBC are identified as the authors on p.528.  And what is the coverage?  A one-page introduction, a list of the records chosen, and then two pages of excerpts from the transcript.  So we appear to be counting the transcript at least twice and possibly three times.  The book acknowledges that Wheeler is "completely unknown".

Of the two new sources:
 * One is a book on the British Forces broadcasting network, which notes on page 23 "Roy Plomley's 'Desert Island Discs' came live from the island of Norderney in the North Sea. The castaway was Able Seaman Henry Wheeler and the engineer was Jack Sheard." That is not by any stretch a substantial coverage about Henry Wheeler, but does helpfully identify which island in Europe he was on when the programme was broadcast.
 * The second is a self-published (Lulu) memoir by Jean Collen about Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth, which simply notes that only one of Ziegler and Booth's duets was chosen "in all the years of the programme, by Signalman Henry Wheeler, a naval rating on 24 November 1945." Again, simply a mention of Wheeler's name, rank, and a date, not substantial coverage at all.

So, are there any other independent and reliable sources with significant coverave about his life before or after the radio programme? Where is the obituary? the ODNB entry? the newspaper coverage? There just isn't any. Yes, he appeared on one radio programme, once, but so what? By contrast, almost every one of the other guests was notable in their own right before they went on the programme (for example, immediately before Wheeler was Deborah Kerr). So Wheeler inherits his notability from the other guests? He is notable because he was otherwise completely unknown?

As to merger, there is not much in this article that needs to be merged: the list article could be improved to include more than just name, date, book, luxury - each castaway's profession and records chosen, for example - but most of the rest of the article would not need to be merged in. I'd also note in passing that as Wheeler was said to be 20 years old in November 1945, and it is not clear when or if he has died, the article could be a BLP.

To go off on another tangent, I see another article of a "castaway" from Desert Island Discs was nominated at AfD recently - Stanley Rubinstein - but that was rightly closed as a keep. Rubinstein is notable, as the sources clearly show, although not as notable as his brother Harold Rubinstein and Harold's sons Michael Rubinstein and Hilary Rubinstein. Ferma (talk) 19:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I have no trouble finding coverage in newspapers — both contemporary coverage in 1945/6 and more recently, seventy years on. My !vote therefore stands.  Further, I note that not a single editor has supported the proposition that the topic be deleted.  The issue therefore seems to be settled and I would not have returned to it if I hadn't been pinged - please see WP:DEADHORSE. Andrew (talk) 12:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'm not sure how WP:DEADHORSE is relevant. I was under the impression that we were having a discussion.  You have not addressed my point that there is only really one source here, which is the transcript of the radio programme.  The only other substantial source is largely copied verbatim from the transcript, and the other "new" sources don't include any substantial coverage.  I see some further information has been added to the article today, based on birth and death records, but a birth certificate or death notice doesn't establish notability either. Does being on a radio programme really make a person notable?


 * For the avoidance of doubt, at the moment, I agree with the four other people who have suggested turning this article into a redirect to another article. However, I agree that it would not be sensible to copy the whole of this article over into Desert Island Discs.  As I indicated above, I would suggest that the most important details about Henry Wheeler could be added to his line at List of Desert Island Discs episodes (1942–46).  Similar information could be added to that list article for the other "castaways", although they are by and large notable as a result of their own achievements, independent of the radio programme, and so a separate article for them is appropriate.


 * I have looked for some substantial sources on this chap - really, I have! - so if you can point me towards the newspaper reports you have found, and they contain more than a passing mention of Signalman Henry Wheeler (as in the British Forces broadcasting network book, and the self-published memoir), or indeed you can identify any examples of significant coverage in other reliable and independent sources, then I will gladly withdraw. Ferma (talk) 18:50, 4 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.