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; per discussion, article lacks sufficient sourcing to establish notability. I will userfy the article on request if an editor wants to work further on acquiring such sources, but even so, the final product would need to be based on reliable, independent secondary sources and thus would require a major rewrite. MastCell ^Talk 20:02, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

J. J. Dewey[edit]

All of the references used in the article were published by the subject, so the article seems to be unverifiable since there hasn't been significant coverage from secondary sources. I've added the ((primary sources)) template twice; both times it was removed by Smithgiant without explanation. 17Drew 18:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Fails primary notability criteria since there are no WP:RS. Almost a vanity page but the claims to published books is a weak claim to notability. But since there are no refs to these books they still dont amount to WP:NOTE.Obina 18:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In the future, please remember to avoid using WP:VANITY, "as the term can be considered insulting to the people it is applied to." The vast majority of Smithgiant's contributions have been to J. J. Dewey, but (s)he hasn't clamed to be J. J. Dewey, and there's nothing that implies it. 17Drew 20:43, 17 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Notability cannot be established, proved, or disproved, through a list of wikipedia references. Notability and encyclopedic suitability are independent of whether or not the subject has a wikipedia entry and also independent of what the wikipedia entry looks like. "Notability is not temporary." See WP:NOTE. I don't know how high this would rank on the notable scale, but I do know that deleting this article without giving the newbie who's furiously working on it the chance to fix it would be a flagrant violation of WP:BITE. Flagging this article for deletion without any discussion flagrantly violates WP:CONSENSUS. See also WP:PROBLEM which directly deals with the issue of badly-written articles. Fredsmith2 23:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Sorry I agree with your comments on notability being permanent and all that, but what is the basis for your keep comment and this being notable? I and most others would love to reach consensus. I would be happy to change my mind on this. But the fact that we don't mean to bite a newcomer does not really mean that this person is notable. Notability in fact can be and is established by references - what we need are multiple non trivial WP:RS. If these exist, then this person is notable. Of course this page wont be deleted without discussion - this is the discussion. The basis for deleting is un related to whether the article is badly written or not.Obina 22:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but I'm not claiming this page is notable. I'm simply saying this page shouldn't have been nomiated for deletion, and that discussion of improvement to the article should have taken place on the talk page. Also, the fact that this article was nominated for deletion, seems to me to violate wikipedia's WP:BITE policy. I agree that notability can be established through references, but a lack of notability cannot be established through existing references on a wikipedia page. The thing I think we should do is remove this article from being nominated for deletion for a month, let the newbie fix the article, and then if nobody has esbablished notability yet, and if anyone cares, someone can re-nominate it for deletion. Fredsmith2 22:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The entire purpose of deleting an article because of notability is that the article cannot be improved to meet Wikipedia's standards. No amount of copyediting is going to produce secondary sources, which is the issue at hand; if you know of secondary sources not in the article, please feel free to share them here and/or add them as a Further reading section. WP:BITE does not apply to nominating an article for deletion; many articles are speedy deleted, prodded, or taken to AfD by recent changes patrollers. WP:BITE refers to "hostility or elitism" toward new users; adding a maintenance template to an article needing a specific improvement, or nominating an article that doesn't meet WP:NOTE does not fall under that category. 17Drew 00:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I appreciate the civil discussion and feeback; and I would, of course, vote to not have this page deleted. However, I now have had time to read just about everything that I can find on the various Wiki policies on notability, and for posting explanations for adding and removing the various flaggings. And while I have a clearer understanding of it all now, from what has been presented here in this discussion, I am afraid that despite the fact that I authored these changes, I am unable to logically give, or argue for any reason as to why this article (bio) should be allowed to remain as is. I realize that I still have a lot to learn, as I still can't quite figure out where, how, etc., as to post my comments and discussions as it relates to this action--and apologize for posting comments all over the place!? And, as I didn't have comments posted on this page, I thought that I would at least post to let others know that I am paying attention, reading, and listening. Also, I was curious as to who makes this final decision concerning such deletions, and is there any other appeal procedure available before this action becomes final and permanent?

Smithgiant 23:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good questions, to which good answers can be found at WP:DELETE. Even if the article isn't deleted, it isn't lost and gone forever; you could still ask an admin to restore it to your userspace so you could work on it. shoy 19:32, 25 September 2007 (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.