Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carl Freer

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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 to delete, default to keep.  Sandstein  06:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Carl Freer

Carl Freer (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

I believe this person is non-notable. Problems have been caused with self-promotion on this page, and other referenced pages, with evident advertizing. ((note - comments here removed as per WP:BLP - see discussion below for details --  Chzz  ►  23:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC))) not WP:NOTABLE  Chzz  ►  21:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep. There is plenty of newscoverage of him. GoogleNews returns 418 hits [1] (even if only a half of them are related to him, that'd be enough). the article includes a few solid references and there are lots more available from the above search, such as [2][3][4][5], and so on. Clearly passes WP:BIO. Nsk92 (talk) 21:27, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete - Not a biography. The article was more about Gizmondo than about this guy. After removing the information that didn't belong the bio, almost nothing is left. Unless a real bio can be created for this guy.... --Damiens.rf 21:34, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
There is no requirement in WP:BIO for there to be specifically a biography or even a biographical article about him, and that is not how it is WP:BIO is typically used, especially for the BLP cases. WP:BIO explicitly says: "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability". There is lots of coverage here that is certainly non-trivial. Nsk92 (talk) 21:43, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep I think a guy involved with a company with its own page, and with a career this, er, dramatic, can merit a page.Elan26 (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)Elan26
  • Delete - Google news hits are not relevant to meeting WP:BLP. Most articles that mention him are about Gizmondo the company, and mention Carl Freer in passing because he was CEO. There aren't many, if any, articles focused on him as the main subject. As Carl Freer is only notable for his involvement in Gizmondo, any material not in that article already can be Smerged there. Regarding the dramatic nature of his career, liability issues and reverts from certain interested editors that occur whenever someone tries to add something about those incidents prevent that aspect of his career from being represented here. Fugu Alienking (talk) 22:18, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete, per Damiens.rf. Stifle (talk) 22:26, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Please be aware that the number of google hits is falsely inflated by self-published and questionable sources. --  Chzz  ►  22:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. After looking through the page's history and looking up more references I see some of what you guys were talking about. There seems to have been some POV pushing involved with this article and a fair amount of verifiable negative material is not represented in the article. E.g. the story about his about his gun-related arrest reported in the LA Times[6]. Some other news coverage is rather negative, such as this story in New York Times[7]. This sourced and verifiable info is currently not represented in the article which is certainly a problem. But I have to say, in view of all of this coverage, positive and negative, the argument that he is not notable seems rather disingenuous to me. There are POV pushing and balance issues with this article and some BLP problems as well. These may be good enough reasons to delete it, especially since this is a BLP article, I am not sure. But I would say that notability is not the real issue here. Nsk92 (talk) 23:52, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Another negative story in LA Times[8]. Nsk92 (talk) 00:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Point of information. Why is this different from other biographical articles. Take a look at Jan T. Gross, a highly regarded historian, but some Polish chauvanists don't like what he writes about Polish persecution of Jews, and keep the page absurd. If you remove pages because they have a tendency to unbalance, many of the most interestign people on Wikipedia would disappear. It's a real problem, but deleting pages is not the fix.Elan26 (talk) 14:59, 17 May 2008 (UTC)Elan
  • Keep I think the Sunday Times story with the others now found makes enough for both notability and to support the article's negative statements. DGG (talk) 01:04, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep Notability is marginal, at best. Ecoleetage (talk) 01:14, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep Clearly notable, even notorious, although the level of mystery remaining means it may be difficult to cover his business arrangements with adequate sourcing and NPOV. Nevertheless, he has received sufficient coverage even just as an executive for an article. --Dhartung | Talk 06:30, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 22:13, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 22:13, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep - it's pretty marginal, and I have concerns about lasting notability - in five years' time, will anyone care who this guy is? But he seems to just about pass WP:BIO, for now at least. In future, merging into Gizmondo might be the better solution. Terraxos (talk) 15:38, 18 May 2008 (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.