Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Avila

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, default to keep. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Daniel Avila

Daniel Avila (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

Delete non notable individual per WP:BIO. This is unencyclopedic and it would be rediculous to attempt the creation of an article for every contestant on every game show. Strothra 21:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. See my remarks on the topic of fandom and genre notability on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Melissa Skirboll. Also, a few minutes of Google searching (by someone, namely me, without any background as a game show aficionado) turned up a claim on Game Show NewsNet that Avila was directly involved in "the greatest moment in game show history".[1] That does not sound like "non-notability" to me. Strothra's claim that "it would be rediculous [sic] to attempt the creation of an article for every contestant on every game show" is correct, but is not relevant to the cases of Avila and Skirboll. —Neuromath 02:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

That website is a self-described fan page and not a reliable source per WP:RS. Such a claim of "the greatest moment in game show history" is an exceptional claim - see WP:RS#Exceptional_claims_require_exceptional_sources. --Strothra 03:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)--Strothra 03:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not a claim of fact, it is a value judgment. Since I am not making this claim myself, evidence for or against it is not relevant. I am reporting the fact that Game Show NewsNet (GSNN) has made this claim, in order to demonstrate notability of the individuals involved. Since the fact that GSNN has made such a claim is not in dispute, WP:RS is not relevant. Please keep in mind that we are discussing whether Daniel Avila is notable—not whether the Wikipedia article Daniel Avila should assert that he took part in the greatest moment in game show history. The fact that such a claim has been made by a fan site (not "page") is evidence that the three individuals in question are notable among game show fans. GSNN says on its masthead that it began as a fan page, not that it is just a page at present. The masthead also lists seventeen named contributors and explains that the site has been in existence since 1999; at present it clearly has a large number of pages and covers numerous game shows. —Neuromath 04:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:RS is incredibly relevant when you present only one source which even claims notability for the individual and it's barely a reliable source, if it is one at all. If you would like to take a part of the WP:BIO policy, however, then look at the central criterion for the policy which reads: "The person has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person." Even if only one source was acceptable, the source fails to meet several of the criteria in Wp:rs#Non-scholarly_sources. --Strothra 04:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind that WP:RS#Non-scholarly sources itself says "In general, a topic should use the most reliable sources available to its editors. Common sense is required to determine what sources to use; this guideline cannot be applied robotically." We're talking about game shows here. Also keep in mind the reasons why the guideline WP:RS and the policy Wikipedia:Verifiability exist. The latter states in its opening paragraph, "Editors should provide a reliable source for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed." I don't see a single controversial factual claim in any of the three articles you have nominated for deletion; the whole question is about significance ("Who cares?"), not reliability ("Is it true?"). The opinions of fan sites are relevant to judgments of significance, regardless of the reliability of their assertions about matters of fact. As to numbers of sources: I found at least one other relevant source in my Google search on "Melissa Skirboll" (a list of people who have won over $100,000 on game shows), and I only looked at a few pages of hits; GSNN was just an example. I didn't look more closely because my interest is not in game shows, but in avoiding the setting of unfortunate precedents for deleting Wikipedia pages. —Neuromath 05:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, fails WP:BIO. Agent 86 07:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

An update on your reference to WP:BIO and my above remarks: a few more minutes of searching Google, with a slightly refined search string ("Daniel Avila Greed" instead of just "Daniel Avila") turned up the following published articles about Avila:

• Joel Stein in Time 2000-01-09
• Eric Deggans in the St. Petersburg Times 2000-02-16
• Gina Valencia in the USC Daily Trojan 1999-11-22

The same search turned up numerous fan pages, and pages like this one on larger fan sites like CNET's TV.com, dealing prominently with Avila.

Although these published references should be sufficient to settle this AfD in favor of keeping this article on Avila, they should not have been necessary. References to reliability and verifiability are beside the point where no facts are in dispute, or likely to be disputed, and the whole question is about significance. —Neuromath 03:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Those articles clearly fail the primary criteron of WP:BIO quoted above. The individual is not the primary subject of those sources. --Strothra 16:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

With regard to the third of these sources (the Gina Valencia article), your statement is clearly false by any reasonable interpretation of "primary subject". With regard to the first two sources, I would note that the term "primary subject" in WP:BIO is vague, and a footnote in that guideline states that "This criterion elaborates what Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a directory says about being 'featured in several external sources'", indicating that the criterion is only intended to rule out the kind of completely trivial mass directory listings described in that section of WP:NOT. Also, the criterion under discussion is said to be "the central criterion for inclusion", linked to WP:N, and the relevant section in WP:N is The primary notability criterion,which says that "a topic is notable if it has been the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself" (italics in the original)—and does not use the term "primary subject". Finally, the criterion in question is for inclusion, not exclusion, and WP:BIO goes on to add other, secondary criteria, including "A large fan base, fan listing or 'cult' following". And WP:BIO prefaces all these remarks with the statement that "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 the original—not added by me). —Neuromath 18:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep In the Time article cited above, Avila is the first person discussed and is the subject of 118 words. In the second reference, he receives a 133 word coverage. These are far from a trivial or passing reference, and thus meet the requirements of WP:BIO. Per ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) The "primary subject" requirement cited by Strothra should not be interpreted as "the only subject" or "the sole focus." The intention is to require that the person be a subject of the article, and not, say, a witness to a news event who is merely given a passing mention and could as easily be replaced by someone else, or a brief mention in a directory. He was "the subject of multiple, non-trivial, reliable published works, whose sources are independent of the subject itself." " journalists have decided whether to give attention to a topic, and in their expertise have researched and checked the information about it." In the third cite above, the USC Daily Trojan, he was the sole subject of a 702 word article. The link above did not work but this one should: [2] The first two count as multiple, and they are verifiable and independent, as well as being mainstream news publications of wide circulation. The campus paper is not automatically excluded as a reliable source, per discussions at WP:RS and should be judged on its merits. This paper has an independent editorial board, print circulation of 9,000 and is one of the top 10 widely read campus papers online, and has been published since 1912. That should make it as much a reliable source as many town papers. Edison 17:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep I say keep. Daniel had an memorable appearance on Greed in 2000 that still is talked about to this day. He was the only one ever to reach the top level. Melissa, Curtis, and Daniel should get to have their own article. Besides, there are many articles on game show contestants that have only appeared once on a game show. Melissa, Curtis, and Daniel are not any of them. He appeared twice on Greed and once on Jeopardy. Melissa appeared twice on Greed. Curtis has appeared on three different game shows and twice on Greed. So, keep. Red Director

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.