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 (this is also a CSD A7). Gwen Gale (talk) 13:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ForestWander Nature Photography[edit]

ForestWander Nature Photography (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

A father and son company that takes photos of rural West Virginia and that gives many of them away via the internet. They were once a finalist in one category of a competition, and I'm willing to believe that there was once an article about them in the Charleston Gazette (although either its server or my browser refuses to display this). And -- plastic at the ready? -- you may choose to purchase the prints too, via the links thoughtfully provided in the article.

However, Wikipedia is not a web directory, the company doesn't seem to have won any competitions, there's no mention of any exhibitions or substantial coverage in any magazines (let alone book-length publication), and it all seems of very minor note; unless of course you want free screensavers of rural West Virginia, in which case Google will no doubt locate them for you.

Moreover, the only contributor of substance to this article has been User:Forestwanderer. I start to suspect COI.

I prodded this article on 6 June. Forestwanderer proceeded to make a number of edits to the page, which to me indicated a desire to keep it; I therefore removed the prod notice myself.

The last of the edits by Forestwanderer has a summary pointing people to further justifications to be read on the talk page. Yes, do take a look: it's quite revealing. -- Hoary (talk) 00:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Seems to be blatent WP:ADVERT and WP:COI. Thetrick (talk) 00:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete there is some notability. A local newspaper article (the link worked when I tried it) And finalist in a Nature Conservancy photo competition is not nothing. But it is not enough to justify an article. It may be that this photographer will gain enough attention to merit an article at some future date.Elan26 (talk) 00:52, 10 June 2008 (UTC)Elan26[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of West Virginia-related deletion discussions. —Hoary (talk) 09:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions. —Hoary (talk) 09:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. I don't see notability here and this is blatant advertising and a conflict of interest to boot. freshacconcispeaktome 11:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per all. Johnbod (talk) 11:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Personally I would have db-spammed it at first review since it's blatant advertising, and the author is same as company name, so never NPOV. The democratic way will do too. Shoombooly (talk) 19:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy delete Should have been G11'd - blatant spam ukexpat (talk) 20:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per above - Modernist (talk) 10:53, 12 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Author Response I appreciate the civil and professional comments above by Elan26 - However, there is no need to be nasty about the article or the intent of the author. ForestWander Nature Photography does not stand to make a significant "advertising" benefit from inclusion on Wikipedia and spam accusations should be carefully moderated as this accusation is not taken lightly.

I do however believe that future recognition will be warranted but obviously and unfortunately is not a consideration at this point. Since the concensus is to delete the article then please by all means delete it.

I tried to copy other company's inclusion in wikipedia and thought that it may be of benefit considering the growing popularity of my work.

In addition to the News paper article and Nature Conservancy Competition we have been published in the local Mountain Highlands Traveler Magazine, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and our country church photograph was used on the cover of a recent Rounder Records bluegrass CD. I am not sure that this will add any additional notability. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.196.218.178 (talk) 20:38, 13 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since I am new to using wiki mark up language and to the wiki concept I guess I learned the hard way.

Please be familiar with the policies of not biting the newcomers,

Thanks for the discussion and learning experience.

How may I ask for someone to write an article in the future?

Or if possible can I merge or transfer the article to my user page?

Forestwanderer

Counter-response by nominator: I regret that your first experience of editing at WP got you bitten as a newcomer. The unfortunate fact is that a large number of individuals and companies seem to want to use WP as a place to host their CVs or corporate descriptions; these are implicitly (and often explicitly) self-promotional, and more experienced editors here tire of dealing with this kind of thing and are sometimes less courteous about it than they should be.

It's not appropriate for you to ask for anyone to create an article about yourself. If you merit an article, it's likely that you'll get one. (You may have to wait a bit. Among photographers, consider the renown of, say, Ken Domon or Eugene Richards, and look how long they had to wait to get even a short, crappy article. And I can think of plenty of photographers who definitely deserve an article but don't have one.) If/when you do get one, it's quite appropriate for you to monitor it for bias or inaccuracy. Putting aside bias for now, you're free to edit out inaccuracies, but only by citing published sources.

If you're an active editor of Wikipedia, it's quite appropriate for you to describe yourself on your user page, and for this description to link to your website(s). It's not appropriate for somebody who's only a rare participant to turn the user page into something that could be interpreted (even if harshly) as an advertisement for himself.

I'd guess that you have a lot to contribute to articles about West Virginia. I encourage you to work on these. You'd then be welcome to mention your work on your user page, and people might well follow the link(s) to your own site(s). -- Hoary (talk) 01:28, 14 June 2008 (UTC) ... PS I've saved the article to a subpage of yours. 01:59, 14 June 2008 (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.