Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert J. Schwalb


 * 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. -- Cirt (talk) 18:13, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Robert J. Schwalb

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I don't see much of a claim to notability here. He's worked in the RPG industry, including working on some games that were given awards of dubious importance (ENnies do not appear to have received the coverage that would indicate importance) and that's about it. The awards listed appear to be awards for games that he worked on (along with lots of other people) and as far as I can tell, none of them are specifically for the bits that he worked on in those games. There does not appear to be any significant independent coverage of the subject on which to base an article. An IP half-proposed a merge to List of role-playing game designers, but there's no discussion of why such a merge would be appropriate after more than a month. Michig (talk) 05:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge at best if there's a sensible way to take a small amount of text. I can see nothing with any wider notability. Blue Square Thing (talk) 23:58, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep Article probably needs some expansion, but the ENNies are a major industry award. Justin Bacon (talk) 02:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Games-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 18:17, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep per Justin Bacon. The ENNies started off small, but they are now the official awards of Gen Con, so that is no small honor. Some of those may have been co-wins, but some of them are for him alone. BOZ (talk) 23:04, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. The lack of coverage of the Ennies suggests that they are not major awards, and I have yet to see any sources to confirm that the subject of this article has won any of them.--Michig (talk) 05:55, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep While the ENNies may not be broken out by individual contributors like Academy Awards are, I do not think it SYNTH to say "Person X worked on Game Y, Game Y won Award Z, therefore person X won award Z". Were either term ambiguous, I would not make that statement. Jclemens (talk) 03:50, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * comment I don't believe that the ENnies have any bearing on WP:ANYBIO #1. While the awards pass notability, I would question whether they are "well known", but the real issue is "significant". The problem is that very few of the award categories are of a standard to imply originality in the field (WP:CREATIVE). I think it definitely should only be the Gold awards that are considered for notability and I would doubt that any category other than best game should count for the notability of a person if not being named.
 * The Origins awards have categories that show how I think that co-creation may be insufficient. Robert has a nomination for 2011 as 1 of 7 co-designers of rules suppliment . While I accept that RPG sometimes has new editions or suppliments that are really different games, it does make it questionable as to what aspect of the game is winning the award. I think that if there are more than 3 co-creators we should look for the most competitive of awards which would be the Hall of fame.
 * Having said all of the above I do think that the collective works means that to find the sources to meet WP:V could mean that schwalb is notable enough for an article.Tetron76 (talk) 11:19, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * comment I tend to agree that only Gold Ennies should matter -- those are the winners; coming in second place isn't necessarily significant. On significance of the awards: major publishers in the field submit their products for award consideration (e.g., Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Fantasy Flight Games, Cubicle 7). I think that speaks to notability. Thanlis (talk) 12:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:ANYBIO. The ENnies are a significant award in the RPG industry, being the signature award of Gen Con, the largest RPG hobby convention. It is one of the two most important RPG industry award alongside the Origins awards. Publishers go so far as to note it on their covers and websites (reflexive notability, I suppose.) As for whether we should be concerned about whether or not Silver ENnies are relevant might be important to another discussion, but Robert has received multiple nominations, which also passes WP:ANYBIO. - Sangrolu (talk) 14:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment can anyone at all show me where this award is "well known" - i.e. known by anyone outside of the field? Seriously - I've played games for years and I'd never heard of them because, I imagine, I don't follow the gaming industry and it's press. I just don't see how this comes close to the GNG. Sure, it'll get in because people don't change their minds about stuff like this, but I do think there's a whole pile of notability issues associated with this that people are simply avoiding - if you accept this is a "well known" (from ANYBIO) award then where do we stop? Blue Square Thing (talk) 14:46, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I recall both OrgeCave.com and GamingReport.com carrying stories on it (alas, the latter seems to have disappeared after their parent magazine was bought out by some media group.) A quick search reaffirmed OgreCave covering the ENnies[1 ][2 ][3 ][4 ], and also reveals stories on it on GeekNative.com. I don't think I would accept just any award that some dude with a website has for the purposes of notability, but when it comes to RPGs, Origins and ENnies are it. And I know forums aren't typically considered for purposes of notability, but forums like RPGnet and Story-Games routinely discuss the awards when ENnie nominations and awards come up, so in some segments of the gaming community, it's not that obscure at all. - Sangrolu (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2011 (UTC) (Added links - Sangrolu (talk) 00:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC) )
 * Comment. I think there are several issues here which some people don't appear to be addressing. Firstly, in order to confer notability, the Ennies need to be considered major awards. Simply being one of the main awards within a narrow industry sector is not sufficient. If they are major awards, why do they get so little coverage? Secondly, it seems to be stretching things to say that a game winning an award means that anyone who worked on that game won the award. Some of the awards listed are for specific aspects, and anyone not directly involved in those aspects cannot be considered to have won the award. Thirdly, we need reliable sources to verify both that those games won those awards and that the subject of this article played a significant part in the work that was recognised by those awards. WP:V is a requirement for articles, and particularly for BLPs, and the reliable sources do not appear to exist to form the basis of an article here.--Michig (talk) 15:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * You answered your own question, I think: They get so little coverage because they are for a small industry. But they still get mentions in third party news sites. This "major award in small industry is not good enough" seems to be your own criteria that I doesn't correlate with any WP guideline I am aware of. As for whether awarding a product constitutes awarding the individual: Schwalb is a lead writer on several of the nominated products, often with his name on the cover. I think it's a bit unsupportable to assert that the lead writer of an awarded work somehow did not receive said award unless it's specifically for something not related to writing (like artwork or layout). There have been game writers who have had their articles deleted that I could not credibly lend a "keep" vote to; Schwalb is not one of them. - Sangrolu (talk) 22:05, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * They hardly get any mentions, which is part of the problem. I didn't say these are "major awards in a small industry" - they appear to be minor awards. We don't consider people notable because they got any award, and there seems little evidence that these are 'major awards' at all. --Michig (talk) 06:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * CommentDoes notability require recognition outside of the hobby/ industry/ medium/ area of interest? Obviously, an Oscar is notable; even people who don't care about movies know what an Oscar is.  But, for example, the All Japan Koi Show and its winners are nowhere to be found in Wikipedia, despite being the Holy Grail for tens of thousands of koi enthusiasts around the globe, and its winning fish selling for six figures. In Japan it is covered in the news at least as strongly as the Westminster Kennel Club's dog show is in the USA.  Given the extensive Wikipedia articles on specific video, computer and role playing games, it's obvious that we do in fact consider as "notable" many things that appeal only to a tiny slice of people (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft:_Cataclysm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sun )  Not saying WoW isn't notable, but a full article on each expansion kind of puts to rest any notion of an impartial standard of "notability" requiring recognition from the non-gaming press.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.104.100.43 (talk) 03:06, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Notability requires significant coverage in reliable sources, which is still lacking here. Reliable sources specific to gaming would be fine, but where's the significant coverage in any source? I couldn't find any and nobody else has come up with any yet. --Michig (talk) 06:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I cited some third party sources who reported above; it wasn't that exhaustive a Google search to find them. I think they also showed up in Dungeon/Polyhedron magazine during its print run, but I would have to take time to look. - Sangrolu (talk) 11:54, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, I doubt that ogrecave.com (Allan Sugarbaker's website) and geeknative.com ("This is a personal blog, a hobby blog, run by Andrew Girdwood") would qualify as reliable sources.--Michig (talk) 05:55, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Point taken with respect to GeekNative.com. OgreCave, I am less sure about. Allan Sugarbaker is also part owner of RPGnet, as I recall, so I did see that but it was not a cause for me to dismiss it as non-reliable. I will try to find the print references in Dungeon/Polyhedron, time permitting. (Bad week for this... sigh) - Sangrolu (talk) 15:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Dug into my dungeon stacks and found:
 * Added to ENnies article. - Sangrolu (talk) 23:14, 10 May 2011 (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.
 * 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.