Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mitch Ratcliffe


 * 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 the clinching argument is the absence of non-trivial coverage of the subject. Spartaz Humbug! 20:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Mitch Ratcliffe

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Contested PROD on WP:BIO grounds. If this man is notable, it's at best borderline and I'd appreciate to hear what the community thinks. He's a tech journalist, which means that he's written several articles and publications, and has been cited (mostly in passing) in others. The article's creator has provided several links to that effect on the article talk page. What has not surfaced, though, is the kind of coverage about the man himself that we would need for WP:BIO purposes: "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." For instance, no third party seems to have been interested enough about him to cover even the biographical basics: date and place of birth, etc.  Sandstein   05:38, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep: Aside from this being an improper listing under AfD (AfD is meant to weed out articles that should NEVER have been included to begin with and should be included in Wikipedia in the future - not for valid stubs such as this that need to be cleaned up and expanded), this subject of this article is a veteran journalist who has written for CNET, Red Herring magazine, MacWEEK, has authored several well-cited books and magazine articles. Aside from that stand-alone notability, he is professionally notable among his peers as witnessed by his mention for his professional activities in the following sources: PBS, Executive Travel (magazine), BusinessWeek, IEEE, Red Herring, NYU, New York Times, BizJournals.com, Salon, TIME, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, State of Arkansas - Davodd (talk) 07:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Am I the only one who finds it an odd coincidence that this nominator has moved to delete a biographic article of a noted mainstream media journalist who covered the Wikia "Essjay" bio controversy scandal that tarnished Wikipedia's image in 2007? - Davodd (talk) 07:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If you mean to insinuate that I have ulterior motives for the nomination of this article, I am sorry to disappoint you. I am not aware of any role Ratcliffe may have had in that affair, and I care not about either the affair or the journalist.  Sandstein   08:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Nope. I was merely pointing out the irony that we are currently discussing deleting the bio of a man who notably criticized the way Wikipedia handles bios just last year. - Davodd (talk) 18:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't find it odd. Seems like a pretty reasonable nomination.  the nominator saw a marginal BLP.  He decided to take it to a forum where people discuss articles at the margin and if community consensus is that the article should be deleted, it gets deleted.  Rather than have some separate discussion for this and then list it at AfD, he just listed it at AfD. Protonk (talk) 16:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment on sources above
 * PBS: Cringely is not a reliable source. Period.  end of story.
 * Executive travel: Fluff piece that cites the subject, not covers him.
 * Business week blog: doesn't cover the subject. trivial.
 * NYU journalism blog: Much less trivial. Discusses the subject's thoughts on different models of journalism.  Doesn't really discuss the subject per se, but a little better.
 * Quoted as a source in the NYT on second life. The piece is not about the subject.
 * Same for the Pudget Sound Business journal.
 * Same for time magazine piece, literal 1 liner.
 * I didn't look at the salon piece yet.
 * IDK what is up with the AK bit. It's certainly not about this guy.

Keep as User: Davodd. Citation as authority by multiple prominent reliable sources demonstrates notability to reasonable people. The Enchantress Of Florence (talk) 21:35, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Look. Journalists write a lot.  they write in venues that other journalists read.  Tech evangalists also perform a critical function for journalists.  They have pithy ways of explaining what are effectively opaque motives and processes to journalists.  Those guys from NYT, Time, etc. all wanted to know how to tell their readers (in less than 50 words) what issue X was all about, but they didn't want to have to learn enough to say it themselves.  Solution?  Tech evangalists and earned media.  The fact that a guy who writes about second life had his work quoted in articles on second life doesn't constitute coverage of the SUBJECT in reliable sources.  For that we have to see that someone made an editorial decision to devote newspaper time to Ratcliffe (By writing a story), not just that his opinion on the subject was loud enough to be heard by the journalist trying to cover a different story.  My read is that (from the sources cited above) this guy isn't notable.  I compare him to Patrick Tyler, a journalist who has been working at the top of his field for years.  If he hadn't written a notable book AND been involved in a notable to-do, there wouldn't be coverage of the guy to build an article with, despite his having written hundreds if not thousands of widely read articles. Protonk (talk) 16:29, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions.   —Davodd (talk) 18:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per my points above. This is a marginal BLP where no secondary sources have covered the subject in any significant detail.  His biography is not a subject of public interest.  He fails WP:BIO and WP:N, if barely.  I'm not sure that we have any provision to keep articles on individuals who are cited in news pieces, but I can assure you that the general notability guideline doesn't cover it. Protonk (talk) 21:50, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Being mentioned in passing or being quoted by others is insufficient evidence of real notability, nor is it enough to base a real biography on. --CalendarWatcher (talk) 21:55, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think this does pass WP:BIO since there is nontrivial (although not in-depth) coverage by multiple independent sources. The sources discussed above all seem to fall essentially into this category: when his opinions are quoted or his business matters are mentioned, these are, to me, examples of nontrivial coverage. In this case there seems to be enough of it to pass WP:BIO. I tried to do a filtered googlenews search to exclude articles written by him and still got 138 hits. Even if a half of them are excludable, that is still quite a bit. A few quotes from these. From Onlamp:This session, featuring Doc Searls, Cameron Barrett, Mitch Ratcliffe, and Halley Suitt was definitely about blogging, mostly about politics, and not at all about effectiveness. Mitch Ratcliffe played the role of the voice of reason, emphasizing the role of blogs as just another publishing tool. He also pointed out that blogs fall into the "horse-race" style of campaign coverage just as much as the mainstream media (Trippi's "broadcast politics"). From Time Magazine:Says Mitch Ratcliffe, editor of the newsletter Digital Media: "I think consumers are going to be unimpressed for a decade or more." From Washington Post:"This is a big myth," said Mitch Ratcliffe, who runs a year 2000 Web site for publisher Ziff-Davis Inc. "A properly formatted date field will not generate 9999 on September 9 under any circumstances." From New York Times:"It's the first one-man war on the Internet," said Mitch Ratcliffe, a longtime Internet analyst who is editorial director of eCommerce Alert, a newsletter on electronic commerce. "Everyone on the 'Net is fascinated." From Los Angeles Times:"If anything, they are consolidating their strength," says Mitch Ratcliffe, president of Internet/Media Strategies Inc., a Lakewood, Wash. ... From [[Business Week]:Via Mitch Ratcliffe, who explains that he’s working with a group to come up with tools that analyze the trajectory and speed of how ideas become influential online. “The first example of our technology, at www.mydensity.com, which tracks the social network two degrees around any URL, doesn’t get to any of the influence tracking by topic/theme, but it is available in an enterprise service. From [[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]]:Mitch Ratcliffe, vice president of programming for ON24.com, said the trip had sparked a couple of ideas he'll pursue but that it didn't produce anything he ... From Los Angeles Times:"It's really a very smart move," said Mitch Ratcliffe, editor of the San Francisco-based newsletter Digital Media. "With Kavner, CAA is an instantly ... From Seattle Post Intelligencer:For example, blogger Mitch Ratcliffe urged Edwards to give a blogger a seat on his campaign bus, with complete access and without restrictions, should he decide to run for the 2008 Democratic nomination. From San Francisco Chronicle:``People are watching investment conferences on the Web that they couldn't get into in person," said Mitch Ratcliffe, vice president of programming. ``The ability to see (corporate executives) so they can judge whether they believe them is very important." And dozens more like these. Individually none of these amounts to much but collectively they do. There is also a more in-depth biographical page about him at Microsoft Research, where he seems to have been a keynote speaker at a conference:. I would say that taken together there is enough here to pass WP:BIO. Nsk92 (talk) 22:13, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete: The language of WP:N is unambiguous: "A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." (emphasis mine) A thousand quotes from him in articles written about other things does not in any way, shape and form satisfy WP:N as per Ratcliffe himself.  A single convention bio doesn't cut it - I can link several for when I've been a panelist and speaker at conventions, and that doesn't make me notable.  Is there a single source out there that satisfies WP:N?    RGTraynor  13:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * With that standard, many (perhaps most) of the people listed in Category:Journalists would be need to be deleted. Ratcliffe is a nationally published and widly quoted American journalist. Notability for journalists is not WP:N, as creative artists, it is Notability of Writers/Authors. As for notability of a journalist, it appears that Ratcliffe fulfills the guideline suggestions of "co-creating, a significant or well-known work" (as a featured writer having been published in many significant technology periodicals) and, additionally, by being "widely cited by their peers," since many other journalists - his peers - are citing him (see above list of reliable sources by Nsk92) - Davodd (talk) 06:17, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, you're right: creative professionals is the standard here. Let's see: "The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by their peers or successors."  Any sources to back that criterion up?  "The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique."  Which ones?  "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, which has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." (emphasis mine)  This goes back to the basic problem that he is not, himself, the subject of any articles or reviews.  It is not enough to create a body of work; that body of work must itself be the subject of reliable sources.    RGTraynor  15:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You are right, many, perhaps most of the journalists on wikipedia shouldn't have articles. That determination can be made on a case by case basis.  I believe that most people mis-apply WP:N to individuals whose business it is to be quoted by the media.  We treat those quotes as some sort of proxy coverage rather than just taking them for what they are. Protonk (talk) 17:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete - Per traynors comment above. Chris  lk02  Chris Kreider 14:49, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per Protonk's and RGTraynor's arguments. I don't really have anything to add. Equendil Talk 20:03, 12 September 2008 (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.