Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Hullah

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. No consensus to delete. Malinaccier (talk) 19:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Paul Hullah

Paul Hullah (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

No apparent notability; sources don't seem substantial. Related to Teenage Dog Orgy AfD. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 02:44, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

• Delete, not really significant coverage in secondary sources. Cirt (talk) 03:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
• Leaning delete. There might be something out there to suggest the guy passes WP:BIO, but as of yet I haven't found anything. Of the books mentioned, I can only find a library catalog entry for one of them, and that includes a note that only 250 copies were printed. Wishing him the best of luck, in his career, but not sure if we can authoritatively cover the subject with so little information available/verifiable. – Luna Santin (talk) 06:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

• Notice the article's seen improvement while this discussion was ongoing (very much appreciated). If not notable, Hullah does seem to be approaching that benchmark. I notice replies made later on are more likely to favor keeping the article. Might be a no consensus close? – Luna Santin (talk) 04:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Poetry-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp | talk to me 22:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Delete. Well, I don't think this article meets WP:BIO or WP:BK or WP:MUSIC at all. Apart from those policies, I just don't think that any leading literary critic, short-story writer, poet, or musician needs to make ends meet by going halfway around the world to Japan to teach EFL. Most writers who are successful in literary criticism, fiction, and/or poetry are able to find teaching jobs much closer to home, as are most musicians who want to teach to make ends meet. Also, we are dealing here with a WP:Single-purpose account that also wrote an article about this same guy's non-notable band, Teenage Dog Orgy, which is going down in flames on AfD itself at this very moment. I'm really close to slapping both articles with WP:AUTO and WP:COI tags, though I suppose it's possible that there might be one person in this world, apart from Hullah himself, who is passionately interested in Hullah as a literary critic, poet, short-story writer, musician, EFL instructor, etc. But I think it's highly unlikely. I think what we've got here is a guy who's dabbled in a lot of the arts without really making a mark in any single one of them. It's possible that some kind soul will come along and try to patch together a bunch of questionable sources for this guy as a combined literary critic/short-story writer/poet/musician, but I have to say that notability is not an aggregate of being non-notable in four different fields. He would have to be notable as at least one of those things to be notable at all, and the way I read WP:BIO, WP:BK, and WP:MUSIC, he doesn't satisfy a single guideline we have. Qworty (talk) 02:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: Qworty, is it possible to critique an article without being so unbelievably rude about it? Maybe the man fell in love with and married a Japanese woman. Maybe he heard a calling to do something different with his life. Whatever the reason, surely you could have judged the content, rather than disparage the person. --Faith (talk) 06:16, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Strong Keep. Being the editor of the author/estate-sanctioned edition of the collected poetry of a major literary figure like Iris Murdoch, coupled with a reasonably sigificant publishing history, ought to be sufficient to demonstrate reasonable notability to anyone moderately familiar with English-language literature. This AFD is a sad display of the meanspiritedness, ignorance, and incivility of the several of the editors involved. User:Qworty's comments violate Wikipedia's policies on civility, against personal attacks, requiring an assumption of good faith, and otherwise indicate deficiencies in basic human decency. To post a disparaging rant against a living person based solely on the nonsensical idea that an English-language academic who has chosen to teach in Japan is inherently incompetent, second-rate, etc., is vile behavior, well below Wikipedia's standards of civility. The Enchantress Of Florence (talk) 03:58, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: Agree entirely. Qworty's is an uncivil and unreasonable personal attack on the subject of the entry, not the entry itself. --stupelo

• Strong Keep: Author/Editor of several books, one of which has been cited in articles published in oxford journals (Google search), including "Yorkshire Landscapes in Wuthermg Heights" (http://eic.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/XLVIII/1/13.pdf in Essays in Criticism 1998 XLVIII(1):13-34; doi:10.1093/eic/XLVIII.1.13 1998 by Oxford University Press) and "XII The Nineteenth Century: The Romantic Period" (http://ywes.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/79/1/443.pdf in The Year's Work in English Studies 1998 79(1):443-545; doi:10.1093/ywes/79.1.443 1998 by English Association), which in itself is enough to make him notable. --Faith (talk) 09:45, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. No sources beyond the subject's resume. Insufficient independent secondary sources to establish solid notability. Lots of people are cited in other publications; I don't think we should have an article on all of them. Gamaliel (talk) 17:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

• Comment: This is incorrect, as my post immediately above this one shows. One of the books was cited in two different journal articles; it was also cited by the Australian government (http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/publications/pubs/convict-sites.pdf) in "Convict Sites". WP:ICANNOTFINDIT isn't a good reason for deletion, as someone else has found it. --Faith (talk) 00:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Further comment (since the text was edited): Subject also has two eleven journal entries and several respectable books, all sufficient for notability per WP:NOTE. --Faith (talk) 03:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

• Strong delete per Qworty. ~ Ameliorate _{U T} @ 03:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - appears notable, the Iris Murdoch poetry editing seems to clinch it. PamD (talk) 16:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - He seems to be notable, discussed in several sources. Steve Dufour (talk) 01:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep: per PamD. Definitely notable. The edition of Murdoch is a very significant publication, the only available complete collection of that major author's poetry, cited in Peter Conradi's biography of the writer and discussed in several sources. Essential source for Murdoch researchers/scholars worldwide (of whom I am one, hence my accessing Hullah's Wiki entry).stupelo

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.