Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Justin McElroy (journalist)


 * 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. Spartaz Humbug! 02:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Justin McElroy (journalist)

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Fails WP:JOURNALIST. Subject describes page as being created as a "birthday prank" by his friends. Madg2011 (talk) 20:57, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. This was created as a genuine factual article, not a "prank," has been sourced, and does not slander or mischaracterize the subject. Sourcing confirms subject is notable. Tweet from subject is clearly a request for removal of spam, which has been cleaned up. Audiovideodiscoo (talk) 21:06, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Sourcing/mischaracterization of subject aren't issues at hand - notability is. The article makes two claims to notability:
 * that McElroy has "received multiple national and provincial journalism awards"
 * that McElroy has received praise from columnists Heather Mallick and Colby Cosh.
 * Neither of these is significant enough to demonstrate the notability of the subject. If you feel the awards make him notable, said awards should be discussed in the article, not just glossed over. Madg2011 (talk) 21:21, 18 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Notability is based on his work having been discussed at length in national media. Multiple independent, reliable sources supporting this case for notability, beyond the two columns you mentioned are cited on the page, including international media and book sources. National awards, which have been cited, strengthen the case for notability, but journalism awards (outside of Pulitzers) do not usually generate public discussion; the works which receive the awards should be disucssed in the page instead. I encourage you to review other well-accepted Wikipedia journalist biographies, none of them focus on discussing industry awards. WP:JOURNALIST is a redirect to the "Creative professionals" criteria, which are not exhaustive, but include "widely cited by peers," which is clearly demonstrated here. I believe you may be citing Notability (journalists), which is a failed proposal not to be used. Wikipedia consensus has been to review journalist biographies based on the subject's overall public profile, not on the highly specific list of criteria you appear to be referencing.Audiovideodiscoo (talk) 22:13, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I cited WP:JOURNALIST intentionally. Madg2011 (talk) 01:58, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The article does not fail WP:JOURNALIST. "Prank" can mean an obviously facetious article or one created to libel a subject, so I clarified that was not the case here. For further discussion on notability, see discussion on independent sources below.Audiovideodiscoo (talk) 02:56, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete total reference bomb, but none of the references deal with him or convey notability: the articles with his name are simply feeds of articles he's written. Not notable. SportingFlyer  talk  22:37, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete per SportingFlyer. 24.80.119.18 (talk) 23:12, 18 March 2018
 * Keep -- Re: SportingFlyer: the following references are significant discussion of the subject and his work in independent, reliable media or coverage of significant awards, none are "feeds of the articles he's written," all are independently written by different people who are not the subject. Your comment is factually incorrect, please review the following and revise: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24. This more than meets WP:GNG. Yes, there are links within the article to the subject's own work, but these make up the minority of references and per WP:NNC references to a subject's own work in their biography are encouraged. Per WP:NRVE, a Wikipedia article's main purpose is not to bureaucratically argue for a subject's notability; notability is a characteristic of a subject, not an article. The majority of the deletion argument seems to be WP:JNN without actually reading any of the reasoning to the contrary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ‎Audiovideodiscoo (talk • contribs)
 * Would argue that the anon supporting SportingFlyer should not be counted as they can't be pinged to review documentation and they based their opinion entirely on SportingFlyer's incorrect summary. WP:PERX Audiovideodiscoo (talk) 00:34, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, you just referenced bombed the AfD, so I had to go through all of the references again. He created a twitter contest, which doesn't actually make him notable per Wikipedia. 5-17 are all about those, with the exception of 9, which is a podcast he wrote. 1 appears to be a large book about student life at UBC which I doubt gets him to WP:GNG. 2-4 are about a minor award he won - other people on the staff also won the award. The remainder are a mishmash of rankings he's done, podcasts, and talks he's given. There's nothing here that's actually about him other than a twitter contest he ran once, which on its own would fail WP:BLP1E. There's really nothing of substance here at all. Non-notable journalist per WP:JOURNALIST. SportingFlyer talk  05:32, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment you've also now voted twice, it appears from the history. SportingFlyer  talk  05:34, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Your first comment appears to have been written without even a cursory check of the references in the article, so I copied a list of references not written by the article subject (your original contention) for convenience. I'm not sure why you keep using the word "bomb." Per WP:NOPE, notability is not a judgement of the merit of someone's work, it's determined by level of coverage by reliable independent sources. You may think someone's work is silly or dislike that it was also discussed on Twitter, but the level of in-depth coverage from a wide cross-section of Canadian media this subject has received, which is clearly demonstrated in the above sources, meets WP:GNG and WP:JOURNALIST. (I would also like to argue that creating a Canada-specific project which received engagement from 400,000 people, more than 1% of Canada's entire population, speaks to notability, though this does not directly address a journalist-specific criterion.) There are also citations for four different significant awards, two of which were awarded solely to the article subject. The remainder of the references I posted were additional independent articles from reliable, independent Canadian media about the article subject and other works he authored. (To point out another inaccuracy in your summary, 9 was not a podcast written by the article subject, but a prominent Canadian radio program produced by other, independent sources). (It's really disingenuous to first dismiss some of the media coverage of the subject surrounding one particularly prominent project as WP:BLP1E, and then go on to dismiss other media coverage about the subject's other actions as "a mishmash." By your logic, every article on Wikipedia is either WP:BLP1E or "a mishmash" and therefore not notable.) I would also urge you to remember WP:POLL, AfD is not a vote and "tallying" is not constructive. Finally, please remember that nearly all precedent for deletion under WP:JOURNALIST is for journalist puff pages where there is no sourcing available outside the article subject's own work, which is obviously not the case here.Audiovideodiscoo (talk) 07:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * You may want to familiarise yourself with WP:BOMBARD. If I've miscategorized any, I apologize, but I really do not see anything which makes him independently notable. I'll also need to see evidence of your precedent regarding journalist notability as I've seen a few journalist AfDs with delete outcomes recently. SportingFlyer  talk  02:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 00:19, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Journalism-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 00:19, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 00:19, 19 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete, without prejudice against recreation in the future if someone can do much better than this. There are potentially valid notability claims here, but they're not being reliably sourced: the reference pool here depends far too strongly on pieces of his own writing (a person gets a Wikipedia article by being the subject of sources written by other people, not the bylined author of reliable source coverage of other things), primary sources that cannot assist notability at all, and glancing namechecks of his existence in coverage of other things. And Audiovideodiscoo's pile of additional sources above are not an improvement: most of them represent the exact same kinds of bad sources, and the ones that don't are still press releases from organizations he's directly affiliated with, WorldCat directory entries which do not count as evidence of notability, and blogs or podcasts. None of them represent "substantive coverage about him in reliable sources that are independent of him", which is what WP:GNG requires — referencing an article to Wikipedia's satisfaction is not just a matter of finding any web page that happens to support the content you want to find a reference for. Only certain specific types of sources (namely media coverage about him) count as support for notability, and there's a specific minimum number of such sources that have to be shown before he's got enough, and there's a specific minimum depth of about-him-ness that a source has to surpass before it's about him enough to count toward that number. And none of the sources, either in the article or in the pile of additional sources shown above, are meeting all of the required standards. Bearcat (talk) 19:59, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete, the nom's link to a tweet by the BLP is very telling. He also realizes he doesn't meet WP's notability requirements. Atsme 📞📧 17:11, 25 March 2018 (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.