Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maureen Brady


 * 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-admin closure) B dash (talk) 02:24, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Maureen Brady

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WP:BLP of a writer, who has no strong or reliably sourced claim to passing WP:AUTHOR. The strongest notability claims here are unsourced assertions about minor literary "awards" that aren't instant notability passes, and mostly sound like council or foundation grants rather than actual awards, and the referencing is 50 per cent her own primary source profiles on the self-published websites of her own publishers and 50 per cent blogs, which means that it's exactly zero per cent notability-supporting coverage in real reliable sources -- and the only other attempt at "referencing" that was present here at all was a set of WP:ELNO-violating offlinks to her books' own sales pages on Amazon or their publishers' websites. As always, the notability test for a writer is not just that her work metaverifies its own existence on online bookstores -- it requires real, genuinely reliable media sources to devote attention to her writing, such as critical reviews of her books and/or actual journalism about her, but none of the sources here meet that standard. Bearcat (talk) 22:55, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Ceethekreator (talk) 23:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Ceethekreator (talk) 23:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. Ceethekreator (talk) 23:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Bearcat. I see your nomination for the article Maureen Brady for deletion. Allow me to explain why I think this should not happen.

Maureen Brady's work is of historical importance. She was a prominent writer and publisher during the period of "women's fiction", specifically the advent of lesbian fiction in the 70s and 80s. She founded a very important publishing company -- Spinsters Ink -- which is of historical importance to lesbian and feminist publishing. And her early work was lauded by prominent lesbian feminists such as Audre Lorde.

I started this article before I was able to access the writer's archives. Much of the important press Brady received was at a time before the internet. As a lesbian feminist she is of a marginalized group and therefore it will take a little more work for me to access the citations that, I agree, are necessary to prove her notability according to Wikipedia's guidelines. However, I plan to visit an archive that will give me more information and my research will provide more relevant links. I do agree that the sources are slim, but I do plan to improve them. It would be a real disservice to delete the article prematurely, when Brady is such an important figure to the history of the development of women's fiction in the United States. (Recently the Feminist Press re-issued Folly, one of her early works, as a classic).

Please give me a few days to improve the article. Thank you for your feedback. Thanks, Osomadre.Osomadre (talk) 23:18, 11 April 2019 (UTC) Osomadre
 * Just to be clear, the correct approach to getting a topic into Wikipedia is not to create the article and then put the work into actually finding any references that properly support notability weeks or months later — the research comes first, and then the creation of the article follows, not vice versa. You also have the option of working on something in draftspace or your own user sandbox, and then moving it into mainspace when it's done. Also, her personal archives aren't notability-supporting sources: what you need to show to make a person notable is media coverage about her in published reliable sources that are independent of her. So access to her personal archives isn't really the ticket here: what you need to get into is newspaper and magazine databases and books that might have covered her as a subject, not her own personal papers. Bottom line is, we don't keep poorly sourced articles pending the possible future addition of sources that have not actually been found yet; when you want to create a new Wikipedia article, you do the referencing research first and then you create the article afterward. Bearcat (talk) 13:42, 12 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep Keep for now. Osomadre made excellent points and I think that with the right citations/sources Maureen Brady could be an excellent addition. 9H48F (talk) 02:14, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Found additional sources in JSTOR and reorganized slightly. I find using a lot of headlines in such a short article frustrating to read so removed those, but feel free to add back in if you think neccessary. 9H48F (talk) 13:16, 12 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep While I agree that the article was not ready for mainspace when it was moved from a draft, I'm not sure why, as a brand new article, it came straight to AfD, rather than having notability and better sourcing tags added. It looks clear to me that the subject will meet WP:AUTHOR. I have found and added some reviews of her books, and there are more in newspapers and in journals that can be added. RebeccaGreen (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, RebeccaGreen and 9H48F. Visiting the writer's archives, which I did today, was helpful to find things out that I couldn't find out by searching the web. As many of the author's reviews were from pre-internet times, unfortunately I was not able to use some of the ones I found today because they are not online. I think it's very clear at this point that this article and this author meets the notability guidelines. The criticism from Bearcat was helpful and now I think the article is much improved. Question: when can we agree to let the article stay put? Thanks, Osomadre. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Osomadre (talk • contribs) 01:21, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Osomadre: 1. Sources do not need to be online, per WP:SOURCEACCESS. If you have the title of the article/review, the name of the author, the title, date, volume, issue and page numbers of the journal/book it appeared in, then add the sources to the article. 2. When an article has been nominated for deletion, it is usually discussed for 7 days before being evaluated for closing. If there is no a clear consensus, it may then be extended so that more editors can add to the discussion. So it's likely that this will remain open until 18 April, at least. RebeccaGreen (talk) 03:44, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you RebeccaGreen. I did not know that about citations not needing to exist online. I am a new Wikipedia editor -- I joined as a result of the #ArtandFeminism Women's History Month Edit-A-Thons, and so far the only editing I had done was on visual artist pages, which I'm much more familiar with as an artist myself. Do you recommend JSTOR? It seems you found some great things that are inaccessible through a regular google search. Thanks again, Osomadre. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Osomadre (talk • contribs) 12:10, 13 April 2019 (UTC)
 * There are many types of search for material Google does not find. Look at WP:The Wikipedia Library to start with. JSTOR is included there but, unless I am mistaken, anyone at all can register for free. Access is then limited but not in a way I have ever found to be a problem. Have you discovered WikiProject Women artists yet? Personally I think references to offline articles are even more useful than online. Using these brings back onto the web information that could otherwise become lost: it is very important to cite them carefully. Thincat (talk) 09:27, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Thincat! That is so helpful. It's so good to connect with other Wikipedia editors who are interested in correcting the systemic bias. I appreciate your suggestions and am just learning a lot including how to create manual references...All the best, Osomadre — Preceding unsigned comment added by Osomadre (talk • contribs) 02:03, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep I have only looked at the article in its present state but seems there is sufficient (referenced) information to establish that her work has "won significant critical attention" WP:AUTHOR #4c. Thincat (talk) 09:49, 18 April 2019 (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.