Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michelle Leslie: Difference between revisions

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Michelle Leslie

This person is not really notable. Only her arrest for drug use and related events are the focus of the article. This kind of article makes WP look bad since a reasonable person reading it would think that the people who edited it and who would be interested in reading it have an unhealthy interest in the suffering and humiliation of an attractive young woman. I am aware that mass media did cover the story, but I would urge the WP community to have a higher standard than that and delete the article. Oh yes, "WP is not news" Borock (talk) 06:12, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. — florrie 06:19, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete She would be a clear BLP1E case if not for the beauty contest: would a Miss World Australia runnerup be notable? Even if she is notable, we have a severe case of undue weight. I don't see the necessary coverage here for notability, so delete. Nyttend (talk) 06:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This case was front page news in AUstralia for months. More than notable. There is a decent list of references. Came at the time of the Schapelle Corby and Bali Nine controversies and got a Prime Ministerial mention. Nominator has odd motivations. On the article's talk page he has referred to anyone editing the article as sick, as perverts, and people he would like to shoot to protect his family. Nominator proceeded to blank everything in the article including references and categories, leaving only the sentence that she is a model. --Merbabu (talk) 07:15, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Stubbing an article back down to one sentence, or one paragraph, so that it can be grown properly, is an acceptable method of dealing with BLP problems, if circumstances warrant it. It's been used many times in the past, by several people. Jimbo has done it (with several infamous "X is a person." stubs). I have done it. The nominator's motivations are in accord with both Wikipedia project policy and the forthcoming advice to all editors of all projects given by the Wikimedia Foundation, and are perfectly fine. Uncle G (talk) 11:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Hang on. The subject is notable and a household name in AUstralia for being charged and imprisoned on drugs charges. The whole saga was front page news for months. Are you suggesting that we stub the article to one sentence that omits this whole saga because of no in-line citations? There is a list of references of national newspapers which I note you yourself have since used. But, you're you're condoning the mass blanking? Nominator's motivation are completely fine? Come on. What's next - citations that John Howard lost the 2007 election? --Merbabu (talk) 11:39, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Yes, the nominators motivations, which are to address observable problems in a biography of a living person, with regard to its neutrality, weight, and accuracy, are perfectly fine. Xe's not motivated by, say, a desire to advertise a WWW site. Xe wants the encyclopaedia to be better. And I'm stating what I actually write, not something else, which is that stubbing is an approach to be used when circumstances warrant, and that is a perfectly acceptable one, used by in the past by good faith editors, and not any reflection on the nominator's motivations at all as you are taking it to be. The nominator may have made personal attacks, used AFD as a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, and done other things. But xe patently wants the encyclopaedia to be better. Ignore the nominator's choice of tools. Ignore the nominator's patently wrong personal attacks. Treat them as distractions. The personal attacks do nothing but reflect poorly on the editor making them. A biography of a living person is bad and needs to be made better. Uncle G (talk) 13:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Comment - I was talking about your above apparent condoning of this stubbing. But your edits to the article suggest you don't condone it. Glad to see that we agree that afd is about notability and not NPOV. --Merbabu (talk) 13:49, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - badly written and with an unnecessary attention to some minor detail, but passes the notability guidelines as the subject is clearly the subject of significant coverage in independent secondary sources. A large number of these sources are al;ready included in the article reflist. As this is a biography of a living person there needs to be particular care in sourcing statements related to the drugs issue, but where a statement is unsourced the correct course is to remove that statement rather than deleting the entire article. The nominator's concern that readers might consider the article shows an unhealthy interest in an attractive young woman is best addressed by copyediting it to present a neutral point of view. In summary - poorly written but moderately well-referenced, and satisfies the notability requirement against which it should be measured. Euryalus (talk) 07:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The notability of the subject is not the only concern. Adherence to policies is also a concern. As administrators we are in fact explicitly authorized to use our protection and deletion tools to ensure that biographies adhere strictly to our content policies. This article did not. I have just now addressed some of the more egregiously inaccurate parts, using my tools to ensure adherence to our policies, because they should not have not stood a moment longer.
  I strongly urge you, as an administrator, to put this policy into practice, too. It's not good to just wave an "Oh, it's notable!" hand at the article and leave it at that when there clearly is a BLP issue. As the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy clearly states, procedural errors in the form of an objection to a biography should not stop us from considering the substance of the objection itself. But that is exactly what has happened here, with you and Merbabu concentrating upon Borock's choice of tool and talk page etiquette to the exclusion of the actual substantive issue. This biographical article was badly non-neutral and inaccurate. Claims were falsely attributed, and the article presented one side of a dispute as if it were Wikipedia's own viewpoint. It's a bit less badly so, now, but there is still a substantive problem to be addressed, not avoided. Uncle G (talk) 11:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for your editing work. I don't know the article that well and have said from the start that it could better cited. My position was that it "this is trash" is not helpful review and neither was deleting all reference to the actual and nationally covered event for which she is notable. (I suspect User:Borock had never heard of this case whereas in AUstralia she was a household name at the time). Now that it is here on afd as suggested and notability asserted, what part are you suggesting was "inaccurate"? --Merbabu (talk) 11:30, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - Comment - UncleG, I agree with you but your arguments appear to support rewriting the article rather than deleting it. A totally unsourced BLP, or one in which the claims to notability are unsourced, would be a candidate for deletion. One where notability is established and referenced but the article is in need of a copyedit, shouldn't simply be deleted out of hand. Thanks for starting work on improving the article, and I agree there's more to be done. I also agree with your point re explicit authorisation, but do not believe the article should be either protected or deleted. As I noted above, anything in a BLP that is poorly sourced should be considered for removal, and certainly removed if it is negative. However, I also believe this article to be about a notable person, with sufficient references provided to establish that. I believe there are enough sources to justify keeping the article rather than deleting it, though I note above that it requires rewriting to satisfy both WP:BLP and WP:V. I haven't commented in this debate about Borock's talk page etiquette, because its irrelevant to this discussion. I mentioned Borock's deletion argument because the nominator's deletion arguments do have relevance to a deletion discussion. If your concenr is that I have commented here but haven't copyedited the article myself yet, I can only plead the amount of time I have in real life to work on Wikipedia articles, and note that instead of copyediting this page I had dinner and put my children to bed. Apologies for taking that time out, but as a respected editor recently noted elsewhere, "AFD is not a hammer for hitting editors over the head with in order to force volunteers to perform cleanup to one's own timetable." In summary - thanks for your points, which I agree with. Thanks also for improving the article by removing unsourced material. I remain of the opinion that it is about a notable person and there are adequate sources to support its retention. Euryalus (talk) 11:40, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - Absolutely. If deletion and restarting from scratch had been the glaringly obvious immediately necessary action, I would have taken it right away. If stubbing and starting again had been the glaringly obvious immediately necessary action, I would have Kerrrzappp!ed it without compunction. (I'm no stranger to that during an AFD discussion. ☺) The tool that I actually chose to use was the "edit this article" tool, and I removed some text and added what I could as a rapidly researched rewrite in its place, complete with direct links from content to sources. It's sometimes forgotten that we still have the ordinary tools, too. ☺ I've already pointed out elsewhere that I was in no way criticising you for not having edited the article. But we do need to bear in mind that whilst the nominator may be using a sledgehammer to crack this walnut, the walnut exists.
        Now, as to the problems: The glaringly obvious problem that leaped out at me was lack of neutrality and outright inaccuracy. There's a dispute here, between two different accounts of events. The article was taking one side quite blatantly, presenting one side as, effectively, "she said" and the other as "but in actual fact". (Ironically, the sources themselves were a lot more neutral.) It may still be taking one side, more subtly. There were also some glaring inaccuracies (in comparison to the sources cited) as to who, exactly, made what claims. There may still be some more subtle misrepresentations. I hope that everyone coming to this AFD discussion chips in and uses their tools to make the article better, mercilessly. This is what I was strongly urging you to do, with respect to putting the policy into action. Uncle G (talk) 13:26, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        I think we're in furious agreement re improving or editing BLP's, though I think the "walnut" is unsourced parts of the article and some poor writing rather than the overall notability of the subject. Having agreed with you on the importance of addressing unsourced claims, I'd be interested in your view on whether this article should be deleted in its current form or retained and further modified to comply with BLP and related policies. Euryalus (talk) 03:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - the article is definitely in need of cleanup, especially as a BLP, but her notability isn't really in question. While press coverage before her arrest was probably not enough to establish notability, it was close, with short articles about her and various press mentions (some trivial, some not) regularly in the media from around 2000 on. After her arrest there were (literally - I checked) thousands of articles about her in the media - she was a major topic of discussion for some time, and she continues to be discussed today, both in terms of her arrest and, to a lesser degree, her life since. All that aside, while I'm arguing for keep, I'm certainly not doing so in the article's current form, which will need to be addressed (and it seems this is happening already), but AfD isn't for cleanup. - Bilby (talk)[[ 14:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - just to clarify my take on the WP:BLP1E concerns being raised. While I don't think BLP1E applies here (she's known for more than just being arrested or second place in a pageant), the main questions are: is she covered by reliable sources outside of the context of the event; was the event significant; and is she low profile. As far as I can tell, the first is yes, she had coverage in the years leading up to the arrest, and has had coverage not directly related to her arrest since. The second is yes - it may seem unlikely, but in the context, this was a significant event with massive coverage, that is regularly referred to years after it occurred. Finally, is she low profile? No. Not high profile, but again she is regularly mentioned in the Australian media, not just in terms of her arrest. I feel that she deserves a fair and NPOV article, but she also warrants coverage. - Bilby (talk) 06:06, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete WP:BLP1E Dlabtot (talk) 17:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could you expand on that, please? Cheers. I'^mperator 17:47, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per WP:BLP1E and WP:NOTNEWS. She was in the news for a few months because of being caught with 2 pink pills. Other than that, as a beauty contest runner-up, she appeared to fail WP:BIO. Edison (talk) 19:01, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per comments above by Merbabu and Euryalus. Cbl62 (talk) 19:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per the dead tree standard. She got arrested. She served the time. Now she's out. Please, give the woman privacy. Sceptre ^(talk) 22:07, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete since I don't believe that WP ought to be the kind of place where a person is remembered for one misstep, even if that misstep landed her in a whole bunch of newspapers. I don't know if I'm correctly applying the BLP guidelines, but I don't care so much for them in this case. Drmies (talk) 22:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - it seems that those voting to keep are Australians (and would have this heard of her). Those voting to delete are appsrently not Australians. Interesting. As they were unaware of the case, in some cases here they are simplifying the story. It did get prime ministerial comment and from religious leaders. The media coverage (which some here are suggesting is irrelevant) is according to notability guidelines enough to justify article. Good thing that afd is not a vote. --Merbabu (talk) 23:31, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:03, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and cleanup - obviously well referenced enough for her BLP1E, and knocking on the door of notability for some other things as well. Needs a cleanup to comply with BLP and undue weight. Could probably be ruthlessly trimmed.--Yeti Hunter (talk) 00:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Yes, Wikipedia is not news. However, in Australia, we heard about Michelle Leslie in the news pretty much every day for months. This was not a little story that appeared in the news for a couple of days about an Australian arrested overseas, then we all forgot about it (if it was, I'd support the article's deletion); this was a story with a high level of media coverage, about a person who has become notable. She has received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources, and has given interviews herself to shows like 60 Minutes. The article needs further improvement, but that is not a valid reason for deletion. Somno (talk) 03:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - notable only for one-event because she got caught; was naive, silly and self-promoting, and the media had a lovely time. florrie 04:11, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Being Miss World Australia runner-up AND her arrest move beyond WP:ONEEVENT. WWGB (talk) 06:06, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Household name. Tons of sources. Obvious keep. Rebecca (talk) 13:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The comparison with the other articles is not correct--they were for much more serious crimes, and the attention was international. (Tho I have my doubts about the extent of the article on Corby) Attention paid to a model for not-very-serious crimes is typical tabloid fodder in any country. OneEvent and Do No Harm hold here. DGG (talk) 04:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Even though there was substantial coverage of this person, it all relates to one event, and she does not seem to be otherwise notable. Kevin (talk) 08:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Australian household name. Many reliable sources. If this article was deleted, another would be needed for "the event", as mentioned in the article it could have been as bad as Corby but they found a way or two to avoid it. Also any "harm" was done by the media then. Mark Hurd (talk) 16:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete BLP1E. We must remember that notoriety is not the same as notability. We must act to preserve human dignity. Being best known for in this way is by no means a claim to notability. (This page also needs to be blanked for the same reason, after the RFA). Not notable, not news and not rogue's gallery. That her mistakes in life should be preserved here-- in perpetuity?-- is contrary to our role and contrary to the concept of doing no harm. There is no encyclopedic value here to balance the harm this article causes. Dloh cierekim 03:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I have given this one a bit of thought as some editors I respect have argued for keeping this article but reading Dlohcierekim's comment above has convinced me my first instinct was correct. I support everything Dlohcierekim has said above, including the courtesy blank of this discussion. I am aware of the case and the subsequent publicity in Australia but I don't see that it obliges Wikipedia to create an article that (to paraphrase the above) "preserve her mistakes in life in perpetuity". Her modelling career would be entirely inconsequential without the controversial trial. Miss World Australia runner-up is a pretty thin reed to establish notability; has anyone got a list of the other Miss World Australia runners-up with articles? -- Mattinbgn\^talk 00:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 *'''Keep''' Australian household name. Many reliable sources. If this article was deleted, another would be needed for "the event", as mentioned in the article it could have been as bad as Corby but they found a way or two to avoid it. Also any "harm" was done by the media then. [[User:Markhurd|Mark Hurd]] ([[User talk:Markhurd|talk]]) 16:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 *'''Delete''' BLP1E. We must remember that notoriety is not the same as notability. We must act to preserve human dignity. Being best known for in this way is by no means a claim to notability. (This page also needs to be blanked for the same reason, after the RFA). Not notable, not news and ''not '' rogue's gallery. That her mistakes in life should be preserved here-- in perpetuity?-- is contrary to our role and contrary to the concept of doing no harm. There is no encyclopedic value here to balance the harm this article causes. [[User:Dlohcierekim|<font color="#00ff00">  Dloh</font>]][[User_talk:Dlohcierekim|<font color="#bb00bb">cierekim''' </font>]] 03:33, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
+*'''Delete''' I have given this one a bit of thought as some editors I respect have argued for keeping this article but reading Dlohcierekim's comment above has convinced me my first instinct was correct. I support everything Dlohcierekim has said above, including the courtesy blank of this discussion. I am aware of the case and the subsequent publicity in Australia but I don't see that it obliges Wikipedia to create an article that (to paraphrase the above) "preserve her mistakes in life in perpetuity". Her modelling career would be entirely inconsequential without the controversial trial. Miss World Australia runner-up is a pretty thin reed to establish notability; has anyone got a list of the other Miss World Australia runners-up with articles? -- [[User:Mattinbgn|Mattinbgn]]\<sup>[[User talk:Mattinbgn|talk]]</sup> 00:29, 30 April 2009 (UTC)