Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Florence Scovel Shinn

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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. Seraphim♥Whipp 00:29, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Florence Scovel Shinn

Florence Scovel Shinn (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

This individual fails notability criteria because there are very few to none non-trivial reliable sources. Almost every single source that is brought up for the article is either from non-reliable sources or sources that offer only very trivial mention of the subject. A one line sentence in a massive article about something totally different is not a solid source for an article. And an article can not be created by just lumping a bunch of trivial references together. Tmtoulouse (talk) 22:12, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Keep See citation Charles Haanel at [1] , she published 3 books in her lifetime "The Game of Life and How to Play it" 1925, "Your Word is Your Wand " 1928 and "The Secret Door to Success" 1940. Though originally self published , all are still in print with major publishers and 98 listings on Amazon [2]. She is additionally recognised as a humorous illustrator see American Women Cartoonists and Comic Artists in the Early Twentieth Century The Journal of American Culture 7 (3) , 38–48 doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.1984.0703_38.x [3] (pdf) . Lumos3 (talk) 22:25, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment: Haanel is a fellow New Thought author, not a historian -- so is hardly a WP:RS for her life story. Further, the page from his book offers no indication that she was "regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by their peers or successors" (the one thing that Haanel is qualified to speak to). HrafnTalkStalk 02:51, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak keep. I'd like to see footnotes in a biographical article, but looks a valid stub.--Sting au Buzz Me... 22:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong delete: restored stub is unverifiable, vague and weasely ("...may be considered... follow in the tradition of..."). References are poor-quality, give no indication of more than fleeting, tangential mention in passing, and are not given inline citations. They give no indication that they amount to "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" (WP:NOTE). Nor does the stub establish that she meets WP:BIO#Creative professionals. HrafnTalkStalk 02:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep with a big IF.
Comment: I back everything Lumos cites having researched and cited the art stuff myself. But whatever happened to the article as I knew it? – it's been stripped of more than its ubiquitous C quotes. Definitely keep if it can be restored to some kind of article it would have been at the time I was working on it and I did give inline cites. At present am tired and beyond calculating the diff in size from then until now, but it seems a puny stub now where it was more of an article then though needing work. Personally am interested in her artistic career and connection with the artists' group, and as a woman who was financially and culturally independent for her time. Difficult to find information on when she switched to metaphysics but she did and is author of several books still in print. It would have benefited from reduced weasel language, but the gatekeeper of the article then (who didn't trust the artist side of her life apparently, and challenged my cites) was too difficult to deal with. Like to see it stay and improved since Schinn serves as a verifiable historical ground to the re-invention claims of her more recent so-called metaphysical/authorial successors, showing the age and legacy of "new thought"sters. She serves as a link with the Theosophists too as I recall. Get the impression that it's been self-destructed as happens with this kind of article. Btw I've been working on Callas and there's no comparison in terms of notability but it doesn't mean Schinn isn't notable in her own right – she's a second-tier artist at least. Thanks for the notice though, appreciate it, Julia Rossi (talk) 09:50, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Julia: the "article as [you] knew it" was mostly an extended quote-farm, with a couple of small sections on her artistic period that were cited to commercial blurbs and an exhibition catalogue -- hardly WP:RS. It can be found here. I don't think there's a single solid source in the entire thing. HrafnTalkStalk 12:34, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. There are enough non-trivial sources in the article to show notability - in fact far more online sources than would be expected of anyone who was active way before the Internet age. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:36, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Hi Hrafn, it was indeed a quote farm from her books but the books were references when there wasn't much else. Maybe someone with better skills could have brought it together more editorially. My interest as you know from the talk page was in the art background/cultural contribution. My point was that though she was not in the league of super artists (which was only possible from the American abstract expressionists onwards) her works are being sold online, recorded in catalogues and included in catalogue essays which makes her a second tier (gallery) artist, as I've said. If she were a first-tier (museum) artist with solo shows, own catalogues and biographies it would be different. Imo, she was of a time when that was unlikely to happen with women in groups of artists, she's been reified by historians, and the gallery/dealer provides the refs as they do. To say she isn't notable (or worthy of scholarship) is too rigorous for her status when she isn't from the mass media/promotional/internet age. The article would have been better in my eyes if it had been built from her art life, then segued to her avocation as a spiritualist. Both ways she was part of vanguard movements. You know I felt some people's standards were a touch demanding for it, but whether Schinn stays or goes, she's notable. It seems a pity that now, with all those references, the guts seemed to have fallen out of the article itself. Julia Rossi (talk) 23:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
  • "but [her] books were references when there wasn't much else" = no "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" = good reason for turning it into a redirect. I haven't said that she isn't worthy of scholarship, I have said (both here and on the article's talk) that no evidence of such scholarship has turned up. Unless and until it does, we have problems with WP:NOTE & WP:V. My whole point of challenging these sorts of articles is to force its supporters (who are far more likely to have access to such scholarship than I do) to come up with it. Sometimes they do, many times they don't, and the article ends up being redirected or deleted, per WP:NOTE). HrafnTalkStalk 04:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Three books is enough to establish notability. One of these books here is #25,749 at Amazon. Not too shabby. Madman (talk) 04:29, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: the number of books is not at issue -- the issue is whether they are: (1) WP:RSs (2) are independent & (3) provide "significant coverage". HrafnTalkStalk 04:48, 16 May 2008 (UTC) Oh you mean her own works -- there is no sales-related criteria for notability in WP:BIO. HrafnTalkStalk 05:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. - easily meets WP:V and WP:N. The article needs substantial improvement, but that's not a reason to delete. This author is notable for writing a modest historic classic of the affirmation genre, The Game of Life and How to Play it. That little 96 page book has been published around the world in many languages and adapted into just about every format a book can be in - print, audio, anthologies, even card decks... The author gets over 600 hits in Google Books - not web pages, but mentions in printed books. Definitely, this is a keeper. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 09:07, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment to Hranf, why do you expect scholarship before an article is worth keeping? This is Wikipedia, a source of verifiable information of the noteworthy. Let's not distort criteria here through some sort of pendantic perfection lens, or we'd have no articles to speak of – reasonability is a good range to go by, the refs are not blogs let's remember, and that's it for me, I'm outta here. Cheers, Julia Rossi (talk) 11:35, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep An article on someone notable in two different ways should be deleted? It has sources which are reliable, based on any reasonable interpretation of the RS guideline. They let us write an informative article helpful to someone who wants information on its subject - the whole reason for wikipedia's existence. Sure, it has problems, but so does everything else at Wikipedia and the whole world too. No problems that argue for deletion.John Z (talk) 05:50, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and NYT obituary [4] and 18 mentions in the NY Times, dating back to 1899.John Z (talk) 20:04, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment/query: Wondering aloud here -- looking at where it was when I was expanding it here[5]'pared to what it is now (and not only my work has been radically "boned"); and Hrafn's reply on the talk page: For the umpteenth time read the bloody policy! A comnercial blurb advertising her book for sale is not a reliable source! Not only is this a clear violation of WP:RS, it is also a violation of WP:PEACOCK. HrafnTalkStalk] I'm wondering if that someone is pwning the article, and maybe needs to take a wiki type break? So much great energy could be more positively used don'cha think? Julia Rossi (talk) 02:33, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: (1) your "expanding" was on the basis of a bunch of commercial blurbs whose purpose was the sale of Shinn's work and an "exhibition catalog" -- are you claiming that WP:RS doesn't apply to you? (2) The source that Madman2001 added was to a Barnes&Noble blurb advertising one of her books, I reverted citing WP:RS, he counter-reverted with an edit summary of "don't be silly". Under the circumstances, I don't think it was unreasonable for me to bring his attention to the policy in question in a fairly blunt manner. It seems that in the New Thought neck of the woods that WP:RS (and WP:V) is just something that applies to other people. HrafnTalkStalk 03:55, 18 May 2008 (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.