User talk:Beccaynr/Archives/2023/September

Opinion on WP:SUSTAINED and independence

Hey, I'm wondering what your opinion is regarding articles on subjects who a) received coverage exclusively because of their death, and only around the time of death; and b) the content on their background/non-death biog detail comes exclusively from press releases from the time of their death. As in, there may be stories with primary news covering the circumstances of someone's death, supplemented with biographical info that comes directly from the handful of facts published in the press releases covering the person's death. I was always under the impression that material clearly derived from PR/non-independent sources was not intellectually independent, and that contemporaneous coverage surrounding a single minor event did not meet the threshold for sustained coverage as required by N and NOTNEWS. Thoughts?
Best, JoelleJay (talk) 03:46, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

I think the sources you describe are also not multiple sources according to WP:GNG, in addition to lacking sufficient independence and secondary coverage to support notability. Fn 4 in WP:GNG includes It is common for multiple newspapers or journals to publish the same story, sometimes with minor alterations or different headlines, but one story does not constitute multiple works. Several journals simultaneously publishing different articles does not always constitute multiple works, especially when the authors are relying on the same sources, and merely restating the same information. WP:SUSTAINED notes Brief bursts of news coverage may not sufficiently demonstrate notability, and I think robust obituaries clearly derived from independent reporting may help demonstrate notability, including because they may indicate other sources are likely to exist, either before the death or afterwards. We have many death WP:EVENT articles because enduring notability is supported and WP:NOTNEWS no longer applies - typically WP:BIO1E supports an event article, not a pseudobiography. So I agree with your impressions - if the article only reproduces an obit based on press releases, and primary coverage of the circumstances of death, it is not encyclopedic. Beccaynr (talk) 05:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Also, JoelleJay, as a more specific follow-up thought, because I had not looked at your edit history to make a guess about which AfD you might have been referring to before I commented; I think the May 13, 2022 obit from the former employer The Oklahoman lacks depth and independence; this is not only produced by her former employer, but also does not tell us much about her career; similarly, the May 9, 2022 obit from the former employer Journal Record lacks depth and independence; quotes from friends in both of these obits also detract from whatever independent weight might be attributed to each source that otherwise provide brief and vague overviews of her career and community service. The lowest-quality obit appears to be the May 13, 2022 OKCFriday source, which lacks a byline and appears to clearly be a family-produced obit, with a similar vague biographical summary as the other obits. In the AfD, there is also what appears to be a 2018 recycled press release from the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame. From my view, notability for journalists can be challenging to support, because reliance on what their employers say or their own work are typically the most readily-available sources, and independent indications of notability are more difficult to find. For this subject, it appears she has received various accolades and awards over the course of her career that arguably constitute a form of secondary recognition and support her notability as "regarded as an important figure", and additional research could help develop the article to demonstrate this with independent sources. Beccaynr (talk) 15:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi Beccaynr, thank you so much for your feedback, it's a relief to know I'm not hallucinating policy! I was actually thinking of a different AfD that in my opinion is even more egregious, although it seems this issue also applies to the one you mention too. Normally I would just go with my intuition on an AfD like that one (where my own search in Oklahoma newspapers didn't turn up anything, and I am generally against "additive" approaches to ANYBIO/NCREATIVE especially if I don't think there will be corresponding coverage), but I'm reluctant to actually !vote against the current crowd...it always turns into an exhausting ordeal that doesn't change any minds. Anyway, I'll have more of a response after work, but thanks again for your input! JoelleJay (talk) 16:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Cheers, and my 'arguable' approach is the best I could come up with from a guideline-based view, and it is weak without support in sources. I am thinking generally in terms of independent secondary support in reliable sources, but if we can't develop a full and balanced article, a redirect is likely the more appropriate outcome, probably to the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame. Beccaynr (talk) 14:27, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm thinking a redirect is probably the best option in the Oklahoma person AfD. This other AfD, though....I just feel like I'm going insane. Like...the biographical material in a news article shouldn't count towards GNG if it is strictly a subset of material from contemporaneous press releases, right? The non-quote, non-news biographical material here or here or here is functionally identical to this press release and its AP derivative (an amalgam of the death announcement and this earlier press release) and therefore should be excluded? JoelleJay (talk) 21:10, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

After a quick review of the article, it looks to me that under the notability guidelines generally, there wasn't sufficient coverage to support notability before her death, and the shallow, repetitive coverage related to her death further helps show how notability did not previously exist - had she had a notable career, obituaries would document this and make sustained notability-supporting sourcing easy to find.

And while that AfD isn't the worst I've seen, the scale of personalization and insults is distracting, to say the least, so maybe that contributes to a sense of something seeming off-kilter. I also think WP:RAPID seems to apply: Deletion discussions while events are still hot news items rarely result in consensus to delete, unfortunately. Beccaynr (talk) 23:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Oh RAPID describes what is happening perfectly, and especially helps explain the rush of random accounts participating. I also think the fact that we haven't even seen an actual obituary at all suggests the interest is wholly focused on the unusualness of her death (evocative of your "murderpedia") rather than her accomplishments as an athlete. That's sort of the core of why I've taken that AfD perhaps a little too personally: the suggestion that the amount of media interest in a person upon their death is a reliable correlate of how important they were in life, and especially that such attention should be directly compared to the level of coverage a woman athlete "normally" receives. It just smacks of missing (young) white woman syndrome. Would she have had such extensive global coverage if she had died at 77? Or if she was on an equivalent Indian or Brazilian team? JoelleJay (talk) 00:52, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Well put - and I really should start that essay, with a focus on accounting for sensational coverage when assessing notability and developing encyclopedic articles. In the meantime, I may try to develop an article for Dara Horn's nonfiction essay collection for the WIR editathon this month (Women writers and their works). Beccaynr (talk) 13:56, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Well, I've just posed a very subtle question at WP:N, so perhaps we will discover that the community actually does consider all sensational news encyclopedic... Good luck with your content creation! Maybe one day I will actually create another article... JoelleJay (talk) 19:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)