Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander Boyd Barty

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. Article's subject is found to not be notable. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 01:40, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Alexander Boyd Barty

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I'm not seeing anything that satisfies WP:BIO or WP:GNG. No sources to speak of. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:00, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:44, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:44, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Scotland-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 13:44, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Satisfies GNG. Obituaries in the Scottish Law Review and Sheriff Court Reports and the University of Edinburgh Journal. His books went through multiple editions (normally an indicator of popularity) and are cited by other works, including bibliographies. James500 (talk) 16:05, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:24, 11 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(with regret) delete (or possibly, redirect to a Dunblane history section). I am afraid that witing a town's local history does not make a book notable. The republication with an additional chapter was presumably in the aftermath of the Dunblane school massacre, to cover subsequent events. Getting local history publihsed in book form is not easy, due to the limited market. I fear that this points to a lack of notability for the book, and the author of a NN book must also be NN, unless for other reasons. Peterkingiron (talk) 10:06, 13 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That is nonsense from start to finish. Firstly, he clearly satisfies GNG due to the two obituaries in academic journals which you have ignored. A book's inclusion in selective bibliographies is relevant by the same logic as the "selective database" argument of NJOURNALS. Your (frankly muddled and incoherent) argument seems to be along the lines that anyone who has written a book about local history is presumed non-notable. That is simply wrong in principle. That is a pure WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument. You have also fallen into the trap of assuming that the book is the only thing that makes him notable. Obituaries often fail to say why someone is notable, apparently because they assume that the audience already knows. I see this all the time, particularly in publications from that era. You (and others) made the same mistake at the AfD for Arthur Irving Andrews because you failed to realise that he satisfies criteria 1 of WP:ANYBIO because you assumed that the biographical dictionaries cited told the whole story, and didn't look for further sources. What should have been going through your mind was "this man's biography would not be included in these publications unless there was a good reason, even if it isn't obvious what that reason is just looking what they say". Likewise with the obituaries for Barty. As far as I am aware, academic journals, and especially law reviews, don't publish obituaries of non-entities. Moreover, you also need to actually read these sources. Unless I am mistaken, the obituary in the University of Edinburgh Journal says that Barty was, for example, amongst other things, secretary of the Scottish Law Agents Society, which sounds like a major responsibility/achievement that is more important than the book. Do I really have to micro-analyse the whole biography for you? He also wrote other books: His History of Dunblane Cathedral was reprinted in 1995. As for your comments about the circumstances under which the second edition that book was published, it is manifestly wrong, because the second edition was published in 1994 (50th anniversary of the 1st edition), two years before the massacre in 1996. James500 (talk) 12:44, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Sam ^Sing! 11:23, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The only reference used is his own book. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:45, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): In view of the fact that there are clearly other sources available (eg the obituaries: [1] [2]), are you questioning Barty's notability or simply suggesting that the article should be blown up for using an inappropriate source? If the latter, would it help if someone was to rewrite the article with better sources? James500 (talk) 06:58, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, though it's clearly a narrow decision. The obituaries cited by James500, on inspection, meet the requirements of WP:WHYN - just enough information from reliable secondary sources to write an article and to determine the veracity and notability of the subject. It might be a good idea to add the obituaries as inline sources, though, or we'll all be back here for a second nomination at some point in the future. Fiachra10003 (talk) 17:30, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 01:14, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I was tempted to close this as delete and I think that's the most likely option right now, based on arguments rather than numbers. The obituaries are linked but the snippet views do not allow us to see whether we're talking about "real" obituaries or single-paragraph notifications. Given the absence of other secondary sourcing I doubt that they were in much depth. Second, if the book is cited, evidence should be presented--but simply giving a list based on Google results is not enough. I found a few citations but their weight is difficult to establish--remember that citations can prove the work is important and has had an impact, which in turn suggests that some citations can be more important than others. This one cites a document cited in Barty's book, and this one cites him in four of the footnotes. They do not suggest that the book is of great importance: the book itself or its author are not discussed. Rather than close it, I'll leave this note here as a pointer, of what kind kind of evidence a closer would be looking for. I'm leaning delete, I'm sad to say. Drmies (talk) 03:36, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(1) It is possible, by manipulation of Google Books' search engine, to extract fairly large passages of books. The obituary in the Scottish Law Review and Sheriff Court Reports, to begin with, appears to me to be a lengthy, blow by blow account of his life. (2) If you still have doubts, the solution is to go and look at a physical copy of those periodicals in a library. NRVE says that sources have to actually exist. It does not say that those sources have to be available for free on the internet. In fact, our policy is that they do not have to be online at all. (3) I am inclined to take the view that "significant coverage" must be something detectable with snippet view, precisely because that is the tool we have to work with, whether we like it or not. (4) The apparent absence of other secondary sources may be because GBooks is said to be missing three quarters of all books. For every source we have found, there are probably another three that haven't been digitised yet. On top of that, Google's search engine doesn't produce all the results it should for any given expression. James500 (talk) 03:53, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That you say "appears to me" means you didn't actually see them. That, plus the rest of your comments, suggests you are arguing that because we can see a tiny little bit, there must be more and we should therefore close as keep. Of course sources don't have to be online, but you can't cite what you can't see, and you can't say "keep" based on what you haven't seen. Drmies (talk) 16:42, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, "appears to me" means I did see them, by doing this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this, and so forth, through the rest of the publication. (Note that he was secretary of the Scottish Law Agents Society). Likewise with the other source: [3] [4] etc. This technique isn't difficult, and you should be able to do it yourself. I used the word "appears" because depth is an inherently subjective concept ("how long is a piece of string"). I wouldn't describe the average snippet as "a tiny little bit", as you do. My idea of significant coverage is any decent sized paragraph, so this is a clear pass of GNG in my opinion. And common sense suggests that a person who died in 1940 who was secretary of the aforementioned society, and etc etc etc, is worthy of notice per WP:NHISTORY (still a draft proposal but lifted more or less verbatim from an existing guideline). The rest of your comments are nonsense. If you can't read the source online, the burden is on you to take yourself to a library and read it there, before arguing for deletion. We have a strong presumption against deletion at AfD, and NRVE does explicitly say that "there is likely to be more coverage offline" is a perfectly valid argument. James500 (talk) 10:14, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have found an additional "good" source, an obituary in The Glasgow Herald, a national newspaper: [5] (article titled "A Dunblane Solicitor: Mr Alexander Boyd Barty" in the fourth column headed "obituary"; not particularly easy to read directly, but here is part of what Google's OCR produces: [6] [7]). There is probably plenty more material if anyone actually bothers to search. James500 (talk) 14:25, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Upon closer inspection, I find there are indeed further newspaper articles from the Herald: [8]. Here is one titled "Centenary Of Dunblane Legal Firm" from 1929. This one, the heading of which I can't clearly make out, though it might be "inherent right of people", is probably more important, as it appears to describe him as "Sir Alexander Barty". If that is true, he automatically satisfies criteria 1 of WP:ANYBIO, as a knight. James500 (talk) 15:14, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Contrary to what Drmies writes above, if this AfD was closed now, the only possible outcome, in my view, looking at arguments rather than numbers, would be a clear keep. Every !vote arguing for deletion above either represents that the obituaries do not exist (mistake of fact), admits to having not read them fully and not knowing how detailed they are, or advances arguments that have no apparent basis in any policy or guideline. That is my assessment of consensus. James500 (talk) 18:08, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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.