Talk:John W. Loftus

This article was nominated for deletion on December 24, 2011. The result of the discussion was Delete.

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles

Religion Low‑importance

	Religion portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Philosophy: Religion Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated task forces:
/
	Philosophy of religion

Practricing

Does this article correctly assert that John W. Loftus is currently a minister? MaynardClark (talk) 22:14, 2 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think he is one. I think it's incorrect. —Approaching (talk) 19:02, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notability

I'm concerned this biography runs into notability problems. It currently relies on four sources:

A self-written biography at infidels.org
One book about deconversion
The results page of a search on penguinrandomhouse.ca (the reference erroneously refers to Loftus as a "staff writer"
A list of signatories of a "Pro-Truth Pledge"

I don't think this list of sources is nearly enough to warrant inclusion on Wikipedia, especially given the ~~four~~ seven years since the article was started.

The four sources themselves have problems. Assessing it by WP:GNG:

The subject of the BLP lacks significant coverage: None of the sources address the subject directly and in detail. The second source is limited to discussing his religious (de)conversion. Likewise, every single one is a trivial mention except the second.
Only the second source is a secondary source.
The first source is not independent coverage, and is a primary source.

Per WP:GNG guidelines, a subject that doesn't meet GNG criteria doesn't merit its own article. If it still has some verifiable facts, the article needs to be merged. But I can see no good candidate article to merge this BLP into.

Assessing per people-specific notability criteria in WP:BASIC, the subject hasn't met basic notability criteria.

Subject has not received significant coverage.
The coverage in a published source is only about one event in their life.
There is only one such published source.

When assessing this BLP in the context of BLP-specific notability, problems also arise, according to WP:BLP1E

The subject of the article hasn't received significant coverage. Where he has been written about in a book, it has been limited to only one event in his own life: His shift in religious views.
This event is also covered in only one reliable source, so there is no persistence of coverage, and no multiplicity of reliable sources.

Because the subject is listed as an author, we can look at WP:AUTHOR, according to which, the subject doesn't fit any of the criteria.

Are there other existing sources that can be relied on? Any other criteria for notability I missed? I did some research, looking for more reliable sources, and cannot find much of anything that makes him relevant or noteworthy beyond being an author and a blogger. It doesn't seem likely that there is any out there. I invite others to help. Hopefully we can give the article sufficient time before moving on to WP:FAILN.

—Approaching (talk) 20:02, 10 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. There is very little indication that Loftus is notable, certainly the sources on the page give little indication of it.Strandvue (talk) 23:24, 23 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]