Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Irene Radford


 * 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. Weak delete, actually, but on the whole we are not convinced of ther notability. Could probably be resubmitted (by somebody not affiliated with the subject) if new sources proving notability are found.  Sandstein  17:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Irene Radford

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Wikipedia is not the white pages; no reliable sources to establish notability of an individual. gnews shows some minor scifi publications, nothing reliable to me. Coatrack for advertising and pseudomemorial page. tedder (talk) 07:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.  -- tedder (talk) 07:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletion discussions.  -- tedder (talk) 07:17, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions.  —--Marc Kupper&#124;talk 06:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions.  —--Marc Kupper&#124;talk 06:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Redirect to Phyllis Ann Karr per this news item. tedder is right about the lack of reliable sources, I see nothing but passing mentions and reviews on bloglike websites. I deprodded this thinking that "hey she's been published by DAW Books and Penguin Books", but according to WP:AUTHOR (and recent talk page discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)), that doesn't matter. The birthdates for the two pen names don't match, but much Googling reveals this is the same author. Katr67 (talk) 16:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 *  Comment Very weak Keep - If Irene Radford and Phyllis Ann Karr are the same person then she is going to extraordinary lengths to maintain two identities. I'd say no to merging/redirecting the two without a very-very reliable source showing they are the same. I did a quick check for reliable-source articles about Irene Radford but did not find any. I've e-mailed her rather than beating around the web. Usually someone with 20 to 25 novels from major publishers in 15 years manages to snag some coverage but even with the books I was only seeing under 300 word book reviews. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 06:38, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * This is the reply from Irene Radford though reformatted and changed to 3rd person:
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 * Phyllis Ann karr is a totally different person and is one of the reason she's stopped using Karr.
 * Article about her in the Sandy Post (possibly August 6, 2009). I'm unable to verify this. It looks like a local paper and so not much of a WP:N point.
 * Granted a lifetime achievement award from Willamette Writers, one of the largest regional writing organizations in the country. August 7, 2009. Verified here and via Google. I took a very fast look but did not see any obvious national reliable-source 2nd party coverage though suspect that exists. As it's a regional organization and possible very little reliable 2nd person coverage I'll call it a weak WP:N point.
 * Granted the John W Dalmas Award by RadCon in 2006. I took a quick look but did not spot obvious verification. John Dalmas exists, the award exists, etc. Another weak WP:N point.
 * Twenty books in print plus 20 short stories. Not a WP:N point though this goes back to if we should revisit publication by major publishers as a WP:AUTHOR point. If it's not notable then I foresee either wholesale deletion of author articles from WP or that the publishers (and Internet marketers) will wise up and salt the Internet with the "coverage" WP wants to see.
 * Founding member of the Book View Café. Not a WP:N point but I see that "Book View Café" gets 918,000 ghits meaning it's possible that business has gotten salt&lt;del&gt;&lt;del&gt;&lt;del&gt;&lt;del&gt; the verifiable/RS coverage to be notable...
 * Designated anthology editor for the Book View Press. Not a WP:N point.
 * Faery Moon by P.R. Frost was a FreshFiction.com pick of the day June 19, 2009. Not WP:N.
 * Harmony by C.F. Bentley was featured on the SciFi Wire in August 2008. Not WP:N.
 * }
 * "What more do they want?" I've heard that one from many different people, or their fans, that insist the WP article subject is notable. I think some of them even read WP:N and related pages. They see 2.5 million or more junk articles about non-notable subjects on Wikipedia with 40,000 more getting added every month and wonder why today is the day their article was one of the 106 picked for AfD... (there's 740 pages in Category:AfD debates at the moment and I divided that by 7 to get an estimate of the number AfDed per day).
 * Anyway - so far she's does not look notable per a strict interpretation of WP:N or WP:AUTHOR though if she has a consistent trend of three or four minor awards per year then maybe that'll do. I'll e-mail her back and see if I can figure out a gentle way to explain "What more do they want?" --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 17:46, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * User:DGG's comment below about no more than 550 libraries made me realize Radford likely qualifies under WP:AUTHOR point 4 "or had works in many significant libraries." I'm changing my comment to a weak keep. It's not a full keep as it seems we are really scraping away at the barrel to find evidence plus it's WP:OR on my part to put the list together rather than being able to cite a reliable 2nd party. The list below shows the number of libraries holding copies of each novel. I did not include any of the anthologies that contain her stories. Most, if not all of the "Irene Radford" books have also been translated to and published in German. I did not include those. The actual list is available at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Irene Radford as I had trouble with getting collapse tables to also be indented in this thread.
 * All of Irene Radford's and her pseudonym's novels are available from public libraries with many of them available in 200 or more libraries. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 08:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * So at this point, would Irene Radford qualify under points 3 and 4 to some extent? Even after scrubbing away the PR-fluff? -- 健次 (derumi)talk 02:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes but I'm tempted to change to a delete because I feel WP:N is important and that's not being met at all. We simply don't have any information from reliable secondary sources meaning the entire article is WP:SELFPUB material other than the list of books can be verified. While she seems to qualify under points 3 and 4 to some extent I'm not happy with that being the only thing propping an article in place. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 09:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * So at this point, would Irene Radford qualify under points 3 and 4 to some extent? Even after scrubbing away the PR-fluff? -- 健次 (derumi)talk 02:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes but I'm tempted to change to a delete because I feel WP:N is important and that's not being met at all. We simply don't have any information from reliable secondary sources meaning the entire article is WP:SELFPUB material other than the list of books can be verified. While she seems to qualify under points 3 and 4 to some extent I'm not happy with that being the only thing propping an article in place. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 09:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment Heather Alexander's 2006 album Merlin's Descendants is based on Irene Radford's fiction, according to that article. I won't argue whether or not that is notable in itself, as Irene is a friend of mine (other than perhaps clean-up or formating, I don't feel I should be editing the article of a personal acquaintance). How Wikipedia works is a bit foreign to her, so I'm trying to let her know what information the article would need in hopefully plainer English. As the article currently stands, it's a huge mess with vague or useless sources. -- 健次 (derumi)talk 22:02, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The Heather Alexander album is good as a WP:AUTHOR point 3 item. I've added it to the article. I'm not too worried about the article being a mess as the focus is on establishing if Irene Radford is notable. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:17, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak delete for now. The evidence that Radford=Karr is thin, and if they do happen to be the same person, and she wants to maintain two separate identities, I don't see a problem with that if we can get sources for Radford. Like I said above, my gut told me being published by a couple major houses should confer at least minor notability, but as it stands, WP:AUTHOR prevails, so we need more sources. "What do they want?"...well, see WP:OTHERSTUFF about why there are tens of thousands of schlocky articles while others get Afd'd. Anyone with the good/mis- fortune to have a connection with Oregon is going to have their article pop up on on WikiProject Oregon's watchlist. That means it's more likely something will end up at Afd, but it also means there is a better chance for it to be improved. I'll take back my merge proposal, but I'm leaning toward weak delete at this point. At worst, give her a few more years. P.S. I just reverted an anon edit that pretty much rendered the article incomprehensible. I'm not making any accusations here but those who know Ms. Radford, be sure to tell her that it's probably not a good idea to edit her own article, for WP:COI reasons. Contributions and discussion on the article's talk page would be most welcome. Hopefully she can set up her own account. I note also that the article seems to have been created by someone running a convention at which Ms. Radford will appear. Slightly less COI, but we aren't here to help provide PR for such things. That said, I'm hoping we can bring this up to standard, it seems like such a borderline case of NN. P.P.S. There are at least a couple notable people connected with Willamette Writers. Katr67 (talk) 00:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The Irene Radford pen name was chosen because there already was a Phyllis Karr; they are two separate people. -- 健次 (derumi)talk 04:46, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Very weak keep - but boy howdy, does this mess need cleanup! (Full disclosure: I read a lot of SF & fantasy.) -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  17:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete  Moderately successful novelist, none of her books held in more than 550 US libraries, which is  only fair for this sort of fiction. Not many reviews: LJ gave one -- and apparently only one-- of them a brief review.  I consider that award from  Willamette Writers as very minor & the local newspaper reviews from oregon as similarly not indicative of notability.  That some people in the region are notable writers doesn't mean that all of them are.  The article shows signs of PR writing to the extent that really concerns me, especially in view of  the energetic try  here to do OR by email. If people are going to put PR into Wikipedia, they can at least prepare it properly in the first place.   DGG ( talk ) 02:09, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't mean to imply that Radford is notable because a couple other Willamette Writers members are notable, I was trying to imply that Willamette Writers might be notable by virtue of having a couple notable members, thus an award from them might confer notability. Just something to follow up on if anybody cares to. Cheers, Katr67 (talk) 03:13, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It's the Willamette Writers lifetime achievement award that would need to be notable in order for it to have relevance to Irene Radford's notability. It's unrelated to if Willamette Writers is notable which is unrelated to if its members are notable. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:09, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry if I've been unclear. It's really not necessary to talk me out of suggesting that these things might be notable. We have so little to go on that I'm just grasping at straws, not making any sort of definite notability argument. I'm merely suggesting a possible line of investigation if anyone wants to do some checking. Katr67 (talk) 05:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * She's a successful author but by normal WP standards she's not notable. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 09:01, 30 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete as per DGG. Stifle (talk) 13:10, 2 October 2009 (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.