Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alan MacMasters
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- Alan MacMasters (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Having been pointed to this article, I am having no luck in verifying it. One would think that the invention of the electric toaster would be well-documented enough that searching for this fellow should turn up plenty of hits, but if I search for 20th century book sources, I get nothing, and the first web hit I get is from [1] which Google claims dates from 2000, but which Wayback suggests may have appeared in 2007 or later. Everything else seems to trace back to a 2012 Daily Mirror "fun facts" kind of article, which isn't something I would take as a reliable source. The authenticity of the photo is likewise dubious. I don't think this was written as a hoax here, but I think it's untrue. Mangoe (talk) 23:45, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
- Delete. I was unable to find anything except "Alan MacMasters invented the toaster, and it later became the Eclipse". That alone doesn't make an article as it is not significant enough coverage. None of the article sources provide significant coverage either. This person is not notable and does not pass the WP:GNG. I was also unable to verify the story about how he invented the toaster. —Danre98(talk^contribs) 00:48, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
- The name was added to the toaster article on 6 February 2012 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=475380799&oldid=474776973&title=Toaster); the Mirror article was published on 1 September 2012. The summary says "revert vandalism" but the text that was there before https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toaster&diff=387113580&oldid=387111783 ("It is unknown who invented the first electric bread toaster") was not restored, instead new text was added mentioning Alan MacMasters, and no source was cited. Peter James (talk) 01:08, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
- Comment I can't tell about the individual itself, so won't vote on this AfD, but the photo was almost certainly faked, as someone on reddit has admitted to doing so. Chessrat (talk, contributions) 09:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)
- Delete for lack of reliable sources, this does sound like the kind of thing where a lone sentence in the toaster article might have been enough for Google to give it as an answer to "who invented the toaster" whenever a hasty journalist was looking for a good opening line for an article about toasters, from 2012 onwards. All sources used in the article appear to be that kind of throwaway mention that post-date that, and there are long, detailed additions which don't appear in the cited sources (the 2018 Winn book only includes the words "based on an idea by a Scotsman, Alan MacMasters" in passing while talking about Crompton). I can't find any reliable sources that confirm that Alan MacMasters existed or invented the toaster. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)