Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rich Shapero


 * 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. Mere existence of sources is a necessity, not a sufficiency. The question is, does this subject have historic notability (see WP:N). Venture capitalist and self-publisher with no sign of either being especially notable, and no evidence in this discussion to show "enduring notability" of any kind. Article sources are 3 college sources and a couple of transient writeups related to self-pub material and a non-notable false alarm due to a book delivery (see WP:NOT and WP:EVENT). None of the respondents in this discussion have actually shown any strong evidence of non-transient historical notability. Although a minority, AFD is not a vote; the delete views seem to be well grounded in Wikipedia policies and guidelines. FT2 (Talk 22:49, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Rich Shapero

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

No evidence of notability. Page appears to have been a vanity page which has been reduced down to almost nothing. Prod tag has been removed under promotion, and under notability Clovis Sangrail (talk) 04:20, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete Keep (see ending comments) i was one of the editors who trimmed it back last year. i never found much evidence of notability, but i dont bother to afd articles, though i do !vote here. unless one of the college papers has a report on his apparently massive giveaways on campuses, i dont think we have notability here. boy, this page gets vandalized! the book is ubiquitous in thrift stores. book had a separate article which was deleted and redirected here. the music is really bad, thus unless it got "bad" reviews, it would have gotten no attention. sorry for the judgement, but it points again to no notability. update: Pax Vobiscum has provided the necessary references to show his notoriety (i had not found them myself, congrats to him).Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The amount of vandalism is a bit bizarre, was it a 4chan target? My impression is that Rich's work is self published through vanity presses, and never found a market. Clovis Sangrail (talk) 09:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Dunno if 4chan is involved, but I'd guess that the reason this attracts so much intense backlash (as opposed to most self-published authors, who are usually just ignored) is the intense hard-sell street marketing tactics Shapero uses, where people dressed up in silly ram outfits practically force passerby to accept copies of the book, with all the intensity of a hellfire-and-damnation preacher. Marketing 101: free givaways are cool, annoying the heck out of potential customers isn't cool.  Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete No evidence of notability. Sources require verification of credibility. One reference is self-published. Prod-2 tag removed without reason and without notifying editor. Canals86966 (talk) 11:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 11:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete author with only one book, and it's self-published. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  16:49, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep The enormous proportion of his vanity advertisement has received a lot of attention including mainstream media like the San Francisco Chronicle (the reference was deleted but is now back). I'm definitely not a fan of his, but even though I find him annoying I believe that the coverage he has received meets our verifiability and notability standards. The vandalism is propbably just people who have gotten the book for free looking him up on wikipedia. Pax:Vobiscum (talk) 07:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:46, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:47, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Click the Google news link at the top of the AFD and look through the summaries of the many results. This one  explains the negative press the guy got for hiring actors to protest it, in order to get media attention, and then mentions in detail what the book is about.  Plenty more coverage about it out there.   D r e a m Focus  21:34, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep - It should not matter if his books are self-published. The 3rd party media is verifiable and meets the guidelines for notability. Kugao (talk) 17:43, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. There are plenty of independent reliable sources included so I can't see why he shouldn't be notable per WP:GNG. Alzarian16 (talk) 14:37, 14 May 2010 (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.