Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/J.J. McCullough (3rd 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 delete. Will salt both titles. There is consensus here (and in all the other afd's) that McCullough is not notable, and isn't likely to become so in the future. Eddie891 Talk Work 22:49, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

J.J. McCullough
AfDs for this article: 
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This is the 5th AfD for this person. If this AfD is not closed as keep, I believe this page (and J. J. McCullough (See AfDs: 1 2)) should be salted (or fully protected if redirected) to prevent its repeated recreation. The sources I have found are:
 * 1)  this article, which states his opinions. Given that this is mainly about his opinions, I'm not sure whether this contributes toward GNG.
 * 2) This interview with True North, not contributing toward GNG because all the coverage is his opinion on this interview. I'm also not sure about the reliability of this source, given Andrew Scheer grouped it with The Post Millenial, which nearly got deprecated.
 * 3)    All 4 of these are related to his Quebec controversies (3 in 2017, 1 in 2014). If these pass GNG, they would still fail WP:BLP1E (It's his QC controversies) and would be better redirected to Anti-Quebec sentiment (He had a section in the article before it was removed).  Username 6892 11:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  Username 6892 11:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions.  Username 6892 11:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions.  Username 6892 11:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions.  Username 6892 11:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete, with salt at both titles. As with the prior attempts, this is still referenced not to reliable sources that properly contextualize his notability, but primarily to his own self-published content. As always, a journalist is not automatically notable just because his work technically metaverifies its own existence in contribution directories on the websites of his own employers — notability as a journalist requires other media outlets, who are not the issuers of his paycheques, to independently establish the significance of his journalism by writing analytical content about him and his impact in the third person. Content on Twitter and YouTube also does not speak to notability at all, because those are user generated platforms, and neither do Q&A interviews in which the subject of the article is doing the speaking about himself or other things. So once you toss all the footnotes here that are doing nothing to establish his notability, there's literally only one GNG-worthy footnote left in the article — and even it's not about him strongly enough to carry him over GNG all by itself as the only acceptable source in the article, either, because it's about an incident rather than him as a person and thus flunks WP:BLP1E. This is not how you establish the notability of a journalist, regardless of whether he's of the left or the right. Bearcat (talk) 19:32, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete and salt per the above, and the fact that the last debate was closed as "delete" barely 3 months ago. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:26, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 *  Strong Keep Per WP:ENTERTAINER. In addition to his columns for the Washington Post, he also has a Youtube channel with 200,000 subscribers that is growing rapidly. He definitely has a large fan base. Scorpions13256 (talk) 11:12, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That appears to be part of additional criteria. Later in the guideline, it says If neither a satisfying explanation nor appropriate sources can be found for a standalone article, but the person meets one or more of the additional criteria: Merge the article into a broader article providing context. The best places to merge would probably be a list of Washington Post columnists or to Anti-Quebec sentiment given that's what most sources talk about. Also, "Large fan base" is incredibly vague. I see no sources translating his 200K subscribers into a "large" fan base (his recent videos have around 70-105K views, so I guess about 70K would be the fanbase if nobody watches his videos more than once).  Username 6892 13:19, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * We have no evidence that YouTube subscriber counts are trustworthy, meaningful or indicative of much at all, really. What's a big number? What's a small one? Who are we comparing against? (3Blue1Brown has 15 times as many subscribers as McCullough, and that's for talking about math in a sedate voice.) How many views are from actual humans? Etc. See WP:ITEXISTS and WP:ARBITRARY. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:39, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete It appears that I have misinterpreted Wikipedia's notability guidelines. I should have looked at more than just WP:ENTERTAINER. I was also wrong to cite his subscriber count, because WP:INVALIDBIO advises against this. The lack of independent coverage (which I was aware of) means that it does not meet WP:GNG and WP:SIGCOV. An article that depends on sef-published sources to exist is not likely to be encyclopedic. For that reason, I am changing my vote. However, my vote would still stand if more appropriate sources existed. Scorpions13256 (talk) 20:40, 4 September 2020 (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.