Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jean Laroche


 * 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 to delete. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 15:42, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Jean Laroche

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

French poet, published a dozen books but it's not clear what their notability is. Article created by a J Laroche... Notability not established, and a few searches (including google news on "Jean Laroche" and poésie) does not produce much of anything. I'd be happy to see improvement instead of deletion, but even the French article doesn't help. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 19:21, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —Nomoskedasticity (talk) 19:23, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. The nominator appears not to have noticed the references in the article. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * reply, I saw the references, but it is by no means clear what sort of work those references do in establishing notability. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:01, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Article is well-sourced for its size. Edward321 (talk) 01:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. No, nominator appears to be correct: the references do not establish at all what we might find in them. I had a quick glance at the MLA, and Jean Laroche is not an "author as subject" there, which is a bad sign. The references look as if they might mention him in passing as a poet. Granted, I'm guessing, but still. Also, those presses don't ring a notable bell with me, and the "Poets du Pays Nantais" thingies (what are they?) suggest we're dealing with a regional poet here. The French WP article is even less informative, and it gives me no reason to extend the benefit of the doubt. Drmies (talk) 05:32, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Since when has it been our practice to dismiss sources without checking them first? To do so would be to exacerbate the already great systemic bias against subjects from before the Internet age. Snippets from two of the book sources offered can be displayed by Google Books -  - and they seem to show substantial, if not extensive, coverage of the subject. And what does the comment, "those presses don't ring a notable bell with me", mean? The presses that count are those that publish the sources, and they comprise three university presses and another major century-old publisher. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:33, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment--I would appreciate a bit more good faith here. For starters, I checked the MLA, which is more of an effort than typing a name in Google Books, and it had nothing. The two references you found may suggest substantial treatment, but to me they don't. The first, a 506-page book, has five mentions of him, and as far as the snippet allows there is no significant mention of our poet. For starters, the book is not about him but about a school of poetry to which Laroche seems to have belonged, but note that his date of birth and his education are mentioned in a footnote--if he had any kind of significance in that school, surely he would have a section or a chapter devoted to him. I can't tell from your comment if you can read French or not; if you do, you will see, however, that he received an award named for the founder of that school. So it's a really mixed bag: not notable enough to get his own section in a huge book, but the winner of an award, which also does not warrant more than a footnote. The second book, no less than 795 pages long, mentions him once, once, and given that that mention is so slight it doesn't matter who publishes the book. As for your sneer at my other comment, it is a bit facetious to suppose that it doesn't matter for a poet whether they get published by a huge and important press, or by a small literary press, or by a vanity press--just ask the poet or the bookstore or the reading public or the institute where they are trying to get tenure. In fact, your critique of my comment really isn't worth any more words. If I had found anything more on the French WP, it would have been a different matter. Now, I also checked the Gale Literary Database of Contemporary Authors and their Dictionary of Literary Biography, and both have nothing. In the interest of full disclosure: Don Johnson, in The Appalachian Homeplace as Oneiric House (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1991), does mention Laroche: he cites Gaston Bachelard who cites four lines from a Laroche poem in The Poetics of Space (I hope this isn't a redlink!). If you want to call that significant coverage, then we have really diverging definitions of significant coverage. Again, I find no reason to suppose, in the absence of clear evidence from my searches or from the English and French WP articles, that we are dealing with a notable author. Drmies (talk) 15:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. Hey, let's hold back on the comments about anyone's motivations. We are nearly always in agreement about AfDs (to the extent that I often find that I don't have to comment because you have already said what I would have said), so there's no need to get shirty. I didn't accuse you of any bad faith, but I did notice that you said yourself that you were guessing. And I wasn't "sneering" about your comment about the publishers, merely stating that the important thing for establishing notability is the quality of the sources, and, anyway, Éditions Seghers seems to be a pretty reputable publisher. As regards the two sources with ISBNs, one, as you say, mentions the subject on five pages, and the second has at least a paragraph on the subject. This, together with the other sources in the article, indicates that there is substantial coverage, i.e. coverage that has some substance rather just a name check. The criterion for notability is "substantial", not "extensive". There is no need for people to have had a whole book, or book chapter, published about them for them to be notable. The existence of reference works that don't mention the subject, or the number of other pages in those that do, is irrelevant. It's the specific pages in the sources that do discuss the subject that count. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:16, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey Phil, I just now realize I should have made it more clear that I meant the poet's publishers, not those of the secondary sources--I hope I made that clear in my response. If a poet is published by a very notable publisher, then that (in the absence of other evidence) is a pretty good indication. And in this case we are guessing, both of use. And my guess, given that the guy is given so little space in such big books, is that he is not that notable, that the coverage there (see the footnote, for instance), is not substantial, let alone extensive. So let's keep it at a disagreement between us in degree, not in kind. Sorry if I came across harsh--I thought from your first response that you thought I hadn't checked anything at all. As a token of my good faith, I'm offering you one of the buffalo wings I'm munching on--and that's a big offer, since I only have three left. Here! Drmies (talk) 00:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Could not find enough to establish notability under WP:PROF. Does not seem to pass WP:BIO either. There is another Jean Laroche, not to be confused with the subject of this article, who does research on audio communication and who seems to pass WP:PROF.--Eric Yurken (talk) 00:58, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep The book sources are sufficient. One does not expect much coverage of late 20th century French poetry in American academic sources. The negative results from Gale and MLA are not relevant. DGG (talk) 02:14, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete The books listings don't seem to have ISBN or any other sourcing information.  Maybe article could be expanded, but it seems like a delete for now. Johndowning (talk) 18:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. The most notable works by the subject were published in the 1950s, well before ISBNs were introduced, and the article does contain the generally accepted sourcing information for books, i.e. author, title, publisher and year of publication. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:57, 7 May 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.