Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey

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 - consensus is fairly clear that the mentions in reliable sources are trivial, and getting 3% in an election doesn't give any other grounds for notability. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 02:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey

Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Procedural. Deprodded. Concern was notability. - crz crztalk 03:40, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - non-notable failed election candidate. MER-C 04:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I rather think the most notable aspect of the subject is her blog, one of the entries from it having gained a pretty good amount of attention. Also, her name brings up 121,000 Google hits, which feels like a lot to me. --Maxamegalon2000 06:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Be careful of the Google bias. Most of those google hits are blog entries about her and blog entries about other blog entries about her — no sign of any reliable sources. Demiurge 12:00, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Be careful yourself of what constitutes a reliable source. A blog post may not be a reliable source for information about Passey, but citing that blog post is a reliable source for the fact that there have been blog posts about her. As WP:BIO states, the definition of "published work" is left deliberately broad, and the literally dozens of bloggers who have published material pertaining to Passey ought to establish notability. VoiceOfReason 19:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Clearly fails WP:BIO & Wikipedia:Candidates and elections. Eusebeus 14:03, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete This person is definitely NN. This article is essentially a defamation of the subject with almost no encyclopedic information. Scienter 14:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Keep As the author I take some offense at the claim that the article is "essentially a defamation"; as written there was no defamatory intent and I was careful to adhere to WP:NPOV. Other (mostly anonymous) editors added defamatory information, which has been removed. Wikipedia:Candidates and elections is a proposed guideline. As for WP:BIO, it's easy to find multiple non-trivial published works of which she is the subject; if nothing else there have been dozens of commentaries written about the blog post detailed in the "controversy" section. VoiceOfReason 19:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, unless reliable sources promised are actually found and cited. Currently no reason to think she'd pass WP:BIO. Change to keep, Toronto Star article covers her pretty thoroughly and establishes notability. Seraphimblade 21:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete It seems to me that a blog post shouldn't qualify as a non-trivial published work. It's not exactly a very stringent 'publishing' process. Should I be able to open up a bunch of Blogger accounts and make myself notable? SubSeven 21:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment When the blog posts in question are on blogs like Marginal Revolution and written by folks like Harvard Economist Greg Mankiw, does the fact that publishing is done online necessarily make it trivial?
  • Comment Even if you open a bunch of Blogger accounts, you can't make yourself notable, because you're neither multiple sources nor independent of the subject. If, however, thirty bloggers write articles about you, that is a strong indicator of notability. Of course, bad faith would have to be taken into consideration... but there's certainly more than enough evidence to assume good faith on the part of the bloggers who wrote about Passey and believe that they wrote about her because they thought she was notable. VoiceOfReason 01:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment I mean that I'd be posing as thirty different people. There is not really anything to prevent this. And even ignoring those kinds of possiblities, I can't accept a blog post as an indicator of notability. Blogs have absolutely no publishing standards (nor should they). Plenty of bloggers are part of circles of friends that regularly talk about each other's exploits. Certainly a few buddies writing about each other can't make them notable to the world. SubSeven 13:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Response I realize that you'd be posing as thirty people. This again goes to the notability criteria being guidelines... not policies, not laws. If your article is up for deletion and you want to claim that you meet the notability criteria because of your mention on thirty different blogs, people could choose to discount that evidence based on suspicion that those thirty different blogs aren't really "multiple" sources, nor really "independent" of the subject. Are you suggesting that that is the case with the multiple blog mentions of Passey? It seems highly unlikely, considering that 1) most of the published works on blogs regarding Passey are hardly complimentary and 2) many of the published works are on well-known, large blogs, which aren't likely to allow themselves to be used as sockpuppets.

As far as blogs having "no publishing standards"... technically, neither do newspapers nor magazines nor any other media outlets. Anybody is free to publish whatever he wants. I can start my own newspaper and put whatever the heck I want in it; it's a free country. But respected blogs, just like respected mainstream media outlets, make an effort not to publish works on non-notable subjects.

Certainly a few buddies writing about each other doesn't establish notability. But just as certainly, a person who is the subject of articles on Kos, Huffington, Malkin, and Powerline is most likely notable, regardless of whether the New York Times deigns to take notice. Discarding blogs entirely as an indicator of notability makes no more sense than automatically accepting any mention on any blog as an indicator of notability. But even so, WP:BIO as it is written today certainly includes blogs; it explicitly excludes other things but not blogs, and it specifically emphasizes that the definition of "published work" is left extremely broad. If you want, you can argue that Passey is not notable, and you can argue that the cited works do not prove notability. But you can't legitimately argue that she doesn't meet the guideline WP:BIO, because she plainly does. VoiceOfReason 19:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• keep Notable jackass. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) .
• Comment - I realize that I'm not disinterested, having invested the time to actually write this article, but I think too many people are kneejerking on WP:BIO. In the first place, WP:BIO is a guideline, not a policy. That an article fails a notability guideline would be a reason to consider the article's merit, not an ironclad mandate to delete. Quoting from WP:BIO itself:

This is not intended to be an exclusionary list; just because someone doesn't fall into one of these categories doesn't mean an article on the person should automatically be deleted.

(boldface in original)

In the second place, Passey meets WP:BIO besides. The very first criterion for notability:

• The person has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person.

Okay, so what's a published work? The guideline continues:

• This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, magazine articles, books, scholarly papers, and television documentaries (2) except for the following: (two criteria which do not apply to Passey).

(2): What constitutes a "published work" is deliberately broad.

A blog post is surely a published work in some form. And several of the blogs which published articles on Passey are big, well-known blogs with massive readership. Heck, some probably attract more eyeballs than most major newspapers.

Maybe blog posts should be specifically excluded from the category of "published works" in WP:BIO. But as of now, they're not. Passey meets the notability guidelines spelled out in WP:BIO and this article should not be deleted.

I'll add that this article has been the target of repeated vandalism, mostly by anonymous IPs. I'll keep an eye on it and prevent it from happening again. VoiceOfReason 01:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I've added some stuff with newspaper citations, though I couldn't find anything for the controversy section. --Maxamegalon2000 04:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Excellent additions, which make clear the subject meets WP:BIO even if you don't count blogs as published works. VoiceOfReason 06:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment can you tell us how substantial those newspaper articles are? Do they just mention her name in passing, or are they entirely about JMMP? The headlines don't mention her anyway. I found the Seattle Times article [1], in my opinion it doesn't really count as a substantial reference, because it's primarily not about her — she only gets a few paragraphs. Demiurge 09:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Neither article is entirely about her, no. But she gets a couple of paragraphs, and the quotes I added. Basically she's given as one of a couple of examples of people with notable blogs. The Seattle Times article is about how blogs can affect politics, and the Toronto Star article is about using blogs to start relationships. She's cited in both as an example of the point about blgos that the article is trying to make. --Maxamegalon2000 15:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - When your only slight claim to fame is the fallout from a hissy fit on your blog, you really aren't important when it comes right down to brass tacks.Chris Buckey 06:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Sorry, could you cite the bit about being "really important" when it comes "right down to brass tacks" in WP:BIO or any other guideline or policy? VoiceOfReason 06:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Umm, the bit that says, "The person has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person." I really don't think blog entries making fun of someone's declaration of quality count as "non-trivial". Chris Buckey 18:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment From WP:BIO: "Non-triviality is a measure of the depth of content of a published work, and how far removed that content is from a simple directory entry or a mention in passing that does not discuss the subject in detail." It specifically draws the examples of a birth certificate or a single ballot line as trivia. Other examples of trivia: "newspaper articles that just mention the person in passing, telephone directory listings, or simple records of births and deaths." Published works focused primarily on the subject are not trivial, even if they take the form of blog posts. Even if you disagree, do you think the Toronto Star and Seattle Times are also trivial publications? VoiceOfReason 00:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Comment Why do you care so much about this? Chris Buckey 05:11, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
          • Comment Because I put forth the effort to write this. I'd have no problem seeing it deleted if it really did fail the notability guidelines, but it doesn't. VoiceOfReason 21:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep The citations I added alone make me feel like this one just squeaks by, but I think the Google hits and all of the other blogs that mention her count for something. Maxamegalon2000 15:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: I have a syllogism to contribute: 1. I have never had lunch with a notable person. 2. I have had lunch with Jacqueline Passey. 3. Jacqueline Passey is not a notable person. The deletion debate here should center on the major premise of my syllogism, although I suppose we could discuss the minor premise as well :) Philwelch 04:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Borderline because of media mentions, but coverage seems pretty trivial to me. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 06:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Notability established by media article / political run. Makgraf 01:10, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Non-notable Bgeer 01:29, 3 December 2006 (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.