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 delete. MBisanz ^talk 22:30, 26 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Andrea Houston

Andrea Houston (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)

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Fails WP:BASIC, WP:ANYBIO, WP:AUTHOR and WP:ACADEMIC. Unable to find secondary sources to support notability. Magnolia677 ( talk) 14:39, 14 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:46, 14 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. North America ¹⁰⁰⁰ 17:46, 14 December 2016 (UTC) reply

• Keep, as the creator of the article. She received the highest annual honour for a lesbian at Pride Toronto, the Honoured Dyke, the largest Pride event in North America. She's been cited multiple times by the Toronto Star for her reporting and writing guest opinion pieces, the largest circulation newspaper in Canada, and a few times by the Globe, the largest national newspaper in Canada. She was the only ever staff writer at Xtra! (1984-2015), arguably the most successful LGBT publication in Canadian history. The article needs work, sure, but she is far and away more notable than most newspaper writers. -- Zanimum ( talk) 20:02, 14 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. Zanimum ( talk) 20:07, 14 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Note: This debate has been included in the list of journalism-related deletion discussions. Zanimum ( talk) 20:07, 14 December 2016 (UTC) reply

She is certainly a "go to" person for one-line quotes, but I was not able to find secondary sources about her to establish notability. Magnolia677 ( talk) 00:30, 15 December 2016 (UTC) reply

• Comment. Although the subject holds an academic appointment, there is no pass of WP:Prof. Notability will have to be found elsewhere. Xxanthippe ( talk) 00:36, 15 December 2016 (UTC). reply
• Delete. Creator's rationale for keeping isn't particularly strong. Firstly, happening to be the Honoured Dyke at one specific Pride festival, in the city where one lives, is not in and of itself evidence of nationalized or internationalized notability — there have been far more Honoured Dykes and Grand Marshals at Toronto Pride who don't have Wikipedia articles than there have been ones who do (and even the ones who do, it's not because honoured dyke or grand marshal, but because of the overarching notability of the reasons why they were chosen as honoured dyke or grand marshal.) Secondly, while Toronto's Pride is certainly one of the largest in all of North America, there is no sourced evidence that it's the largest even over New York City's or San Francisco's or Chicago's. Thirdly, neither being a giver of soundbite in media coverage of other things nor being the author of media content about other things confers a WP:GNG or WP:JOURNALIST pass in and of itself — a person gets a Wikipedia article by being the subject of media coverage, not by being the author of it or by having her existence namechecked in coverage of other subjects. Fourthly, I'm not sure where he's getting the claim that she was Xtra's only-ever staff writer, but I'm sure Marcus McCann and Neil Herland and Eleanor Brown and Dale Smith and Rob Salerno and Rachel Giese would be fascinated by the implication that they don't exist. And fifthly, being a contract professor at a university isn't an automatic WP:PROF pass, either. I'll add her to WP:CANQUEER as a potential future article topic, but nothing here as of right now is enough, in the absence of her being the subject of (again: not "quoted in", not "author of", but subject of) quite a lot more reliable source coverage than has been shown.
  I'm not dismissing the value of Andrea's work at all, either — I certainly don't know her well, but I've met her personally once and have no reason whatsoever to dislike her. But having a Wikipedia article can have unintended negative consequences, such as the ability of anonymous people who do dislike her for some reason to make POV attack edits criticizing her, or to violate her privacy rights by posting her home address and phone number. That's the central reason why we have WP:BLP rules, and specific notability standards that have to be reliably sourced before a person is deemed notable enough to have a Wikipedia article: not to dismiss the Andrea Houstons of the world as unimportant, but to protect them from the potential consequences of having a poorly sourced article. Bearcat ( talk) 19:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Just checking in, and I'll reply in more depth later. One source for it being the largest in North America is Huffpost. -- Zanimum ( talk) 01:05, 16 December 2016 (UTC) reply

That's one of those cases where just because a journalist asserts it doesn't inherently make it true in and of itself — we would need to see a source that specifically compares Toronto to NYC and San Francisco and Chicago to prove that Toronto is the largest. You can also easily find journalists who assert that "Eaton's dropped the apostrophe from their stores in Quebec because Bill 101" (which is actually wrong, because Bill 101 never covered branding trademarks, and in reality Eaton's made its own internal business decision to "Frenchify" its name in Quebec several years before Bill 101 even existed at all), and that "the Apollo astronauts visited Sudbury to see what the surface of the moon was going to look like" (wrong, because for one thing they went to study a specific rock formation, and for another the city didn't actually look like the surface of the moon), and that "Charlotte Whitton was Canada's first woman mayor" (wrong, because while she was the first woman mayor of a major city, she was preceded by a few women mayors of smaller towns, but some people do erroneously think Whitton was the first woman to become a mayor anywhere at all in Canada.)

Journalists do sometimes simply repeat "popular knowledge" that's actually wrong, and "how many people attended Pride this year" is a thing that tends to generate debate about the numbers, rather than being verifiable in any objective sense — so we need a source which specifically shows hard evidence that Toronto's is the largest Pride in North America, not one which merely asserts it as a given. And even if it actually does turn out to be, being honoured dyke at the largest Pride in North America still wouldn't be an automatic notability freebie in the absence of a demonstrable WP:GNG pass. Bearcat ( talk) 17:10, 16 December 2016 (UTC) reply

• Comment. The above comment makes the very significant point that having a BLP in Wikipedia may have significant detrimental effect on its subject. Did the creator of the BLP seek the consent of the subject before writing it? Xxanthippe ( talk) 21:40, 15 December 2016 (UTC). reply

The personal consent of the subject isn't a requirement that Wikipedians have to seek out. I raised that point just as a clarification that my comment wasn't motivated by any personal animus against Andrea Houston — let's face it, the chances of Andrea and I meeting each other again in the future and possibly even having to work together on something are exponentially further away from zero than they are for most other people with Wikipedia articles, so I'm just trying to be extra-careful that nobody gets the wrong idea about what I meant. But no, Zanimum didn't have a responsibility to seek out her permission first — he just has a responsibility to keep the potential for BLP damage in mind when weighing whether an article is appropriate yet or not. Bearcat ( talk) 22:03, 15 December 2016 (UTC) reply

You are correct to say that there is no policy requirement for the creator of a BLP to obtain or even seek permission of the subject before creating it. However, common decency might suggest otherwise. A large number of sub-notable BLPs is being created by special interest groups in editathons and so forth. In many of these sub-notable BLPs the subject of them is dragged through the humiliating process of AfD through no wish of their own. Because of the poor BLPs that survive AfD, often due to special interest pressure, people may not wish to have a BLP in Wikipedia because they don't fancy the company they find themselves in. This is one example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sally Marks. Xxanthippe ( talk) 00:30, 16 December 2016 (UTC). reply

• Delete lack of sufficient sources to demonstrate notability. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:42, 15 December 2016 (UTC) reply
• Delete. Lack of enough independent sources to establish notability. Xxanthippe ( talk) 21:45, 16 December 2016 (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.