Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Howard F. Barrett

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. --Coredesat 01:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Howard F. Barrett

Howard F. Barrett (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Subject is non-notable per WP:BIO. Mwelch 00:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. The article offers no indication that the subject is even the slightest bit notable per WP:BIO. Aside from the birth and death dates of the subject's wife, the article is entirely sourced from the subject's obituary in the local newspaper. I might have tried to speedy A7, but the article's author has a long history of contributing biographies of non-notable individuals, many of which have been deleted as such, and he generally contests speedies and prods of such work, forcing them to come to AFD anyway. So I figured I'd save time and start here. Mwelch 00:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete fails WP:BIO, it reads like a memorial with no indication of why they are notable.--Paloma Walker 01:14, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment If "he was instrumental in developing and enhancing several breeds of cattle." can be verified from a source other than his own family, I'd be happy to keep the article. Mgm|^(talk) 11:58, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. I have searched for such a source and found none. Googling him indicates (aside from the obituary) only that he was a cattle breeder. Mwelch 21:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy delete verbatim copyvio from Lubbock Online. - Iridescenti (talk to me!) 17:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy delete copyvio indeed. - Anas ^talk? 18:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment as Mwelch mentions above, the creator has recently created dozens of articles, all of which appear from the tone to be cut-and-pasted from local newspapers, and most of which are egregious failures of WP:BIO, eg the owner of a local lumber merchant. - Iridescenti (talk to me!) 19:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that egregious is a bit of a strong term, and BIO is just a guideline, not firm policy. I don't think that this copyvio is likely to get us into trouble if we work to fix it soon. Has anyone contacted the writer to let him know about the WP guidelines and to help develop the article. As MacGyver mentions above, there might be some notability here. --Kevin Murray 19:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the writer, Billy Hathorn, has been contacted about notability issues, both on his talk page and in the deletion debates of the many articles he's had deleted. (Although he hasn't here, he frequently participates in those debates to defend his subject's notability, so he's definitely been advised of WP:BIO numerous times.) He often doesn't reply to such advice, though when he does, he's civil and respectful. In the end though, he just doesn't seem much concerned about WP:BIO notability standards. (But then, the same can be said of many editors who self-identify as "inclusionists", so perhaps that's not such a big deal, even though the writer has not claimed that specific self-identification.) I'd speculate that he is content to continue creating biographical articles as he sees fit, and to just leave it up to the community to delete those that we see fit.

This is not the only article that the writer has created as pretty much a cut and paste from someone's newspaper obituary. I will say that I don't know if anyone's specifically mentioned the copyright violation angle of that to him, though. I definitely recall it being mentioned, once again, in the deletion debates of his articles, but that would be a good thing to bring up directly to him also.

Other problems with his work include frequent original research and dubious "references" to argue notability. For original research, he will include significant information and even quotations into his articles that he then sources in the "References" section to "e-mail exchange with Billy Hathorn" or "conversation between [Subject's name]'s wife and Billy Hathorn" or some such. I've deleted some of the worst examples of this in articles like Roy C. Strickland and Malouf Abraham, Jr., though there are others, and since he doesn't use in-line citations, I'm sure I didn't even get all of the OR even in those two articles — just the most obvious of it. To his credit, he hasn't fought me on it by trying to add the info back. For arguing notability, he will often add references that are not, in fact, references. If he reads in a subject's obituary, that the subject was, say, a member of ACM and IEEE and PETA, then he will list as his "references", a web link to the subject's obituary and web links to the ACM, IEEE and PETA web sites, and then argue that the subject was notable because his article has four different references listed to him.

So given the writer's history here, I'd be willing to wager that there isn't any "development" of the article that can really be done with actual WP:ATT-acceptable sources. No problem if others wish to spend more time pursuing the subject's notability, though. Mwelch 21:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete, doesn't this fit WP:CSD#A7? Not notable plus the copyvio. --Seattle Skier (talk) 00:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy delete. Cpoyvio is enough, plus there's lack of notability and the author's dubious track record. Realkyhick 03:14, 28 March 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.