Talk:Michael Koeberling

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Is this person really notable? See the guidlines for notability Wikipedia:Notability. The person should be considered notable if you can cite independent secondary sources. The person's official website is not considered independent.imars (talk) 07:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

He is a reasonably well-known luthier amongst violin players and his contemporaries and is certainly discussed online in various violin related forums. The size of the entry is probably commensurate with his current standing. Given that bandwidth and disk space are not an issue I struggle to understand the problem. I would argue that he is certainly more significant in the world than some of the other drivel on Wikipedia, such as extensive articles about Dora the explorer - not that I have anything personally against Dora, as she keeps my three year old quiet for hours on end. One beauty of Wikipedia is that it is not limited by a set number of pages and so it should have scope for small articles about less significant topics. If it's OK to write about Bart Simpson in an encyclopedia then I think its acceptable to have a five line entry on a professional luthier... Paul (talk) 07:14, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Hee, hee. You make a good argument :-). What makes Dora and Bart Simpson notable is their coverage in independent media, newspapers, academic books on pop culture and television (hmm academic + pop culture? ;-)), and such. I believe you when you say Mr. Koeberling is a well-known professional luthier, but an encyclopedia requires documented sources. The personal website of Mr. Koeberling can hardly be considered independent. Otherwise anyone could publish a website claiming they were a well-known anything. As long as there are no independent references, this article is in danger of being deleted because it does not meet the requirements of being notable. Since you have some interest in this article I would encourage you to cite some sources. I dabble with the cello myself, so I sympathize with your position. But there is a standard for notability, and just because others do not follow it, does not mean that we should not.imars (talk) 07:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I can dig out some web pages that refer to him. But these are not much more than online directory listings of luthiers. I can also dig out forum threads discussing his instruments. However, I don't think either would add any value to the article and I am not aware of any online articles written about him. This is true of most luthiers I think. So, if a Wikipedia "deletionist" decides the article must go, so be it. But I think this kind of bureaucratic decision is to the detriment of the website and serves only to discourage people from creating articles. The article is not incorrect, or libellous, or excessive. The worst that can be claimed of it is that it is of little interest to most readers. For an online resource I don't see this as a problem - if no one decides to search for the article or click on its link then it will just fester on the server somewhere, occupying a few hundred bytes out of the gazillion bytes Wikipedia now occupies. Including the highly informative articles on the 500 Pokemon characters which I am delighted to see do meet the high academic standards of this resource... Paul (talk) 06:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)