Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John R. Palmer

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. MBisanz ^talk 00:30, 6 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

John R. Palmer

Article makes several claims to notability, but none of them seem anywhere close to fulfilling the criteria at WP:BIO. It claims his songs have been heard "in Scandinavia, across North America, and in the Caribbean during the St. Lucia Country Music Festival." Only the last item is a real claim, and I can find nothing about this festival except in connection with him. His one book was published by vanity press iUniverse. He hosts a syndicated radio show which is "on hiatus." His "political career" consisted of announcing a run for city council then changing his mind. He apparently has done some environmental work that was "accessed thousands of times from inside Ottawa City Hall," but it's all worded very vaguely and doesn't seem notable at all. Lastly, he also coined a word on the Internet. Even taken as a whole, these achievements don't seem anywhere near our notability criteria. This article reads like a resume more than anything else, especially as it includes information on things like which colleges he got into. -Elmer Clark (talk) 04:53, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

~~A Google search does verify Editor:Clarks claims. Article's purpose may be self satisfaction. Too ambiguous and vague. Unless new infomation is added, as of now, I would say...Delete~~--Buster7 (talk) 05:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)...My initial DELETE was since it looked like the article was self composed (I admit I failed to check history)..but now that Editor:BMW has staightened that out, I would like to withdraw my support of deleting. That is unless BMW IS John R Palmer????[reply]

Delete. There are no sources supporting the claims in the article or establishing notability. Capitalistroadster (talk) 05:54, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. (original editor) This is an article that I first started ages ago, and yes became a bit of a pet project. In 2003 when Mr. Palmer actually ran for city Council against the toughest opponent in the city, I was a senior student in journalism. The City of Ottawa website (a city of almost a million people) makes numerous mentions. A simple g-search will turn up plenty of hits. I have slowly added ref's from the local papers as I can find them - unfortunately, the journalism databases do not always hold them. The Ottawa Citizen (the large city newspaper) has featured him in relation to the 2003 election, his work on Ottawa Transit. Canada's National Broadcaster, CBC also has a few hits. He actually wrote articles for the Nepean This Week newspaper. iUniverse is, according to the New York Times, not and "vanity press". A good number of wikilinks. Sure, I probably threw some cruft into the article that I was able to glean through small articles, internet searches, and *gasp* press conferences where I was able to ask questions in open forums. As Mr. Palmer sells the full rights to his songs, I was not even permitted to list the ones you might have heard on the radio on the page - this is not something I can fix easily. Before this becomes WP:TLDNR, I wanted to clarify some of the misinformation above. Many other editors have added and edited this article over the past 6 years or so. (talk→ Bwilkins / BMW ←track) 07:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

iUniverse is a print-on-demand self-publisher who charges an upfront fee to the author for publication. That is the definition of a vanity press. And I still don't think losing (by a lot) in a city council race is grounds for political notability. And finally, with a name this common, Google hits really aren't meaningful at all. Even in the first few pages of results for "john r. palmer," many are clearly not him. I'm still not seeing non-trivial coverage from a variety of sources. -Elmer Clark (talk) 07:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, searching for "john palmer" and "john r. palmer" restricted to ottawa.ca returned only items about the results of his city council election bid and this, which mentions him only in one sentence. I'm not seeing "numerous mentions" here. -Elmer Clark (talk) 07:39, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the terminology is slightly more nuanced. See this page for more details. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:18, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting link, thanks. I guess by those definitions they are a "subsidy publisher" then. At any rate, the point is that they are not a traditional selective publisher and simply having had a book published by them is not any indication of the book's notability even on a very minimal level. -Elmer Clark (talk) 10:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- (talk→ Bwilkins / BMW ←track) 10:27, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. -- (talk→ Bwilkins / BMW ←track) 10:28, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. -- (talk→ Bwilkins / BMW ←track) 10:28, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz ^talk 05:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The article content and references do not establish evidence of life achievements that indicate an encyclopedia article is warranted. FloNight ♥♥♥ 19:29, 5 March 2009 (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.