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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Doug Bell (2nd nomination)

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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 Apparently I forgot once again we can never delete articles resumes on topics Wikipedians like, regardless of the utter nonexistance of sources. --Rividian (talk) 04:00, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And also reply to people then close the AFD to get the last word. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 06:52, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doug Bell

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AfDs for this article:
Doug Bell (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This is an article that's been around for a while and whose subject has edited Wikipedia before, and which was nominated for AFD 2.5 years ago (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Doug Bell, result was "no consensus"). I think that's all the important disclosures to get out of the way, my apologies if I missed anything. At the time inclusion standards were apparently a bit more subjective, and the key arguments for keeping the article then were that he was involved in the production of some video games and that he published a book. As I understand it now, WP:N and WP:BIO are based more on the existance of sources than subjective claims, and there are no sources cited in this article. Furthermore, I haven't been able to find any. He has a common name so searching for sources is difficult, but I scanned through several pages of news archive results for "Doug Bell" on Lexus Nexus and saw nothing related, and a result of the broader Google News Archive with a specific term yields nothing: [1]. WP:BIO says nothing about authors so we must use the basic criteria, which calls for a person to have been "the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject.". That doesn't seem to be the case here, so to keep this article, people should find evidence of such coverage. Rividian (talk) 19:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Notability is not temporary he was involved in major video game publishing and authored two books. Just because we can't currently find any WEB BASED refs, does not mean that this article should be deleted. The guy was active far before it became common for every news and magazine article to be archived online and this should not be held against him. LegoTech·(t)·(c) 23:03, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Per WP:V the burden is on people wanting to keep content to find sources... note that Lexis Nexis includes decades of newspaper sources, it's hardly just a search of webpages. You haven't produced a policy-based reason to keep the article. --Rividian (talk) 23:12, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Not to be pedantic, but Notability is not fleeting is a policy based reason to keep the article. He's a published author, which you don't seem to think is notable, but ask anyone that's tried to get a book published by a major house exactly how easy that is to do...twice. LegoTech·(t)·(c) 23:35, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about WP:V which says "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." It's frustrating that so many people want to ignore this supposedly core policy... it makes it practically useless. You're talking about notability in the subjective sense... I'm just talking about the existence of sources, which is supposed to be important on Wikipedia. --Rividian (talk) 23:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
At any rate, your "notability is not temporary" link says "If a subject has met the general notability guideline..." this article doesn't meet that general guideline, so the "not temporary" argument is invalid. --Rividian (talk) 02:16, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You're not being pedantic, but I would be more impressed by your argument that it is hard to get multiple books published by a "major publishing house" if Bell had actually done so. The article plainly cites that the publishers of his two books were JavaWorld.com, for which Bell was working at the time, and IDG Books, which at least has some notability, but just breaking one millionth in Amazon.com sales rank with a co-author credit isn't enough to crack WP:BIO. Make mine Delete.  Ravenswing  02:29, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
He has written textbooks for Prentice-Hall and at least one book for Wiley & Sons (publishers of the Dummies books). I'm assuming he's not the same Doug Bell as the noted auto-mechanic author of the 1960s. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 03:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep His work is important. Lets look for sources, not delete. DGG (talk) 01:55, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • This can be undeleted if sources are found... or they can be found before the AFD is up. Just declaring that sources might exist is a poor rational for keeping an article... sources about my cat might exist but that doesn't keeping an article on him for years. Why do you, as an admin, want to ignore a core policy? WP:V clearly states "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." --Rividian (talk) 02:02, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:BIO: "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, which has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." This person played a major role in creating the Dungeon Master (video game) series, have a look at that article for a list of articles and reviews on what he created. Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:35, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Those hardly look like periodical reviews... they're all webpages. --Rividian (talk) 02:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment Dude, did you notice the long list of awards that game won? Do you seriously think it wasn't heavily reviewed? We can go hunting for more reviews if you really want to contend the point, but the outcome seems certain enough that I for one would rather not waste my time especially given that in that era we're probably mostly talking physical gaming mags. Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:53, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • The line of WP:BIO you mention doesn't mention awards, or gaming mags... just periodicals. But ultimately WP:BIO is a guideline and WP:V is a policy, and WP:V says "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it". There aer no such sources for Doug Bell located yet. --Rividian (talk) 02:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • Comment A magazine is a periodical. And here's a list of reviews of Dungeon Master published in print magazines. You wanna go double-or-nothing and bet that info on the lead developer of this apparently ground-breaking piece of programming can't be found? Before you lay your money down, you may want to consider that his credits on the books and games in question are verifiable. Ryan Paddy (talk) 03:11, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Widely-published author of programming guides, creator of notable games. Not a really high-profile figure and not one who's been active in game design for a while, but we can pass this to WP:CVG. He passes WP:CREATIVE point 3, as well as (arguably) WP:PROF. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 02:56, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Without any sources, how is this article ever supposed to be more than just his resume? And the large majority of those books were published before this article claims Mr. Bell was born. --Rividian (talk) 03:09, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete without prejudice, on policy grounds per nom and for lack of content. IF this person really is notable, and there are print sources to be found, the article can be re-created when those sources are brought to the table, and nothing will have been lost, as the current article doesn't really tell us anything (and cannot do so without becoming OR). Also, notability is not inherited -- his games being notable doesn't make him notable. This discussion isn't about deleting his game articles, so the contention that his games are great/important is a red herring. Either he is documented in the media or he isn't. Ham Pastrami (talk) 03:12, 16 June 2008 (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.
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