Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ki Longfellow

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 Keep. James086^Talk 10:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ki Longfellow

Ki Longfellow (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Notability not established or adequately sourced per WP:BIO, WP:ATT. RJASE1 ^Talk 04:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: ugh. For one thing, grotesquely prolix, and ludicrous in the way it drops names. Quote: ... in 1964 she briefly migrated to Los Angeles instead, following the destiny of another friend, Zekial Marko, a pulp fiction writer. Marko’s work, though totally unnoticed in the land of his birth, had somehow become serious fiction in France. Thanks to this, he was asked to write a film for a young French actor called Alain Delon in order to introduce him to an American audience. The result was the rather poor “Once A Thief” [3] directed by Ralph Nelson (who’d just made Father Goose with Gary Grant and Lilies of the Field with Sidney Poitier). It starred Jack Palance, Ann-Margaret, Van Heflin, Tony Musante, and John Davis Chandler. It also featured Longfellow, her first and last appearance in film. Again from her radio interview, she said the experience taught her acting was not to her taste, mainly because it was so dependent on the taste, actions, and "meddling" of others. As Jack Palance said to her while he whiled away the tedious hours between shots: “This is no job for real artists” (plus markup). This one reeks of va -- of, ah, conflict of interest. It's full of fascinating (or not) little asides that aren't backed up, probably couldn't be backed up, and don't look as if they're worth the effort of backing up. It's an embarrassment. (Can promotion by/of/for somebody who's clearly articulate and intelligent be so shameless? Then again, perhaps it's a joe job.) There seems to be a pattern to this: earlier, I had to zap Stanshall-irrelevant Longfellow stuff from Vivian Stanshall (see this). ¶ Yet the woman does indeed seem to have written two or three books that have been put out by major publishers. Hmm. -- Hoary 06:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Currently a terribly written article, but it has at least a lot of constant work going into it, and the Author in question did manage to get several books published, at least one by Random House (major publisher). Her most recent work made Publisher's Weekly for review. Give it more time to hopefully straighten out as it's still less than a month old. It would seem much better to post "provide reference" notices for this than deletion. Autocracy 08:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete This article reads like a collection of reviews copied from the backs of the book jackets or at least a collection of critical reviews gleaned for positive statements. Arx Fortis 17:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep A writer who has published six books, three with extremely major presses (Harper-Collins, Doubleday, and Random House), and who has been the subject of a Publisher's Weekly article *and* a brattleboro.com interview passes WP:BIO. Considering the fact that she publishes under at least three names in English alone, Ghits on one name may not be terribly useful. --Charlene 19:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Charlene. Sarcasticidealist 22:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep I wrote it. I did try to follow what I'd read in the articles of other writers. The first coment is that there is so much name-dropping, and I can see that person's point. The problem is, this writer has been there and done that so much, it was hard not to name drop. If it would make things better, I could drop the movie paragraph because I can see it might be too much. I can't back up everything I've written, not by quoting published articles, but so much of what I've learned is taken from English radio and television documentaries. Is it really so terribly written? I admit that hurts a bit. But I do want to learn. I've googled a lot and more is coming out on this writer all the time. Perhaps I could work on it again. Or perhaps someone could take a red marker to it. There's someone else contributing, but I started the article (I admit, I am a fan), I take the blame for it being "terrible". But really, I am sure it shouldn't be deleted just because I did a a bad job since it meets wiki's criteria for an article. Shanalk 00:53, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: It may be hard not to name-drop. Well, try harder. Look, here's something that's quoted above and that is still in the article: The result was the rather poor “Once A Thief” [3] directed by Ralph Nelson (who’d just made Father Goose with Gary Grant and Lilies of the Field with Sidney Poitier). It starred Jack Palance, Ann-Margaret, Van Heflin, Tony Musante, and John Davis Chandler. The fact that Nelson had made Father Goose and Lilies of the Field can be explained in the article on Nelson. The fact that Once a Thief starred all those people can be explained in an article on it (if it's worth an article, and since it's "rather poor" perhaps it is not worth one). Et cetera et cetera (the namedropping isn't the only problem). Please get back in the article wearing an apron and welly boot and armed with secateurs. -- Hoary 03:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
• weak keep because her books seem notable. If kept, a rapid pruning is in order. I think there's about 2 paragraphs that's encyclopedic.DGG 02:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
• 'Keep and rewrite -- The article's in pretty bad shape, but the subject is notable, and can be verifiable. -- Chairman S. Talk ^Contribs 07:57, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and some rewriting. I can see it needs some work but some comments are, in my opinion, way over the top. The subject is suitable. The writing isn't bad at all. I do agree it is not encyclopedic, therefore needs to be worked on. I've seen things here go unchallenged that are really poor. I sometimes wonder more about us 'critics' than I do about those who contribute articles. Palmrow 13:29, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Comment: I've removed the entire offending paragraph. Also touched up a few perhaps too-non encyclopedic comments. Please, anyone, go in and do some pruning.Shanalk 13:56, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment: I've now trimmed it quite a bit. There's still a load of ho-hum biographical stuff that, if it's worth keeping, needs precise sourcing. What do I mean by ho-hum? Well, before meeting Stanshall she spent a lot of time in various places, meeting various people, but I don't see that what she was doing for most of this time was any more significant than what most people do. Can we skip the filler and just get the highlights? -- Hoary 16:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment All artists, scientists, musicians, writers, etc. have a life before they make whatever it is they make. People find that interesting. If a person ends up doing something notable, then what they did before, or what influenced them, is of interest, at least to me. I'd like to know how they got there. That's what biographies are for. There are many writers here, some with long articles, some with short ones, a lot with unreferenced materials, many with quotes and accolades. I know, I've been reading them to understand what is wrong with my effort. Who wouldn't be disappointed when there is only a list of their books, discoveries, albums, included? You say ho-hum biographical stuff. Because you are not interested in this artist? Or any artist? Or only particular artists? I don't want to read about many of the notable people included on wikipedia, so I don't bother. But if I do want to read about them, I want to know some of these, to you, ho hum, details. I can understand your earlier comments about name dropping, but not cutting out real biographical material. Shanalk 00:00, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
    • That's a fair question. It's possible that I've viewed this article with excessive coolth, prompted by its initial extravagances. First, there's a question about the status of this biographical material. Typically (although not necessarily), material about somebody's life while they were little known comes from that person. But in WP it must first be filtered through a source not controlled by that person. So we can't cite a web page written or controlled by KL, but we can cite the book Ginger Geezer even where the latter is doing little more than recycling what KL said. This requirement may knock out a lot of what's written here. Secondly, let's suppose that we have sufficiently independent evidence to assert that, say, KL spent a year in Paris, Nice, and elsewhere in Europe. Because it's a whole year, it's something that's probably worth saying even without any obvious reason; still, a good article might attempt to explain what effect this year had on KL, whether in the short or the long term. -- Hoary 03:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. My earlier irritations notwithstanding, this is somebody who merits an article, and the article about her is certainly good enough to remain. -- Hoary 03:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Thank you, Hoary, for listening to me, and even more for hearing me. I shall work harder on making this a proper wiki article, using points about the writer's life that influenced her work. This is my first article and I have other artists I would like to include. This discussion is proving invaluable to me for any future articles. I would also like to work on already existing articles that I feel are not "right" now that I've learned quite a bit discussing what is wrong with this first article.Shanalk 15:49, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry to have made you feel unwelcome at the start, and am glad that you feel welcome (or anyway not so unwelcome) now. -- Hoary 02:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per the dramatic changes and significant improvements to the article since AFD (including the addition of sources). See diff. As noted by a number of users above, the article was initially in very poor shape, but it has been largely cleaned up now. -- Black Falcon 06:31, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• • Comment Does this interesting discussion mean that the deletion notice will be removed from this article? If so, will it be soon? I've checked around among other articles that have still this tag, no discussion, and are months old. I'm hoping an active ultimately favorable number of Keeps will allow the delete tag to disappear.Shanalk 21:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Attempted explanation You've asked at least two questions here. First, while I don't want to prejudge a decision that should be made by somebody else (somebody who hasn't participated), it does look likely that there'll be a "keep" verdict. If/when that happens, three changes will be made more or less simultaneously: the person deciding it will mark this discussion as finished, will remove the deletion-discussion notice from the article, and will add a comment to the article's talk page saying that the article survived AfD. There's no reason to push this. However, some discussions such as this do fall through the cracks, as it were; if you, I or some other participant here thinks this has happened, the normal thing to do is to contact some administrator who hasn't participated in the discussion. The other articles that still have this tag but are months old: you could mean any of several things by this; if you name one or more of the articles in a message on my talk page, then I'll take a look at them and get back to you. But let's not discuss them here. -- Hoary 02:10, 16 March 2007 (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.