Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jeremy Zawodny

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. Sandstein 22:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jeremy Zawodny

Jeremy Zawodny (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Non-notable. Vanity page. No references. 256 unique hits. cacophony ◄► 07:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Not a vanity page, but delete anyway. Likely to fail WP:BIO, nothing but mentions in blogs and other user-generated content. MER-C 08:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment From what I can gather, the bio information is sourced by his self-written bio on his site, so even if an affiliated party didn't put the info in the article, I think it's vanity by proxy. cacophony ◄► 08:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. He's published a notable O'Reilly book and is a long-time columnist and editor for Linux Magazine (USA). His blog is listed in the CNET News.com Blog 100, and he has delivered several presentations at notable open source conferences like these: [1], [2]. He's been mentioned in notable blogs such as Valleywag (here) and has at least one—albeit somewhat fleeting—CNN mention here. He's also been mentioned in several published books as seen here. -SpuriousQ 11:10, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - Per MER-C. Also, according to WP:BIO his own book alone can't enstablish his notability. The other sources you cite are blogs or trivial coverage. - Femmina 19:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep for now, but needs a lot of work. Google news and Factive indicate plenty of coverage, but that needs to be evaluated by tose with subscriptions to see if it's non-trivial. Guy (Help!) 20:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and rewrite. Notable person, but this is a vanity page. Jordan 20:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment A rewrite might be difficult with the lack of any sources. Can somebody please provide a source for his biographical info that wasn't written by him? cacophony ◄► 00:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I found a bio on him from the O'Reilly site, one of his publishers: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/1758 Jordan 19:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete vanity Reywas92^Talk 21:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - Very notable and well-known, and has plenty of press coverage (so passes WP:BIO). Jayden54 21:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - The press coverage has to be non-trivial to satisfy the bio requirements, which it isn't. Valleywag and CNN both give him passing mentions. Likewise for the books listed on Amazon search. Thus, fails WP:BIO. cacophony ◄► 00:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per SpuriousQ. — coelacan talk — 21:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete T-t-t-terminate this non-notable vanity piece. Mirror, Mirror, on the wall... 05:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I threw this page together last year when I was looking for info about him, he is mentioned a lot in tech circles, and I still think an article would be useful. It's not sourced well, obviously, and if that can't be solved I am neutral. - cohesion 18:28, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per SpuriousQ. Zawodny is sufficiently well-known to be considered noteworthy, and the article contains useful information him. Recommend incorporating references found above by SpuriousQ. Bear in mind that WP:BIO is merely a guideline, not policy, and "is not intended to be an exclusionary list". In my opinion there is sufficient information available about Zawodny to create a useful, sourced NPOV biographical article. --Fjarlq 01:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Notable, published, sourced, and well-known. Just this week he exposed Google for ripping Yahoo off. Wankers had to redesign their page that day. Ranks no. 469 out of 55,000,000 in Technorati. DelPlaya 02:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment The article is not sourced at all, and the subject does not meet the WP:BIO notability guidelines. Even if 469th place among blogs was impressive, it's irrelevant, as the subject of the AfD is the person, not his blog. cacophony ◄► 04:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Good point, cacophony, the blog (which wasn't written by itself) is also notable and should have more of a presence in the article. 469th place out of 55 million anythings is impressive and just as relevant as your mentioning that his name only receiving 256 unique ghits because from Technorati we learn that the subject has received 2,685 links from 1,778 blogs, which would suggest to most that he is quite well known and notable within his field. On a side note, you may want to cross out your claim of Vanity now that it has been proved inaccurate and it goes against WP:AGF DelPlaya 05:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I will assume good faith and give you the benefit of the doubt that you have read the WP:BIO requirements, but they clearly state that notability requires "being the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works" (keep in mind that a blog does not satisfy this requirement), which Zawodny doesn't seem to have, and thus, does not satisfy the notability requirements. In addition to this, I mentioned google hits because it is a proposed alternative of determining verifiability per WP:BIO, wheras "Technorati ranking" is not. cacophony ◄► 06:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment May I suggest that by claiming Vanity as you do in the first sentence of this AfD, you are inferring that the subject wrote the article himself WP:COI, which has been disproved, thus you should retreat from your vanity claim as it might paint you as biased. Regarding WP:BIO, the line you reference concludes with "or other well-known Internet search engine". Technorati has a respectable ranking of 181 on Alexa. A rank that is higher than Slashdot, NBA.com, or even WalMart.com, therefore most would agree that Technorati's numbers in regard to this subject are valid, and since their numbers rank him quite high, it passes the Search Engine Test that you present. DelPlaya 07:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Technorati is not an internet search engine, it is a blog search engine. As such, it's results would obviously be biased towards blogs, and anything that is a blog would rank higher on Technorati than on an internet search engine, regardless of the notability of the subject. If you'd like to use another search engine as an additional test of notability, feel free to pick one that treats all websites equally, rather than assigning a higher rank to the class of website that you would like to have a higher rank. Might I suggest you use one from here? As for the claim of vanity, currently the article seems to be sourced from Zawodny's autobiography, ergo, vanity. cacophony ◄► 11:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Technorati is not an internet search engine? To quote from the first sentence about Technorati on Wikipedia "Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo, PubSub and IceRocket." If you would like to use search engines that compare sites like Amazon.com vs people like Mr. Zawodny, please keep using that strawman technique. If you would like to try to see where people like Mr. Zawodny stand in his field, Technorati is a far better judge, in my opinion - and by its Alexa rating, I'm not alone in using it as a helpful tool. Some people today might want to use ghits to use as strawmen against those who are well-known in the blogosphere, some in the past threw alleged witches into water to see if they'd float. It appears that you wish to avoid any tool that would show this subject notable, as opposed to seriously trying to discover how notable he is. That's too bad because it makes you appear biased and not not neutral. DelPlaya 22:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Yes, that's correct. Technorati is not an internet search engine. To quote from The Wikipedia list of BLOG search engines, "Technorati". We are trying to determine how notable Zawodny is, period. Not in his field, not among bloggers, but among everything. Realtive notability is irrelevant. One could use your logic to determine that my dog, Skip, deserves a wikipedia entry, because he is notable among the rest of my pets. But I digress - It appears that you wish to avoid any tool that would show this subject non-notable, even if that tool is Wikipedia policy, as opposed to seriously trying to evaluate his notability.

In fact, this whole argument is irrelevant. WP:BIO states that, in order to meet the notability requirements, the subject has to be "the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works". To elaborate upon that, "Works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as newspaper articles that just mention the person in passing" are explicitly excluded. Jeremy Zawodny does not meet those notability requirements. Therefore, Jeremy Zawodny is non-notable. cacophony ◄► 01:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid you continue to misread WP:BIO. Nowhere on that page does it say that if someone fails at one of the bulletpoints then they are nn. Indeed it says that even if a person doesn't satisfy any of the items, they are still not necessarily eligible for a Speedy Deletion. The item that you quote is simply the first of a long line of things that *could* determine notablilty. Meaning even if Mr. Zawodny had several non-trivial published works where he was the subject, it still doesn't guarantee notability. "People who satisfy at least one of the items below *may* merit their own Wikipedia articles, as there is likely to be a good deal of verifiable information available about them and a good deal of public interest in them." With thousands of links to Mr. Zawodny as well as Top 500 Technorati ranking, and several non-trival newspaper articles where he was a subject, it would appear that he has what WP:BIO is looking for which is "a good deal of verifiable information available about them and a good deal of public interest." But if you want to continue the charade that not perfectly meeting one item disqualifies you, then go right ahead. DelPlaya 06:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, you're right, he fails at all the other bullet points as well. You are also correct in noting that people who meet the requirements *may* merit their wikipedia article, and they *may* not. You are also correct in that he does not merit speedy deletion, which is why we are going about non-speedy deletion in this AfD. So, on to the AfD;

• The "Technorati ranking" of somebody's blog is not an accepted means of determining that person's notability.
• Number of links to a person's blog is not an accepted means of determining that person's notability.
• Number of google hits is an accepted means of determining that person's notability.

• Jeremy only has 256 google hits.

• Several non-trival newspaper articles of whom the person is a subject is an accepted means of determining notability.

• Jeremy DOES NOT have several non-trivial newspaper articles of whom he is the subject, so that point is moot.

• There is NOT a good deal of verifiable information available about Jeremy, as it stands there is only ONE verifiable source that provides any biographical information.

Regards, cacophony ◄► 13:14, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• It's clear you just want to be argumentative here. The same line that you claim deems ghits an accepted means of determining a person's notability is part of the Alternative tests section that is prefaced thusly "Other tests for inclusion that have been proposed (but haven't necessarily received consensus support) include:" Therefore your claim that "Number of google hits is an accepted means of determining that person's notability" is false. Just like many of your other opinions. Just like your opinion on Technorati, which I have suggested fits in with the Alternative test section as an "other well-known Internet search engine". Therefore if ghits counts, so does the Technorati ranking. Whatever, when you decide to read the entire article that you reference and throw in some common sense, and think about the spirit of WP:BIO as well as what it says (and doesn't say), you will probably have better luck with your opinions seeming less biased. In closing, and I'm not the first to say this, WP:BIO needs to include standards for determining bloggers. And I would suggest that until a consensus is reached regarding what makes a notable blogger, AfD's about bloggers should be tabled. DelPlaya 23:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

• Hello, if I may reiterate, blogging search engines such as Technorati do not search the internet, they search blogs, and thus do not fit into the "other well-known Internet search engine" with Google, Yahoo, and Alexa. I really don't see why bloggers should be treated any differently than anybody else, that they should have their own special notability requirements. Other, more notable people who are bloggers seem to meet the notability requirements just fine. What we have to remember, though, is the fine line between blogger and blog, between website and website operator. Even if his blog were notable, then it would be notable in it's own article. Managing a notable or successful website does not automatically make one notable in their own regard. That would be notability by association. Thus, we cannot judge this person's notability by the notability of his website. That's why we have WP:BIO and WP:WEB separate. If you continue to insist that his blog is notable then, should it meet WP:WEB, feel free to create an article on his blog. Just remember though, that none of the criteria for determining the notability of a person in WP:BIO includes them being the manager of a notable website. Having said that, I will again reiterate that Jeremy does not meet any of the notability requirements suggested in WP:BIO. Regards, cacophony ◄► 04:23, 17 December 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.