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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David L. Jones

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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 keep. Keep was the general consensus of this long discussion. Shii (tock) 07:50, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, Dream Focus has pointed out on my user talk page that there is no consensus here and the arguments for notability are quite weak. I suppose I should have relisted this discussion in order for more people to evaluate Jeh's arguments. Shii (tock) 16:49, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

David L. Jones

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David L. Jones (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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No reliable sources mention this person at all. Dream Focus 01:52, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep: "number one in a list of electrical engineering channels on YouTube", "849 videos". "200,000 subscribers", successful Kickstarter. I believe this not a fraudulent, hoax individual; worthy enough. GangofOne (talk) 02:49, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: Nearly 250 million thousand subscribers, over 800 videos posted, and over 41 million cumulative views (see here) makes him far more than "just another you-tuber", particularly given the specialized subject content. (Yeah, and "Gangnam Style" is just another YouTube music video.) I will be adding some of his notable publications (articles in actual, real, in-print magazines, not edited by him), and an interview with him that appeared in a highly respected in-print magazine in the field to the article soon. Jeh (talk) 08:29, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep: When it comes to explaining about electronics design, he is the best in the world. Also when there is trouble with fake electronic components or trouble inside companies, many wait for his opinion about the subject. Johan65 (talk) 12:47, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • — Johan65 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Dream Focus 13:27, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • My contributions are in the .nl section of wikipedia : [[2]] 23:31, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
        • Johan65 Having fans who say he is amazing does not meet the requirements. We have certain criteria that has not been met; there must be secondary sources about him; for example, a newspaper or magazine writing about him (where he is the primary subject of the feature). —МандичкаYO 😜 00:36, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: Per WP:SPATG, "under no circumstances consider anything that falls into the below categories as evidence for warranting an SPA tag [... and one of the "below categories" is: ...] A user should not be tagged as an SPA just because they only have a handful of edits." There is no other evidence of SPA-ness presented; therefore, per this rather firm ("no circumstances") dictum, this SPA tag is wrongly placed. Jeh (talk) 06:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • I explained it to you on my talk page already. Read the entire rule, specifically the section Wikipedia:Single-purpose_account#Decision-making_tags. It is common in AFD to do this if someone has no other edits other than posting in an AFD. He has since linked to a different language Wikipedia, showing he has also made small numbers of edits there some years for certain subjects. Dream Focus 16:38, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • And since, on your talk page, you refused to accept a completely standard interpretation of "under no circumstances", I feel it necessary to point out that bit here. The "entire rule" includes the phrasing I quoted: The fact that an editor has only a handful of edits cannot be the only reason for an SPA tag. You presented no other reason, so the tag violates this dictum. It may be "common" to do this to people whose first edit is an objection to deletion of an article, but I see no way to interpret "A user should not be tagged as an SPA just because they only have a handful of edits" as allowing it, especially since that wording is preceded by "under no circumstances". That's my position and I'm sticking to it. As for what you "explained" on your talk page? "Noted." Please do not address me as if your "explanation" is authoritative or that I should interpret it as such. Jeh (talk) 17:46, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment About the sources in the article now. Extech: A company gave an award to a blogger who gave them great reviews for their products. [3] He claims on his website he once published an article in a magazine. [4] A lot of people write articles for magazines, that doesn't really make them notable. It says that "Fluke Corporation mentioned one of Jones' videos on their news page", probably because he gave them a good review. The link to an old news page doesn't mention him at all, nor his video. I don't think the Hackaday prize is a significant award, so being a judge for it doesn't seem notable. Dream Focus 13:41, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Extech: A company gave an award to a blogger who gave them great reviews for their products" - You should watch the reviews, he gave them a far less than great review, in fact out right accused them of trying to kill him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.17.255.139 (talk) 17:03, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • [5] "...Dave Jones concluded at the end of the exhaustive 54-minute episode that Extech was the "clear winner" of the shootout and "better than the others overall."" They go into detail about all the good things he said about them, without mentioning anything negative, or mentioning their competition at all. If his final conclusion wasn't to say they were the best, do you think they'd give him an award and mention him on their website? Dream Focus 17:16, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • What award? They didn't give him an award, he awarded them best in that class and they still are very proud of that even after he's slated them in other videos. I think the fact the likes of Fluke, Extech, Microchip etc count his opinion as valuable and worth mentioning even when it's negative criticism of their products should count towards his notability. The fact they have taken his criticisms and changed products due to them should count even more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.17.255.139 (talk) 17:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changed to keep - see rationale below Delete - Does not meet the WP:BLPPRIMARY. Every single mention is a primary source, and the one of them that linked to his video did not even name him. His name is unfortunately common, but I haven't found anything that meets the requirement of a secondary source. Lpgeffen: please don't misunderstand this and please do not be offended; Being valuable and passing the Wikipedia criteria of notability are not related. When we say does not meet notability guidelines, nobody is insulting the subject or saying they are not a worthy person, not a valued member of a community, not well-liked etc. (At the same time, having an article in Wikipedia doesn't make one valuable or of high esteem either: the most reprehensible people who have ever lived probably have good sized articles.) The guidelines are in place and are firm for a reason to help Wikipedia stay credible; we can barely keep up as it is with the floor of articles being created that are pure spam, incomprehensible content translated by Google, probable fifth-grade homework assignments, advertisements disguised as articles, etc. We use these guidelines of notability not just for people, but for every article, whether it's about asteroids, math equations, cat food companies, a church in Ghana, counterinsurgency in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, cargo plane crashes, French idioms, ethnic groups that nobody but the article creator has ever heard of, and of course, dogs that were elected mayor........ every single of those were the topic of an article I voted to either keep or delete this weekend. Articles that are suggested for deletion are basically pass/fail based on their sources supporting them. Articles can always be restored if sufficient sources pop up down the line. Please familiarize yourself with WP:BLPPRIMARY. —МандичкаYO 😜 20:54, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • eetimes mentioned his name with others. [6] This is not "significant coverage" as required by the notability guidelines. The Circuit Cellar interview seems to give him ample coverage. [7] But that site allows anyone to submit anything they want. [8] The link shows a post by their editor in chief showing the interview from that issue, but the interview itself was done by someone else called "NAN". Is this person a paid staff member, or just a random person who interviewed some guy on YouTube on their own and tossed it up there? Dream Focus 04:57, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • The eetimes mention may not be "significant coverage" for establishing notability, but that doesn't mean we can't mention it. It's staying. Jeh (talk) 06:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • I wasn't saying it should be removed, I was just pointing out it doesn't count towards notability. And don't try editing my post again to include the pointless word "comment" before it. Dream Focus 15:59, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • Beg pardon, but you are claiming the entire article should be removed. And the "comment" was just a formatting fix. Isn't it a comment? It certainly is not a !vote. What is it, then? If your comment is not preceded by the bolded word "comment" (or something similar) then it may be construed, at least in a quick scan of the page, as a !vote, and you're not allowed to !vote more than once (your nomination counts as one). The word "comment" is frequently used in deletion discussions to clearly delineate such. Jeh (talk) 17:46, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    The operative word regarding your complaint about CC above is "submit". Yes, just like a great many specialty magazines, and peer-reviewed scientific journals for that matter, anybody can "submit" articles. But if you will read just a little farther down on THAT SAME PAGE, you will see that it says
Our editors carefully review all proposals and finished submissions before making final decisions about publication. The review process can take a few weeks.
This is no different than, for example, Popular Electronics was in the sixties. I do not see how this can be construed to mean that any "random person" can write an article "on their own and toss it up there" and see it published without editorial review.
Besides, CC is a print magazine as well as online. This interview was published in their print magazine. Do you honestly believe that CC would just print—and I do mean on paper—anything anybody sent in without editorial approval? (Are you completely unfamiliar with how magazines work?)
Re "NAN", on the interview page you linked, in the paragraph JUST ABOVE the first line that starts with "NAN:", there is an intro paragraph that ends with:
—Nan Price, Associate Editor
Clearly a staff member. (I can't speak to the "paid" part but I see no requirement in WP:N or WP:RS for such; in fact, plenty of RS's have unpaid editorial staff.) So, that's twice where you've raised an objection to this source and in each case the counter to your objection was right there on the page you were looking at. Maybe you need to "focus" a little better...
If you PM me I can send you a PDF of a scan of the original print magazine, which includes her name in the "staff" box. Jeh (talk) 06:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • See WP:USERGENERATED for the rules on this. You can't even consider using something "with the exception of material on such sites that is labeled as originating from credentialed members of the sites' editorial staff, rather than users." Are they a paid staff member, or just some unpaid user submitting something? If the print issue clearly identifies her as a staff member, so be it. Just checking on that to be sure. If that's the case, you have one reliable source giving significant coverage to them. You need at least two. Dream Focus 16:06, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Second things first: We have a second RS, an entire chapter of a book.
WP:USERGENERATED is about self-published sources. Have you ever seen a copy of Circuit Cellar? While it had humble beginnings (it was originally a column in Byte), to think that today's CC would be considered "self-published", or that there is no editorial oversight on contributed content, is ludicrous. By your interpretation, any paper in a scientific peer-reviewed journal would have to be excluded as it would not "originate from credentialed members of the staff".
And I must point out (again) that USERGENERATED does not require that the editorial staff be "paid", only "credentialed". You are making that up, and I wish you would stop that (not that I have any reason to think Nan Price is not paid). btw, the review committees for peer-reviewed scientific journals are frequently unpaid volunteers, nor do the authors of the papers they publish get paid. Your interpretation of WP:USERGENERATED would exclude papers in such journals. On the other hand, freelance contributors to published-for-profit print magazines (like Circuit Cellar), and even to edited web sites like Ars Technica often are paid for their articles. That doesn't make those "self-published sources".
In any case, Nan Price is clearly identified in the print edition of Circuit Cellar as a staff member: "Associate Editor: Nan Price". This is in a box labeled "the team" and she is listed right after the Editor-in-chief and before several "Contributing editors". In your words, "So be it".
Aside: You know, for someone who used to rail vociferously against "deletionists", you seem awfully eager to find reasons to exclude references that qualify this article for inclusion. Even to the extent of ignoring evidence that's right in front of your eyes (the two things I quoted above in italics), and making up requirements like "paid". What happened to you? Jeh (talk) 17:46, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, I thought you'd come back with that. TL,DR version: Already covered. Check the reference. Don't miss the WL for the publisher name. You might want to brush up a little bit on WP:N and WP:RS while you're at it.
Long version: First, no, a book does not have to be WP-notable before it counts. Details on that at the end. Please put down the WP:N stick and walk away slowly...
If you'll bother to check the reference (please note that the publisher has their own article on WP, WL'd from the reference, which you would know already if you'd bothered to do a little clicking and reading before replying here...) you will find it is not a case of "anyone can publish their own book." It's not the author's "own book", nor is it David Jones' "own book". A book from an established publisher (their "about" page claims over 1000 books in print) stands as a RS unless you can find compelling evidence to the contrary. I'd have hoped you would do such checking before objecting, but it seems you are more interested in getting this article deleted than in doing any research on your own.
I suppose next you'll demand to see favorable reviews of the book in two RSs? No. I'm not jumping through any more of your hoops. I believe that at this point any unbiased closing admin will agree that these two sources are reliable and that they well establish the subject's notability, so it doesn't much matter what you think. If you want to discredit the book as a RS, it's up to you to find evidence supporting your position.
As for the book's "notability": That is not a requirement here. The notability requirements, WP:N and even WP:NBOOK, are about articles. Let me spell it out for you: If we wanted an article about the book, then, yes, we would have to establish the book's notability. But just as individual points covered in an article do not each have to be WP-notable on their own (see WP:NNC), a RS does not have to be WP-notable—that is, it does not have to merit its own article—to be a WP:RS for an article subject's notability. You're making stuff up again, just like you did when you claimed that RSs had to be written by "paid" staff, and I really wish you'd stop that. It makes you look desperate and biased. Jeh (talk) 18:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, they have "more than 1,000 books in print and electronic formats." No telling how many of them are print, and anyone can toss out anything online. Anyway, being published by publishing company doesn't make a book notable enough to count towards notability of someone. This has come up many times in AFDs over the years. Any closing administrator will take note of that. They will also ignore any WP:ILIKEIT votes. Dream Focus 19:46, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notability of the book is not a requirement, no matter how many times you declare that it is. You're making that up.
See WP:GNG: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list." Emphasis added: It says "reliable sources", not "notable sources". There is nothing in WP:GNG or in all of WP:N for that matter that says that the sources used to establish notability must themselves meet WP:N, only that they be WP:RSs! Despite your claims to the contrary.
Notability would be a requirement if someone wanted to create an article about the book. But to be a RS for something else's notability, it just has to be a RS. (Otherwise, where would it end? Are you familiar with the concept of recursion?)
You are also trying to invent another criterion regarding the publisher's proportion of hardcopy to online books. I find nothing that says that an online-only book can't be an RS; but even if that were a requirement, this book is available in hardcopy; and if you will check some of the publisher's other books, say at Amazon or BN, you'll find that many of them are hardcopy too. (I have several of their programming books on my bookshelf.) You're really grasping at straws here. Jeh (talk) 20:16, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • (You mean you wrote "notable" when you should have written "reliable source". There's a difference.)
Oh, please. As Wikimandia said above, the requirements are that the subject of the article have received "significant coverage in reliable sources, per Wikipedia's guidelines", further elaborated as "not self-published and not a press release". Fine. The book exists, was not self-published nor a press release, was in fact published by a major publisher in the tech field, and does contain an entire chapter (hence "significant coverage") devoted to Dave Jones. These points are easily verifiable. The book's coverage is also completely consistent with what we find in other places, like the Circuit Cellar interview. If after all that you want to challenge the book's status as an RS you're going to have to provide specific evidence that it isn't, not just general armwaving and FUD like "not all books are RSs".
Aside: Since the book also has a chapter on Jeri Ellsworth I should probably add a similar ref to her article.
Wikimandia: Do you still think the article "has 0 references that meet the requirement"? We have two: The book discussed here, and the lengthy interview in Circuit Cellar magazine, discussed above. Jeh (talk) 21:07, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep (change vote) - I think the Q&A in Circuit Cellar (with the mention of his significance in the introduction) is enough to establish notability, combined with other mentions, though I haven't researched the book yet, I'm going on WP:AGF that it exists and was not self-published and he got a chapter. It's been established by a reliable source that he is someone of ongoing prominence and influence in the embedded electronics field; embedded electronics is a highly specific industry but it's a perfectly legitimate mainstream (non-fringe) field. So Jeh I'm changing to keep. FYI, there is NOWHERE that says someone has to be paid for it to be a reliable source. Did I misunderstand that comment? I hope so because I find this preposterous. There are people who contribute articles who, sometimes even on principle, do not get paid. For example, Angelina Jolie wrote an article for the New York Times: "My Medical Choice" about the breast cancer gene. I really doubt they sent her a check for $550 or whatever they pay. Her WP article cites her NYT article four times; there isn't any sane person here who would tag it with "better source needed" and argue it was suspect because she possibly didn't get paid to write it. There are many factors for determining whether or not something is a reliable source, but whether or not someone the author got paid for it has NO relation to that discussion. —МандичкаYO 😜 21:59, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just gonna leave this here http://circuitcellar.com/community/interviews/interview-engineering-for-the-people/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.0.41.184 (talk) 12:21, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Weak Delete One interview in a magazine is not "significant coverage in multiple sources" and the book that he's in is of questionable independence. All other sources appear as SPS, or otherwise non-RS sources. Popularity/number of subscribers is not how we evaluate notability as it avoids self-promotion like what many of the other sources in the article seem to do. --MASEM (t) 15:40, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hmm. What is your basis for your opinion that the book is of "questionable independence"? Jeh (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Based on reading on Apress, they clearly have a strong interest to publish books on electronics and programming. That itself isn't necessarily a problem, but they also don't seem to have a strong established editorial process that major publishers would have. It is not that they are a "self-publishing" house, but they also don't seem super discriminatory/demanding as long as it meets their content ideas. It's also a fact that the book's author is a relative unknown; if it was, say, penned by someone with an established history, that would be better for support. --MASEM (t) 02:04, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • This book is part of a specific series ("...At Work") Apress publishes, and it is not the first of the series nor the most recent. This speaks of an "established editorial process" to develop and publish books of this specific sort. It's not as if this is the sole book they've ever published that doesn't cover specifics of electronics and programming. Jeh (talk) 16:18, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Interviews are primary sources. Notability is obtained from secondary sources. From reading all the sources provided and searching, I think that his blog may be more notable than him. However, I didn't find any potential sources that clearly meet WP:N for his blog with cursory searches. --Ronz (talk) 15:46, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Neither WP:N nor WP:BIO includes any language excluding interviews as acceptable sources for establishing notability. Now, I can completely see how an interview would be considered a primary source if the interview subject's own words were being used as references for claims about the subject. For example, if Dave Jones had said in one of these that he was the first full-time engineering vblogger, we couldn't use that as a ref for that claim. That is why WP:NOR includes "interviews" in a footnote, a long list of things that are considered primary sources. But if the author's or editor's introductory material for the interview had stated that, then that is a little less clear-cut. (And that would be why WP:NOR's footnote precedes the mention of "interviews" with "depending on context".) For supporting notability, the lengthy interviews cited here do constitute significant content about the subject. And the very fact of their existence, that the CC editors and the editorial staff at Apress approved these pieces, is what demonstrates the subject's notability (pretty much regardless of what Jones had actually said in them). It's not as if we're relying on statements by Jones that "hey, I'm notable!" I would also agree that these would obviously be "primary sources" if Dave Jones got author credit for them, but he did not. The "author" of an interview for bibliographic purposes (and the person who gets paid, if it's a for-pay assignment) is the person who conducts the interview. Jeh (talk) 19:49, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sorry, but I'm not following these arguments to use primary sources when the guidelines specifically say to use secondary sources. Know of cases where such arguments gained consensus? --Ronz (talk) 22:23, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • I'll try it shorter: What Jones says in an interview would definitely be a primary source for details about Jones. But he didn't pick himself as an interview subject, nor is he the author of the interview, nor the publisher of the book or magazine. Thus for "notability" purposes an interview is not a primary source, but rather secondary: third parties thought Jones was notable enough to devote a monthly magazine feature or book chapter to him, conduct the interviews, edit them (interviews like this are never simply transcripts), and publish them. They were neither written by nor published by Jones, therefore they are not self-published by the source. If Jones had included such an interview in a chapter about himself in a book he himself had published, then the interview would be considered self-published. But it was not. Jeh (talk) 16:18, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete The sources do not add up to WP:NOTABILITY, and too much of the information in the article is sourced to Jones himself, and thus OR. Interviews are indeed considered to be not third-party sources. Although factual information can be taken from them, they don't confer notability. Unfortunately, the book chapter [9] is also an interview. That leaves us with mentions. LaMona (talk) 14:38, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:07, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:07, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:07, 12 May 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.
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