Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Julia DeMato (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   keep. \ Backslash Forwardslash / {talk} 08:00, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Julia DeMato
AfDs for this article: 
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Delete. After Articles for deletion/Alexis Grace (2nd nomination) saw a “delete” outcome, I feel that the time has come to determine which of the American Idol contestants truly deserve their own articles. WP:NOTINHERITED tells us that just because somebody appeared on American Idol, it doesn’t make them notable and worthy of an article. This fails WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO. The subject has done nothing of note since the programme and the article admits that: "her brief musical career...further success eluded her" DJ 08:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak redirect to American Idol (season 2). Fails WP:MUSIC for sure, but a case could be made that her arrest and the subsequent coverage might combine with her Idol appearance to make it past WP:BIO.  young  american  (wtf?) 11:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

This sort of mass nomination is unproductive because it leads to people voting based on "I like it"/"I don't like it" since no one can reasonably be expected to properly research 38 articles of the same nature in a week. (Indeed this has already begun to happen.) Since the results of these AfDs are likely to be influenced by voting rather than a proper discussion, they should all be closed with no prejudice against reopening a few at a time after a good faith attempt to determine notability has been made. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:49, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Speedy close as a (unintentionally) disruptive nomination. The nominator rapid fire nominated 38 American Idol contestants all with the same (invalid) rationale that Alexis Grace (who finished 11th and hasn't had a chance to do anything post Idol yet) was deleted.  It is quite clear that he/she made no attempt to research any of the nominations as several quite clearly meet multiple inclusion criteria.  Some of these articles should be kept, and others merged, but none should be deleted.  All arguably meet WP:MUSIC #9: "Has won or placed in a major music competition" by virtue of making the finals of American Idol and the less notable ones should at least be merged with their respective American Idol season X pages.


 * Speedy close per ThaddeusB. Jeni  ( talk ) 00:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Speedy close per ThaddeusB. Crafty (talk) 01:56, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Speedy close per WikiProject Idol series; the Alexis Grace deletion was improper per that guideline, and this one is even more so. --RBBrittain (talk) 02:11, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep This article gets over 1,000 hits per month, on a regular basis.  See, for example:    In fact, in the first 6 months of this year, it received 10,371 hits, for an average of 1,728 per month. If that many people want to read it, then why not keep it?  In terms of substantive reasons beyond that, Julia DeMato is, or was, of interest as someone who won brief fame on the basis of her vocal talents, but failed to invest the time and effort needed to do something further with what she had.  She is of historical interest: something like 40 million people watched her during her time on the show.  Why throw out this article or any others on American Idol or any other show or contest because the persons concerned have not built further on what they did then?  Same point for "one hit wonders" in the world of music.  My view is that the Wikipedia servers and storage facilities are large enough to accommodate a wide range of articles.  I'm happy to contribute to the Wikimedia Foundation on a regular basis to do my bit in funding the servers and the drives.  They never seem to have a problem in this regard.  No need to keep rationalizing and reducing the articles on the basis of continually shifting criteria.  Let's hang onto the history that we have in the form of Wikipedia articles.  They are an archive of the culture of our times.


 * As the main author of this article, I put a lot of work into it - and on behalf of people who invest time in writing Wikipedia articles, I think it's only fair to keep the articles if they have readers, as this one certainly has - over 1,000 per month. Personally, I am absolutely fed up with the kangaroo court proceedings relating to article deletions - no consistency, rules in constant flux, "voting" by small coteries of people who follow this stuff, etc.  I'm all for quality improvement, even if this means tagging the articles - but any sidelining of articles should only occur through an evolutionary process in which articles which are orphaned (no links followed) or otherwise not read are then archived into auxiliary storage - but not deleted as a result of someone's opinion or policy decision.  If people watch American Idol and if they read articles on individual contestants, then why not keep the articles?  Why should anyone be making policy decisions that restrict their choice of articles on the grounds of "notability".


 * On a fundamental point of principle, I don't think it's fair to the writers of articles to have one set of criteria in place for years - as has been the case for this class of articles - and then to change these criteria later and delete the articles that people spent time writing. Who knows if the article you are writing today will be deleted a year or two, or more, later, because someone thought up a new policy?  This undermines the trust that authors need to have in order to invest time and effort.


 * More generally, I would take issue with a rule-bound approach which gives power to small groups of people who set themselves up as the arbiters of what people in the community have written. If articles find readers, let's keep them.  If they don't find readers, then archive them.  But there is no reason to set up a whole lot of complicated rules and policies that will keep proliferating over time - that's a fundamentally bureaucratic and legalistic approach.  Some cultures and systems like to set up all these rules - and that's a tendency which you see in a number of other areas in the USA, in particular.  (See, for example, the Code of Federal Regulations.) But others would prefer a few basic principles.  Basically, I would simply say that if an article has readers, then keep it.

JD Fan (talk) 15:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * People will definitely have sympathy for your having done a lot of work on an article and then for arbitrarily changing standards years later resulting in it being at AfD. But you will throw away that sympathy if you engage in rants about "censorship" and "nanny state".  Wikipedia is its own organization and in its collective wisdom it can do whatever it likes about its website and content.  If you don't like it you are free to start AmericanIdolpedia or Celebritypedia or whatever and do things your way.  (And that has been done, see for example Memory Alpha the Star Trek Wiki which covers Star Trek in much more depth than Wikipedia is willing to.)  If the U.S. government were trying to delete your articles then your "censorship" and "nanny state" complaints would be on target, but it isn't and you're not.  Wasted Time R (talk) 00:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

JD Fan (talk) 14:25, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Point taken. I deleted the text in question.  But I still believe it's worth thinking about the other points, particularly the question of authors doing articles in good faith, under one set of criteria, and then later finding their work discarded, under another set of criteria.


 * Keep. The second season was AI's breakthrough year in terms of popularity, and its finalists received more attention at the time, and have lingered longer in terms of public interest and thus notability. This is indicated by the usage stats given above and by the attention given her run-in with the law.  Wasted Time R (talk) 11:03, 30 July 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.