Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew Shribman


 * 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. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 15:22, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Matthew Shribman

 * – ( View AfD View log )

See talk for full details. Article was created as a promotional piece and continues to be edited to support the promotional activities of the subject. Infowars420 (talk) 23:47, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  07:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  07:58, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  07:59, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  07:59, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of COVID-19-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  07:59, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone  07:59, 31 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment. Leaning toward delete. There are a lot of citations, but the quality and depth of sourcing are deficient. Many of the news articles referenced just have brief mentions of his activities, rather than coverage of his background, and the festival lineup/his band's promotional material do nothing for notability. He's not a scientist (despite the peculiar insistence some of those articles have in calling him such), so it's harder to gauge whether this is just TOOSOON. JoelleJay (talk) 20:36, 31 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete. Sources are all either not reliable sources or mentions in passing.  A google news search shows a couple articles discussing a documentary he made but nothing more; no significant coverage of him personally in WP:RS and so fails WP:GNG.  Something is fishy, however - the page was created by a likely COI single-purpose account User:Magd2884, but the nominator is also a single-purpose account with no contributions to Wikipedia besides the PROD and AfD process on this article.  Be wary, but if I stumbled upon this article I'd've brought it here myself.  FalconK (talk) 05:37, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per FalconK. GhostDestroyer100 (talk) 10:33, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Disagree on the proposal for deletion. In an ecological emergency, should we be deleting environmentalists and science communicators? Furthermore, what makes an environmentalist noteworthy? Is it the impact of their work or its coverage? MIT Media Lab’s Pantheon study makes it clear that cultural noteworthy-ness / coverage is moving away from thinkers and towards “celebrities”. Should Wikipedia follow this trend too? Looking at articles of other science presenters Samantha Yammine, Lee Constable, Emily Grossman, the subject is of similar noteworthiness. Agreed on the need to improve this article. User:Infowars420, I note that you take general opposition to people using Wikipedia for self-promotion, and I appreciate this; it’s important. However, what is the purpose of an article like this? It does seem to have begun as autobiographical… but one questions to what end. It does not seem to be self-promotion for personal gain – most of his environmental work seems to be voluntary, and he is running an educational charity, supported by a grant from the UK government. Meanwhile, his work is having a significant positive impact. User:JoelleJay, to your point about “scientist”, the OED defines a scientist as a person who is studying or has expert knowledge in one or more of the natural or physical sciences, which is fulfilled by the subject. The Science Council has a narrower definition on their website, which seems to be disputed by… scientists. I will work on an edit today, and gather better sources. Full disclosure – I am part of a small community working to support science communicators. JHay556 (talk) 11:00, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * My comment applied more to the requirements for academic notability--if he was a tenure-track professor there would be a good chance his credentials would meet that notability guideline in the future. That said, he does not perform scientific research and his expertise is disputable (a master's (or PhD with no strong followup publication record after) does not and should not establish someone as an "expert"--this would confer dangerous degrees of authority to unqualified people). Especially in environmental science (and vaccines etc.) we should personally promote stringent criteria for whom we call an "expert", as having any wiggle room leads to media propagation of inaccurate descriptions and popular acceptance of unqualified and less-qualified opinions. That doesn't diminish the importance of environmental activists and communicators. You don't need advanced scientific understanding to communicate awareness and information to the public, and being able to do so in a way that reaches the most people is extremely valuable. This is why we need skilled science journalists and activists who can engage communities across socioeconomic and age strata; just because they should not be consulted as experts on the topics they disseminate doesn't mean they aren't a critical component of science education. If this guy has received significant coverage for his science communication, he could very well meet the general notability criteria. JoelleJay (talk) 19:06, 3 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Agreed on these points Joelle, though I'm also not proposing that we list him on Wikipedia as a scientist, hence my limiting to science communicator and environmentalist. I was more replying to you about why external articles might have written about him in this way. JHay556 (talk) 11:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment. Fellow Wikipedians, inviting feedback and collaboration on today's edits of this article. JHay556 (talk) 17:28, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The criteria for notability are pretty well established by consensus and we do not have a consensus policy of making exceptions based on whether someone's contributions are for a humanitarian purpose. To keep this article, we would need a showing that Mr. Shribman meets the criteria described in any of WP:GNG, WP:ANYBIO, WP:NACADEMICS, or some other part of WP:N.  I appreciate your attempt to improve the article, but it remains that the article relies heavily on unreliable sources such as the Facebook page of his own organization.  I'd also note that an article in Wikipedia is not a reward for doing good work, it's documentation of what reliable sources have said about the subject.  That is one reason we need significant coverage in third-party sources.  Also, @User:JHay556, I hate to ask, but do you also have another account?  It's unusual to see so much involvement in an AfD from so many accounts that have few edits to other areas of Wikipedia.  FalconK (talk) 01:45, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure what you mean by "relies heavily on unreliable sources such as the Facebook page of his own organization" though - only one reference (27) links to the subject's organisation's Facebook page, and that because it is a video of Caroline Lucas saying the quote. The other Facebook links are all to the organisations / people in question. As for reliable sources / broader coverage, I've cited the Times, News.com.au and NewsHub, which are among the most respectable news sources in the UK, Australia and New Zealand respectively. Other sources include the Metro of London, VICE Media, the Edmund Hilary Fellowship. As for the notability guidelines, if the words "entertainer" and "entertainment" were replaced with "environmentalist" / "science communicator" and "environmentalism" / "science communication" then I don't see why this article, like the others linked above, shouldn't stick, especially with the global context we are in. And yes, just this account - I don't usually do Wikipedia, though some colleagues have been working on other articles and giving me advice on how to do so, so I'm working on this. JHay556 (talk) 11:33, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep based on significant coverage such as BBC and The Times, it should stay. I also think anyone that gets invited to speak at TEdx is well vetted and must be an expert in his field to be invited to speak in such a well known conference. BTW, I removed some promotional language and it may need a little more work to make it less promotional sounding. Expertwikiguy (talk) 00:30, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per lack of WP:SIGCOV. "Significant coverage" for biographies of living persons is a term of art here on Wikipedia. It means that two or more reliable sources have covered the subject personally. Reliable sources include the BBC and The Times, a paper of record. However, the subject of their reports must be more than mere mentions and interviews can not be used to cite specific details about the person's life and work details. Also, we prefer secondary sources, rather than primary sources such as those news outlets, regardless of how reliable they are. The sources must also be independent of the subject, so citations to the person's social media and blogs are not allowed. We also have specific rules about whether certain honors allow for automatic notability (for example, getting a Nobel Prize). Most of the time, being connected to a notable or prestigious institution does not automatically confer notability. Even being associated with an important issue is not mean the person is notable; thousands of people are involved in climate change right now. Giving a TEDX talk is not so prestigious an honor to confer automatic notability. Wikipedians are in the process of cleaning out a lot of non-notable subjects from our encyclopedia; currently we are working on articles created in 2010 and 2011 and we have found there's a lot of non-notable persons who have articles on here. Sorry, but in my opinion, based on past similar cases, this person is not notable yet. Finally, althouigh some offending words have been removed, the article remains in such poor a state, with cites to social media, as to require a total re-write. Bearian (talk) 16:07, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - gives a very in-depth and cogent argument as to why this person does not currently meet WP:GNG.  Onel 5969  TT me 20:10, 7 January 2021 (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.