Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Malcolm Wakeford


 * 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. No credible argument put forward that this is properly sourced. Spartaz Humbug! 06:46, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Malcolm Wakeford

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Promotional page created and for years maintained by Wakeford's business partner using the now COI/PAID-blocked accounts and. No significant coverage has been found or is presented, cf. Source assessment below. Subject does not meet the basic notability guideline for people and is not notable under the additional criteria for musicians.

Article looked like this when I first met it, and finding a total lack of reliable, secondary, independent sources that describe subject in detail, I redirected it to Little River Band, one of the better known bands Wakeford has had a short tenure with. Redirect was reverted without addressing the sourcing issues, and I opened a talk page discussion.

Since then, material posted by the COI/PAID editor in Draft:Malcolm Forest Wakeford has been merged into the article, and lack of secondary sources has resulted in e.g. the / Early years / section being sourced with scans of passenger lists dug from the depths of the National Archives of Australia, giving us such subject-irrelevant and overly detailed information as "Ronald continued to work on the tanker Hamilton Sleigh and finally arrived on a Qantas flight on 9 June 1966." Nobody cares about the name of the ship the supposed father of Wakeford worked on, equally less do we care about which day or with what airline he arrived.

The merging of the COI/PAID editor's "update" in Special:Diff/823909029/823918970 is a verbatim copy paste from Draft:Malcolm Forest Wakeford (Special:PermaLink/823788578). Besides the introduction into main space of several sections with totally unsourced material, and free promotion of Wakeford's upcoming album, also unsourced, this selective paste-merge includes a source like

which is an anonymous blog post that consists of multiple copy-pastes from Wikipedia articles and copyright violations of other artists' sites. And is used as a "source" in the article to directly support a statement about Wakeford. WP:IRS, please.

You can't polish a turd, and while Malcolm Wakeford still is a possible search term and the most likely target for a redirect still is Little River Band, this promo trainwreck should be deleted before any redirect is created. Delete per WP:DEL8.

Sam Sailor 20:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor 20:29, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor 20:33, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Per Sam Sailor's thorough assessment of sources. I considered this subject might be notable per the criteria of having been a member of multiple notable bands, but upon investigation found his roles were generally that of a journeyman session player or touring member on various projects rather than that of a significant, ongoing part of the ensemble. Although the subject seems accomplished it's not more than run-of-the-mill existence and absent significant third party recognition I say delete. ShelbyMarion (talk) 10:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep I dispute the nominator's assessment of many of the article's sources: some of which I supplied for the article.


 * The subject was a substantial contributing member of two (or more) notable bands – more than just a "journeyman session player or touring member" – he was recorded on their releases, he co-wrote material with other members, he toured nationally and/or internationally as a full member of these groups.


 * The article was redirected by the nominator without any consensus with other interested editors: it was disputed by another editor and was reverted.


 * Notability issues have been muddied by conflation with the COI situation. The fact that a major contributor(s) had a business relationship with the subject is now known: this was not self-declared and WP:Assume Good Faith requires other editors to accept another's material at face value. The COI 'plate was placed about 36 hours after I had started editing this article. I have no problem with the blocking of those two accounts.


 * In editing this article I have added citation needed 'plates, removed self-serving refs and trimmed the External links section, including the removal of the subject's business concern: interestingly the nominator added that link in the infobox as their "Official website", which it is not.


 * The article certainly requires clean up: both for COI issues to neutralise tone, remove biases and self-promotion; and for removal of redundancy and repetition of sections.


 * However, the subject, himself, passes WP:MUSICBIO despite the nominator's claims otherwise.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 01:25, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: The Australian editor above disputes my assessment of many of the article's sources, but does not disclose which.
 * In Special:Diff/823737175/next they introduced the unsourced birth year "c. 1951". Subsequently in Special:Diff/823920807/next they violated WP:BLPPRIMARY and introduced based on a misreading of this primary source the birth month and year to "September 1950". If we are to believe the article's creator and main contributor, Wakeford's business partner, Wakeford was born 13 July. Secondary sources on his DOB have not been found.
 * Concurrently they removed BLP sources an notability despite the article being an under-sourced COI/PAID job.
 * They then in Special:Diff/823955826/next used this annonymous blog, which consists of copy-pastes from Wikipedia, to source a fact about Wakeford. This is a simple WP:REFLOOP mistake, but it does illustrate the near impossibility to find reliable sources about Wakeford, and a profound misjudgement of sources.


 * The editor contends that Wakeford was a substantial contributing member of two (or more) notable bands, but as the article stands now, this is entirely based on original research that stitches together one trivial mention in databases after the other. There are no reliable, secondary sources to back this up. Rather contrary, of the three bands Wakeford had short, less than 1-year tenures with, Little River Band (LRB), Redgum, and Flying Emus, LRB remain the most prominent, and as one single source added by me states in regards to Wakeford and LRB: "Other members wouldn't last long at all; 1986 was drummer Malcolm Wakeford's sole year of service." In fact, Wakeford was in use only for the short seven gig April 1986 tour after Steve Prestwich had left LRB, and Wakeford only plays as an additional musician on one single track of the album No Reins. He is not a substantial contributing member.


 * Redirecting an article does not require prior consensus, please read the relevant policy that states:
 * "Sometimes an unsuitable article may have a title that would make a useful redirect. In these cases, deletion is not required; any user can boldly blank the page and redirect it to another article. If the change is disputed, an attempt should be made on the talk page to reach a consensus before restoring the redirect."


 * We write articles based on significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent from subject. That is not the case here. Here whole chunks of COI/PAID text is regrettably copy-pasted directly into main space, and the text is then bombarded with bottom-scraping sources that is misused. The fact that it is done in part by someone who "know most of the original members [of LRB]" is worrying. Sam Sailor 13:36, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment – I don't like the nominator's tone: it is overly abrasive, accusatory and misleading. There is no need to be uncivil.
 * It seems that the nominator agrees that the subject's birth year is 1950 (which surely is c. 1951?) but why cite a banned account for his birth date? I can live with removal of September, leaving born in 1950.
 * The nominator is able to trawl old edits of the article: he provides them with no hesitation. However he implies that I removed the templates while the article was labelled as COI (PAID was not mentioned at that time) however his research would show the COI 'plate was not placed until about four hours after the edit he directed us to, above. Why this misdirection?
 * In another accusation he claims that I used an anonymous blog. However, I had reworded the sentence "He played drums on their Postcards From Paradise" to "He played drums on their third album, Postcards from Paradise (1989)" and hadn't even checked the source at that time. For my next edit I added a template for that source. Now the nominator is accusing me of using the blog: again this is misdirection and unfair accusation.
 * Nominator contends that subject "is not a substantial contributing member" of LRB. I disagree. The nominator believes that sources supporting his membership and contributions are "original research" while the only source the nominator likes is his own. I dispute his interpretation of many of the sources in this article and believe the subject has been shown to be a substantial member of two (or more) notable bands.
 * Redirect policy is quoted, there was a dispute over how "useful" the applied redirect was. Consensus is not obligatory for a redirect: sure, this is in that policy, but why not seek consensus when the article is being actively edited by other users? It was disruptive to those editors in the way it was applied.
 * In the final ¶ above the nominator talks about "whole chunks" being "copy-pasted". The implication is that I had something to do with these. However the edits were made by a different editor. Likewise the nominator cites a talkpage entry by that other editor. This additional ¶ is a misdirection as it applies to another user but the nominator gives the clear impression that it belongs to me by adding it to the previous ¶¶.
 * In his nomination pre-amble he directs us to WP:DEL8. We find there a caveat, "subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page." I attempted to improve the article by what I believe to be reliable sources; now I'm being accused of various forms of poor editing and my reputation is being tarnished by someone willing to misdirect others to support his belief.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 22:40, 11 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Let's Refocus on notability. So far nobody claims that Wakeford passes WP:BASIC/WP:GNG.
 * A musician may be notable under WP:MUSICBIO #6 if (s)he "is a musician who has been a reasonably prominent member of two or more independently notable ensembles". I added this source that says "Other members wouldn't last long at all; 1986 was drummer Malcolm Wakeford's sole year of service." Bring on the sources that say Wakeford was a prominent member of two or more bands. Sam Sailor 08:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete – does not appear to meet notability criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia. Per the above assessment, does not appear to have received significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources. Citobun (talk) 15:00, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. Wakeford was a member of Little River Band and Flying Emus, and therefore is "a musician who has been a reasonably prominent member of two or more independently notable ensembles. Generally speaking, in a small ensemble, all people are reasonably-prominent" per MUSIC BIO #6. Hence the subject satisfies a criterion for inclusion. WWGB (talk) 22:23, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * With all due respect WWGB, how deep was your research into this? Re: Little River Band has had over 30 members through out its 43 year career. He was with the group for 1 year during the duration of recording a single album among their 17 career album output. I certainly wouldn't characterize this as a "reasonably prominent member" per wiki criteria. He appears to have played a bit larger role with Flying Emus, but even there he was not among the founding key members per the sources, nor as a bluegrass band is a drummer typically an essential part of the ensemble. ShelbyMarion (talk) 04:32, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I repeat, "in a small ensemble, all people are reasonably-prominent". That's Wikipedia talking, not me. LRB never had more than seven members at any one time, so it was always "a small ensemble". Hence, "all people [including Wakeford] are reasonably-prominent". We don't have to agonize over our own thoughts on prominence, Wikipedia has made the decision for us. WWGB (talk) 04:50, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: No, that is a common WP:INHERITED fallacy:
 * Wakeford was a member of Little River Band and Flying Emus, and therefore is "a musician who has been a reasonably prominent member of two or more independently notable ensembles.
 * Having been a member of a band does not equal to being "a musician who has been a reasonably prominent member". The onus to demonstrate through reliable sources that the musician was indeed a "reasonably prominent member" lies with the editor making the claim. Just making the claim is not enough. Notability (music) makes no fuss about it:
 * "To meet Wikipedia's standards for verifiability and notability, the article in question must actually document that the criterion is true. It is not enough to make unsourced or poorly sourced claims in the article, or to assert a band's importance on a talk page or AfD page – the article itself must document notability through the use of reliable sources, and no criterion listed in this page confers an exemption from having to reliably source the article just because passage of the criterion has been claimed."


 * I still invite new sources, but without them, the MUSICBIO#6 criterion has not been proven true. And right now, there are none. Sam Sailor 20:26, 15 February 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.