Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samuel Gottschall


 * 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. --MelanieN (talk) 01:40, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Samuel Gottschall

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If we take this article on good faith (i.e., assume it isn't a hoax), the story seems to be the following: someone rediscovered the works of an obscure 17th-century composer, published them in three volumes, set up a website, and is offering them for sale &mdash; for a cool $1,199.00.

OK, fair enough. Still, this encyclopedia does rely on reliable, published sources. Preferably ones not linked to someone selling a product. (If you search for strings of words from the article, you'll find they precisely match this page, although it's been taken down. That might even be grounds for speedy deletion as a copyvio.) And aside from this one website, I can find nothing about a Samuel Gottschall who lived from 1719 to 1811. Now, if at some point in the future, he makes it into Grove or some other standard works about music history, great. I'll have no objection to including his biography. But as things stand, there simply isn't enough verifiable independent content to justify an article. Our job here is to reflect notability as it currently exists, not generate notability for entities that don't have it by the usual means (multiple, independent, published sources.) - Biruitorul Talk 01:33, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. A well-known search engine, excluding the advertised website and this WP page, lead me to worldreligionnews.com (no comment about reliability), which pointed to the Daily Mail. There is a music score in the pictures at the end though nothing is mentioned. However, this Samuel Gottschall lived during WW2 (and I do not think even the DM article makes him notable, but that's another story).
 * It's either a forgery inspired from the real story, or a completely unnotable homonym. Either mandates deletion. Tigraan (talk) 09:17, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Austria-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:BIO. Notability is not clear at all from the one source cited in the article, nor is it clear that this is the same Samuel Gottschall whose mementoes were found in the attic in Slovakia. His name does not appear in any reference work of composers. Delete per nom. Yoninah (talk) 19:35, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. Hi all. We're working on publishing the appropriate sources for this. As you can tell from the article, they're not exactly in the world's knowledge set, but we have them. The copyright of the bio page on the website was released into the public domain by the author for publishing here, and was subsequently removed from SamuelGottschall.com. Reviewing the Notability guidelines suggests that this article does conform to a minimum acceptable level of notability. 50.135.255.25 (talk) 01:58, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I am afraid you do not understand what the guidelines say... If the references are obscure and unheard of, they are not sufficient (vast simplification here, but the point remains). Please quote reliable sources that establish that SG (1) existed and (2) made significant contributions to music (or Jewish music in the 19th at the last) or was notable for other reasons.
 * If no such source is to be found, it does not mean that SG never existed, or even that he wasn't notable in his time; but it does mean we should not include him in WP because it is just impossible to check. Tigraan (talk) 10:16, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Regarding reliability from WP:SPS: "Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications." The author of SamuelGottschall.com is Gayther Myers, a composer in New York City. Studied at Julliard, Oberlin, Mozarteum. He has been mentioned in numerous sources and has self-published his earliest findings about SG, which are summarized in this Wikipedia entry. His age and scholarly work makes him exactly the kind of expert we look to for publishing verifiable, independent primary sources. The work itself has been scanned from its original manuscripts, photos of the gravestone were taken, a prayer book has been recovered. He has not masked his identity or published anonymously. While he does have a price tag attached to the publication of the work, this does not violate WP:SPS, as the product being sold is over 1,700 pages long and printing, binding, and shipping the work is not free, but this is clearly not a "for profit" enterprise, as it is intended to be acquired by universities and collectors as the only mass-produced copy of the work in the world. Therefore, this obviously satisfies reliable sources. Regarding notability: SG was a composer for kings and a collaborator with Haydn; that is notable by any definition of the word. 50.135.255.25 (talk) 21:10, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The high price tag makes me guess it is a for-profit enterprise. But we do not care the least: whether GM is a greedy scammer that is selling a forgery at gold price or a honest lover of SG who wants to share his music with the rest of the world is irrelevant. Either way, Gayther Myers is not a independant source of what he publishes. If you prefer, money is a powerful creator of conflicts of interest, but not the only one.
 * From a quick internet search, there is no evidence that Gayther Myers is notable whatsoever beside what you just said ("He has been mentioned in numerous sources"), and I have the healthy habit to doubt anything that could be linked if true but comes unlinked.
 * Even if GM was the most notable musician and music scholar of the last century, there would be no evidence that he is the one publishing the website (I can write on my website that it is written in collaboration by Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, they would probably not bother denying). (I would be ready to trust your word here, but the guidelines demand a source.)
 * You will understand from these, that it does not "obviously" satisfies WP:RS. Finally, "SG was a composer for kings and a collaborator with Haydn; that is notable by any definition of the word" runs straight against WP:NOTINHERITED for the Haydn part and is seriously limited for the "kings" part; add to that that the aforementioned healthy habit suggests to me this claim ought to be sourced.
 * Tigraan (talk) 21:42, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. While SamuelGottschall.com could be established as a reliable secondary source, this needs more peer review in the third-party literature. I'll vote for Delete, which brings us to consensus. 50.135.255.25 (talk) 20:49, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Hum no, I do not quite see how samuelgottschall.com could possibly be a secondary source for Samuel Gottschall... It is just like a company's website: although companyX.com is probably reliable in the sense it will usually publish reliable information such as the CEO's name, postal address etc., it is certainly not the place to read unbiaised commentary about their latest dumping of oil in the local river.
 * Now for the technicality, if you change your !vote, you should strike the previous !vote, using the ( text to be striked ) syntax. Tigraan (talk) 13:53, 1 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment Secondary source here, page 11, bottom paragraph http://issuu.com/nycc/docs/program6-7-2008 @SmithAndTeam (talk) 02:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid one line in a concert program attests nothing about the notability of a classical musician. An entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Harvard Dictionary of Music or The Oxford Companion to Music would be rather more convincing. - Biruitorul Talk 03:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Certainly a mention of his musicianship in Jewish sources is also called for. Yoninah (talk) 09:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Two of Gottschall's compositions appeared in a collection of Jewish melodies compiled by Lewandowsky in the 19th century as "anonymous" -- these composition match Gottschall's arrangements of Emet Ve'emunah and Adoshem Malach. See a transcription here: http://samuelgottschall.com/music/emet-veemuna-p64/ 50.135.255.25 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:17, 27 March 2015 (UTC)
 * This is a self-published source on samuelgottschall.com. Yoninah (talk) 18:20, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, the sources for this are Lewandowsky's text and the scans of the music in question, neither of which is self-published. The imperative against self-published sources is intended in the spirit of the rule to prevent people from publishing their own primary research as fact. SamuelGottschall is not a source for either of these claims -- the sources are in the public domain. 50.135.255.25 (talk) 20:15, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * So please provide an independent, third-party reference that connects these anonymous works to Gottschall. Yoninah (talk) 20:57, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  beans  // 10:58, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete The Article lacks large number of sources and clearly does not qualify BLP at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dormantos (talk • contribs) 12:21, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This newly registered account has left the very similar deletion rationales (almost every one a "strong delete") on dozens of AfDs in rapid fashion. Likely he did not read any of the articles (one he said fails "BLP" was a company, for example). --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:45, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia has criteria that subjects have to meet to merit a Wikipedia article. The standards are low and this subject is not meeting those low standards. This fails WP:GNG and other specialized WP:N criteria.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:15, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete No coverage in reliable secondary sources (only coverage I see is for different people with the same name). Nwlaw63 (talk) 14:46, 2 April 2015 (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.