Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sam Davis (producer)


 * 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. Black Kite (talk) 16:56, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Sam Davis (producer)

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Deleted at MfD, restored per talk page request as the discussion had no participation. Creator claims there is a claim to notability as a show he produced won an Emmy (he himself did not win) and there are some sources about him. Drafts aren't usually deleted for notability reasons when there is a reasonable claim to notability, but this has been rejected a number of times at AfC. Therefore I am taking the unusual step of moving it to mainspace to have an AfD to settle the matter.

My analysis of the sources in the article is as follows:

The remainder of the refs are from the production company website and don't demonstrate notability. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 02:10, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * 1) Time - decent source
 * 2) Horizont - ROUTINE business announcement
 * 3) DWDL - business announcement in trade mag
 * 4) Unitel - production company "news"?
 * 5) Romyverleihung 2012 - Can't cite WP, so no
 * 6) Emmy - decent but not inherent notability especially as he didn't win the Emmy, the show did
 * 7) DWDL - interview, trade mag
 * 8) DWDL - not primarily about Davis, trade mag
 * 9) NRW - paywall, can't see depth of coverage
 * 10) Emmy Ceremony - participating in the Emmy ceremony is not evidence of notability
 * 11) NRW - trivial mention by name only
 * 12) Romyverleihung 2012 - Again, can't cite WP
 * 13) As 6
 * 14) As 6
 * 15) Presseportal - Davis not mentioned
 * 16) Presseportal - Davis not mentioned
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 05:46, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 05:46, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. The Mighty Glen (talk) 05:46, 12 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Articles for Deletion doesn't prevent future recreations/submissions of an article as notability can always be established in the future. I don't see why interviews don't help establish notability as we use them in BLP articles of famous people all the time. --Donald Trung (Talk) (Articles) Respect mobile users. 09:53, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Either he's notable presently, in which case the AfC reviewers are wrong and the article should be in main, or he isn't, in which case it should be deleted. The fact that he might become notable later isn't relevant, or else we would never delete anything just in case it became notable in future. WP:CRYSTAL is a reason to delete, not a reason to keep.
 * It's been resubmitted and declined numerous times at AfC, then deleted at MfD. I restored it at the request of the nom on behalf of the creator. MfD historically has way less visibility than AfD (as evidenced by the lack of participation in the original discussion), so AfD is a much better place to get the community's thoughts on Davis' notability.
 * There's a difference between a source being used in an article to cite something, and a source being used to judge notability. Interviews typically don't help establish notability because they're not intellectually independent of the subject, which is required for a source to be considered reliable by our standards. It can vary of course, depending on who published the interview, but usually interviews in smaller publications are not considered to contribute much to notability. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 11:17, 12 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Non-notable producer. The above source analysis correctly indicates the lack of notability. Perhaps the article on the German Wikipedia should also be deleted, but that requires its own discussion there in German. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 04:32, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Sam Davis is a very successful producer in Germany and has won several prices. For the TV movie A Day for a Miracle he won with his company Rowboat Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH an International Emmy Award in New York. This is very very rare for a German producer. For A Day for a Miracle he won, as well, the preeminent Austrian Romy television award  in the category Best TV Producer. Beside that Sam Davis was nominated two years in a row for the Producer´s Award at the Filmfestival Hamburg for The Cold Truth (2014) and Trust me (2015). All this is sufficient grounds for an English language Wikipedia article about Sam Davis. KatharinaRB (talk) 08:51, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Strong keep very notable producer in Germany who works international KatharinaRB (talk) 08:21, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Additionally, the argument, that the movie and not the producer Sam Davis or the company Rowboat won the International Emmy for A Day for a Miracle isn’t quite accurate. Of course it’s the movie that is primary associated with the award – which is in fact a producer´s award –, but without the producer (and the production company) there would have been no movie. You can compare it to the launch of Falcon Heavy of Space X on 7 February. The test is of course very notable, but without Elon Musk, his company Space X and – not to forget – his vision, there would have been no test. Like Musk and Space X, Sam Davis and his Rowboat company are intertwined. So that A Day for a Miracle did win the award is mostly due to Sam Davis and his vision executed through a company, that has produced other notable productions. Most recently, the company is launching in 2018 the second season of the highly rated and discussed prime time series Professor T. The series is a notable adaptation of  the  similarly titled series in Belgium, which was also produced in France under the same name, again... notable. For these collective reasons, may I kindly recommend keeping the English article of Sam Davis.

*Strong keep --KatharinaRB (talk) 08:14, 16 February 2018 (UTC) — Duplicate vote: KatharinaRB (talk • contribs) has already cast a vote above.


 * Notability is not inherited. If Davis had won an Emmy for producing, then it would be a different story. But something he worked on won an Emmy. That contributes to the notability of the show or the film, not the producer. Your analogy fails because Elon Musk, Space X, and the Falcon flight are all independently notable by Wikipedia standards - there is plenty of coverage in reliable worldwide sources about all three. On the other hand, Davis is so lacking in notability that the best source is a single Time article from 2002, with nothing even remotely approaching that level of substance having been produced in the sixteen years since.
 * Respectfully, you are a paid editor employed by Rowboat. You have a goal here, and it isn't to produce encyclopedic content - it's to promote Davis, his company, and its works. I applaud you for working openly, but your arguments are made from that point of view, not from Wikipedia policy. If Davis were notable, there would be more reliable sources about him, period. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 15:35, 16 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. One of the more notable producers in Germany, who gets featured as such by ZDF (major German TV station) or Die Welt. Kress calls him "einer der wichtigsten Aufbauhelfer für das moderne TV-Movie in Deutschland". The Romy prize can be sourced to a reliable Austrian source, so he has verifiably won a major award. Fram (talk) 11:08, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Procedural comment (neutral). There was no need to move this to mainspace to run it through AfD.  Drafts can be brought to WP:MFD and can be deleted directly from there if they are found to be non-notable.  As a recent example, WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Josef Schmalz.  But, that's just for future reference; now that it's here, we should let this discussion continue to its normal conclusion.  -- RoySmith (talk) 17:04, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep as per the sources identified by Fram, passes WP:BASIC and confirmed as winning a notable award Atlantic306 (talk) 19:31, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - despite poor sourcing in this and the German article [], I was able to find this [] in the Hollywood Reporter, which calls him "...one of Germany's best-known television producers". Based on his filmography, multiple productions with their own articles, my vote is a keep, and I also recommend a refimprove hatnote. TimTempleton (talk) (cont)  23:31, 20 February 2018 (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.