Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Axel Downard-Wilke

Axel Downard-Wilke

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

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

After careful analysis of the seemingly extensive sources, my judgement is Downard-Wilke does not meet our notability guidelines for people. The article cites 51 sources, so please bear with me – a full explanation will necessarily take some time.

Some important context: Downard-Wilke is Schwede66 (talk · contribs), who sits on Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand's management committee and is a Wikipedia administrator. The main contributors to the article have been the New Zealand Wikipedians Wainuiomartian (talk · contribs) and Marshelec (talk · contribs). Given Marshelec apparently sits on the same Wikimedia NZ management committee as Schwede66, there appears to be some problematic conflict-of-interest editing going on here. I am in the process of opening a COIN thread which I will link when finished.

Now let's get onto the sources. I uncontroversially rule out the following sources for independence concerns. By uncontroversial, I mean something like "Downard-Wilke wrote the source", "The source is Downard-Wilke's company", or "Downard-Wilke was on this organisation's committee at the time":

1, 4, 5, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 51.

This knocks out 21 of the 51 sources. To put it another way, about 40% of this article’s sources are obviously and uncontroversially not independent.

I uncontroversially rule out the following sources as not mentioning Downward-Wilke at all:

16, 20, 23, 24

I also uncontroversially rule out source 7 (raw election results, obviously not significant) and 45 (Wikipedia discussion, user-generated). That is all the sources I believe can be uncontroversially eliminated.

I rule out the following sources as cases where Downard-Wilke merely acts as a spokesperson providing brief comment and receives no significant coverage himself:

9, 29, 38, 40, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50 plus 10, 32, 41 (on ProQuest, ask me for the full text)

I rule out sources 35 and 36 (ProQuest, ask me for full text) and sources 46 and 47 for the same reason, but I wanted to note these separately because they give slightly more extensive coverage.

I rule out source 2 as a "man-on-the-street" type of interview, where Downard-Wilke is interviewed by a German paper because he is someone with a German background who experienced the Christchurch earthquake. This sort of coverage does not indicate the interviewee is significant.

I rule out source 3 as the type of interview that is considered non-independent (see the essay Wikipedia:Interviews). There is not enough independent content beyond Downard-Wilke’s answers to the questions.

I could only partially verify source 6, finding a NZ Library record. However, given the context of the source (a local paper covering Downard-Wilke running for a regional council election where even winning candidates don’t have articles unless they have some sort of national political career), it’s unlikely it contributes to notability.

I rule out source 12 (ProQuest, ask me for full text) as covering a case where Downard-Wilke received an award from an organisation while he was on their executive committee. Not sufficiently independent.

I rule out Boulter 2020 (cites 13 and 21) because the document notes itself to be a draft copy. I have other concerns, but drafts are at the very least unreliable.

I was unable to verify source 25, which provides extremely little bibliographical information. However, judging by the type and brevity of the information it is cited as supporting (the fact Downard-Wilke won a local German bike race), we have good reason to think this is not the sort of source that would deliver significant coverage.

Source 43, a Stuff article, initially looked promising to me, but judging by the link at the bottom, it appears to have been written to promote this edit-a-thon which was explicitly geared towards improving coverage on Stuff. Downard-Wilke seems to have played some part in organising the meet-up. Not sufficiently independent.

I could not find any promising sources that weren't already in the article, so I conclude the article fails NBIO. I appreciate you reading this through to the end and I hope you can appreciate it is difficult to strike a balance between comprehensive discussion and brevity when you are dealing with 51 sources. – Teratix ₵ 07:17, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Politicians, Cycling, Transportation, Germany, and New Zealand. – Teratix ₵ 07:17, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Prob keep - I see that the OP has put a lot of work in the nom, but when it boils down to it, there is media coverage of the subject for at least two different reasons: cycling advocacy and wiki work. I appreciate that some think that interviews count for little, but in my opinion an interview shows that the subject is worth interviewing and is notable. For me, refs 2 and 8 are sufficient to meet the GNG and whilst there is some puffery, I'm not convinced this is a fight worth having. JMWt (talk) 07:37, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep - I agree with everything JMWt has stated above on this matter. Viatori (talk) 08:03, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]