Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sean Kennedy

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. The votes were 7 delete, 6 keep. dbenbenn | talk 22:34, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sean Kennedy

--I vote keep. This is not self promotion. He was on [CBC]. The charismatic voice and face at the forefront of almost every RantMedia project. Sean's miraid of shows stretch from the early beginnings of RantRadio with the WhatTheHell?!? Show to his ongoing RantTV series SKTFM.TV. ~Schnits

Self-promotion. Not a single one of the links in the article, which were external links before I wikified them, have Wikipedia articles. -- Paul Richter 05:56, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. This article is NOT self-promotion, as Paul Richter claims; it was started by Klipper. Also, I do not believe that anyone/anything should be judged by its popularity/publicity--it would be unscholarly and adsurd to do so. RantRadio may be a small, independent operation relying mainly on word-of-mouth promotion, but that does not warrant condemnation. Don't judge by size or popularity. Therefore, Keep. After all, the article is just a stub, plus there is already a short article on rantradio. Something to consider. ~Anonymous, 19:26, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment by user 65.49.20.154. --InShaneee 18:48, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • This note was removed at 18:22, Feb 22, 2005 by User:65.49.20.154. -- Scott e^iπ + 1 = 0 06:54, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
• Does being a DJ/commentator on an internet radio station make a person notable? He does seem to be fairly popular within that medium. In any event, he's carved quite a niche for himself here. If he's not notable, then this image needs to be deleted, as well as a whole mess of mostly irrelevant photos at wikimedia commons. No vote yet. -- Scott e^iπ + 1 = 0 06:43, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm going to say keep. I still think there are way too many pictures on Commons, but I'm not familiar with the policies there. -- Scott e^iπ + 1 = 0 19:48, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • keep: Appologies if This comment is uncalled for, or if I do not get to have a say in things (I'm new to wikipedia ... there is a fair amount to read; expect this comment to be deleted if I don't actually get a vote or something if I find time to read through it all), but Sean is hardly just "a DJ/commentator." Thereis the entire KULT chapter of his life(albeit over) to consider. This must be weighed in; this man had a good deal of very radical people following his every word. But hey, come to the right conclusion; There is no doubt that Sean made an impact in the world, and the lives of thousands if not tens of thousands of people. I don't have any doubt in my mind that Sean's activity in some ways have been notable (being _the_ inspiring force in a lot of musicians, performing at clubs, organizing group after group, whatever); the hard part is seperating what happened with KULT with what sean is directly responsible for. Is this enough to justify a wikipedia article? Hard to say; but If my say counts, I'd err on the side of yes. I agree with Ashley Pomeroy, he was a quasi-Moussolini-type and this article likely needs work. And is the picture really neccesary? Perhaps if the picture was removed, those who feel that he is not popular enough, or whatever, can feel more at ease that he's getting less of the spotlight.themusicgod1 1:57:21 21 Feb 2005 (???)
• Comment, Google yields 1900 hits for "Sean Kennedy"+dj. The first page seems to contain articles about this person. Inter 10:22, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Searches for "Sean Kennedy"+Rantradio and +Kult return quite a few hits, and judging by this [1] he seems to be notable as a quasi-Mussolini-type figure, as you can tell from the commanding gaze in his photograph. Article as stands needs a lot of work, though. Are any of the WFMU DJs Wiki-notable? -Ashley Pomeroy 11:21, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• KEEP, he isn't exactly a DJ, he's a talk show host, news reporter, video show host, etc. check out some of his stuff and you'll understand! i don't see anyone trying to delete Howard Stern! --Klipper 15:15, 2005 Feb 12 (UTC)
  • User:Klipper is User:68.202.3.109 (evidence), who created the page. -- Scott e^iπ + 1 = 0 19:09, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)
    • This note was vandalized at 18:22, Feb 22, 2005 by User:65.49.20.154. -- Scott e^iπ + 1 = 0 06:54, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
  • Sure if this guy was as big as Howard Stern, we wouldn't delete an article about him. But that rather begs the question: which is, how big is this guy? --BM 00:45, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Rantradio is an internet radio site based in Langley British Columbia that has been online since 1999. It broadcasts three channels. They seem to have received a fair amount of publicity, judging from theGoogle hits. But according to Alexa, www,rantradio.com has a rank of 582,000, which isn't very impressive. How do you tell if an internet radio station or one of its DJ's is notable? There are a lot of them now. Arbitron does rankings of Internet radio stations, but Rantradio isn't ranked. Internet radio is a notable development, of course, and maybe a particular station is notable even with low traffic if it is a trailblazer, etc. But I'm not sure that would extend to one of its DJ's. --BM 22:56, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Vanity page (complete with publicity photo): unless some hard evidence of notability, delete. --Calton 01:09, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Keep the most notable person on Rantradio. Rantradio itself is noteable, and I'm shocked there isnt an article on it yet.  ALKIVAR™ 06:26, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Alkivar, what is your source for rantradio being notable? --BM 13:35, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • The fact that i've seen ads for it in person in more than 4 states. All of which are on the east coast ... and its west coast. thats a hell of an advertising campaign. 2) Results 1 - 100 of about 11,100 for rantradio 3) i dont need to justify my decision to you.  ALKIVAR™ 06:03, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • I wasn't asking for you to justify yourself, I just thought you might have some handle on the notability, so that I could decide how to vote. But I did, already. --BM 01:57, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Comment: Sean describes himself as "the open source celebrity". if you have any question as to the notability of Sean, just check out the links provided on the article. tales from the afternow is a great story! patrolling has changed me quite a bit. the sean k show provides hours of laughs and good info. the scabbed wings of abbadon is an impressive book. just take 10 minutes to check it out, i think you'll be glad you did.... unless your a scientologist --Klipper 18:21, 2005 Feb 13 (UTC)
  • Comment: Klipper, this isn't a discussion about whether Sean or rantradio are entertaining; no doubt some people think they are. It is about whether the website or its talent are notable. I spent quite a long time last night trying to understand how one would determine whether an Internet radio channel, or its on-air talent, were notable, and it seems to be very hard. Arbitron and a couple of other similar services are doing ratings of audio streams on the internet, similar to their ratings of conventional radio stations. According to Arbitron, the Top 15 networks twelve months ago included AOLRadio Network, Yahoo!'s Launchcast,MSN Radio, Virgin Radio, and several regular radio stations that stream their content on the internet. Rankradio was not in the list; so who knows what its listenership is? Even the 15th on the Arbitron list had only 38,000 listener-hours during the measured week. Rantradio also didn't make it onto the list of the Top 20 stations that was released by Webcast Metrics. On the Webcast Metrics, the 20th ranked station, only had a daily CUME of 11,485, meaning that only 11,485 unique IP's were recorded as listening for at least 5 minutes during the measured day. Since being 20th on this list isn't too impressive in absolute terms, one has to wonder about the notability of a station that isn't even on the list. --BM 21:51, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment: i don't think that popularity would constitute a station's significance. what if someone in a mental institution had come up with plans for a flying car or something, but no one would listen to them because they were 'crazy'? their plans may not have been very popular, but still significant! that wasn't a very good analogy, but i'm sick and it was the best i could think up :P --Klipper 21:57, 2005 Feb 14 (UTC)
      • I'm sorry, I don't understand the point of your analogy. If you would like to suggest some other criterion according to which internet radio stations and their talent might be deemed notable, please go ahead. Are you trying to say that the station and its primary DJ are notable because they are notably inventive and innovative? That might be so, but it would have to be demonstrated that they were inventive and innovative and not just by the say-so of some Wikipedia editor. There would have to be citable sources that stated this, and I don't think I would accept if it was just their own bragging. Being innovative in secret wouldn't count either; for one thing, I would want to know if it is so secret, how do you know about it? --BM 02:09, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Keep While some of the Radio sites you refere to here may have more listeners than RantRadio, I think you're forgetting that Mr. Kennedy is involved not only with RantRadio but also with Rantmedia as a whole. There is a community affixed to RantMedia, this includes not only the listeners, but also people who download the episodes and read the forum and books. Along with a couple of other personalities Mr. Kennedy is one of the kingpins. As stated above, the Rant* comunity has been there since 1999 and we are not talking about a couple of friends listening to a radio station someone they know started, we are talking about people from all over the world who are listening, reading, and viewing what Sean Kennedy has produced. And people are really inspired by Mr. Kennedy, if you do not believe me, then read the forum (e.g. the Patrolling Forum on RantRadio). I do not see why this entry should be deleted at all. It is obvious that stations like AOLRadio Network, Yahoo!'s Launchcast,MSN Radio and Virgin Radio are used by a greater audience than RantRadio, they have the money to do the advertising and people know they're there because of this. How could one prove that Sean Kennedy is a great inspiration to those who listen to him? Well, we could cite the mails he gets from people in NewsReal, we could qoute what the users of the forum says or even tjek the IRC-Channel, but would that be enough? If Wikipedia had been aroung while Edgar Allan Poe lived then the same arguments for deletion could have been applied if he had had an entry. I tjekked what the entry about Sean Kennedy said and it matched with what can be found on RantMedia, so if the entry isn't fake, why should it be removed? I thought the idea was to type in what you wanted to know something about and then you would get the entries for that search word. --FRUGT.O5 17:18, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Note: this is FRUGT.O5's only edit. --InShaneee 18:42, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, and if rantmedia is the many-tentacled empire behind rantradio.com, and it is actually the fount of notability for Sean Kennedy, how come its website www.rantmedia.com has an Alexa rank of 4 million and www.rantmedia.ca an Alexa rank of 2 million? My wife's website where we put up the artwork of our five-year old daughter and family pictures has an Alexa rank of 1,028,539, so these ranks are ultra-pathetic. I've never actually seen an Alexa rank that low before.
    • Looks like BM forgot to sign. --InShaneee 15:51, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • what does alexa's rating of rantradio.com have anything to do with rantradio or sean kennedy's notability? --Klipper 02:52, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
      • it means the web site and its talent doesn't have any audience to speak of, which is rather consequential for a radio station or a talk show host. You have intimated that their might be some other basis for notability, and I asked you to explain your reasoning, but you haven't. Make your case, man.
      • Comment by BM --InShaneee 21:30, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. No basis to believe this internet radio on-air person is notable. Probably self-promotion. --BM 01:53, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • self promotion?! i'm not sean kennedy. --Klipper 02:48, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
• Delete I love internet radio to death, and I think we as internet users really need to do our part to foster its growth. However, as of yet, it's still in its infantcy. I've been holding back an opinion on this, but the fact is that there's just not any notability here yet. The guy's got potential, but so do a lot of podcasters out there. Maybe in a few years, all of rantmedia will have a place here.--InShaneee 16:00, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: oy gevalt! if you want to see its notability, CHECK IT OUT! check out the forums (over 1000 members,) check out the IRC (usually about 100 people sitting in there,) check out some of the shows! --Klipper 18:33, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
    • Notability shouldn't be determined by what the editors of Wikipedia who vote in VfD think of the guy. It is determined by whether he has beome sufficiently notable that people are going to expect to find him the subject of an encyclopedia article. By the way, 1000 people on a forum site is not very impressive. And an Alexa rank of 582,000 suggests that it is not very busy. --BM 18:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. It concerns me the number of people on here citing the lack of Alexa Rank. Have any of you actually seen how these ranks are generated? According to thier own site www.alexa.com "Alexa's traffic rankings are based on the usage patterns of Alexa Toolbar users over a rolling 3 month period" So to put that much fait in a bunch of Alexa Toolbar users choice in webpages is neglegent and irresponsable. A more (although arguable still not 100% accurate and notoriously out of date) way to judge popularity would be google's pagerank. However it does not rely on a toolbar to gather it's information. You "Could" sumply use the argument that an intelligent audience does not use toolbars. All in all Alexa rank is in no way a good measure of popularity let alone a measure of relevency --CMoZ 03:27, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Note:User CMoZ has only edited this page and Sean Kennedy (the page in question). --InShaneee 04:23, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Alexa is widely cited as a way of determining the notability of web sites; but it does have problems. The rankings are based on data gathered from the few million people who have installed the Alexa toolbar, and if a website's visitors for some reason were under- (or over-) represented among Alexa toolbar users, its rank could be mis-stated. That said, if you think Alexa data isn't accurate for rantradio.com, the burden is on you to cite some other evidence that the site has notable traffic. It is one thing to question quantitiative indicators like Alexa, but I don't see CMoZ providing any quantitative data. By the way, an Alexa of 580,000 is very low. The Alexa data would have to be wrong by an order of magnitude or even two orders of magnitude, just to get rantradio.com into the ballpark. Intimating that rantradio is underrepresented because its visitors are smart and Alexa toolbar users are stupid is not going to cut it. --BM 15:16, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: i agree that Alexa is an extremely poor way to judge a website's popularity! how many of the people on the internet use Alexa? i don't have the humble privilage of using Alexa due to my use of Linux and Firefox. as far as i know, only IE users are vulnerable to Alexa, and more and more people are switching over to the light side of the internet (using Firefox). if you're all so hell-bent on rating web sites' popularity, try google... i'd bet you a million that more people have heard of google than they have alexa! --Klipper 17:10, 2005 Feb 17 (UTC)
    • Comment: not only is Alexa an extremely poor way to judge a web personality's popularity, but it would be an even worse way to judge Sean Kennedy; the two groups "people who follow Sean Kennedy" and "people who use Alexa" are very likely mutually exclusive, if not violently so. The people effected by the people who follow Sean Kennedy may not be so mutually exclusive, but the point still stands.themusicgod1 8:32ish 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: here is what I can see the google hits. The first two hits are the rantradio website itself. The next hit looks like a blog created by someone involved with rantradio. The next hit is for a user on deviantart named "rantradio", who is probably also involved with rantradio. The next one is some place selling t-shirts for rantradio, i.e. an affiliate of rantradio. Then there are couple related to rantradio meetups. On the subsequent pages, one has wikipedia and its mirrors due to the article here for rantradio. A lot of them are just quick mentions of rant radio in articles about internet radio, where a lot of other stations are also mentioned, and generally other stations get more prominence. And so it goes: it looks to me like these google links are just the result of intense self-promotion since 1999. Google Groups, which is a more stable indicator for Internet topics has only 42 hits, by the way. I can see why you want to discount all other indicators of notability except for google, but do you actually have anything to establish notability aside from google-spamming? How many listeners does the station have? How many listener-hours per week? How big is the Sean Kennedy audience? I find it very telling that you either don't know these numbers, or refuse after repeated requests to provide them. --BM 14:01, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Comment: i'll probably have to check with Cimmerian for those numbers, but i know that the stream, and all its mirrors lag whenever Sean would come on, and right now, rantradio is begging for more streaming mirrors because they are growing so much in popularity. --Klipper 01:36, 2005 Feb 20 (UTC)
• Delete, under the bar of notability for me, possible self-promotion. Megan1967 05:23, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Probable self-promotion, definately not notable enough. Let's see some external proof of notability: interviews, news articles, etc. in the mainstream media. Gamaliel 07:42, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: for the last friggen time, ITS NOT SELF-PROMOTION! you want to see mainstream news coverage? how about WIRED? http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,37854,00.html or maybe The New York Times, The Langley Times, Exclaim Magazine, Globe And Mail, Spin Magazine, Vancouver Sun? had enough media coverage? well, there's MORE! had you taken maybe 5 minutes and CHECKED IT OUT, you would have found your evidence... http://rantmedia.ca/media.php and when i said there was more, there are media interviews in certain SK shows and WTH shows. --Klipper 17:04, 2005 Feb 18 (UTC)
    • You'll discover people are more willing to change their votes when dealt with politely. Gamaliel 17:31, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • Comment:Unfortunately for Sean, politeness in action, is if anything not what he preaches; and those like Klipper are going to have a hard time stepping away from that. Klipper's behavoir is part of the rebellion against social convention that Sean would exactly support.themusicgod1 8:33:21 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • People should vote their conscience and nothing else. GRider\^talk 00:55, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and allow for organic growth. GRider\^talk 00:55, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Keep: Sean has just recently come back from an invitaion to speak at the Adirondack Community College in New York, he has spoken at a few DEFCONs and has been invited to the next one, he has had major media coverage, there is a growing community of support for Rant Media, the Alexia popularity contest argument has been overcome, it is not self-promotion as there are obviously others who would keep it (as well as he did not create the article), and the photo was used as it is the most recent. It should not matter how many pages a person has edited under the current username, as I thought from editing many articles that it could be done anonymously, and before it is posted, this is the first document I have edited under this username. I have only done so for this article as I want to be able to watch the page and recieve an email if I am replied to. As for Google Groups, unless they completely changed everything about it in version 2, I thought that it was a way for people to search newsgroups as a whole. So I would want to know how many people use usenet regularly, I would exclude of course *.bin.*, and company use of newsgroups (such as Microsoft), as these are there for specific reasons that would have nothing to do with popularity. I would be for another request for deletion if Rant Media became defunct, or if Sean Kennedy quit the show as then any relevance would not matter.Just my two cents on the issue.-- <+=Jijinmachina 20:06, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Note: this is Jijinmachina's only edit. --InShaneee 02:35, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Note: I have stated this already, see above, so why did InShaneee post it? I normally edit anonymously as I hate being tracked in any way. Once this is over I more then likely will not log in under this account again. <+=Jijinmachina 02:19, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. See criteria for inclusion of biographies. --Pjacobi 00:52, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)
  • Comment: As the inclusion criteria for biographies has still not been accepted for use as a guideline, it does not have to be adheared to. <+=Jijinmachina 01:46, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Keep I am the one who started the Rantradio article, because I and many friends listen to it and it has survived long enough as a web station to show it's viability (It has expanded a great deal since I started listening). I believe that both Sean Kennedy and James O'Brien, as the creators, are significant enough to have their own article.  The Steve  05:30, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.