Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Major Garrett

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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. The discussion below indicates that the subject fulfills Wikipedia's notability requirements, and the article has been further expanded since discussion began. Non-admin close. --jonny-mt 06:01, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major Garrett

Major Garrett (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)
  • Delete a guy's a correspondent for a news org, but so nn that we have no sources, no date, place or year of birth, red flags of non-notability Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:57, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. Obvious to anyone who performs even a cursory amount of research. Major Garrett is a correspondent for Fox News. Many, many other correspondents have articles (Uma Pemmaraju,Amy Kellogg,Phil Keating, etc). I assure you that he is not in fact, so non-notable that he doesn't have a date of birth. Nom should be made aware that AFD is not for articles that need clean-up/expansion. NiggardlyNorm (talk) 01:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment - Then it should be easy for you to find a few sources and add them to the article.
      • Done. Couldn't this have been solved by discussing this article with me and allowing me to add the information rather than immediately putting it up for AFD? NiggardlyNorm (talk) 06:30, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete unless sources and some content are added. Torc2 (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Sources and comments have been added. Is this adequate for you to change your !vote?NiggardlyNorm (talk) 06:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep - Should eventually deleted if the article is not expanded upon with sources. The subject of the article is notable. --Taxman214 02:00, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Speedy Delete under reason A7: the article does not indicate "why its subject is important or significant." A one sentence article that said "The Beatles are a quartet from Liverpool" could be deleted for the same reason, and whoever restarted this article is just plain lazy (pardon the namecalling). UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:24, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Being a correspondent for a major news outlet is a reasonable claim of importance. --W.marsh 02:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Importance is not notability, and notability isn't established just by being a news correspondent. Why should this subject have a separate article, instead of just redirecting to FOX News? There is also the issue of WP:Verifiability. Torc2 (talk) 02:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Agreed. I've seen this individual on Fox. He handles the Washington beat. Plus, I hear him on Fox News Radio every so often; a local station carries it at the top of the hour. However, this is not an article. It's a declarative statement. This is a clear-cut A7. The original poster should have done his/her homework and done a good stub instead of a few keytrokes. Frankly, we need to enforce A7 a LOT more for things like this regardless of the subject. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 02:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • So after admitting that this person is a regular correspondent on several major media outlets, you maintain that the article "does not indicate why its subject is important or significant"? How could this possibly be a clear cut A7? NiggardlyNorm (talk) 06:08, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • By the way, that's a speedy delete vote for me under A7, especially after reading the user's talk page and his rather clever way of skirting the username issue. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 02:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • I don't understand how a users name could have any bearing on whether to keep an article or not. Could you explain? NiggardlyNorm (talk) 06:03, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Major Garrett is notable, but this stub offers almost no information. Unless it can be expanded with some reliable sources, I can’t see keeping it. —Travistalk 03:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
A really quick search turns up this bio. —Travistalk 03:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. Article shouldnt stay here if its a bad article. You can always make a new one later with a sandbox and some research.--DerRichter (talk) 04:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep, obviously. A major reporter is inherently notable. --B (talk) 04:45, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. Changing opinion to Keep based on recent changes; see later comments. Not sure why an article that short needed to be posted; it's obvious that only minimal effort went into its creation. There's reams of data available about Garrett and his career; an hour or so with Google (at the very least) would have created the basis for a pretty good article, so this one doesn't have any justification for existence. Duncan1800 (talk) 04:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Umm ... would you like me to mass delete everything in every stub category while I'm at it? One person creates a stub. Another expands it. That's the way Wikipedia works. --B (talk) 04:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
      • I regret that I ought to have been more clear. It's not the size of the article so much as the size of the research that went into it - we all agree that Major Garrett is worthy of an article, I'm just saying that a bio article (on an easily notable subject) with so little information didn't have any business being posted in the first place. And no, I'm not saying "delete all stubs" - it wouldn't make a difference even I had said that, since the reason for AfD is to determine consensus. No need to be so reactionary, thanks. Duncan1800 (talk) 06:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
        • I apologize, but I don't follow the reasoning here. If we all agree that Major Garrett is worthy of an article, why is it on AFD? There are many ways to encourage expansion of an article without deleting it. Am I missing something? NiggardlyNorm (talk) 06:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
          • See comments below. Duncan1800 (talk) 07:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
          • The article when it was nominated was garbage, failed all the major policies, and didn't give any indication of being legitimate. The fact that it has been improved since the AfD doesn't make the nomination wrong. It is relatively easy to create a stub that has at least enough information and references to make a case for having an independent article. The initial article did not, not by Wikipedia's most lenient standards. I would expect any article purportedly about a living person that included only one sentence and zero references would be nominated as well. Torc2 (talk) 08:33, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • STRONG Keep and close early. This is a bad faith nomination by an admin who nominated the article 5 minutes after creation, and when questioned about that, he then blocked the editor writing it, a block up for review on AN/I. This is such a bad faith nomination that it needs to be closed and revisited in a week, once the editor's natural block period would be up and he'd have reasonable time to expand it. ThuranX (talk) 05:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I said this on the ANI thread, but it bears repeating here: this was clearly not a bad-faith nom. The article was one sentence long, and it wasn't even a particularly good sentence. The nominator speedied, the article was re-created, so he took it to AFD. He's got five days now, that should be plenty of time. -- Vary | Talk 05:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I think the "bad faith" part was putting the article on AFD and blocking the article's creator instead of discussing the issue. NiggardlyNorm (talk) 05:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
'Bad faith nomination' has a very specific meaning, and it's not a term that should be thrown around lightly. It implies that the nominator is trying to make a point or otherwise looking to cause trouble by bringing the article to AFD, and doesn't actually think that the article should be deleted. There is no reason to think that that's the case. Any actions on the nominator's part after the AFD began don't enter into it. That discussion belongs at the ANI thread, not here. -- Vary | Talk 06:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Vary is exactly right. Whatever you think of the judiciousness of this nomination, it is very clearly not "bad faith". That harsh and accusatory term is thrown around way too much in AfD discussions lately. — Satori Son 16:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
If some people think that an unsourced one sentence article of "X is a correspondent for Fox News" is WP-worthy, so strongly that if anyone were to nominate it for deletion must be doing so in bad faith, their position is way out of the mainstream. But they have the right to state their piece because the accusations of bad faith are cheap around here - more so by fringe factions. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 08:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
So it's now procedure to nominate artticles and block your opposition? If you really felt the AfD would go your way, you wouldn't have immediately blocked the creator of the article. Nominating and using buttons to protect the nomination has as much bad faith behind it as a POINT violation nomination. I'm not some fringe idiot when I use that term, and the idea that there is only one kind of Bad Faith nomination is nonsense. ThuranX (talk) 01:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
You're overdramatizing this. It wasn't an immediate AfD-and-block like that. Clearly the block came after the snippy exchange over the AfD, not with the AfD itself, which was totally proper. Why are you assuming bad faith on the part of Carlossuarez46? Torc2 (talk) 01:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it's a bad-faith AfD - I think it's a sloppy mistake. And I think it's the end result of an overly aggressive deletionist philosophy. One should always *at least* run the title of an article through Google before they submit it to AfD. Carlos is an admin - he should know better. So, no, the AfD wasn't an abuse of power in any way. As for whether the *block* was abusive - well, that's not an issue for AfD. --Hyperbole (talk) 02:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep The article can be improved with the bio material cited above from Fox as cited by Travis. Deletion is not the proper course for bio articles which are stubs but for individuals with sources to provide improvement. I sought references to flesh out the article, but there are so many "Major Garretts" with paper trails. One fought in the Civil War, one fought in World War 1, one fought in World War 2, and then one started in as a newspaper reporter around 1990, and has been a featured reporter for several major news organization, and a frequent guest on National Public Radio while a reporter for the Washington Times. The most recent on (the reporter) seems to satisfy WP:N. There is no rule that bio articles are automatically deleted if they do not contain the individual's place and date of birth. We have kept numerous articles about porn stars which do not even contain their real name, let alone place and date of birth. Edison (talk) 05:46, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Changing vote to keep. It's now expanded beyond a basic, incomplete sentence. However, I agree with Vary. This wasn't a bad faith nomination, the original author is not inexperienced and there was a wealth of information he could have referred to in order to make this a basic stub. It would have taken all of five minutes. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 06:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Also changing to Keep based on recent changes. The article is now closer to what it ought to have been in the first place, and I will compliment the editor(s) on their diligence. No hard feelings, I hope? Duncan1800 (talk) 07:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Definitely no hard feelings. It just seems like a lot of people said, well this should be an article, but it needs more info, so delete it. Apologies if I was a bit incredulous. NiggardlyNorm (talk) 14:21, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep!. Surely a no-brainer. And an article with little content is not grounds for deletion. It's called a stub people. Jellogirl (talk) 11:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • My apologies as well to NN. As for the above content, it was a single declarative sentence in its original form, not an article. It might have been a borderline "keep" in its original form if not for the fact that there was so much info available on the guy. It seems to me as if NN was planting the seed, as it were, in good faith. Just kind of a small seed, though. However: Now it's an article. The point of the discussion wasn't the content or subject but the lack of content. This one turned out nice and I'd like to move to close the discussion. --PMDrive1061 (talk) 15:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Seems notable enough, being a correspondent for a major news network and having published multiple books. --Itub (talk) 17:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - What started as a nearly content-free stub has now been expanded somewhat. The subject, as I said before, is notable. —Travistalk 18:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - Clearly notable. This whole things seems to stem from a gross overreaction by User:Carlossuarez46. Honestly, I'm kind of concerned about that. --Hyperbole (talk) 00:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - The reasons given for deletion are non-issues that can easily be fixed and have nothing to do with non-notability. -- Fyslee / talk 06:08, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep, the sources that have been provided are sufficient evidence of notability. Terraxos (talk) 17:09, 13 February 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.