Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/E. M. Washington (2nd 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 Keep. Sourcing is adequate to satisfy WP:BLP, although the article in its current state does not meet the standard footnoting conventions, as the added maintenance tags have highlighted. This is a matter for editing, not deletion. Office actions for the ticket can override this AFD or outright separately delete the article, but do not directly influence the consensus of an AfD debate. Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 04:25, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] E. M. Washington

E. M. Washington (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

An individual who is asserted to e an art forger, but we have OTRS ticket 2008022810020292 that asserts otherwise. Either way this does not look to be a notable art forger or artist. Tom Keating this is not. Sourcing is way too thin for a biography this negative. Guy (Help!) 18:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

• Strong Keep. The Forbes article and others in the included references show that he certainly is an art forger, and note that that article reported

  Since 1998 as many as 60,000 Washington prints may have been sold on Ebay and at PBA Galleries in San Francisco and DuMouchelle's in Detroit, among other venues, at prices ranging from $20 to $350.

Let's halve the “as many as 60,000”, and multiply that 30,000 by the low figure of $20. $1,200,000 as of Sep 2004 (the year of that article). Guy may sneeze at this low-end figure; I do not.

Since the publication of that article, Washington admitted to “faking his death and creating over 1700 wood engravings”, which is his way of confessing what he hadn't at the time of the article.

If a “ticket” has been received, this is from Washington or from one of his agents, such as Thomiswil, who was blocked for such things as blanking the article. (Washington has been thrown-off eBay and his eBay agents such as thomiswil and lsolis808 are now having trouble moving the forgeries.) —SlamDiego_←T 19:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per nom and WP:V. At best, calling subject a forger/counterfeiter goes beyond WP:RS provided. We have one RS with the accusations, but charges are not proven yet. I don't see sustained or deep RS coverage to establish notability. Shedding whatever deserved light on Washington is a job for journalists, not Wikipedia. • Gene93k (talk) 19:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per nom- possibly a small time crook - not notable Dreamspy (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
• Weak delete, there's a marginal claim to notability, but the Forbes article is practically the only reliable source for the negative claims and nobody's gone to jail yet. Optionally WP:SALT due to prior problems. --Dhartung | Talk 21:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
• Comments: There are thousands of Google hits on this guy, and the references already included in the article include not only The Forbes article but also one from the Escher Foundation. Notability and RS are plainly met. —SlamDiego_←T 04:11, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Only a fraction of these hits are relevant. The relevant hits appear to be primary sources (dealers or accusers). Calling someone an alleged crook needs needs multiple high quality sources, especially without verdict in civil or criminal court. • Gene93k (talk) 15:42, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
    • You're strictly speaking correct in calling the thousands of relevant hits a “fraction” of the hundreds of thousands of hits in that search, but the fact remains that there are thousands of relevant hits. And those hits were cited to speak to notability. As to “reliable sources”, we have those at least with the Forbes article and with the notice from the Escher Foundation (that's the horse's mouth when it comes to things Escherian). Additionally, the Amity Art Foundation and the Philadelphia Print Shop are quite respected in their fields (Donald Cresswell, owner of the Philadelphia Print Shop, is a regular expert on the American Antiques Roadshow.) —SlamDiego_←T 16:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. However, I would agree that the article needs a major rewrite, either with much more guarded language or with sources to back up the claims.Christopher Busta-Peck | Talk 14:54, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
  • If it's the price of saving the article, then I'd support loading this very short article up with foot-notes. (I do, however, think that the present way of referencing it is objectively adequate.) —SlamDiego_←T 15:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. Wikipedia is an important source for people trying to learn about artists, a complete lack of reference to someone who is a controversial figure in the art-world would leave the site incomplete. Miss Minerva (talk) 23:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
• Keep Forbes is a sufficient source for the accusations. All that is necessary to meet BLP is that there be a specific inline references for exactly what changes come from what source--possibly accompanied by a brief quotation , "According to Alan Abrams writing in Forbes, ....". It would be desirable to have another source of similar conventional respectability, but in this case the less formal sources are adequately reliable for even this purpose. I placed 3 "fact" tags for spots where a specific inline source is in my opinion essential. DGG (talk) 07:37, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Insufficient assertion of notability. Eusebeus (talk) 18:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. It's a close call, but there simply isn't enough to satisfy the requirements of WP:BLP in the presented article. I'd recommend to leave open the possibility of a new article that states more about the notoriety of the person, most basically why Mr. Washington should be considered more worthy of a Wikipedia article than, say, a bank robber or someone who embezzled thousands of dollars from a corporation. There is potential, perhaps, for the subject... but I don't see it in the article.B.Wind (talk) 03:28, 29 March 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.