Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mel Greif


 * 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 no consensus. After two full relistings, no consensus for a specific outcome has occurred in this discussion. This discussion is being closed with no prejudice against speedy renomination, per relatively low participation. North America1000 12:37, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Mel Greif

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WP:BLP of a high school teacher, not reliably sourced as the subject of enough reliable source coverage to get over WP:GNG. The notability claim here is that he won awards, but neither of them are "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to have been covered by real media -- but the only references here are primary sources which are not support for notability at all. Bearcat (talk) 04:23, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 04:23, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 04:23, 26 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. This is listed in the academic deletion discussion list, but WP:PROF does not really apply to him; I think, for high school teachers, all we have to go on is WP:GNG. So it's not the level of the awards that we should be looking at, but their coverage. I've added more and more-independent sources, most of them with in-depth coverage (the CBC one is not in-depth). I think it now shows that he passes that criterion. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:28, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The references you've added include a non-independent source (Ontario College of Teachers) that is not support for notability because he's directly affiliated with it; two glancing mentions of his existence in sources whose primary subjects are other people, and thus don't speak to Mel Greif's notability as they aren't about Mel Greif; and a 79-word blurb that is not substantive. The only source you've added that's actually starting to get us somewhere is the Globe and Mail piece, but that doesn't get us to the finish line all by itself if it's the only substantive and reliable source about Mel Greif that can be shown. GNG is not just "content can be found on the web with his name in it": it requires the sources to be independent of him, deprecating the self-published content of directly affiliated organizations; and it requires the sources to be about him, deprecating brief mentions of his name in sources whose primary subjects are other things or people who aren't him; and it requires the sources to be substantive coverage, deprecating short blurbs. Bearcat (talk) 00:05, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * When all teachers in the entire province of Ontario belong to an organization, his membership in it is de minimis compared to the prominence of coverage they have given to him. It's as if you were saying that we could not use any US-based newspaper to source stories about citizens of the US, because the sources are from a group the subjects belong to. It's taking the rules as more important than the intent behind the rules, and then greatly exaggerating parts of those rules that are disconnected from that intent. Additionally, the Spacing magazine coverage is primary only for the claim that he was given the Jacobs Prize; everything else in its (substantive) article about him is secondary. We don't pretend that in-depth magazine articles about a subject are unusable merely because the magazine also gave him a prize as well as writing an in-depth article about him; the prize plus the article is more than, not less than, the article would be without the prize. And for the part that the article is not secondary for, the prize itself, we have another source as well. And when you write "that can be shown", you are incorrect, unless that was an inaccurate way of writing "that has been shown", because more can be shown than already had been. In particular, he is also covered in non-trivial detail in the 2016 Encyclopedia of Bohemian and Czech-American Biography. (I didn't find this earlier because it uses a different form of his first name. And it is self-published, but nevertheless looks authoritative.) —David Eppstein (talk) 00:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * No, it's absolutely nothing like saying that "we could not use any US-based newspaper to source stories about citizens of the US" — it's like saying that we can't use a non-media organization's own self-published blog content about its own members as a priori evidence of those members' notability to the world at large, which is not the same thing as deprecating real media. Bearcat (talk) 18:10, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 09:12, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Nothing in this article is remotely notable. Dorama285 19:34, 07 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think that word means what you think it means. Notability, on Wikipedia, is almost completely unrelated to significance, and is about available sourcing, not the contents of the article. You appear to be trying to say that nothing in the article is significant, but that's not what we're deciding here. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:13, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It hasn't been shown that he's notable in the "available sourcing" sense, either. Bearcat (talk) 22:30, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   19:33, 9 February 2020 (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.