Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Banks Elliott

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. Randykitty (talk) 14:47, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

John Banks Elliott

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Although Elliott (also spelled Elliot in some of the references) was the first Ghanaian ambassador to the Soviet Union, there is no indication Elliott himself meets Wikipedia's standards of notability. (Per WP:POLITICIAN "ambassadorships are not considered international offices" for the purpose of providing an automatic presumption of notability.) The current article's content is largely not based on the given references and unverifiable; in fact, given what third-party sources had to say about him, some of the more laudatory parts are simply incorrect (and other parts are clearly unencyclopedic, such as the discussion of his opinion towards persons "that are inequitable towards him or his achievements"). The cited sources (and the currently unused ones I'm aware of) do not discuss Elliott in any detail and do not allow us to write an article without resorting to original research. Huon (talk) 00:28, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:35, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bilateral relations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:35, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:35, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

delete fails WP:BIO. There is no inherent notability of ambassadors. Some of the article looks like original research eg In his lifetime, Ambassador Elliott witnessed, discussed, advocated, endorsed, recommended, proposed, advised etc., and been involved in all sorts of intrigues and controversies of the world stage, some in the forefront, and other, behind the scenes LibStar (talk) 04:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
i did a Google search in Russian and couldn't find anything [1] & [2] 09:04, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Notability is certainly possible, but unproven at this time. Sufficient sources do not appear to exist online, but could exist in 1960s Ghanaian or Russian newspapers which aren't likely to be online. Until such sources actually surface, I suggest a merge to Ghana–Russia relations where the few verifiable statements (e.g first ambassador) can go. Pinging @Joe Decker: who accepted the article at AfC for input. --ThaddeusB (talk) 18:34, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping! I indicated an older revision of the article in my note below, you may want to sift carefully through the clutter of the sources there, I think there are a few sources which might (or might not) be of helpful. --j⚛e decker ^talk 17:56, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would be fine with either a trim and keep due to the additional sources demonstrated by Joe Decker, or a merge. I would be against deletion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 16:23, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Ambassadors to a major nation are notable--it's usually the very top level of a country's diplomatic service. Not finding something in the Russian Google is even less a reason for deletion than for English language Google for US/UK subjects. After all ,the coverage would likely be in the Nigerian newspapers. DGG ( talk ) 02:46, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:MUSTBESOURCES. LibStar (talk) 05:09, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - ambassadors (even to or from major nations) are not inherently notable. A cogent argument has been put forward in a range of WP forums that ambassadors from major countries to major countries are very likely to be notable and I agree with that sentiment. But articles are still judged on a case-by-case basis. I'd be comfortable with a merge of anything relevant but we still don't have sources to suggest that this would be a significant ambassadorship that requires significant coverage in that article per WP:WEIGHT. St★lwart¹¹¹ 03:43, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - The article can be of importance just that there is little online sources to cite. I recommend it's kept and before that the original research contents need to be rectified. Also I see @Dorothyelliott:'s username and article's name both with Elliott to be WP:COI. What do you say @Dorothyelliott:? →Enock4seth ^(talk) 17:33, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep more or less per DGG and WP:BASIC. First, I think there is a direct argument that BASIC has been shown here. I think the Miller source and the CAIRN source (later removed) both are in-depth, third-party, reliable sources. I recognize that "in-depth" is subjective, however, and the rest of my argument will proceed allowing that people can have different views on that bar.

More or less, I think DGG's point that there are almost certainly better sources than we have is undeniable.

Yes, ambassadorship is not a priori notable in our precedents, but in my long experience at AfD, the ones that have failed to survive at AfD have been those from smaller, distant, and historically unrelated nations. This case is different in that the USSR is, at this time, one of the two most powerful nations on the planet, which raises the likelihood of coverage greatly, that Ghana was occupied by Soviet forces which were expelled during Elliott's tenure makes that doubly so.

I personally suspect the most likely place to find undeniably in-depth coverage is in Ghanan newspapers of the time. Do I have them in hand? No. I have frustrating snippets from "West Africa" in 1963, Ghana Today in 1959 and 1965, the BBC's Listener in 1960, and lots of passing snippets from US newspapers including the 1963 Moscow protest and embassy break-in that I'm sure those of you who followed WP:BEFORE know all about, e.g., [3]. But I think it's reasonable to expect that Ghanan (or perhaps, per DGG, Nigerian newspapers) profiled Elliott outside of what we've found so far at least once, given (a) WP:SYSTEMIC bias, (b) the specific relationship of the Soviet Union and Ghana, and (c) the difficulty of searching based on a common last name, sometimes misspelled, and a first and middle name that were often omitted or abbreviated, and at least once misspelled as well. These factors leave me with a high confidence JBE meets our biographical notability guideline.

I am sympathetic to one concern, I do think there are OR issues, and that they will need to be addressed through our careful editorial processes, and those are not issues we resolve through article deletion. --j⚛e decker ^talk 22:44, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

j⚛e, I don't strongly disagree but coverage of an event (like the expulsion of forces) is not guaranteed to include coverage of him and he doesn't inherit notability from an event because of peripheral involvement. Don't forget, he wasn't the Soviet ambassador to Ghana - it was the other way around. Its a bit of a stretch, I think, to assume that because he was there and there was an issue, he was involved in that issue in such a way that he is notable. From what I can see, the event itself has received coverage in books and whatnot and that hasn't included even passing mention of him. Be keen to know if that's wrong. St★lwart¹¹¹ 22:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per DGG and WP:BASIC.--TM 21:29, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - there are sufficient sources ( a combination of primary and secondary) to show he passes GNG. I, too, agree that ambassadors are usually notable, per DGG, especially, in cases such as this, when he was Dean of his diplomatic corps. Bearian (talk) 04:37, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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.