Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randy Cooper (Model maker)

Randy Cooper (Model maker)

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Fails WP:GNG no significant coverage, beyond listings and credits. Declined 5 times at WP:AFC but moved to mainspace repeatedly by User:Orlando Davis who states “ I don't agree with notability tags. The subject may take it personally. Deletion makes more sense, or leave it alone.” so here we are. Theroadislong (talk) 15:10, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: People, Artists, Film, and Visual arts. Theroadislong (talk) 15:10, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Fine-Scale Modeler, The Evening Independent, and Bay News 9 are all highly reliable and independent. The film credits and interview articles should be noted. Significant changes have been made after each time it was turned down. Orlando Davis (talk) 16:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With niche sourcing like Fine-Scale Modeler, one good way to establish it as a RS is to show where the source is seen as a RS by other RS, particularly academic/scholarly sources. Offhand I see it used listed in a further reading section in this CRC Press book and a note in this Taylor & Francis. I wasn't able to find much more. The magazine was owned by Kalmbach Media but was sold to Firecrown Media last year. It looks like this is probably usable, but I'd recommend running it through WP:RS/N to be certain.

As far as interviews go, those are seen as primary sources regardless of where they're posted unless they're written in prose. The standard interview format is pretty much just question and answer, without any sort of accompanying article. As such, they almost always have little to no editorial oversight or fact-checking beyond formatting and spell-check. This is a very widely held stance on Wikipedia and is unlikely to ever change.

Now, when it comes to film credits the issue here is that notability is WP:NOTINHERITED by the person working on a notable production or with notable people. The reason for this is that there can be hundreds to even thousands of people working on a film. According to this, over 3,000 people worked on Iron Man 3, so just working on a notable film isn't enough to establish notability - you need coverage in independent and reliable sources that specific highlight the person in question. So if there was a RS review that stated "Randy Cooper's work on IM2 was fantastic", that would count. However with his work being so specific, it's unlikely that he would be highlighted over say, the person or company who was overall in charge of VFX.

Finally, I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't say that local coverage tends to be kind of seen as routine on Wikipedia as local outlets are more likely to cover a local person. So in this case what you will need to do is help establish how this coverage should be seen as more than just local, routine coverage. Viewership/circulation numbers are a great way of doing this. So for example, a local paper with a fairly low readership would be seen as kind of routine whereas say, an article in a major, well circulated paper would be seen as a much stronger source. Now to be fair, there's nothing official saying that local coverage can't be used, but it is typically seen as a weaker source and shouldn't be doing the heavy lifting in an AfD discussion. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 17:55, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your response.

Bay News has a very high viewership (1.76 Million), (source 11). Charter Communications

The Evening Independent was a major newspaper in the Tampa Bay area and was merged as the Tampa Bay Times in 1986, which has a circulation of over 100k not including the more widely read digital edition. 1)Times Publishing Company 2) Tampa Bay Times Orlando Davis (talk) 19:54, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Fine Scale Modeler magazine is ok for sourcing, the rest either aren't online, trivial mentions or primary sources. I can't pull anything up. Just not enough sourcing for wikipedia. Oaktree b (talk) 19:41, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We have two solid sources so far: Fine Scale Modeler and the Evening Independent. Also, we should be able to use the five interviews due to the Ignore-all-rules rule since it is an article that is obviously notable, and the rules are getting in the way. Interviews by the hobby magazines Sci-Fi-Modeler., Psycho Moya Styrene, the YouTube channels Richard Cleveland (Amazing Plastic), Adam Savage’s Tested (A YouTube channel with almost 7 million subscribers and the public television Bay news, with a viewership of 1.76 million make Randy notable, and the Ignore All Rules rule was put in place for situations like this when the rules get in the way of an obviously notable article. He built many models that were used for major films such as Starship Troopers, Iron Man 2, Stargate, Spider-Man 2, and many others. Just looking at his older models, it's obvious that the style of spaceships he created was used for Starship Troopers, a major movie!

And what's the difference between an interview and an article in this case? For this article, the part that matters for notability is that he is significant enough to be written about and interviewed by various significant sources. Orlando Davis (talk) 11:26, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]