Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicholas Claxton


 * 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.  MBisanz  talk 00:17, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Nicholas Claxton

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I did not find sufficient coverage in secondary sources. Ringbang (talk) 20:33, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2016 March 11.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 20:46, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:15, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:15, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Middle East-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:15, 12 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep for his work on award winning documentaries ( such as Emmy Award) for major broadcasters such as BBC, and Disney, I think he passes WP:BASIC Atlantic306 (talk) 19:27, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
 * He was not the recipient of the Emmy. What are the secondary sources that lead you to conclude that he passes WP:BASIC? —Ringbang (talk) 15:28, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * It's also worth noting this "Keep" cannot be taken closely to actually better satisfying any applicable notability as his exact article is still currently questionable thus deleted for now. SwisterTwister   talk  22:38, 29 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The point I was making was that as well as WP:BASIC, he also passes the Creative notability guidelinesAtlantic306 (talk) 00:54, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * To be clear: I stand by the Delete vote implied by my nomination of the article. The references I found are almost entirely incidental mentions; I don't call that "significant coverage". Is this a case where a number of not-so-deep references amount to notability? I don't think so, because the closest that any of them comes to specifying Claxton's on-the-ground involvement is when Rich says that he interviewed subjects for Seeds of Despair. But Rich also says that Claxton won an Emmy, and my research does not corroborate that. Show me that he won the Emmy, and I'll rewrite the article instead of voting for deletion. —Ringbang (talk) 19:02, 30 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete as nothing solidly convincing for independent notability and my searches found nothing better. SwisterTwister   talk  22:08, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I continued my search. Here is Nicholas Claxton's filmography at the British Film Institute, and here is the filmography for his production company. I searched for coverage of the following documentaries: Drug Raped (1998), The Search for Shangri-la (1998), Frontline (1994), Linda McCartney: Behind the Lens (1992), The Hidden Hand (1991), Do They Feel My Shadow? (1991), Edward Goldsmith: The Green Revolutionary (1990), Suffer the Children (1988), Promised Lands (1987), The Price of Progress (1987), and Seeds of Despair (1984). Although I did find some coverage (listed below), it rather seems like scrapings to me. Some of the films are significant—no doubt about it. The question is, as SwisterTwister put it, is it "solidly convincing" evidence of "independent notability"? Most of the sources below are snippets from Google Books. In some cases, there isn't enough context to determine the depth of the coverage. In all cases, the emphasis is on the film, not the filmmakers. Even in Bruce Rich's book, which of all the sources is the most generous to Claxton, this is the case. Some of the films look really intriguing; especially the vanguard coverage of the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia. I still haven't found much that one can say about Claxton himself, and his involvement. Most of the material in the article right now is unsourced, and some of it is clearly promotional. It emphasizes his current career, which seems to be unnoteworthy. But even if I attempted to revise the article to refocus attention on his filmmaking career in the 1980s and '90s, I don't see much substance I could put into it from these sources (which are the best I could find). If the article is going to be more than a catalogue or summary of the films in which he had a greater hand, I think we need more and better sources than what I list here:
 * In his book Mortgaging the Earth, Bruce Rich writes about Claxton and his film The Price of Progress. Rich says that Claxton won an Emmy for Seeds of Despair, but I haven't found any sources that corroborate the claim that Claxton (as the film's producer) personally won the Emmy. When the film won a Peabody Award, the recipient was Central Independent Television. The 1986 Year Book and The Americana Annual say that CIT won the Emmy for Seeds of Despair. The Emmy search engine didn't return any hits. I also browsed through the documentary categories on Emmys.com for each year in which one of these films is meant to have won; again, no hits. Is there a more comprehensive resource for Emmy winners?
 * The Price of Progress is covered in The Latin American Times. It seems to have gotten a four-star rating in the Video Rating Guide for Libraries.
 * The Hidden Hand is discussed in Horizon, a Zimbabwean magazine.
 * A piece in New Statesman Society praises Do They Feel My Shadow? before its release.
 * Linda McCartney: Behind the Lens won a CableACE Award after it was rebroadcast in the United States. The film was on display in a retrospective of McCartney's photography.
 * Suffer the Children is mentioned in the magazine West Africa.
 * A writer for the Royal Geographical Society's magazine Geographical says "Claxton is perhaps best known for his Emmy Award-winning film Seeds of Despair". —Ringbang (talk) 21:04, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Malcolmxl5 (talk) 06:16, 20 March 2016 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment firstly I'd like to commend your extensive search for sources and your intention to produce a high class article. Unfortunately I can't seem to magnify the Google book results but I trust your judgement However, I think the paragraphs about Claxton in the book "Mortgaging the Earth" and his lesser coverage in other RS such as The Times article allow WP:BASIC to be passed and a stubb class article to be maintained until better sources occurr that would allow for a high class article. Atlantic306 (talk) 18:08, 26 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I think reducing the article to a stub with some select sources might be reasonable. The thing that stimies me about film and television producers is it's often unclear what their creative involvement was. When a film wins prestigious awards, that doesn't automatically confer notability to everyone involved with the film. In this self-written bio, he says he "made" Cry, Ethiopia, Cry, but his Wikipedia article says he was a "joint producer". What he actually did remains vague. —Ringbang (talk) 03:58, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I think from this source he was joint producer and as such when the film won the award it was received by both producers as is the case at the Oscars for best film. Atlantic306 (talk) 01:09, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Those producer credits appear on all those Frontline programme info pages. It's not a list of the Emmy recipients. I've found no document that names the recipients. Ringbang (talk) 04:15, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 06:13, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Arab Emirates-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:25, 28 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete: There just isn't enough solid coverage about him to meet WP:GNG, or any of the other notability criteria. Article would also likely need serious rewriting in order to not qualify for CSD G11, IMHO.  This article also suffers from far too much WP:OR for my tastes on top of the WP:PROMO aspects. Chrisw80 (talk) 06:12, 29 March 2016 (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.