Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hermann Leiningen (2nd nomination)


 * 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 and not for lack of attempting to find one. While there were a few invalid arguments on the "keep" and "delete" sides, most did indeed directly address the availability of source material, and just didn't agree on whether or not it was sufficient to justify an article. At this point, I don't think further relisting is going to make things any clearer, but maybe a new and more focused discussion in the future could. Seraphimblade Talk to me 21:07, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Hermann Leiningen
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log )

WP:BLP of a person notable only as a descendant of royalty. As always, notability is not inherited, so people are not automatically entitled to have Wikipedia articles just because their name technically shows up in the triple-digit "this is never, ever, ever actually going to happen" range in a royal succession list -- but this makes absolutely no claim that he has done anything that would make him notable for his own achievements, and of the five footnotes three are genealogical and one is a YouTube video, which aren't notability-supporting sources at all. Nothing stated here is "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to have a lot more than just one article about him in a real newspaper. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 15:06, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 18:28, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * keep I disagree that WP:NOTINHERITED is applicable here since nobility inherently derives notability from inheritance. The question is rather whether there are enough RS to cover this subject. The question is rather whether WP:GNG is fulfilled here, the National Post piece seems be the piece with most in-depth coverage of the subject itself. Passes WP:GNG and WP:RS. --hroest 01:05, 16 May 2021 (UTC)
 * GNG requires a lot more than just one newspaper article about him. It requires multiple pieces, not just one, and it distinguishes between "coverage which exists in noteworthy contexts that pass Wikipedia's inclusion criteria" (which helps) and "fluffy human interest coverage" (which does not). Bearcat (talk) 13:52, 17 May 2021 (UTC)


 * KEEP per responses made in previous delete nom. the so-called YouTube video was uploaded to the official channel of 16×9, a news magazine originally broadcast by Global Television Network. the segment aired in the summer of 2012, I think. the YouTube channel was rebranded to Crime Beat last year, another Global program. here. Zentulku (talk) 20:48, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep The previous deletion request listed a dozen potential sources which were not added to the article for one reason or another. However, asserting a Jewish-community news website and a German banking industry magazine are not "real" news is uncomfortable to read on Wikipedia regardless if the intent was to somehow prove Leiningen is unworthy of an article because of x and y… STRONG KEEP. Fostrdv (talk) 03:07, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Here are the refs posted by in thread for the previous delete request:           . CNJ, PBM, and Queen's College magazine, are "real news," as far as I'm aware. The rest appear to be press releases of various flavors. Fostrdv (talk) 03:12, 18 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No on Queen's; university and college student media can be sparingly used for supplementary verification of stray facts after GNG has already been passed, but cannot count as data points toward getting a topic over GNG — and that's especially true when the student media in question is covering the person in the context of being a former alumnus, and/or the father of current students, of that same university rather than in the context of anything measurable against an inclusion criterion. PBM is a Q&A interview in which he's answering questions about himself in the first person, which is not a type of source that can be used to support notability — like student media, Q&A interviews can be sparingly used for supplementary verification of stray facts after GNG has already been covered off, but do not contribute toward the process of getting a person over GNG in the first place. Press releases self-published by organizations or companies that he's directly affiliated with, on sites such as Business Wire, Cision or World Market Intelligence News, are not notability-building sources, because they aren't independent third party analysis. "Posthumous Award for King Boris" isn't about Leiningen for the purposes of helping to establish his notability — it isn't covering him in the context of doing anything notable, it just briefly quotes him giving soundbite in an article about someone else. And the Canadian Jewish News hits aren't "covering" him in the context of doing anything noteworthy, either: one is just about him giving a speech to a non-notable organization, which is not a notability claim, and the other is just about his quiet life in Oakville, which is not a notability claim. GNG is not just "as soon as X number of web pages can be found that have his name in them" — it doesn't just count the number of footnotes, but tests them for their type, their geographic range, their depth and the context of what they're covering the person for, and discounts some potential sources as being worth much less than others. Bearcat (talk) 13:28, 18 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep I believe did some editing to the article that included those sources but a user deleted them. I'd have to check the edit history. But yes, PBM is a real news source, though its print editions are very hard to find outside of a few cities in Germany-- The refs include Israeli state news who made mention of Leiningen's receipt of the posthumous award to Boris III. Israeli TV (I don't remember which channel) ran several segments featuring Leiningen and other members of his family roughly the same time 16×9 ran its segment. Thosbsamsgom (talk) 06:07, 18 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete Having a famous parent does not make a person notable. MrsSnoozyTurtle 11:28, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - the 11 references provided in the previous AFD which was almost snowing, were more than enough to keep. I have no idea why this was nominated with those 11 references so easy to see. But it's another Before failure. Nfitz (talk) 01:58, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Firstly, Twinkle does not preinform a person that there's been a prior AFD nomination at all — if you're using Twinkle to formulate an AFD nomination, then you get absolutely no indication whatsoever that there's been a prior AFD discussion until your AFD nomination is done and turns out to have "(2nd nomination)" in the finished title. It gives you no notification of any prior AFD discussions until the new nomination is done and submitted. So it is not a "before failure" to not have already known about a prior AFD discussion, in which sources were listed that were never added to the article. Regardless, the sources listed in the first discussion are not all valid support for a WP:GNG pass, as the same list of sources has been reoffered in this discussion, and already addressed above: more than half of them are press releases self-published by organizations he's directly affiliated with and/or university student media, which are not support for notability at all, and the less than half that do come from real media are not covering him in "inherently" noteworthy contexts. So my failure to have been psychically aware of a list of bad sources isn't a failure. Bearcat (talk) 04:32, 25 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete - most of the 11 references above are not even about the article subject, (and if they mention him it's not in a significant fashion [the piece about Boris III is significant coverage about Boris III, not this person]; or they're clearly nothing more than press releases or pieces from student newspapers, which are not really "significant coverage"...). The sources in the article are genealogical (thus, not evidence of notability given their database-like nature). I couldn't find anything more significant that was not an interview or the like. Fails WP:SIGCOV and WP:NOTINHERITED (not even being anywhere close in the line of inheritance does not, in any way shape or form, create inherent notabiility). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:51, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree User:RandomCanadian that most of the 11 don't go towards GNG. But I thought number 1 and 10 11 did. And I think that's enough. Nfitz (talk) 20:40, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * No. 11 is, in German, a letter/interview from the subject, so that's no good, and no. 1 is offline and you haven't provided a description of it's contents or a link to an online version so I can't check. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 20:54, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant 10, User:RandomCanadian. Number 1 is CP feed, so should be easy enough to find. Here's the Windsor Star version - oddly they must have messed up that day, as it's both on page A-11 and also on page B-9, with slightly different headlines! Though I must confess now, I can't find another newspaper that carried that CP feed. However, there is an even longer, different, article the previous day in the Toronto Star at along with a less notable announcement a couple of days earlier in The Globe and Mail at.
 * But if I'm going to start a BEFORE - what's wrong with these quickly Googled references one, two, three, and four. I don't know how User:Bearcat didn't see these - they are literally the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th hits at a simple Google search. Who knows what the other 277 hits get (I didn't page down). Nfitz (talk) 21:35, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Having two or three pieces of human interest coverage is not enough coverage to hand a person a GNG-based exemption from having to have an achievement-based notability claim that would pass any SNGs. GNG does not just count the footnotes and keep anybody who happens to pass an arbitrary number — it does take into account the context of what the person is being covered for, and "banker with no discernible claim to passing our inclusion criteria for bankers happens to be descendant of royalty" is not an inherently notable context, so it takes a lot more than just two or three pieces of human interest coverage to get such a person over the bar. Coverage has to be about him doing notable things to count as support for notability, not just about who his 3x-great-grandmother happens to be (see e.g. WP:NOTINHERITED.)
 * And there's a reason I didn't say "four" pieces of human interest coverage, by the way: the last of those four links is, once again, the self-published alumni magazine of his own alma mater, which is not a GNG-building source. It's a type of source that can be used for supplementary verification of stray facts after notability has already been covered off by stronger ones, but is not a source that can help to bring the GNG. Bearcat (talk) 21:51, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The first 3 alone establish GNG - which was already established with the existing references. SNG has no relevance, as per WP:N, "A topic is presumed to merit an article if" it either meets GNG and SNG. Nfitz (talk) 22:14, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
 * GNG requires sources which are both significant, non-trivial coverage (i.e. WP:NOTNEWS), and which are entirely independent of the article subject. Of the three sources above (disregarding the fourth one), the first one looks like an interview (it reports multiple statements from the subject, and it is clear from how they are introduced that this was part of some form of an interview); so does the second, and the third is basically a near exact copy of that (so it doesn't count as a different source - multiple sources reporting the same thing [such as newspapers repeating the same piece from agencies like the AP, or a press release, or the like] are all effectively reporting one and the same thing. So that basically leaves us with "sources" which read more like puff pieces and whose only claims about the subject's notability are that he is a distant descendant of a royal bloodline. WP:A7 is a thing, and WP:NBIO is also clear that the topic of a biographical article should be "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded". A few puff pieces about descent from some royalty (studies show that the vast majority of the European population is likely descended from a most common recent ancestor no later than about 32 generations (900 years or so) ago - and likely that most modern Europeans are descended from Charlemagne, specifically).  are not enough. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs)  02:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
 * If the existence of two or three pieces of fluffy human interest coverage were all it took to say that a person passed GNG and was therefore exempted from having to be notable for any particular reason, then we would have to keep an article about my mother's neighbour who once got into the papers for finding a pig in her front yard. If a person has a hard pass of a "must include" criterion, such as winning election to an inherently notable political office or winning a major notability-clinching award, then just two or three sources are enough — but if you're shooting for "doesn't pass any SNGs but is notable under GNG anyway just because media coverage exists", then you need more like 10 or 12 pieces of substantive reliable source coverage, not just two or three. Bearcat (talk) 02:18, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This statement rather catches me off-guard. What generally-accepted policy or guideline states 10-12 independent, nontrivial, reliable sources are necessary to meet GNG?   78.26  (spin me / revolutions) 18:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. Fails WP:NOTGENEALOGY: There's nothing in the article that is not of a geneological or similar nature. Also no significant coverage in reliable sources.  Sandstein   20:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Not sure we've quite reached a consensus here, but seems to be leaning towards keep based on GNG, though some dispute about the sufficiency of the sources remains.
 * Delete - notability is not inherited. Not enough in-depth coverage about him to pass WP:GNG.  Onel 5969  TT me 02:57, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep I think it with the coverage it probably a keep e.g The Canadian who would be king. It probably satisfies WP:BASIC, WP:THREE and more. VocalIndia (talk) 04:00, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge to Prince Karl of Leiningen. It is biographically significant enough for the merge target that his sons have these two royal lineages, and that he is a grandfather of his grandchildren. BD2412  T 06:31, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Go  Phightins  !  22:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep The article has a number of coverages which would surely make it to satisfy GNG. Zin Win Hlaing (talk) 16:09, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep There is sufficient coverage. Rdzogschen (talk) 09:21, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. I don't see significant coverage. He works at a bank; so did I for several years, which does not make ne notable. Is he a VP or COO? I am know (or notorious) for my fairly lax standards at User:Bearian/Standards, but I'm afraid he fails. I would not oppose a merge back and redirect. Bearian (talk) 16:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep . There’s enough coverage to pass WP:SIGCOV. Generally being a member of the nobility, even minor nobility, makes you notable by birth as evidenced by the sources. Nobody is claiming his work as a banker is significant.4meter4 (talk) 02:42, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per Bearcat; in particular agreement with this part of his argument the Canadian Jewish News hits aren't "covering" him in the context of doing anything noteworthy, either, to which I would add: the piece is obviously about the story of saving the Jews, and the information on the subject is a pretext to create a reason to retell the actual story, i.e. trivia to catch your attention. The The Canadian who would be king article on the other hand is about daily life with the historical tidbits acting as trivia. There is something trivially interesting and eye-catching in all of this, but there is a serious reason not to maintain the article which is WP:NOTGENEALOGY. Plus all the other more prosaic arguments consistently put forward by other delete proponents (such as WP:NOTINHERITED and WP:SIGCOV), and not refuted. For example I find the counter of nobility inherently derives notability from inheritance to be an explicit negation of an obvious result of adding NOTGENEALOGY and NOTINHERITED together, and therefore completely invalid. — Alalch Emis (talk) 23:24, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, – bradv  🍁  15:38, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:SIGCOV from reputable sources such as The National Post. Richiepip (talk) 20:34, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep per all above and there’s enough coverage to pass WP:SIGCOV. I don't really understand pervious AfD result is pretty clear but why admin or closure very delay to close this discussion. I see, they are wasting time unnecessarily. Taung Tan (talk) 02:53, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Per all above, one should much more gladly conclude that there isn't enough coverage to pass WP:SIGCOV. — Alalch Emis (talk) 20:14, 21 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Question Is there a reason why this AfD remains open, looks like 5+ weeks old, I thought the policy is that they are closed or relisted by admins after ~7 days? Now over 13days long!! the relisted days are over than over. Is there really any need to relist it ?, Consensus is pretty obvious here? Useless admin are biased here and What do they want? They will not stop until more delete votes come here! What is the community value of this AfD? 37.111.8.14 (talk) 13:34, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete NOT TABLOID. People have to have actually done something to be notable, and sources that cover someone only because of their birth or inclusion in obsolete notbality are not reliable for the peruposes of establishing notability --they're either directory source or gossip sites. The rean why "a Jewish-community news website and a German banking industry magazines" are not useful for notability is thatthey are nonselective, and cover those in their community regardeles of general significance, anf I ;d say the same of small town newspapers --it';s not our being prejudiced--it applies to all such special-interest sources.   DGG ( talk ) 07:10, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. NOTINHERITED applies, nobility or not. Does not meet GNG or ANYBIO. Basically per the analyses of Bearcat and DGG. --Randykitty (talk) 12:35, 27 June 2021 (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.