Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Waverleywattle/Peter Nicholson (poet and author)

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was  delete. BencherliteTalk 19:38, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

User:Waverleywattle/Peter Nicholson (poet and author)
This is a paid-editing job as a result of this posting on elance.com. The job description reads "Would like a Wikipedia entry created for my work (already written). More work to follow if this turns out satisfactorily. See http://peternicholson.com.au" and the service provider is a user named "Leghari_K"

This should be deleted as a promotional puff piece where the subject is attempting to manipulate Wikipedia for his own personal gain. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for this type of promotion.  Them From  Space  12:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete - Wikipedia is not a vanity press. MER-C 11:59, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete - For other reasons also, namely
 * At User talk:Moriori, User:Waverleywattle left a veiled threat that he would post information offsite (presumably to somehow embarrass wikipedia) "until there is a satisfactory outcome" (presumably Wiki publishing the article which had already been deleted four times.).
 * Among information User:Leghari k contributed to this article was a link to Nicholson's website, plus an image from here.
 * Note that the source at Commons is claimed to be "own work", and the "author" is claimed to be Leghari K . But, on the Nicholson website -- which is specifically copyrighted according to this -- the same image appears on the front page. It is attributed to David Moore (photographer) and it was taken on 19  July 1995. He died in 2003 so it was some feat for him to upload it to Commons in June 2010. Moriori (talk) 03:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment The author has went and uploaded this into the mainspace. See related AfD  Them From  Space  10:57, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Please note Moriori. The photo used at my Wikipedia article is a commissioned photo. Copyright in commissioned photos taken prior to 30 July, 1998 lies with the person who commissioned the photo. This is Australian law. The photo belongs to me and I can use it as I wish. I will write at greater length when I have time. --Waverleywattle (talk) 02:08, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Please note Waverleywattle you avoided addressing the point that User:Leghari k, the person you paid to write a Wikipedia article about you, uploaded that very same photograph to Commons and said it was his "own work", and he was the "author" of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moriori (talk • contribs)

When the article concerning my work was first put up it was taken down by two administrators four times in quick succession, on notability provisions. Being new to Wikipedia protocols, I thought this was a bit rough and decided it would be best to put up an alternative version so that people could at least comment on it. This proved unnecessary since Arbitrarily came to my rescue and undeleted the deleted article.

I have no technical skills to design this kind of thing and I cannot see what is so remarkable about hiring someone to turn an unsatisfactory stub into something suitable for Wikipedia. Since everyone knows Wikipedia is not meant to be used for promotional purposes and only presents objective, sourced information about the subject, the person designing the article made sure it included independent, verifiable sources: four published references together with the National Library of Australia link to the archive of my site and to Austlit, the main reference site for Australian literature.

Concerning notability provisions, I am not sure how these are evaluated, but, in the digital age, perhaps online references are one way in which this might be done. The last time I looked, if you typed in my name plus poet into the Google search engine, it came up with 70 000 references, and in Yahoo, 650 000. Of course, these can’t all be about my work, but this is what the algorithms present. A list of publications is available at my website. A recent publication was Anna Bemrose’s book about Sir Robert Helpmann which included a poem of mine at the beginning of the Epilogue (p. 312). The National Library and the National Portrait Gallery have photos of me in their collections.

The whole movement of culture in the contemporary period is towards the independent artist who, for the first time in history, is able to have a substantial audience out there in the digital universe. Surely Wikipedia should represent this change in cultural activity, when warranted. I confine myself here to the subject of literature. In previous times, a writer such as Emily Dickinson, with only a handful of poems published in her lifetime, would have had no hope of being represented in a 19thC equivalent of Wikipedia. Neither would two of the greatest works of the modern period—Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (self-published) and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (self-published). No comparisons are meant: that would be ridiculous. But culture has now changed so that independent artists can gain a representative voice before they kick the bucket, and therefore why should this change not be reflected in Wikipedia too—the people’s encyclopedia—where a substantial body of work exists.

Well, I read there are further provisions to apply for review under Wikipedia deletions policy, which I may have to utilise.

I note someone has deleted the David Moore photo from the article, as at June 21 (midday). I have already explained that I have copyright in this photo (see above). It should be restored. --Waverleywattle (talk) 08:31, 21 June 2010 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.