Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Woman in the mask

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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 DELETE (the image is kept, but is an orphan until some editor uses it) - Nabla 13:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Woman in the mask

Woman in the mask (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

I'm not sure whether the subject of this article, who was injured in the July 7 London bombings, passes WP:BIO. She has been mentioned in the news but Wikipedia is not Wikinews - this article seems somewhat unencyclopedic - and individually this has no prospect for expansion beyond a stub and she is not notable in herself - it's the photograph that the article is about. Delete or failing that merge. See also Google UK hits for "woman in the mask" and "london". Also Google UK results for her name, barely 1,200 - and this will include Wikipedia and mirrors.-h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 12:45, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment I'm unclear about the standards being applied in this case. The subject of the article is the photograph, not a person. Therefore references to WP:BIO are spurious. In fact, Wikipedia does not have specific notability standards for articles on photographs (most likely because we only have a few dozen articles about photographs and most of those are clear cases for inclusion). Falling back to the 'General notability guideline' we note that "Significant coverage" is in fact a consideration, negating Otto4711's comment above that newsworthy does not equal notability (remember the subject is the photograph, not Ms. Turrell). I think the article does satisfy the other points in the general notability list. I think the impact of the photo is fairly well established and that this shows notability. My problem with this article is that it purports to be not about a single photo, but about several photos, of which we are only shown one example. Moreover, we are not told the name of the photographer or given details about how the photo was created. If this article was limited to a single photograph and provided better documentation of the impact of the photos and awards given, then I think it would clearly merit inclusion. TheMindsEye 15:24, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - the article's lead sentence is "The woman in the mask" became the name used for the subject of several photos, some by the Associated Press, that became iconic of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. (emphasis added). This, plus the fact that the remainder of the article is devoted to the identity of the person, including such details as her name and occupation and the circumstances surrounding her injury and recovery, indicate strongly to me that the topic of the article is the person, not the photographs. Quoting from WP:N, Wikinews, not Wikipedia, is better suited to present topics receiving a short burst of present news coverage. Thus, this guideline properly considers the long-term written coverage of persons and events. In particular, a short burst of present news coverage about a topic does not necessarily constitute objective evidence of long-term notability. If there are reliable sources that demonstrate that the photograph has become notable in the long-term, beyond an initial short burst of news coverage, then an article that is actually about the photograph can be written that includes them, including significant information about the photograph itself rather than the person depicted in it. Otto4711 16:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete as nn. Has there been news coverage of the photograph? JJL 17:53, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete The article deals with a non-notable subject and would be nearly impossible to expand. Put the photograph into 7 July 2005 London bombings and delete the article on the photo. Escape Artist Swyer | Talk to me 18:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep There are several articles on iconic photographs. The article isn't about her, but the image itself. See Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967 --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 18:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete article, keep picture Redirect and put the picture on the 7 July 2005 London bombings page. Kwsn(Ni!) 23:38, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete She did not plant the bomb, and she recovered from her injuries, so her relation to the newsworth event is peripheral. Per WP:NOT "The fact that someone or something has been in the news for a brief period of time does not automatically justify an encyclopedia article." The 2 newspaper references are inadequate to show that her having a strange looking first-aid dressing placed on her face and being photographed makes her or her photos encyclopedic. Wikipedia is not an archive of every person or image who made it into a couple of newspapers. If an adequate rationale can be stated, the image might be used to illustrate the article on the bombing, or to illustrate an article on current first-aid dressings in Britain. Edison 21:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete/merge unless more can be said about the use of the picture, as RAN suggests; otherwise I go with Edison this time. DGG 00:49, 18 June 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.