Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ugly American (magazine)

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. Carlossuarez46 23:43, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ugly American (magazine)

Ugly American (magazine) (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Massive, MASSIVE COI taking place here. Also bordering on notability (probably not even there yet), and a very crappy article in general. Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 22:18, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

• Dear Mr. Dihydrogen Monoxide:

A few facts for your consideration:

1) None of the zine's principals created the article; the article was created by a fan. I rewrote the article due to numerous factual inaccuracies, and I included in the initial draft an unusual postscript explicitly stating the possibility of a conflict of interest. I also stated that no one outside of the original participants could possibly have a sufficient grasp of the facts to present an accurate historical record of the zine. The postscript - but not the actual article - was felt by the administrators at the time to fall outside of the boundaries of Wiki's stylistic standards, and it was eliminated. Great care was taken to maintain a balanced perspective on the subject at hand, and none of the people involved with the zine or mentioned in the article have ever complained that its portrayal is innaccurate (which, admittedly, doesn't actually prove anything; a careful reading of the article, however, clearly demonstrates a rather straightforward presentation of both "positive" and "negative" facts).

2) The possibility that the zine is a promotional item is nil, considering the fact that it folded in 1999, and that most, if not all, of the bands mentioned (including those that included members of the zine) have also folded. Had you bothered to read the article, you'd note that it contains no promotional material whatsoever.

3) So the article is crappy? Really? Crappier than, say, the forlorn stub on Forced Exposure that's been sitting around since February 2005? Less notable than the ultra-obscure zine The Grimoire of Exalted Deeds, or the laughably obscure Riff Raff? Why don't you simply delete all of these articles while you're at it? As for the zine's importance, it should be noted that while Ugly American was indeed a highly marginal publication, it still managed to carve out its own distinctive (and yes, occasionally recognized) niche during the indie-rock explosion of the nineties. Whether or not marginal cultural artifacts are worthy of inclusion within Wikipedia is a separate matter for the administrators to decide.

4) I'd like to state for the record that the article Ugly American (magazine) had enjoyed a peaceful existence until the administrator known as Wizardman deleted a fair-use image without first posting a warning (despite his claims to the contrary). I openly challenged this deletion as being heavy-handed and thoughtless, and now, less than twenty-four hours after that confrontation, the entire article is being considered for deletion. If the other Wikipedia administrators have any integrity whatsoever, they should at least consider the possibility that these events are not coincidental.

5) If in fact the deletion of the article stems from challenging an administrator, please spare me the appearance of thoughtful consideration and grave earnestness, kick-start this kangaroo court, and delete the article immediately, along with my lengthy postings to Wizardman regarding his somewhat questionable practices. Personally, I feel that the article is unfailingly accurate, fairly well written and wholly comprehensive, but should the administrators still decide to delete the article, then so be it. Encyclopedias throughout history have been selective and exclusionary, and really, why should anyone expect Wikipedia to be different? Either way, Ugly American has left its own, small mark on indie-rock history, one which can't be deleted by Wikipedia. J. Marlowe 00:54, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. The statement that "no one outside of the original participants could possibly have a sufficient grasp of the facts to present an accurate historical record of the zine" is an admission that it cannot be verified by reliable sources. The article does not provide any sources that establish notability, nor is a 13-issue personal project porno/hip-hop mag notable on its face. While it might sometimes be a good idea to let an article sit while someone looks for sources, it is clear that a lot of time has already been put in in that regard without success. COI or crappiness aside, this topic does not merit inclusion. --Markdsgraham 01:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per WP:WEB. Regardless of COI, notability isn't there Bfigura ^(talk) 17:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete I am not sure that it is unverifiable, but it will probably take a careful look through printed sources in other magazines of the period. Someone associated with the magazine might well write it from personal knowledge, and not realize it ha been written about. DGG (talk) 18:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per WP:WEB and WP:NN. I would also like to answer a few of the

points made by J. Marlowe

1) I am not sure how J. Marlowe knows for a fact that a fan started the article and not someone from the magazine. In anycase, if no one outside of the original participants could possibly have a sufficient grasp of the facts to present an accurate historical record of the zine, then it could be possible that a wikipedia article is not needed for this magazine. First articles need to rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Second, all the information provided has be be easily verifiable by any reasonable adult without specialist knowledge...something that you have claimed isn't possible.

2) I can't see how the article is promotional as the magazine in question is out of business.

3) You may be right about the other articles, however pointing at the dirt the other articles have on them does not mean that this article should have a pass. Those articles may deserve an AFD as well, however bringing up their shortcomings is not validate this article or help it in any way. If the magazine carved out a nitch, there should be newspaper articles, mentions on televisions shows or radio shows, or something to verify the claims made. Article fails WP:V

4) Please assume good faith. First you can verify by viewing the admin's contributions to wikipedia very easily to see if they did or did not create the warnings. Next, a user came accross the article and put it up for AFD. It's coincidence.

5)The article may be 'unfailingly accurate', but no adult can easily and reasonably verify the facts and claims made in the article. No matter how well written, and wholly comprehensive the article is...it still fails WP:V, WP:NN. Remember "Notability" is not a reflection of the mag's worth. The mag may have been brilliantly written, fascinating and topical, but it's not notable enough to ensure sufficient verifiable source material exists to create an article.

I have a few questions for Marlowe:

Has the book been the subject of multiple, non-trivial published works whose sources are independent of the mag itself, with at least some of these works serving a general audience? This includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, other books or magazines, television documentaries and reviews. I couldn't find any.

Has the magazine won a major literary award?

We use those as notability guidelines for books and it works well for magazines too. Can Ugly American pass those notability questions?--Brian_{(view my history)}/^{(How am I doing?)} 23:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

4) - No, it's not a co-incidence. Wizardman didn't want to AfD it himself because you've flamed him in enough on his talk page. Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 23:50, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• As I'm absolutely certain that the article on Ugly American will be deleted, consider the following to be a commentary rather than a vain appeal:

Rather than speculate on the possibility of behind-the-scenes machinations by the Wiki administrators, I'd like to address instead the two purportedly significant issues at stake: verifiability and notability. The issues are related to the degree that both rely upon the existence of a critical mass of what I'll refer to as "third-party" documentation. Within marginal subcultures like the pre-Internet indie-rock underground of the eighties and nineties, however, this documentation barely exists. While the era produced numerous zines that churned out reviews of contemporary bands, definitively comprehensive and "authoritative" features and interviews involving both bands and other zines (and their writers) are notably lacking. As a result, later literature dealing with the period is necessarily dependent upon interviews with surviving principals. These first-hand and often highly subjective narratives have frequently formed the very basis of various "official", "historical" narratives with regard to the bands of the period. The quintessential example of an authoritative usage of a first-person account is the "standard" media portrayal of Black Flag. Black Flag are arguably the most influential American postpunk band, and yet aside from the recordings, the only historical narratives that have offered substantial insights into the group have been first-hand accounts, the most overwhelmingly influential being Henry Rollins' Get in the Van. You'll note that the Wikipedia article on Black Flag is currently tagged with a note chiding it for its lack of sources. Much of the article's "factual" content appears to have been taken almost verbatim from Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life. Azerrad gleaned the contents of his writing on Black Flag almost entirely from interviews with band members and - predictably - Rollins' Get in the Van (and not, it should be noted, from the zines of the period, despite their somewhat misleading appearance in his bibliography). Since its publication in 1994 on Rollins' 2.13.61 imprint, Get in the Van, which is a personal diary of life on the road with Black Flag, has become the de facto historical narrative of the band in the absence of any other similarly comprehensive documents. Prior to the book's publication, Black Flag, lacking an overarching, "master" narrative or a compelling mythology, were regarded as just one among many marginal but influential bands of the postpunk era. Following the release of Rollins' self-published, self-mythologizing tome, however, Black Flag's perceived historical importance grew steadily as mainstream writers now enjoyed access to a persuasive, prepackaged tale that they could easily reference and build upon (in the manner of, say, Michael Azzerad). Rollin's subjective account, then, can be said to have been historicized, or transformed into an "official", "objective" narrative due to the dearth of other contemporary sources. A second, slightly different, example of this phenomenon involves the underground zine Forced Exposure. Currently, the Wiki entry on Forced Exposure is a mere "stub", and will likely remain so for the duration of its existence, if only because the two primary members of Forced Exposure - Byron Coley and Jimmy Johnson - have been generally rather tight-lipped regarding the zine and its cultural significance. As a result, anyone attempting to write about what is regarded as one of the most influential underground zines of the eighties has available only a superficial collection of facts discernable by any casual observer. Insights into the fundamental nature of the zine, however, must perforce come from either Coley or Johnson (which is likely the reason a comprehensive account of the zine has yet to appear in any source that I'm aware of). Ugly American, though obviously not in the same league as Forced Exposure, shares that zine's fate of being bound by its insularity to narratives that are inherently subjective (the consequence being a lack of "authoritative", third-party documentation). One of the general results of an overall lack of third-party documentation is that in the absence of first-person narratives, cohesive, historical narratives per se do not, for all practical purposes, exist. First-person narratives then, are absolutely, historically essential in situations where other, more substantial documentation is either limited or incomplete. But does the lack of "authoritative", third-party documentation of important - though marginal - art necessarily mean that such art should not be included in an encyclopedic forum? The answer depends on how highly "marginal" culture is valued within the forum itself. A culturally conservative view (such as the one taken by "Markdsgraham" who impugns the worth of Ugly American by calling attention to its "mere" thirteen-issue run, ignorant of the fact that even Forced Exposure ran for only eighteen issues over a similar period of time) will deem marginal art superfluous and irrelevant, as it measures artistic worth solely in terms of the extent of the art's dissemination and the corresponding size of its cultural impact. A more liberal view will deem both marginal and mainstream cultures as being complementary and inseparable aspects of a larger cultural dialectic, and will value marginal art on its own aesthetic terms, concentrating more on the nature rather than size of its cultural impact. Where Wikipedia as a whole resides on this ideological spectrum is debatable, but the encyclopedia appears to be drifting towards a slightly more conservative position as its stewards increasingly seek to elevate its status as a definitive reference source. The ideological positions of most of the administrators involved in this deletion case, however, remain conspicuously opaque, and consequently, I can only plausibly comment on the efforts expended in attempting to meet Wikipedia's criteria for "verifiability" and "notability" during the composition of the article, offering in the process a few generalized insights on Ugly American's cultural relevance.

With regard to the article's "verifiability", I and a few other contributors have labored to both exhaustively illustrate the scope of the zine's wider cultural associations, and locate and provide any and all third-party documentation available on the Internet (said online documentation by definition constituting an incomplete record, precisely because the zine folded just prior to the transition of the fanzine per se into an almost exclusively Internet-based medium). As for Ugly American's "notability", the zine had substantial connections to a number of influential and critically lauded - but likewise highly marginal - musicians, writers and zines, and these connections - whatever their "worth" - have also been documented to the extent possible. While I know that Ugly American's cultural impact was small, I also know that the zine is recognized within admittedly esoteric circles as having carved out a unique and somewhat cultish niche, in the process creating a disproportionately large impact upon the small number of readers who felt a kinship with the publication's acid-addled combination of aggression, surrealism and dark humor. Am I able to prove this point beyond what's already been documented within the article? No. Does anyone outside of a handful of fanatics and weirdos actually care about the zine? Probably not. Do the marginal artists who have been associated with the zine - no matter how fleetingly - themselves merit inclusion within Wikipedia? Well, I'm sure that they'll find out soon enough. And if Wikipedia's deletion of the Ugly American article isn't necessarily a damning indictment of the forum's cultural and historical ideologies, do probing questions regarding the philosophical basis of the notions of "verifiable content" and "notability" that are being used by the administrators in establishing cultural worth still need to be asked? Absolutely. Overall, this particular deletion case seems to raise more questions and present more dilemmas than it answers or resolves, and in the final analysis, the only irrefutable truth to emerge from this morass is that the tediously predictable parting of ways between Ugly American and Wikipedia will do little to diminish either the cultural influence - no matter how small - that the zine exerted, or the joyful madness that it wielded. J. Marlowe 02:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

• Brief comment - it may be true that the combined effect of WP:VERIFIABLE and WP:NN is to exclude "marginal" cultural history because nobody has written approriate sources dealing with that history. Nevertheless, it remains essential to Wikipedia's usefulness that content be verifiable. Read that policy to see why. --Markdsgraham 05:45, 18 September 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.