Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pamella Bordes


 * 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. Although we must be sensitive to BLP, in this case she has enough significant coverage in reliable sources for notability, and the continuous coverage shows that it does not fall under WP:BLP1E. Following BLP policy here is not solved by deletion, but by proceeding with caution over all statements made in the article. As a side note, the Wikipedia article (which is significantly less negative and gossipy than a lot of the news articles) is first on the Google results, so the existence of the article may actually be beneficial to her reputation. King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 02:04, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Pamella Bordes

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This is a request for deletion by the subject of the article, Pamella Singh (previously Bordes), re:OTRS ticket 2012091410007106''

The controversial content relates to press coverage of Singh's role as a 'companion' to several notable individuals. The issue was raised at BLP/N in this thread. Content was revised but not removed; thus the deletion request.

I'm relaying this request on behalf of Pamella Singh. Please consider it as if she presented it herself. --User:Ocaasi

Message from Pamella Singh,

The original stories about me were originated by the News of The World a British tabloid paper which had to be shut down due to their track record of publishing inaccurate stories and phone hacking etc. Once they published stuff the material snowballed from there and other newspapers picked it up including some serious newspapers. No one called me to verify anything and by the time I got the information it was too late because it was everywhere and I had become a cottage industry for anyone to write as they pleased. In fact, they are still doing it. The information in this paragraph has been taken from various british newspapers most of them tabloid like the News Of The World etc. Everybody knows how unscrupulous British tabloids are in hounding and destroying people's lives with inaccuracies and lies.

This information on me in wikipedia has totally destroyed my life. I have been deeply unhappy and frightened for the past 25 years due to this. For past 20 years I have been doing very well as a professional photographer but people outside the art world do not take me seriously no matter how hard I work or how many prestigious exhibitions I have. I am sexually attacked by men because they read the wikipedia description of me and I am the target of jealous and hateful women who malign me when they see how well i have done as a photographer. I think I have been punished enough since 1989.

Just last week I was attacked by a woman at my photography exhibition who i thought had come to see the pictures. She said she had googled me and that she was shocked by what she had read. She was veryj udgemental and nasty. I was very upset by the incident because I had worked hard to make this exhibition a success and she was really going for me. She was not at all interested in my work but was attacking me for the very stuff which was in paragraph one.

This information about me was gathered around 25 years ago and its not completely accurate. People that i have been associated with in this article like Ahmed Al-Daim are not even alive any more and Mr. Kahassoggi was only a social acquaintance.

Many thanks for your co-operation. --Pamella Singh


 * Tentative delete I'm unsure if she's notable in herself: she has three possible sources of notability, as a beauty queen, as a feature in gossip columns, and as a photographer. I don't think the last is very compelling.  Her friendship with Andrew Neil was the cause of a celebrated libel case in 1990, and both her and the libel case are still discussed many years later. This issue is important to the history of Neil, who has been a major figure in British media since the early 1980s, and arguably to British libel case law (in view of the questions it raised about the nature of reputation and the derisory damages awarded), and therefore should not be removed from Neil's article.  As a beauty queen, I'm not convinced she's notable and can't find any guidelines.
 * Incidentally there's a minor error in the OTRS comment above, since Bordes was her surname from a former marriage, not her birth name. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:05, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete This seems a clear case of WP:1E in that the only real notability arises from the London years, and can be adequately dealt with under the Andrew Neil article.Martinlc (talk) 21:48, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Weak keep - we've had a few of these recently and the point I have made elsewhere is that the test for WP:GNG is "significant coverage" not "significant complimentary coverage". Selecting which sources we include based on whether or not they are complimentary of the subject is contrary to WP:NPOV. Excluding material because we don't like it is akin to original research in that we are building an article which is not based on reliable sources. There are always going to be some subjects (including BLPs) which have only uncomplimentary coverage. That is unfortunate but Wikipedia is not censored. It didn't take much to find more sources, like this from the Deccan Herald, this and this from the Daily Mail, this from The Week, this from The Telegraph and this from the New Straits Times. None of those are from the News of the World, by the way.
 * I don't think this is a case of WP:1E given some of those articles relate to other events / instances. I think the subject quite obviously meets WP:GNG.
 * That said, we need to be cognisant of the obvious BLP issues. But I think these are resolved by the use of relatively NPOV language. The article does not refer to the subject as a prostitute, though many of the sources do. The article is also primarily focussed on her more recent photographic work, rather than her more "controversial" history as most of the sources are.
 * The whole point of WP:V is to ensure we don't publish material which is not supported by reliable sources and the reality is that the claims in the article (entirely true or not) are backed up by sources. Deleting this article will not delete the sources on which it has been built - googling the subject's name will still allow people to see all of those articles. Again, it didn't take me long to find the sources above (and I used both "Singh" and "Bordes") so deleting this article will have little, if any, impact.
 * However, my position is Weak keep for a reason - mostly because I am an advocate for the principle of "avoiding harm". I don't think the article is so valuable (in an encyclopaedic sense) that we should be fighting to keep it at all costs. I'm not convinced that deleting it will solve the problems the subject has been having, but If the subject badly wants the article deleted then I see "no harm" in deleting it (as distinct from this argument), from an encyclopaedic perspective.
 * But (and this is a big one), if we delete the article, we should give serious consideration to salting both potential titles. Based on the sources available, I certainly don't think this is the most uncomplimentary article that could have resulted - a far less complimentary one could have been created (as far as I am concerned) without breaching either WP:V or WP:NPOV. If we are going to reach a consensus that the article should be deleted, we should ensure an attack page cannot be created in its place in the future.
 * Cheers, Stalwart 111  (talk) 03:36, 25 September 2012 (UTC).


 * Keep. She received massive media coverage for a while and her name is still highly recognisable in the UK. Although only a minor celebrity at best, the coverage she received makes her notable enough for an article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:48, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 09:49, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 09:49, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 09:49, 27 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Weak keep There is no doubt that the internet can do harm as well as good. Anyone googling her on her past or present name will be able to read a great deal about her personal life, true or not. Fortunately WP is not the offender here, and her case does turn out to raise some important issues. She was widely reported to have been involved in a number of relationships with men but she seems now to be denying the interpretation placed on that. Significantly, so did prominent men involved (a newspaper editor and government minister) and the whole point of the story there came down to an allegation that she was concealing elements of her past and present life from them in order to establish a relationship which was itself then being used to make her more attractive to prospective clients. Importantly, none of the sources quoted in the WP article are themselves reliable for any of that. The first two references in the article make only passing mention of her, and the third is not about her but does contain a paragraph alleging that she made certain admissions but without itself quoting a source and so that at least should come out. References 4 and 5 are unavailable and the last two about her as a photographer (the last not an RS anyway). So the basis of allegations about her does indeed seem to be in 1989 articles in the News of the World and Daily Mail both of which are not RS for Wikipedia. The affair is, however, discussed in the Max Clifford article using a book co-authored by him as a source.
 * So we have a BLP where the subject might be notable as a former Miss India, because she was given extensive coverage at the time for personal relationships with people who were themselves notable and because of tabloid claims about how she earned her money which she now says were inaccurate, and is now the subject of articles raking up her past and making claims that are frankly impossible to substantiate. I do not think she is notable as a photographer. She was not convicted of a criminal offence. Had she been accused of breaking the law WP would not allow those claims to be used.
 * As Necrothesp points out, it is difficult now to deny that the media coverage she has received does satisfy GNG though if anyone can make a stronger case for extending WP:BLP1E to deal with this I would be sympathetic. My advice to her would be that the WP article as it is now, which is always likely to appear at the top of Google searches, is the fairest and most helpful way of summarising her life compared with anything else people are likely to encounter on the internet. But I do think that the nature of the sources of the unfavourable coverage, so often repeated elsewhere, do qualify the article for protection on a permanent basis. --AJHingston (talk) 12:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep the subject of the article is notable, she received massive media coverage back in those days, and even later. And the article, as of now, is forcefully sanitized, describing her photography achievements which is not what she is notable for. I think in the text of the article, we can mention that according to such and such newspaper or book, she was associated with so and so. Besides mentioning the sources in the reference section, mentioning the source in the text will easily show the readers that the claims made are from particular sources, and not made-up by wikipedia (a reader who is naive to wikipedia editing process will understand the claims made are from those sources).
 * However, I am unaware of any wikipedia policy for BLP that tries to protect sensitive or problematic (although verifiable) personal information. If there is such a policy, the content may be censored. As far as notability is concerned, the subject is very mush notable, and the article should not be deleted.--Dwaipayan (talk) 13:54, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Paradoxically, though, if she had been accused of a crime she would be protected. And BLP policy does not allow editors to get around the ban on using unproven allegations with words like 'rumoured...' 'reported...' etc. If we are really saying that we have to repeat the claims about her in order to explain why she has an article then there is a real problem, because that principle would have wide BLP policy implications. --AJHingston (talk) 14:32, 27 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - Subject is notable and multiple quality third party sources are available. The article has been too sanitised in my view - the word prostitute does not now appear at all, although that is patently what the subject was - and we should not be excessively sensitive, particularly when a quick Google search for the name reveal all manner of reliable sources which contain details which the subject would not like. I find the comment that Wikipedia has ruined the subject's life to be nothing less than ludicrous. She did that herself, with the help of the media. Rangoon11 (talk) 16:03, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Photography-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:38, 27 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep. I am very sensitive to BLP issues, and I understand that Ms. Bordes is most probably unacquainted with how WP operates.  In fact, I was one of the first people who was aware of the blatant BLP violations in this article, which is why I immediately made these edits .  Even as we must be very sensitive toward BLP concerns, we must also be balanced, and recognize that more than sufficient WP:RS exist to establish her notability.  So I say keep the article, be sensitive, don't allow anything into it that smears her reputation.  I think the middle road is the best solution in this situation. Qworty (talk) 01:15, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Definitely Keep. Do not even consider deletion PB was a very big story in the UK. People still talk about her, in my experience. I came to this page because she was mentioned in a story today in the Media Guardian, and I wondered what had happened to her. Also, personally I find it hard to believe her statement "This information on me in wikipedia has totally destroyed my life." If the information is true, then I have no sympathy. What next? Jeffrey Archer asking for Wikipedia to delete his article? But I think the stuff about her photography career should be cut back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.78.161.224 (talk) 07:08, 28 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete — I agree with both the nominator and Colapeninsula. The vast majority of coverage is insubstantial. I also think the coverage that's substantially about this subject verges on tabloid and fails WP:RS; none is very additive to WP:GNG or WP:ANYBIO. JFHJr (㊟) 06:27, 30 September 2012 (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.