Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saffron Henderson

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 keep. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:47, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Saffron Henderson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Fails WP:ANYBIO and WP:NACTOR maybe redirect to her father's page Dom from Paris (talk) 12:19, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:20, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Voice actors are not handed an automatic inclusion freebie just because they've had roles — the notability test is not the having of roles per se, but the depth and range and breadth of reliable source coverage that they did or did not receive for having roles. But a profile in an IMDb-like directory of voice actors is not a reliable or notability-assisting source. Bearcat (talk) 18:26, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and WP:TROUT nominator: Oppose bad-faith nomination: Speedy keep: WP:BEFORE was not followed here. I found and added links to two interviews, on top of the existing one, within a few minutes whilst having no previous involvement with the article. WP:GNG is now definitely passed (though the article needs significant improvement). Modernponderer (talk) 22:18, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

These WP:INTERVIEWS are primary sources so of very little use in showing notability. GNG requires in depth coverage in reliable secondary sources. One of the interviews in what seems to be a defunct blog was conducted by another voice actor who worked on the same animation films as she did so unlikely to be independent. If you have any sources that actually support notability I'd be happy to self trout but those do not made the grade by a long chalk. Dom from Paris (talk) 05:24, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your own link explains that it's a matter of controversy as to whether interviews are primary or secondary. I'd also add that one of the links in your original nomination, WP:NACTOR, contradicts said nomination as well: Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions.

Given these facts, as well as the depth of coverage in said interviews, my trout here is only strengthened. Modernponderer (talk) 05:46, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The "in a nutshell" part at the top of the page explains it better than I can. Interviews generally count as primary sources, but commentary added to interviews by a publication can sometimes count as secondary-source material. Interviews may be published in reliable publications, but that does not make primary source material contained in them acceptable to cite claims for which Wikipedia requires secondary sources.. Hope that helps. Also repeated use of the meme trout can make you look a little silly if there are other users, especially very experienced ones that have !voted delete. I don't know if it's supposed to be funny or rude. Better to use it sparingly or the joke wears thin and starts to become rude. Dom from Paris (talk) 23:33, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You claim you're a very experienced user, yet you haven't even mentioned the banner right above it that clearly states that the page is NOT a policy or guideline.

Also I don't see anyone else commenting here after me, so I'm not sure what "other users" you are referring to. I only see a single other comment made before my arguments and expansion of the article. Modernponderer (talk) 05:09, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:PERESSAY but of course essays do not have the same weight as policy and guidelines but they do help in deletion arguments. If you want to find a policy that backs up this essay try WP:NOR which says in the footnotes Further examples of primary sources include...interviews and WP:N says "Sources"[2] should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability.. Hope that helps. Dom from Paris (talk) 05:31, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly agree that "proper" secondary sources should be preferred wherever possible. I cannot agree with the notion that articles should be outright deleted because only sources of a slightly lesser calibre (still reliable and independent) have been found. Modernponderer (talk) 06:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

if you step back and think about what you are saying you are basically advocating using primary sources to show notability when secondary ones don't exist which is against policy and guidelines. Anyway we will have to agree to disagree no point in taking this discussion further. Dom from Paris (talk) 06:39, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid you don't get to just end the discussion after misrepresenting both my statements and policy. Nowhere have I agreed, nor is it clearly stated, that interviews are purely primary sources (your sneaky incomplete excerpt from WP:NOR notwithstanding). THAT is the real bottom line here, and now this debate can end I suppose. Modernponderer (talk) 07:44, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interviews, a class of source that represents the subject speaking about herself rather than being spoken about by other people, are NOT notability-clinching sources in and of themselves. They can be used for supplementary verification of stray facts after GNG has already been covered off by stronger sources, but they do not confer a pass of GNG in and of themselves if they are the strongest sources on offer. So no, the nominator is not getting trouted for this. Bearcat (talk) 12:05, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

You know what? I've removed the trout. But not for the reasons both of you are claiming – rather, it's pretty obvious from the extended discussion that this nomination was made in bad faith, and that you are supporting this as a fellow deletionist no matter what.

If either of you wants to have your arguments taken seriously you might want to cite policies and guidelines (NOT essays) that support your exact point of view, as opposed to some variation of it. Modernponderer (talk) 13:45, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I am not anybody's "fellow deletionist". I am an editor with a correct understanding of how Wikipedia's inclusion rules work, which is that nobody in any field of occupation ever gets a notability freebie just for existing if their notability claim is not reliably sourceable to substantive WP:GNG-eligible media coverage about them. We're an encyclopedia, not a free directory of everybody who exists and has a job — articles get kept or deleted on the basis of whether they properly demonstrate that the subject passes defined notability and sourceability standards, not on the basis of some mythical deletionism vs. inclusionism war. Bearcat (talk) 13:56, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Deletionism vs. inclusionism is not mythical – it is a fundamental, ideological disagreement that is pervasive on Wikipedia. But there is little point in continuing this discussion until such time as one of you has provided the requisite direct policy quotation(s), and not just your opinion of what notability means here. Modernponderer (talk) 14:15, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, yes it is mythical, because it's not an accurate reflection of what actually happens on Wikipedia. There is no "deletionist" faction that believes in marauding through fields of solid articles to kill them just because they subscribe to some imaginary ideology of deleting stuff for the sake of deleting stuff, for starters — stuff gets deleted for valid reasons, such as non-compliance with our inclusion and sourcing rules, and not just because somebody who likes deleting good stuff for shits and giggles kidnapped it. Sure, some people want our inclusion standards loosened up to the point where everybody and everything that exists at all is entitled to have an article that can never be deleted for any reason — but having no inclusion standards is not a viable approach to building an encyclopedia. Lines have to be drawn somewhere between what is or is not appropriate for inclusion here — but while there may be some disagreement about where those lines should be drawn in some cases, that is not the same thing as what people mean when they talk about "inclusionism vs. deletionism", because again, there is no such thing as any group on Wikipedia that believes in tearing down good stuff just because a delete function exists.

Secondly, please read up on why "that's only an essay" is not a valid argument in an AFD discussion: note, in particular, the part where it explicitly states that "we have policies which tell us what to do and why to do it, and guidelines to help us with how to do it." Notability standards and reliable sourcing rules are not less binding just because they're spelled out in guideline essays rather than formal policy statements: they exists as clarifiers of how policy plays out in practice, and thus are equally binding in the absence of a compelling reason why a special exception to them would be warranted.

The bottom line is, this is how Wikipedia works: the baseline for inclusion is that the person has a strong and credible notability claim, backed up by a WP:GNG-satisfying volume of reliable source coverage about her to verify that the notability claim and the article content are actually true. Both of those conditions have to be met, because if reliable sources were not necessary as long as something that sounds notable was asserted, then people would be able to get into Wikipedia by self-declaring themselves as the presidents of unrecognized micronations, or by claiming to have had charting hits as a musician that they didn't really have, and on and so forth — and if a notability claim weren't necessary as long as any form of sourcing whatsoever was present, then people could game our rules by getting their friends to conduct fake "interviews" with them on YouTube or by self-creating their own "coverage" on a crowdsourced "citizen journalism" website. So Wikipedia has rules about what counts as a valid notability claim, and what types of sources are acceptable support for it, for the purposes of making a person eligible to have a Wikipedia article — because as a platform that people regularly try to use and abuse for publicity, we have to have and enforce standards of notability and sourcing if we want to hold the line on being an encyclopedia instead of just a social networking site. Bearcat (talk) 16:09, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of taking my advice, you posted a long rant. Nevertheless, I will address a few of your points, if only to deter others from believing in this nonsense.

1. It is to the obvious advantage of the deletionist faction to claim it does not exist. If the amount of salvageable encyclopedic content lost this way were ever recognized, there would be protests throughout Wikipedia, swiftly followed by administrator action.
2. The reason the claim "it's only an essay" is 100% valid is because essays do NOT represent consensus. There is no requirement, in fact, for them to represent anything more than the individual opinion of ONE editor. It is not remotely uncommon for essays to outright contradict established policy (and though some of these are userfied, not all are)! If such an editor participated in a discussion like this, their opinion would be weighed as but one !vote – yet because they wrote an "essay", it is suddenly worth much more?
3. Finally, and this is the real issue that destroys the case for deletion of this page: these interviews are from reliable and independent sources. You have tried to conflate them with hypothetical "interviews conducted by friends" and "citizen journalism", knowing full well that this is not the case here.

So please: either post the direct quotation(s) from policy that support your side, or WP:DROPTHESTICK. Modernponderer (talk) 17:25, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

1. The amount of "salvageable" encyclopedic content that gets deleted in a year adds up to a molehill next to the Mount Everest of garbage that gets correctly deleted for not meeting our requirements at all. And since deletion does not prevent somebody from recreating an article again if they can do a better job than the first version did, that molehill amounts to a non-existent problem — it is not our job to keep a badly written and badly sourced article just because improvement might be possible, it is the job of the person who wants the article to exist to make it good enough to get kept in the first place.
2. Wikipedia guidelines do represent consensus, and do not represent the individual opinions of just one person. User essays can be individual opinions, and as such do not carry much weight in policy and procedure discussions — but formal Wikipedia guideline essays, which are not the same thing as user essays, do represent the weight of consensus.
3. It doesn't matter what type of source the interview appears in — the issue with interviews is the question of who's doing the speaking. People do not get over a Wikipedia inclusion guideline by talking about themselves — for a source to count toward getting a person over GNG, it has to represent other people who are not Saffron Henderson talking about her in the third person. Sources in which Saffron Henderson is talking about herself in the first person can be used for supplementary verification of stray facts after GNG has already been covered off by third person sourcing, but do not carry a GNG pass in and of themselves if they're the best sources on offer. To assist passage of GNG, a source must be written in the third person by somebody other than the subject herself. (And no, the fact that somebody else transcribed her words in the process of laying out the article does not cover that off — because it's still her own words being transcribed.)
4. You have already been pointed to all of the policy and guideline documents necessary to demonstrate that every word I have written in this discussion is one hundred per cent correct. Again, guidelines are not the same thing as user essays: guidelines do not represent individual opinions, but rather do represent the weight of established Wikipedia consensus. Notability has to be covered off by reliable sourcing, that's not even up for debate here. But interviews are not notability-assisting sources, because they represent the subject talking about herself — they are fine as verifiers of additional fact after notability has already been covered off by the more correct class of sourcing, but they do not make notability in and of themselves if they're the only class of sourcing being used. Bearcat (talk) 18:08, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As Bearcat so patiently points out this essay explains the policy and guidelines that says 1/ secondary sources are needed and 2/why interviews are not secondary sources. I think that you should take your own advice about dropping the stick.Dom from Paris (talk) 19:16, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User:Domdeparis and User:Bearcat, I am indeed dropping out of this discussion now. Let it be known, however, that this is because each of you has blatantly lied here at least once (cutting out a highly unfavorable portion of a policy quote as I pointed out before, and now stating that essays represent consensus when even the template at the top of the essay under discussion very clearly states that they do not). I am unsure why this type of conduct continues to be tolerated, but sadly I am not in a position to pursue this any further at this time. Modernponderer (talk) 19:25, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Modernponderer: Accusing other users of being WP:LIARS without proof is a WP:PERSONAL ATTACK please strike your comment. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:28, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging the wrong username, citing an essay AGAIN, making false claims (again), and messing up the formatting here for a second time... wow. (Not to mention dragging me back into a discussion I had already decided to leave.) Nevertheless, I have struck out the comments in question but only because unlike you I try to follow policy, and conduct is technically not supposed to be debated on pages such as these, only content. Modernponderer (talk) 16:00, 15 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Sourcing is a little hard to find, and the results tend to be a small amount of material over a wide variety of sources. Nevertheless, I think there is enough there to put together an article that can comply with our BLP policies. I've added two book citations to help move things along. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:20, 16 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I checked out the book sources and the Deformed and Destructive Beings is really a passing mention that says the more accomplished Geena Davis in the original; lookalike Saffron Henderson in the sequel and in the The Gorehound's Guide to Splatter Films of the 1980s she is listed in 2 cast lists and talks about her without being named as a "stand-in" for Geena Davis who was maybe "above horror films at this point in time". I can't really see this adding to her notability to be honest. Dom from Paris (talk) 10:12, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That was kind of my point - the sourcing is lots of publications, but only a few sentences in each, so it's a marginal case. Another way of looking at it, when consulting alternatives to deletion, is to redirect somewhere. But there's no obvious target to redirect as she's had her fingers in so many pies (so to speak). That generally leaves "keep" as the only option left. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:54, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble is that there are a lot of actors (voice and otherwise) that have been knocking around for years so they have a long list of credits and have a few interviews in trade or niche magazines but as they have never really made the big time there is no real in depth coverage. As she comes from a show biz family I think we could redirect to this section Bill_Henderson_(Canadian_singer)#Personal on her father's page that mentions her and if she ever gets that big role then the page can be expanded. Dom from Paris (talk) 12:51, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. A careful reading of NOR shows that there's a context in which interviews can be considered primary sources. There's also context where they shouldn't. I think on balance there's enough here, especially as there's far too much for delete IMHO and, as Richie says, no obvious redirect target. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 15:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I can't find any independent sources on her (such as feature articles): there are no independent secondary sources that aren't directory listings. She's done a few interviews, but it's difficult to count those toward notability. No prejudice on recreation/read this as a changed vote if a feature article or two has gone missing. SportingFlyer talk 06:27, 22 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. No doubt of notability. However the article's a mess and needs to be set up better. And what's the story with her date of birth???? Is it September 25, 1965 or is it December 27, 1967? Interesting to learn that Chris Walas had hired her to appear as Veronica Quaife in the opening sequence of The Fly II. Tidy it up and you'll have no problems. 10:47, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Notability does not attach to the claims that an article makes, it attaches to the quality and reliability and depth of the sources being shown to support the claims. Bearcat (talk) 13:23, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and clean up. Passes WP:NACTOR from her work with the Dragon Ball series alone, imo. As others have said, needs some serious tidying. Etzedek24 ^{(I'll talk at ya) (Check my track record)} 00:10, 5 August 2018 (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.