Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Maximillian Laumeister (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 delete. Ad Orientem (talk) 02:22, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Maximillian Laumeister
AfDs for this article: 
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Cites contain negligible biographical detail, refs to BitListen are passing curiosities, Listen to Wikipedia isn't even anything to do with Laumeister, nothing in a WP:BEFORE. Notability of Laumeister or BitListen is negligible at best. Previous AFD was "no consensus" due to no-one bothering to participate. David Gerard (talk) 15:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. David Gerard (talk) 15:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. David Gerard (talk) 15:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:GNG, WP:MILL, and WP:SIGCOV. I found five articles on Google News about the subject, three mentions in books. This guy is not even close to being notable. Bearian (talk) 18:37, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Bearian, please note that according to WP:GNG the quality of coverage in verifiable, reliable sources is the determiner of whether something is notable on Wikipedia, not just appeals to numbers - see WP:ARBITRARY. Non-notable is one thing, but the sentiment "not even close to being notable" comes off to me as somewhat reactionary in light of the article's sourcing in mainstream tech media, and the additional source and scholarly paper which I was able to find with just a bit of smart googling. Remember that the guidelines are what determine notability, not WP:IDONTKNOWIT. K.Koopa (talk) 18:36, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep Redirect to BitListen - Changing my !vote from Keep to Redirect. Per Pichpich and Jbh, I am starting to understand that Laumeister himself is not notable as a biographical subject, per se. I stand by what I said about sources establishing notability, but for BitListen rather than Laumeister specifically. K.Koopa (talk) 23:58, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't feel like I have enough experience to be the final arbiter of notability based on the sourcing, but it's worth noting that I did dig up and add two more secondary sources that reference the subject, including an academic journal article on data sonification that calls the BitListen project "emblematic". The subject is definitely not WP:MILL, as article is not cookie cutter, i.e. does not "resemble [...] other articles by containing mostly the same words with a few fill-in-the-blanks". Regarding WP:SIGCOV, multiple independent reliable sources do address the subject directly, such that "no original research is needed to extract the content", in accordance with the notability guideline. For borderline articles like this one, it's not very informative IMO to just cite guideline pages broadly, see WP:VAGUEWAVE - notability needs to be decided based on the actual content of the guidelines. K.Koopa (talk) 18:36, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * The sources you added don't seem to talk about the article subject, though. Perhaps there's material for an article on BitListen - but is there any actual substantive coverage of Laumeister? - David Gerard (talk) 19:52, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
 * David, it appears that in June of this year, you actually quietly removed a citation of a direct media interview with Laumeister using the reasoning "no way is this reliable", though I could find no criteria under WP:PUS or WP:RS that would substantiate such a decision. I also noticed in the edit history that you recently edited a second citation out of the article - the edit was made during this very AfD - with the reasoning "no subject of this article is mentioned in this reference". However, the citation is from a reliable source that indeed substantiates a statement in the article. Please be more careful with your edits in the future. Whether the references help establish notability is for consensus here to decide - when you remove reliable citations that substantiate information in the article, but that you personally don't believe "show notability", that impedes editors' ability to come to a consensus with full information during this AfD process. I know that what you are doing seems harmless, but to an outsider, it could appear that you are removing information that you personally believe shouldn't be taken into account during the AfD, to tip the AfD in your favor.  For now I have restored the citations and text in question until consensus is reached in this AfD, so that potential AfD contributors will be able to make their own unbiased decisions. If you believe that a source is unreliable due to reasons outside of WP:PUS, please feel free to discuss your concerns on the article's talk page if this article still exists after the AfD, but removing reliably cited sections of the article that you don't agree with during an active AfD is not the way to go about it. Please understand that there will be plenty of time to clean up the article after notability is determined. K.Koopa (talk) 02:54, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * You used 99bitcoins, a ridiculously low-quality cryptocurrency blog, as a source for a BLP. I've removed it again. The bad sourcing remains bad sourcing, and makes the article appear much more puffed-up than its actual Reliable Sources content warrants. The strong sourcing required of WP:BLPs still applies to articles under an AFD - David Gerard (talk) 12:56, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I understand that the removal itself of the 99bitcoins interview in June was most likely done in good faith, though I can't say I personally agree after reviewing WP:BLPRS, especially since the source is not tied to potentially contentious statements in the article. The issue here is your denial of the source's existence - or did you legitimately forget that you removed that source in June? At this point if you have specific concerns about the source's reliability, then please elaborate, that's what this discussion is for - it's not enough to just hand-wave and say that the source is "ridiculously low-quality". From a cursory look at the 99bitcoins site, it looks to me like the company's articles are written by paid writers, they have their staff and headquarters listed on their about page, and the founder has guest-blogged on Bitcoin.com, presumably a reliable publication in this space. But again, the quality of the sources in regards to notability is a question for the contributors to this AfD - by reinstating contentious deletions you run the risk of impeding the ability of this AfD to come to an unbiased consensus with full information. The correct way to go about this would have been to mention the source and mention that you removed it in June because you believed it was (un)reliable - not to play dumb and ask me whether any sources directly interview Laumeister after having removed such a source yourself in June.  In regards to the NPR citation you removed, keep in mind that a citation is nothing more than a reliable source that substantiates information in an article. As far as whether a citation should be included in an article, it's not relevant whether the citation "looks like it puffs up" the article - that's a notability question for the editors here in the AfD.  I also noticed that you again deleted the (in my view) unquestionably reliably-sourced paragraph on BitListen's relation to its notable derivative work Listen To Wikipedia. I'm not going to turn this into an edit war, instead I encourage participants in this AfD to compare  with  and form their own opinion. I don't think I am being unreasonable on this - above all we need to keep decisions unbiased in here. I feel like we are very much lacking additional informed viewpoints in this AfD at this point, so I encourage others to weigh in. K.Koopa (talk) 20:41, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * (Striked the above sentence, with my apologies. I didn't realize that Listen To Wikipedia was already mentioned near the beginning of the article. I agree it's reasonable as per your edit not to give it a second mention, regardless of sourcing quality. My other concerns still stand, however.) K.Koopa (talk) 00:22, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
 * David, with all due respect, it looks like you have a history of deleting information from articles to hide the information from AfD participants. As quoted from a participant in an unrelated AfD: "The point is that we can decide if it's rubbish or not, rather than you telling us that it's rubbish and that we're not to even look at it." . K.Koopa (talk) 21:19, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
 * No, I remove bad sources when they're bad sources, as I stated. This is a BLP, we don't keep bad sources in the article. An interview in an unreliable promotional publication is not a source that should be considered for a BLP, of all things. This is really basic sourcing stuff, and you're pretending these really basic sourcing rules don't exist - David Gerard (talk) 22:58, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, – bradv  🍁  23:07, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete Biographical coverage is trivially related to a piece of software that got some "Hey! Neat!" coverage. It does not meet the significant coverage requirement of GNG nor does he meet any of the biographical notability requirements which could be applicable ie PROF (mentioned in 2 papers), ANYBIO, or CREATIVE. Jbh  Talk  18:53, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete and then possibly redirect to BitListen which is the only thing Laumeister is known for. The next questions are of course: "Is BitListen notable?" and "Is Listen to Wikipedia notable?" My first instinct is to say "yes, barely" in both cases. Pichpich (talk) 19:18, 18 August 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.