Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Valley Report (2nd nomination)


 * 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.  Sandstein  20:23, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

The Valley Report
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Fake news site. Over half the references are just Facebook posts. The closest this gets to having a reliable source mentioning it is a Daily Mail item regurgitating a report from Buzzfeed. World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 20:23, 14 July 2017 (UTC) World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 20:23, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:49, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 20:55, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * If it was well sourced, we wouldn't be having this discussion. World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 22:07, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE - I added several more sources, including several radio stations, news outlets, online publications, newspapers, and televesion stations. It should also be noted the person nominating the page to be deleted also had the editor of the websites wiki page deleted a couple weeks ago. Very suspicious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yeahimadethis (talk • contribs) 00:15, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Please note that all of those radio stations are part of the iheartradio chain. It is not commentary on the item, it is simply a link to the original Valley Report story published on the blogs managed centrally by iheartradio. You need third-party reliable sources that write about the website. Those radio stations count for nothing. I think the one good source you have is Buzzfeed. We'll see what other editors think. World&#39;s Lamest Critic (talk) 02:53, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
 * They are all independent radio stations, each with their own separate wiki entry. They were listed to illustrate the reach of the website.


 * Delete due to lack of coverage in reliable, independent sources that discuss the subject directly and in detail. The discussion on sources from the first AfD is compelling. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:03, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - Fails WP:V and WP:NOTABILITY; some things just don't belong in Wikipedia. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:59, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Silverman, Craig (2016-05-06). "A Comedian Is Getting Tons Of Facebook Shares For His Fake News Articles". BuzzFeed. Archived from the original on 2016-06-16. Retrieved 2016-06-16. The article notes:
 * Keep - as pointed out by editor Cunard: Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.

The story is from the The Valley Report, a website that mostly publishes satirical articles. It occasionally puts out a fake news stories like this one in order to drive traffic and revenue, according to its owner, a comedian who goes by the name Dave Weasel.

Weasel, a Canadian living in Los Angeles, said the story is one of the site’s biggest hits since it launched in August. His initial plan for Valley News was to publish satirical articles that offer an element of social commentary. But then he tried his first hoax and it instantly went viral on Facebook.

His first hit was a fake news story about a woman who stabbed her boyfriend in the face because he took longer than 10 minutes to like her selfie. “That one just took off, getting hits and shares from all over the place,” Weasel said.

As noted at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 188#Buzzfeed, Mother Jones for BLP's., "One of the challenges with sources like Buzzfeed is the wild inconsistency in article quality, so it really depends on the specific circumstances. If written by one of their real journalists as a legitimate news item, then it should be fine to treat it as a reliable source." And as another editor wrote, "BuzzFeed articles are, as [the previous editor] says, situationally reliable depending on who they were authored by." This article was by Craig Silverman, BuzzFeed Founding Editor, Canada. Silverman is an established journalist. At https://ca.linkedin.com/in/craigjsilverman, he noted that he was an adjunct faculty at the Poynter Institute, was a managing editor at PBS MediaShift, and was a columnist at the Columbia Journalism Review, The Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. http://www.poynter.org/author/craigsilverman/ lists his Poynter Institute articles and this article from Poynter and this article from The Globe and Mail verify his background.

Since this article was written by a reputable, established journalist, it is reliable and can be used to establish notability for The Valley Report.

Gamp, Joseph (2016-05-07). "Viral lottery winner 'defecating on boss's desk' news story revealed as fake". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 2016-06-16. Retrieved 2016-06-16. The article notes:

A recent news story that became a viral smash, detailing how a woman defecated on her boss' desk after winning the lottery and amassed tens of thousands of views in the process, has since been revealed as a fake by the story's author. Dave Weasel – who runs The Valley Report, a spoof news site like The Onion and The Daily Mash –admitted to BuzzFeed that the story had been fabricated, but was also one of the best stories to have been published on the site.

...

The piece, headlined Woman arrested for defecating on boss' des after winning the lottery' was the site's most popular article in the site's nine-month history. Reportedly, Valley News earns Weasel "thousands of dollars per month from ads".

...

Weasel, who is based in Los Angeles, stated that he thought the majority of people that read the article believed it to be true on first read. But he claimed that, "Most of the people that share it do not read it."

There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow The Valley Report to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

If you wanted the article merged with the original Wikipedia entry for Dave Weasel, you should've done that instead of having them both deleted a couple weeks apart.
 * Delete. Lots of references in the article, but they're all just the same (presumably fake) story about the defecating woman.  The sources cited above (which look like they're just the same as were presented in the first AfD) don't impress me either.  -- RoySmith (talk) 16:38, 22 July 2017 (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.