Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James D. Nicoll (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, clearly. Plenty of valid reasons to keep, but actually Patrick Nielsen Hayden's input alone is probably sufficient. Tempting though it may be to further taunt the editor who rather injudiciously chose to challenge that, I think this is a valid application of the good old snowball clause. Guy (Help!) 18:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

A discussion about some of the issues raised in this articles for deletion discussion has been started at: Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources#Recent_issue_with_reliable_sources. Please contribute! --Kim Bruning 19:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] James D. Nicoll

James D. Nicoll (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (1st AfD)

It amazes me still that this article was able to skirt our WP:BLP policies so conveniently just 5 months ago, but try as I might, I cannot locate any non-trivial third party coverage of this person. Right now the article is pulling sources from Usenet, LiveJournal, and a couple different mailing lists depending on what time of the week you view the page. That is just unacceptable and fails WP:A policy as well. Burntsauce 21:23, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per nom. Questionable notability, and no proper sourcing. - TexasAndroid 21:28, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Take another look, two print sources have been added. Shsilver 00:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The sources appear to be very trivial in nature. RFerreira 05:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Doesn't meet WP:NOTE, WP:BIO, totally lacks proper sourcing according to WP:V, WP:A. Knowing of him from Usenet and thinking he's a good guy does not mean he's worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. WP:BLP policies are not optional at this point. Xihr 22:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Speedy Keep At first glance I'd say delete, but trying to make an informed decision I was trying to figure out the history of this article and gave up. There seems to be too many people who are set on changing things on it without discussing it on the talk page (including the nom). Besides that, it already passed an Afd consensus once and, based on the history of the article, don't want to take the time to try and figure out if the nom even nominated it correctly or if it should have been put up for review. Theophilus75 23:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Can you please provide reasoning based on Wikipedia policy? If you're not willing to make an informed decision that takes policy into consideration, I imagine that the closing administrator would most likely discount your comments as meaningless fluff.  ;-) RFerreira 05:29, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Specifically I'm not sure that this article has been allowed to be worked on without someone participating in [tendentious editing] in an overzealous attempt at forcing people to comply with a militant view of WP:V even when the info is not challenged or likely to be challenged, while totally ignoring WP:IAR. Additionally due to extensive tendentious editing I got tired of sorting through the article history trying to figure out if the article was properly Afd'd or if it should have been put up for review. Theophilus75 17:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• 'Strong Keep , was Weak keep' Changed on the basis of what the more knowledgeable have found. It seems that he is a notable book reviewer. But he does it in ways that do not get documented by ordinary sources. By our rules someone has to write a published article on rec.arts.sf and its daughter lists. But we know just as much about them now, & I'd accept the usenet groups as the actual main source. I do not think BLP affects this, because we are not reporting on his personal life or any controversy. He published what he published. "Any assertion in a biography of a living person that might be defamatory if untrue must be sourced." None of this is. DGG 01:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete while there are some facts pointing to the guy being notable... theres not enough to make him pass WP:BIO. Most of the sources arent reliable. Until there are more sources provided verifiability isnt proven.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 02:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. If anyone has established notability solely on the basis of their Usenet presence, Nicoll would be such a person. That aside, I do not understand what particular misunderstanding has caused editors now twice to delete the quotation from which Nicoll's outside-of-Usenet-and-fandom notability arises, which was cited to its primary source. To repeat: this quotation, with its history of misattribution, is what makes Nicoll notable in the world at large; to delete it is to remove the article's reason for existing. The sources are what they are, as difficult as this may be; as DGG notes, there is very little published information about Nicoll beyond that which he himself has written and published, so if this article stands (as I believe it should), one must accept Nicoll's own writing as the principal source for most of the relevant details. 121a0012 02:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Good point and all... but you missed something big... Usenet != reliable source. Primary sources as you mentioned also unfortunately are not considered acceptable as the only source of backup to statements.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 03:41, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Unfortunately, this is one of those instances where the general guidelines in WP:RS simply don't match up with reality. It is certainly true that a Usenet article (being effectively self-published and not subject to any sort of authentication as to their source) should not be given much weight as a source of facts; it is however a legitimate source of the statements of its author (even if we can't be certain that the author is who the From header claims). In this case, the long-established posting history of the subject weighs rather heavily on the opposite side of the scales, and we can be reasonably certain that all those articles were in fact written by the same person -- and if that person is notable, then these primary-source materials are likely to be the best source. (They are certainly verifiable, as long as Google and others maintain archives of the newsgroups in question, given that each article's unique Message-ID is included in the citation. One need not be able to verify the real-world-identity of a Usenet poster to have confidence in the continuity of the Usenet-identity, and from the latter it is legitimate to draw uncontroversial inferences about the former.) 121a0012 05:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Alkivar, the page you quote clearly notes at the top (emphasis mine): "This page provides examples of what editors on Wikipedia assess to be a reliable source. The advice is not, and cannot be, comprehensive, and should be used primarily to inform discussion in an article talk page with respect to sources. Exceptions can potentially be made; however, these should be avoided. Use common sense when reaching a collaborative conclusion." WP:V also notes circumstances in which "self-published sources and sources of questionable reliability" are acceptable, and those circumstances seem to fit most of the Usenet/LJ/etc cites under discussion here. --Calair 05:55, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • It is both meaningless and inaccurate to state that Usenet is absolutely not a reliable source; it was wrong when someone originally asserted it in that page, and it has not become better with time. Usenet is a medium, not a publication; is perfectly reliable for sourcing individual posts with a known author as statements by that person, and it is, generally speaking, less likely that a given was faked in their name than it would be for a letter in a newspaper. What Usenet is not usable for is any kind of bulk inferences, any "much discussion has revolved around" or "popular believe is that" material, but this is not relevant here.
    • As such, with Usenet sources, we should not be considering the "publication" as a whole as we would with, say, reliable/unreliable newspapers; we should be considering the context and the author. And why, specifically, are these cites unreliable? Shimgray | talk | 21:41, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. WP:BLP, WP:V and associated policies are important, and that is precisely why we should not bring them into disrepute by using them to nickel-and-dime uncontroversial material out of an article before deleting it for lack of content. When somebody who is best-known from Usenet posts on Usenet indicating his own birthday, and has no obvious reason to lie about it, rejecting that as a citation and tagging it with factneeded is excessive zeal. Compare to Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Albert Einstein, and many other articles - each of which get more scrutiny in a day than Nicoll's has in its entire existence - and yet begin with uncited birthdates. The reason those birthdates have stood without being challenged is not that their editors are sloppy, it's that they understand that enough bludgeoning with the policy stick can kill any article. --Calair 02:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. This is a small article, but a valid one. DS 03:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• (Overriding?) Keep. Charles Stross, Jeremy Smith and Richard Lederer refer to this bloke, apparently. 2 of those are notable enough to have their own articles. I think this destroys the not-notable argument outright. --Kim Bruning 03:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Kim notability isnt at question here... the fact that there are no reliable sources to back any of the data in this biography is.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 04:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I also accept Usenet as a reliable source, under certain circumstances (specifically in this case, in situations to do with usenet itself). This seems to be one such circumstance. (specifically in this case, in situations to do with usenet itself). --Kim Bruning 04:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Added when usenet can be reliable to examples. (also, I missed the rfc editor, so added them too :-) ) --Kim Bruning 04:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. What, we need to delete this or there's no room in Wikipedia for other articles?. This sort of prissy attitude is what's killing Wikipedia, man. --Martin Wisse 03:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and lack of non-trivial third party sources, article fails WP:BIO and verifiability standards, and miserably at that. RFerreira 05:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete no significant secondary sources. Lacks notability by any reasonble measure. Quatloo 06:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. People are capable of being notable personalities within the Usenet sphere, and this is definitely one of them. If the article has structural problems then fix them in some way other than AfD.. Bryan Derksen 06:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. A Usenet post saying "The Earth is flat" is not a reliable source for the Earth being flat, but the original Usenet post saying "The problem with defending..." is certainly a reliable source for the origin of the quotation in question. It is, in fact, the only possible reliable source. That quotation alone, and the question of its attribution, are deserving of an article; the Nicoll Pledge is likewise of unique importance within SF fandom. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zeborah (talk • contribs) 07:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC).
• Keep. Didn't we go through this already? -- Metahacker 13:20, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per above. Spikebrennan 13:30, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep because this sort of article is useful to me. I find myself strongly at variance with what seems to be emerging Wikipedia policy -- you guys are ruining everything that's good about Wikipedia, and keeping only the parts I can find anywhere. James is somebody people will need to look up and learn about, and his original articles on Usenet are in fact the ultimate published source. Dd-b 20:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep as per above and as per the previous AfD debate. Also I would like to note that merely because the notability is regarding Internet presence that notability should not be discounted; after all, Wikipedia itself is an Internet presence. -- Anton P. Nym 216.191.213.114 20:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC) — 216.191.213.114 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Keep As per Dd-b, this is a microcosm of all the problems the deletionist tendency is causing. And as per Theophilus75 WP:IAR applies in spades. --Bth 20:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, for the reasons Martin Wisse gave. Personally, I think deletionists should go get their own wiki-based encyclopedia, which would, appropriately, be empty. -- Cabalamat 21:32, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per above. Valuable material is being deleted from Wikipedia by people who don't appear to understand what kind of things are valuable to literary scholarship. Nicoll is an aphorist and raconteur well known to--and influential upon--several different overlapping circles of professional SF and fantasy writers. As a frequent first reader for the SF Book Club his editorial judgement has a non-trivial impact on the field as well. If we were talking about American writers in Paris in the 1920s, rather than the professional SF world today, by now there would be at least one full-length book about Nicoll written for a popular audience, a fistful of academic papers, and innumerable references in various interviews and memoirs; he's that kind of eccentric but important figure. If there's currently a dearth of print references to him, what that tells us is that the print-SF subculture lives more and more on the internet these days. -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden Pnh 21:40, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
  • You need to back these claims with reliable sources, which as of right now still amount to zero. Burntsauce 22:57, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Keep. Oh, for God's sake, Burntsauce. Patrick Nielsen Hayden IS a reliable source: He's the senior editor of Tor Books, the largest science fiction and fantasy publishing house in the entire world, a multiple Hugo nominee in both pro and fan categories, and a walking, talking respository of the history of the science fiction field. If he says someone is notable in science fiction, they are, and no amount of ignorantly pedantic Wikitwittery such is displayed in the comment above will change that. As for myself, I'm not nearly as notable in science fiction, as I am a mere two-time Hugo nominated, Campbell Award-winning author, but I also vote to keep the article, because when the history of this era of SF/F publishing is written, it's not at all likely Nicoll won't be in it, and it would be nice if Wikipedia had information that reflected this reality. Scalzi | 01:53, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
    • You do realize you just challenged a major professional editor for one of the largest science fiction publishers as not providing any backup for the assertion that Nicoll has influence in the field of science fiction, yes?
    • Usenet is not a source, no more so than Penguin Books is a source for what one of their authors writes. Usenet is a medium through which we obtain a source. Chanting a mantra of "usenet is not a reliable source" may make you feel warm and fuzzy, but doesn't help the matter in hand. Shimgray | talk | 00:24, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment If the rules (whether they be the notability ones, or the sourcing ones, or whatever) make this article a deletion candidate, then the problem is with the rules and the correct response is to modify them, not delete the article. Modifying the rules is of course a huge faff, but luckily we already have WP:IAR precisely to deal with these edge cases. Further, in response to the "not a vote" tag, while I did come over here having heard about the AfD from fandom sources, the reason I came and chipped in was that I saw it as a chance to flag up my concerns about these issues, which are precisely why I no longer bother actively editing Wikipedia beyond copyedits, and normally do so anonymously. --Bth 06:03, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per above. Jcfiala 22:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC) — Jcfiala (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Keep. Per above. Possibly even interview James D. Nicoll himself (as he is still alive and may be a good source of information about himself). Sleepykit 23:21, 16 May 2007 (UTC) — Sleepykit (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• Keep I've heard of him on USENET and could imagine someone wanting to look him up. JJL 00:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Use Google Groups and you can easily see he's a major Usenet personality in SF and althist, if not elsewhere. Sorry if reality hasn't fit into your preconceived notions of possible sources but this is frigging obvious to anyone who knows something about those social spheres. You can buy shirts with his aphorisms on it; there's a Wikiquote page filled with his quotations. Notable enough? -- I won't even touch the funniness of Wikipedia complaining about other online sources as being unreliable. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 12.73.243.11 (talk • contribs).
• Keep James Nicoll is directly influential on dozens of SF authors as one of the primary reviewers of such material -- for, among others, the Science Fiction Book Club. His evaluations of new SF books is one of the major factors determining whether the SFBC picks a given book to offer or not. *I* have a Wikipedia entry. If James Nicoll is not sufficiently influential to have a Wikipedia entry, I most certainly am not, and I will personally delete my own entry if his is removed. -- Ryk E. Spoor
• Keep. Good grief. "Usenet != WP:RS" is not some magic dogma. It's not a reliable source for most things, obviously, insofar as there's no editorial control, but to complain that Usenet archives are not a reliable source for documenting someone's activities on Usenet is absurd. Someone needs a tap or two with the cluestick. Choess 06:30, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep for reasons well stated by Pnh, Scalzi, and Martin Wisse above. Note that I also find the notion that surviving the AfD process is equivalent to "skirt[ing] our WP:BLP policies so conveniently" to be extremely tendentious. Ergative rlt 06:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep For pity's sake, the oft-quoted (and misquoted and misattributed) "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore..." is in and of itself certainly enough to warrant the man's notability! Add to that his influence in SF literature and fandom circles (which widely overlap),as Patrick Nielsen Hayden and others have already explained. If this isn't "notability" and "reliability" enough, not only are your criteria incredibly picky, but your understanding of your medium seems to be as well. Someone seems to have the misconception that Wikipedia is limited somehow by space. Print encyclopedias have to limit the number of their entries, because they only have so many pages to fill. How does this apply to Wikipedia? And isn't an online, popularly-edited encyclopedia full of vast numbers of articles on a wide variety of obscure topics, many relating to various fandoms and other popular-media subjects, exactly the place we would expect information, a short article,a brief biography, on a perhaps obscure but nonetheless influential person in some of the very online fandoms and popular-media topics Wikipedia specializes in? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bibliotrope (talk • contribs).
• Keep. Reliable sources discussing Mr Nicoll include:
  • [1] John Scalzi is a professional SF author and is widely respected on the SF community. His blog can be considered a reliable source on matters related to SF.
  • [2] Chad Orzel is a professional physics research (and therefore his publications in the field of physics are considered reliable sources by WP:V) describes Nicoll as one of his "go-to sources for odd information about space related issues"
  • [3] Professional linguistics researcher Mark Liberman quotes the Nicoll quote discussed in the article in his self-published blog which has previously been widely accepted on wikipedia as a reliable source.
  • [4] Charlie Stross is also a profession SF author and therefore reliable for similar reasons to Scalzi
  • [5] Official Science Fiction Book Club source confirming information in the article. I think these five sources are more than enough to justify keeping this short bio. JulesH 12:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment (another one, sorry) Separate from the issue (possibly too broad for this AfD) of whether Wikipedia needs a complete overhaul of its attitude to online sources for online subjects, can someone explain to me what the perceived problem is under WP:BLP? The notability argument appears to have been conceded; this dispute is about reliable sources. The "Using the subject as a self-published source" section of BLP says that material self-published by the subject is an acceptable source under a number of conditions (relevant to notability, not contentious, not self-serving, undisputed authorship and lack of claims about third parties). Nicoll's blog on LiveJournal appears to me to satisfy all of them. I am genuinely interested to know what the problem is. (I have checked the history; these guidelines were present in BLP at the time this article was nominated for deletion.) --Bth 13:10, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: subject is obviously the sort of person we should have an article on, and if our policy says that the available sources are not suitable, then the policy is doing us a disservice. This is the kind of "discussion" which is gradually turning Wikipedia into a laughing stock as people look in from the outside wondering what kind of articles we do want to keep. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 14:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep: Subject is quotable enough to be worth a Wikiquote entry ; according to Wikiquote, one of his more famous aphorisms "has appeared in textbooks." People will want to crossreference to know who he is. Also, his quotes have often been misattributed making identification important. LisRiba 15:07, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

  Anyone can add a Wikiquote entry about anyone, that doesn't make the person notable, nor does it provide the missing link here: reliable, non-trivial third party sources. Burntsauce 17:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

• Keep: I've added some additional print works that use the quote, which should certainly help boost "notability" and I think I'll expand to include references to additional online linguistic discussions. It should also be expanded to include more references from the SF fandom, SF writing, and SF publishing worlds. --Padent 17:09, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Close Now? Seeing the unique situation where this Articles for Deletion discussion probably counts as a reliable source all by itself now, shall we keep early? --Kim Bruning 15:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC) On the gripping hand... I wonder how many more famous/important sf people we can still attract? O:-) see also the talk page

• Keep Did someone call for famous people? Oh, that's NOT me? Sorry. On a more serious note, there seems to be enough reliable evidence that this person is more notable than your standard db-bio. Avi 18:34, 17 May 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.