Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/April Wilkerson (3rd nomination)

April Wilkerson

AfDs for this article:

• Articles for deletion/April Wilkerson
• Articles for deletion/April Wilkerson (2nd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/April Wilkerson (3rd nomination)

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

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Not notable. Almost every reference is the introduction to one of her own videos on various sites. Reference 3 is a mention of one of her youtube videos, in the context of an article about a charitable project run by somebody else. Ref 1 is a single image of her workshop and 1 line of text, in a more general article. Ref 6 is an interview on a LifeHacker site, in which she simply tells whatever she chooses to, so it's not independent. And a count of YouTube views is not evidence for notability

In the first AfD, the publication names were emphasised, and this was accepted as a reason for notability. But that was apparently without consideration for what was actually in them--that they were a combination of not-independent, and basically to her own work. I'm more careful now to view or read the actual reference in its own context, Sometimes that's not possible, and we tend to give the benefit of the doubt to sources that are difficult to find or access, or in a language little read here. I think that's a good practice, if what is claimed in reasonable and the reference looks appropriate, although strictly speaking it would be questionable in BLPs. . But when we can see the references, we should. That's what Verifying means: check the sources. Not just check that references are present to what might be sufficient sources. DGG ( talk ) 20:44, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• Speedy Keep. This is the third attempt by DGG to delete this article, with the first one here and the second one here. Both times the community said 'Keep'; so DGG, what's your problem? Magazines like Woodworkers Journal and Popular Mechanics have profiled her and her projects -- they trust her -- so to try to invalidate them because there's a lead-in to her YouTube videos is dubious. To claim these sources are "not independent" is spurious reasoning at best; these magazines have to keep faith with their readers and provide good information, which they do. Wilkerson is one of YouTube's new stars, getting millions of views, and helping all kinds of do-it-yourselfers finish many projects (including myself -- I'm a handyman and her advice is sound and helpful). She's received plenty of coverage in Popular Mechanics and also here with international coverage and also here in Australia and in Woodworkers Journal. Her shop has been covered in Popular Mechanics and her projects such as turning a barrel into an illuminated decoration have gotten coverage in Simplemost magazine. Notable person who clearly meets the general notability guideline.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:44, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

• Keep I'm not seeing what has changed since this was kept after you last nominated it. We do cover YouTubers (and for YouTube gamers, the fanbase ensures that notability need only be extremely minor). When such YouTubers get coverage in Popular Mechanics, which is the relevant large-circulation paper magazine where we'd expect to see DIY channels getting covered, then that's WP:N. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:47, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
• Delete I have looked at all the Popular Mechanics articles listed as sources, and I do not see them as profiles of April Wilkerson, they are basically republishing her projects. The only one that says anything about Wilkerson herself is this [1], which presents videos of 5 people's workshops, and has 2 sentences about each person. So that's 2 sentences about Wilkerson: "April Wilkerson works out of a 500 square foot shop, and most of the workbenches, storage bins, and tool holders were built by her. She narrates the tour and shares details on why and how she uses everything in her workshop." (That source is used as a reference for the size of her workshop, though how "500 square foot" got to the "3000 square foot" stated in this article, I don't know.) The LA Daily News source is about abandoned babies being buried, and it also has 2 sentences referring to Wilkerson: "The urns began coming shortly after a video was made by April Wilkerson of Fort Worth, Texas, that went out to her fellow DIY woodworkers all over the country. It’s five minutes long, but it feels like 30 seconds because it’s so mesmerizing watching this talented craftswoman show us how to build a baby urn fit for a king or a queen — or a pauper." That tells us where she's from, at least. The Woodworkers Journal is a profile of Wilkerson, the only source that counts as significant coverage in an independent, reliable source (and even then, it's part interview, so taking only the content written by the reporter about Wilkerson shortens it considerably). The February 2018 issue of Woodworkers Journal has a brief profile of her (4 sentences), which confirms that she lives in Texas, but doesn't count as another source because it's the same journal. And that's all I've been able to find.

WP:BASIC is a useful guideline, because it allows that "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability". But here we have one longish source and two others which each have 2 sentences about her. I'm not convinced that this adds up to multiple independent sources. So unless there is other coverage about her, rather than reposting/republishing her projects, then I would have to say Delete. Maybe just WP:TOOSOON, or maybe not everyone whose projects and plans are published in magazines like Popular Mechanics and Woodworkers Journal is notable. RebeccaGreen (talk) 00:04, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

• When an afd discussion goes against my opinion, and I am not convinced by the result, I keep track, and look agin in a few years. (i lose about 10-20% depending on how you count NC closes--the reason that's so high is that I deliberately try to nominate borderline cases ,with the intention of clarifying consensus) If the article has been kept, I don't renominate unless I think there's a good chance consensus has changed, or at least is changing. I think that's the case here. We have finally over the last year or two shown signs of becoming skeptical about people and firms who may technically meet the notability requirement, but where the sources are border line, and there does not appear to be any genuine encyclopedic interest. This consensus has already firmly changed for firms, with WP:NCORP, and I think it is in the process of changing for people.

Additional, I have become skeptical about the nature of coverage in routine news and web sources. An appropriate role for a news source is to spread information about things that may not be notable, but seem interesting.(the usual name for this is "human -interest" stories There's nothing wrong with this, if they're not concealed advertising; I like most other people sometimes read such articles. (for that matter, I even read advertising when it's something in which I might be interested) But that does not mean the material is encyclopedic, which is supposed to contain information of permanent interest. So when I see what might be such references, I go and actually read them. There's probably tens of thousands of blps here which seem to be based on such sources. As with other widespread problems, it will take years for us to either improve or remove them.

I have never been a deletionist. If something appears to be of potentially long term interest, or even serious interest about important things in the world, I try to keep an article. When such articles get deleted, I also look after a few years to see if I can find something further that might justify them. As all regulars here know, improving articles is harder work than making arguments ,so i am not able to do it as often. DGG ( talk ) 05:16, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to explain, but the problem with your reasoning is this: you're trying to second-guess news sources, saying this one's 'good', this one's 'bad', this one is 'permanent', this one is 'temporary'. That's not something we Wikipedians are equipped to do. We're not the editors of Woodworkers Journal or Popular Mechanics.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 10:44, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Comment. As I've observed previously and as many past AfD cases have proven, secondary sources can be wrong or the notability they might suggest can be false or fleeting. The problem with the simplistic "there are sources" basis of WP is that it does not account for the fact that a large fraction of content that is generated today is done so basically to fill our modern infinite channels of zero-cost communication. (This is opposed to, say, a century ago, when communication was expensive, for which a source was written to confirm/report some aspect of already-existing genuine notability. Then, one could not easily be famous for being famous.) So, it should be clear that it is absolutely WP editors' jobs to judiciously evaluate sources. If we're not doing this, then how/why are we "editors"? Why not just have smart people write a big script to crawl the world's knowledge banks and automatically create a WP of all sourced information infinitely more efficiently? Answer: because that would not really be an encyclopedia. The only real value that we editors add to WP is through discriminating discernment and judgement of what is, in fact, encyclopedic...then we write it down. Unfortunately, social fads have pushed WP into significant mission creep. Enabled by "there are sources" philosophy, one of its main goals has become WP:RGW by flooding WP with non-encyclopedic bios that are supposed to (by various subjective and shifting criteria) "balance" the overall content. I don't know if this is one of those cases, but it looks like DGG has done the homework. Agricola44 (talk) 22:08, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. Thsmi002 (talk) 12:15, 20 August 2019 (UTC)