Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph Patrick Moore (second 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. - brenneman ^{L} 07:29, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Joseph Patrick Moore

A majority at DRV overturned the previous keep closure for this article as improper, but there was not sufficient consensus for outright deletion. Hence, pursuant to Wikipedia:Deletion policy, this article is relisted for new consideration at this AfD. Please consult the DRV discussion before commenting here. This is a procedural nomination, so I abstain. Xoloz 14:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. The Milt Hinton award and NARAS musicianship nomination, as well as the numerous articles in the likes of Bass Player Magazine, Creative Loafing, The Memphis Flyer and main Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, pass WP:MUSIC, The article needs to be cleaned up. --Tony Sidaway 15:04, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete The artist may or may not fulfill WP:MUSIC guidelines, however the article was created specifically for soapboxing by sock puppets who are likely to return after deletion review is finished. OSU80 15:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • OSU80 has been blocked for twenty-four hours by Mackensen for socking (user bluecanoe2 was his; an apparent impersonation attempt). --Tony Sidaway 16:37, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Non-notable musician who fails WP:MUSIC substantially. Being nominated and then failing to be awarded the NARAS musicianship is not noteworthy. Also, the NARAS musicianship appears to be a local, not a national award[1], so even less impressive. The Milt Hinton scholarship is not a major award[2] - it offers $1,000 for some private tuition for young bassists[3]. Media coverage is underwhelming - the biggest title claimed is the Memphis Commercial Appeal which has a 2 paragraph review of an album by one of its local boys[4]. The Memphis Flyer mention is just his name in a list of nominees for the best local bassist (the NARAS award) with 5 other names[5]. The Bass Player Magazine mentions are very short reviews ranging from two lines to [6] to 4-5 lines[7]. The regional North Carolina website Creative Loafing gives him 8-9 lines[8]. Other reviews cited by his site are of similar length and calibre[9]. The interviews are longer (well, they're interviews) - but they seem to be for non-mainstream websites and internet forums (the international insitute for bassists says its just a website popular amongst bassists, not an actual institute[10]), not printed magazines or well-known websites; some of these seem pretty obscure[11]. Bwithh 16:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I think we differ on the significance of these awards and nominations. Since the Milt Hinton award was recorded in Bass Player Magazine, my feeling is that it must be of some considerable significance, enough for it to be termed "major". Your mileage may vary.
  • I'm not one to insist on a very high bar for inclusion in Wikipedia because I think that this would result, to take the current example, in patchy coverage of professional jazz musicians who, like Moore, achieve a level of recognition without much commercial success. If people might read about someone and come to Wikipedia for informationm, then we should probably write about them. I'm inclined to the view that Wikipedia's purpose isn't to describe only those people a lot of us already know about; I know this isn't a universally held view. --Tony Sidaway 17:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't see the evidence for Moore achieving a noteworthy level of non-commercial recognition. As for the scholarship, it is much smaller and less well known than many university scholarships/fellowships/best-of-class prizes. Bwithh
  • I'm not concerned with "noteworthiness". We really aren't in the business of saying "this person is worthy, that person is not." As I suggest above, I think the criterion should be: is someone likely to read about this person somewhere and want to come to Wikipedia to learn more, and if they do can we tell them more than they already know?" --Tony Sidaway 17:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is not a search engine; its an encyclopedia, not an indiscriminate collectionm of information. As a matter of policy, many useful categories of information are excluded - how-to's, recipes, quotation lists, the Yellow Pages etc, never mind more obscure terms that people might want to look up. Bwithh 18:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree completely with the policy that Wikipedia isn't "an indiscriminate collection of information." But here we're talking about an article about a professional musician. I just don't think the policy as stated means what you seem to think it means. Articles about professional musicians are very much the kind of thing one would expect to find in an encyclopedia. --Tony Sidaway 18:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Notability exists to service WP:V/WP:RS and WP:NPOV. WP:V and WP:NPOV are well served in this article; by that metric this article deserves to stay. As a well-written, fairly well-sourced article, it does not in any way diminish Wikipedia to include. For that matter, depending on the status of the label he published his albums on (M.M.P. ring a bell for anyone?), he may very well meet WP:MUSIC, with regard to the following: "Has released two or more albums on a major label or one of the more important indie labels (i.e. an independent label with a history of more than a few years and a roster of performers, many of which are notable)," or "Is frequently covered in publications devoted to a notable sub-culture.". Captainktainer * Talk 18:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • MMP stands for "Moore Music Productions", which seems to have been the name of Moore's personal label, Blue Canoe, for several years. Although Moore says he was a session musician, I have been unable to locate any session credits (this isn't surprising). --Tony Sidaway 19:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Thanks for clearing that up, Tony. Know anything about Root Cellar Productions, which seems to be the label for his third album? Captainktainer * Talk 19:36, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Out of 17,379 CD reviews on allaboutjazz.com, there is a single hit for MMP[12], 5 for Blue Canoe (3 of them are records by Joseph or him and his band). Root Cellar is not listed[13]. Root Cellar appears to be a custom digital recording studio[14] - this is the first hit on google - not a record label. Oh, and I totally disagree with the idea that notability is easily dismissable exists only as to service WP:V etc. Wikipedia doesn't work like that, though I know some people would like to see it do so Bwithh 19:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
      • As a matter of fact, "notability" isn't Wikipedia policy, while Verifiability is. Moreover you will search in vain for "non-notable" as a deletion criterion in the Deletion policy. It is possible that you have been misled on these matters. --Tony Sidaway 19:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
        • Actually, I do know that notability is a guideline, not a policy while WP:V is etc. but notability is not something which is simply overriden by verifiability, reliable sources and NPOV. And thanks very much for being condescending but WP:NN discusses non-notability, noting that it is a controversial topic b ut is a frequently used argument for deletion on AFD, and that it is often associated with the formal policy, WP:NOT. Bwithh 20:06, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
          • I didn't mean to be condescending, I'm sorry. But it seemed to me that you were trying to imply that notability concerns override all others. My view is that this is an interesting bass player who has been around for a decade as a recording artist. Not quite Jaco Pastorius, but certainly someone whose name does tend to crop up in electric bass and double bass circles. There is enough material to make an interesting an useful article (though I don't think the article it quite there yet in terms of quality) and in my opinion that's really all we need. The "notability" concept is sometimes useful, for instance, in dealing with garage bands and high school bands, This fellow isn't one of those and, in my opinion, it would be inappropriate to exclude his article from Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway 20:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Non-notable artist. --InShaneee 18:59, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Once, again, I argue that this article be deleted. The various records/CDs/albums that this artist has been published under are all homebrew studios or they were never published at all (Blue Canoe Records is a digital record label/he was published directly to the internet). It doesn't appear that he passes any of the WP:MUSIC criteria for inclusion.
  • He hasn't charted a hit on any national music chart (unless one counts his eMusic rating among other artists that aren't included on Wikipedia).
  • He has no gold records.
  • He has not gone on an international or national tour.
  • None of his albums have been released on a major label, or one of the notable indie labels.
  • He was not part of any other band that passes WP:MUSIC.
  • He is not the prominent representative of the music scenes in Memphis, Knoxville, or Atlanta.
  • He has not won a major music award.
  • He has not placed in a major music competition.
  • He has not performed music for a work of media that is notable (the closest to this is the fact that his music has been used during the local weather segments on the Weather Channel).
  • He has not been placed in rotation at any national radio network.
  • And he has not been the subject of a half-hour or longer broadcast on a national radio network.
• This, combined with the rampant soapboxing, including adding this artist to the articles on Bass guitar [15], Fretless guitar [16], his birth to 1969 in music [17], among other pages by Ms Frieske, and her proven and suspected sockpuppets stands that the artist and the executive producer were using Wikipedia to promote Joseph Patrick Moore, not unlike all of the musical artists who think because they put themselves on myspace that they can advertise themselves on Wikipedia, too. Ryūlóng 20:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Although, I'll remind you that one of the sockpuppets was actually controlled by OSU80, on the other side the debate. Mackensen (talk) 20:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• After some consideration, Keep. The subject is a borderline case--neither a slam-dunk keep, nor an obvious case of a non-performing garage band with delusions of grandeur. In such cases, I tend to lean keep; there is enough material for an WP:NPOV and WP:V article; Tony's proposal is a good start (though I'd remove any reference to the Grammys, the local NARAS chapter awards aren't referred to as such for a good reason). The attempt at sockpuppetry by the part of the folks at Blue Canoe (and WP:VANITY in general) can often swing my vote the other way (which is why I listed this in the first place); however, the apparent malfeasance by a Wikipedia editor in creating an {{imposter}} account I consider a far worse violation--Karen Frieske is doing what she's paid to do, promote her label and the label's artists. There is no excuse whatsoever for impersonating other users, or trying to frame them for sockpuppetry. Thus, holding my nose over all the BS which has gone on here, I'll vote keep. Further, I repeat my suggestion that folks from Blue Canoe refrain from editing the article directly, or linking to it elsewhere. --EngineerScotty 21:55, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
  • However, the imposter account actually did some help, by listing the article under List of jazz bassists or whatever. There were more sockpuppets and sockpuppeteers pushing this artist than the single imposter account trying to make a point. Ryūlóng 22:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and protect. In borderline notability cases for dead or long-retired musicians, there's reason to lean keep, since Wikipedia is an important place to preserve historical info and pointers to the remaining documentation as they fade from memory and the easily-locatable info dries up. For borderline-notable still-active musicians supposedly on the rise, delete without hesitation, especially when the slightest whiff of WP:VAIN or WP:SPAM attaches to the article. If they're really on the rise, their notability should be increasing and not decreasing, and they can be re-entered once they're no longer borderline. Notoriety for musicians being bankable and with every Wikipedia page contributing hugely to Google rank, there's relentless pressure to ram self-promoting music articles into the wiki, tilting the NPOV of the whole encyclopedia and worsening its spam problem. That should in no way be encouraged.

  The above is on general principle. In this particular instance, there was apparent egregious sockpuppetry from marketroids at the "label" that released this guy's recordings. The logic is "Hey, if this spamming works, I get valuable exposure. If it doesn't work, the article gets tossed and I'm no worse off than before. Plus, the deletion process might waste a lot of their time, but I'm getting paid for this, so there's no loss for me. There's no disincentive whatsoever, so go for it!". There has to be a "loss" branch and so if the socking is confirmed, not only should the article be deleted, but any music articles having to do with this "label" or its performers should be banned from Wikipedia for at least a year, regardless of notability. Phr (talk) 12:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

  • That doesn't strike me as a sensible way to build an encyclopedia. If people put advertising material and promotional language into an article, remove it. --Tony Sidaway 14:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
    • It is eminently sensible. The number of people and organisations that might want to use Wikipedia for self-promotion runs into tens or hundreds of millions, Wikipedia has a limited number of housekeeping editors, who have limited time, and any article can be seen by hundreds of people before anyone decides to clean it up as most readers never edit. Landolitan 18:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
      • That's an argument for deleting all articles on obscure subjects. I am happy that it has seldom prevailed as an argument for deletion on Wikipedia. --Tony Sidaway 18:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
        • As written, the general part about deleting semi-notables whose notability is supposedly increasing was specifically about musician articles. It can be generalized to articles about some other types of people, companies, and products, but certainly not to every subject. And it doesn't apply at all to borderline-notability subjects which are fading away in popular awareness (e.g. deceased subjects), for which documentation should be preserved before it is lost. I do lean towards keeping those types of articles. Phr (talk) 23:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
      • It seems to me, that the proposal to block WP:VANITY violators and bar their pet subjects is, ahem, interesting--but entirely irrelevant to this AFD. --EngineerScotty 18:15, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
        • The suggestion is to ban blatant abusers who try to game Wikipedia for profit (in this case by attempted ballot stuffing using sockpuppets by management at the record label), just like we ban blatant vandals. It's way too drastic a remedy for run-of-the-mill vanity editing. I agree that an AfD isn't the right place for that discussion, maybe I can separate out that part of the comment. Phr (talk) 23:52, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Not sufficiently notable for reasons listed above. He has more to gain from the existence of an article about him than Wikipedia or its readers have. Landolitan 18:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, non-notable and vanity --Awiseman 18:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Tony Sidaway, figure skates by WP:MUSIC guideline. Yamaguchi先生 23:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Bwithh's thorough research. Non-notable musician, fails WP:NOT self-promotion/advertising. ~ trialsanderrors 02:09, 27 July 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.