Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arling Wiederspahn

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. Sr13 01:09, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arling Wiederspahn

Arling Wiederspahn (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

No reliable sources offered — neither to validate specific article content nor to establish that the subject is even notable in the first place. Mwelch 01:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. Article lists ten "references". Only four of the "reference" links currently mention the subject of this article in any way, and each mention is trivial. The entirety of the information about the subject that can be discerned from all ten "references" combined is that the subject existed, married a woman named Edvina, founded a funeral home, funded a scholarship and donated to the Community House charitable organization. Obviously, none of those things make the subject notable per WP:BIO. Everything else in this article is completely unsourced. Since the author has a habit of creating Wikipedia biography articles about people based on their obituaries in their local newspaper, I suspect that's also the source of this information. The first listed "reference" appears to be a link to an obituary, though the link is now outdated. Of course, family-provided obits are not reliable sources because they do not indicate notability (anybody whose family submits one, gets one printed; no indication that anyone other than the family found the person notable) and because they are not fact-checked (the family gets to say pretty much anything they want that seems plausible and it will run like that). Other claims (not validated by references in the article) to notability would be that he was elected county coroner, was elected to a community college board, was appointed to the state's Board of Embalming and that he was the first person in Wyoming to offer cremation as a burial service. The first two claims are quite explicitly mentioned by WP:BIO as being insufficient ("Just being an elected local official does not guarantee notability.") for WP:N. There's also nothing in WP:BIO to indicate serving on an appointed board, in the absence of any non-trivial secondary source coverage, is WP:N. The final claim about being the first in the state to cremate seems more interesting. Maybe there could be something there, but again the article provides no reliable source to even indicate that that claim is true, much less that any secondary sources consider such a claim to be particularly noteworthy. Mwelch 00:33, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, umm, I think Mwelch has pretty much said it all! *Cremepuff222* 01:44, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete ... I think everything was covered (wow that's a long point). --Whstchy 02:22, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete unless he turns out to be notable as a funeral director--and it that case it will be very appropriate to delete everything else.DGG 02:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete in agreement with Cremepuff222: Mwelch has said why. Acalamari 02:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as every location, flexibly defined, has a "first" anything, but that isn't real notability, it's boosterism. This is a really obscure first. --Dhartung | Talk 07:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Keep There is no reason to believe that anything written may be contradicted through further research. Unless someone has evidence this is a plant, it would seem inappropriate to make the assumption. As it stands, the person's notability is explicit. DDB 08:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete - "This person's notability is explicit"? This is a guy who founded a crematorium. As Dhartung says, every town with a crematorium had a first one - unless he lobbied to get the law changed to legalise them, or something similarly significant, there's nothing noteworthy at all about it. And this reference in particular takes the prize as the single worst "reference" I have ever seen - an obituary for someone completely unrelated who happens to have been buried by his firm — iridescenti (talk to me!) 09:27, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Comment In major newspapers, the obituaries are indeed fact-checked, and the editors do not print lengthy obits about every dead person. They print short terse obits in general. They print long obits on leaders in business, government, the arts, and philanthropy, and also for balance sometimes choose one of us ordinary people who led an interesting life. The obits of notables are prepared in advance and staff writers update them periodically. The AFD nomination have overstated the case for obituaries failing to demonstrate notability. They can, to some extent, depending on the paper. In a town of 4,000 they probably print whatever the family sends in if it seems plausible. In New York City, that is not the case. Edison 14:01, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment The obituary in question comes from the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle which with all due respects, probably has less need to be selective & save space on the obits page than the NYT. An obituary in the Washington Post, Daily Telegraph, Die Welt etc I accept as prima facie evidence of likely notability, but a local paper in Cheyenne needs something else to back up the claim — iridescenti (talk to me!) 16:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I appreciated Edison's making that clarification, which I certainly should have made explicit in the nomination. Because I have nominated several of this author's small-town-newspaper-obit-based articles for deletion, and indeed was nominating two others at the same time as this one, that is what I had in mind when I referred to "obituaries" in the nomination. I don't disagree at all that an "obituary" article (as opposed to a paid "death notice", which still anyone can get) in The New York Times is an entirely different affair (as evidenced by the fact that such an obituary has a by-line, so yes, you know someone worked on fact-checking it). I was sloppy in not having been more clear about the distinction, to be sure. Guilty as charged. But I stand by what I said with regard to this and the other obituary articles I've nominated. With The New York Times, you have to call them and suggest an obituary article (again, as opposed to a simple "death notice", which, even with The Times, anyone can simply pay for), and then they make the decision on the person's notability. The newspaper which ran the obituary that serves as the basis for this article, on the other hand, accepts obituaries like this. No one is making a call on the person's notability, and there's no by-line to indicate that what was submitted was subjected to anything more than copyediting. Mwelch 18:33, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment I'm not sure what you're basing usage on here, but in my hometown paper it's precisely the opposite. Everybody gets a basic death notice; longer obituaries are paid for by the family. In rare cases a local luminary -- pol, businessman, volunteer -- gets a bona fide bylined article which is basically full of encomia from associates. These articles are not called obituaries. --Dhartung | Talk 08:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
      • Reply. Yes, that's about how it is with most small newspapers, the variable being whether they charge for the "upgrade" from death notice to obituary. Some do; some don't. And if there is an actual reporter-assigned article (not just a family-providec obituary) like you mention at the end, then that speaks to the person's notability, I would agree, and also is much more likely to be a reliable source, in terms of fact-checking. There was no such article here in the case of Wiederspahn. What Edison was pointing out, though, is that in a metro area, like New York with The Times, it's even the basic death notice that the family has to pay for, and it's not the family's option to just pay more to have it "upgraded" to a longer obituary. You have to call The Times, suggest that so-and-so receive an obituary, and then they make the editorial decision as to whether the person notability merits such. So with their obituaries, the "anybody can have one" and "they are not fact-checked" arguments would not apply. Mwelch 15:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
• Delete even if obits were reliable (and even those from major news sources aren't) this guy isn't notablyBalloonman 04:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree on that last point. Modern major newspapers maintain a high reputation for obit coverage--as the principal ones are prepared long in advance, they probably do in general represent a balanced view. DGG 02:22, 24 May 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.