Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jonathan Fenby


 * 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   keep. (Non-administrator closure) Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 07:52, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Jonathan Fenby
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Only references to reliable sources that work, are just articles he wrote himself. None of his many books are notable, I seeing no reviews for them at all. Working as an editor for a newspaper or whatnot, doesn't make someone notable.  D r e a m Focus  00:39, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Withdrawn Some of his books do get reviewed, thus he is notable. Please someone close this AFD.   D r e a m Focus  22:06, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note, the two awards aren't anything special. National Order of Merit (France) shows they created this award do to how many people were being given another award, this one lesser to it, and if you read the requirements, millions of people can easily get it for years of public service.  The other award "is the most junior and most populous order of chivalry".   D r e a m Focus  01:05, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:49, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Though the article could use some additional editing, Fenby is certainly the sort of person that ordinary Wikipedia users (like me) would like to know about.Sbabones (talk) 09:23, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. The nomination is unfortunately faulty in almost every respect, but probably through no fault of the nominator - a more thorough effort at WP:BEFORE would in fact have been advisable, but I started with the probably unfair advantage of already knowing something about the subject. It probably does not help that the article on a person whose main notability is as an author and former newspaper editor and journalist instead highlights his rather less notable current career in consultancy, and depends so heavily for referencing on the subject himself.
 * However, I have now repaired one of the bad links in the article, to an independent reliable source which provides a significant amount of detail about parts of his newspaper career. From memory, there are almost certainly further reliable sources about his newspaper career, but most of them will be in newspapers from the 1980s and 1990s, and either offline or behind paywalls.
 * So far as review of his books are concerned, they are difficult to sift out from the other Google results but there are plenty of them - not just from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews but also from the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist, Times Higher Education, the Literary Review, the Asian Review of Books and the Taipei Times.
 * And while editing a newspaper does not in itself make a person notable, it should be noted that he was both one of the founding (if subordinate) editors of The Independent (which got a lot of coverage from other news media at the time) and the first editor of The Observer after it was taken over by The Guardian.
 * Finally, the nominator has also shown some lack of knowledge about the British honours system - while the Order of the British Empire can indeed be described as "the most junior and most populous order of chivalry", this is mainly because the other orders of chivalry within the honours system are effectively restricted to various groups of British government employees. In terms of prestige, the class of an honour is more important than the order, with far fewer awards in the upper classes of an order than in the lower classes. So while the lower classes of the Order of the British Empire - the MBE and the OBE - do not measurable contribute to notability, the CBE - which Fenby was awarded - is a strong indicator of notability (most of the people awarded it would have met one or other of the Wikipedia criteria of notability well before getting the award) and I would regard the award of one of the higher classes - the KBE, DBE and GBE, all of which count as knighthoods (or damehoods) - as effectively guaranteeing automatic notability in Wikipedia terms. So, to finish - the article could definitely do with a rewrite and more sources, but Fenby is definitely notable. PWilkinson (talk) 21:36, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Some of his books did get reviewed then. My mistake.  AFD Withdrawn.   D r e a m Focus  22:06, 6 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.