Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sebastian Brown


 * 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 no consensus.  Sandstein  19:23, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Sebastian Brown

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WP:BLP, resting entirely on "local interest" news coverage with no evidence of wider national or international media attention, of a musician notable only as a local busker. This is not a claim that satisfies WP:NMUSIC in and of itself, but there's nothing else here (such as having released albums, etc.) that does so either. Delete, without prejudice against recreation in the future if and when a more substantive claim of notability and a wider array of sourcing, not limited to a single media market, can be provided. Bearcat (talk) 17:08, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 17:15, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Musicians-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 17:15, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I think it's somewhat inaccurate to say the sources were limited to a single market. Yes, it is true the first five articles were broadcast locally, but the two most recent received national attention: Sebastian Brown was featured on the cover -- not a local subsection, but the national cover -- of the Toronto Star, which is the most widely circulated newspaper in Canada; and the CTV story aired twice on CTV National News, again, a nationally-televised broadcast, not a local edition. He also appeared on television in Taiwan, on a report by the CNA, which is that country's state broadcaster. To reiterate, this article has multiple reliable and independent sources, is the main focus of the articles published by those sources, and indeed has been the subject of wider national and international attention. this certainly satisfies WP:MUS number 1, and also number 7 (Has become one of the most prominent representatives of a notable style or the most prominent of the local scene of a city; note that the subject must still meet all ordinary Wikipedia standards, including verifiability): a Google search of "Ragtime Toronto" or "Honky-Tonk Toronto" yields several articles on this performer in the first two pages. Keep. Nate diddly (talk) 18:50, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * NMUSIC #7, for the record, does not mean that every individual combination of "City" + "Musical genre" that you could possibly come up with creates an automatic inclusion freebie for one musician; rather, the particular City + Musical genre combination itself has to also be a notable, encyclopedic thing in its own right. For #7 to have any bearing on whether Sebastian Brown qualifies for an article or not, we would have to be able to write an article about "the Toronto ragtime scene" as an identifiable phenomenon of international interest — the criterion does not mean that every individual musical genre that exists at all automatically entitles the most locally prominent Toronto musician in that genre to a Wikipedia article, if that genre's Toronto-based "scene" isn't a thing that people outside of Toronto have also heard of in a substantive way. If "Toronto ragtime" were a thing that was getting international attention in international music media, then #7 would come into play — but #7 does not mean that you can just snap any city and any musical genre into a "most prominent of the local scene of a city" snowclone to create an automatic inclusion right for one local musician in every musical genre that exists in the city. Bearcat (talk) 14:34, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but I still don't see how the article fails to satisfy #1, for the reasons I listed above. Nate diddly (talk) 22:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Very convincing argument by Nate Diddly, it seems that the article already satisfies the criteria outlined by WP:NMUSIC in addition to the new additional criteria described by Bearcat. Keep. Erhik (talk) 03:27, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete for now but feel free to draft and userfy as there's not much else aside from the current information and my searches simply found some of the same coverage here and here (one of the links was also included at Books). SwisterTwister   talk  07:09, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:NMUSIC exists for a reason. Why are we inventing additional requirements for notability? Where are these new requirements coming from? Please refer to List of policies, or cite some precedent. Nate diddly (talk) 19:31, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * At this moment, the only one I can think fits best is music notability guidelines as the current sourcing does not set him apart from any ordinary musicians and will likely even need better coverage local notability much less all around notability. SwisterTwister   talk  21:16, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Sam Sailor Talk! 09:23, 30 September 2015 (UTC) He was featured on the cover of the Metro -- the most widely circulated paper in the entire country -- and was featured on the cover of the Star -- the second most widely-circulated paper in the country. Again, not a page-17 footnote, but a full-on feature on the front cover of the two-largest newspapers in the country. And he was featured on CTV National News -- the most widely broadcast evening news program in the country -- and on the State Broadcaster of Taiwan. These clearly satisfy the notability guidelines, in addition to the new guidelines we've invented specifically for this one article, all of the information is well-sourced and detailed, the sources are professional, independent, and consistent. I really don't understand what more we're asking for. Keep, again. Nate diddly (talk) 18:50, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Please note that while you're allowed to comment in an AFD discussion as many times as you like, you're not allowed to make more than one bolded keep or delete "vote". Accordingly, that part of your comment here has been struck out.
 * As for the newspapers, Metro consists of several distinct local editions which do not share most of their content across markets; he may have made the cover of the Toronto edition, but he certainly did not make the cover of every edition. And the Toronto Star attains its circulation figures entirely by virtue of being the dominant newspaper in the country's largest metropolitan area — it does not have any significantly-sized readership outside of the GTA. And newscasts, even national ones, routinely carry human interest "here's somebody you've never heard of before who's doing something kind of cool" pieces about people who don't get encyclopedia articles just because that newscast carried that piece, especially when they can just borrow a piece already created by one of their affiliate stations instead of having to commit their own resources to producing a separate one. And as for the coverage in Taiwan, you keep asserting that but you haven't shown any verifiable proof that it's true — people routinely try to get their pet articles into Wikipedia by claiming that coverage exists which actually doesn't pan out when somebody actually tries to find it, so it's not enough to just say that it exists if you don't show it.
 * Ultimately, "what more we're looking for" is evidence that he's done something, such as having released albums or songs that are actually getting radio play, that would make him somebody that any significant number of Wikipedia readers are likely to have already heard of, in a significant, sustained and "will actually remember his name twenty minutes later, because they've already heard it more than just once" sort of way. If a person could get an article on here just because their existence was verifiable in two or three distinct sources, we'd have to start keeping articles about heads of local PTAs and neighbourhood watch committees and coordinators of church bake sale committees — hell, we'd have to keep an article about me if that were all it took. Coverage can't just exist; it has to verify that they've done specific things that would make them a topic one would expect to find in an encyclopedia. Bearcat (talk) 11:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)


 * 2<10. Please direct me to ten distinct professional sources about the same head of a church bake sale committee. Nate diddly (talk) 04:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Any city that has even one local media outlet will always have at least a couple of dozen, likely far more, people who are active enough in the local community to get their names into media coverage on that local outlet anywhere from two to fifty times a year. (Just as an example, there's no such thing as a city councillor, in any city, who doesn't get media coverage locally, yet we explicitly deprecate city councillors as not appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia except for a very rarefied tier of special cases — because even though all city councillors could always pass GNG on local coverage, the substance of that coverage almost always fails to demonstrate any particular reason why they would warrant the attention of an encyclopedia with an international audience.) And the more local media outlets there are, the more likely it is that both the number of locally active people who are getting their names into the local media on a moderately regular basis and the number of media hits they're getting are going to shoot up even further. But that still doesn't necessarily make them all suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia just because that coverage exists, if it's not covering them in a context that's of any substantive non-local interest (such as a musician having actually recorded albums that have actually garnered national or international release.) Bearcat (talk) 15:43, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Cna-screenshot.png This is a screenshot of one of the CNA articles, but I can't find the originals because I don't speak Chinese. Nate diddly (talk) 04:30, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — ☮ JAaron95  Talk   16:07, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Sebastian Brown is well-known in downtown Toronto. I work in the area and talk with a lot of people there, most are aware of him. Of course, anyone could make such a claim without evidence, in which case we should say, "Who cares?" But the extent of the media coverage speaks to the subject's notability. Erhik (talk) 21:48, 10 October 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.