Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/June Preston

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 keep. (non-admin closure) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:43, 22 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

June Preston

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I started editing this article with the view that the subject was, just, WP:NOTABLE. I tried, along with some other editors, to help knock it into shape by trimming unsubstantiated claims, information from unreliable sources, etc. However, the more I (and others) have sought to address these issues, the more I (and others) have been met with attacks (on the talk page) from an editor who states she is the subject’s daughter, and supporters of the latter. Through posts which the daughter is putting up on Pinterest, these supporters continue to add material which is trivial in itself and in any case not reliable. Having looked through the sources and related material in more depth, I am now of the opinion that the subject is not notable and I therefore move this AfD.

My rationale is as follows, and is based on WP:GNG, the elements of WP Notability.

1) “"Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. “ That cannot be held to be the case in this article. The subject is presented as a film actress and a singer, but there is no coverage of her in either of these roles other than trivial mentions in sources which do not qualify as reliable 2) “"Reliable" means that sources need editorial integrity to allow verifiable evaluation of notability, per the reliable source guideline.” . Much of the material in citations is journalistic recycling of publicity materials. Other citations support trivial issues (e.g. that she sung Gilbert and Sullivan at high school). The above considerations also affect the other elements of notability: “"Sources"[2] should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability.”; “"Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases…..”. One of the article's defenders has kindly listed the sources used - editors can judge for themselves whether they think these sources are significant or reliable. WP:GNG mentions that “significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article”. In this case there is clearly no significant coverage in relevant reliable sources.

As regards the detailed guidelines for notability for people WP:BIO – “People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published[4] secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject.” This subject does not meet this criterion.

For Entertainers WP:ENT the criteria are: 1. Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions; or 2. Has made unique, prolific or innovative contributions to a field of entertainment. The subject fails these criteria.

For singers WP:SINGER there are 12 criteria, none of which are met by the subject – I’m not going to set them all out here, anyone can go look. The subject also fails the criteria for concert tours WP:NTOUR.

Conclusion: delete. Smerus (talk) 18:32, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per nom, fails WP:NSINGER and WP:ENT all coverage is merely listings or passing mentions nothing significant or in-depth. Theroadislong (talk) 18:38, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete~~ Keep per Silver seren ~~they are only mentioned in passing in the newspaper clippings and never had a major film role.~~ Wgullyn (talk) 19:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep You already know she meets the GNG with significant coverage from around the world from her concerts. You've been trying to remove sources and reduce the actual representation of notability in the article for over a week (with this article being practically the only thing you've edited on Wikipedia as a whole in that length of time). Not to mention you've been repeatedly insulting the article subject and her daughter's account on the talk page during that length of time. I don't know why you have a personal agenda against the article subject, but it's pretty obvious that you can't properly determine notability in this case. Anyways, for everyone else, here's examples of significant coverage of June Preston from around the world, as helpfully collected by her daughter due to 1950's non-English papers not being digitized:

Van Hessen, Ro (24 October 1964). "June Preston: verrassend !". Haagsche Courant (in Dutch).
"La Expresiva Soprano Norteamericana June Preston, Presentada Por La Asociacion De Cultura Musical" [Expressive American Soprano June Preston, Presented By The Music Culture Association]. El Noticiero Universal (in Spanish). December 1, 1962.
"La celebre soprano June Preston en el Instituto Musical" [Celebrated soprano June Preston at the Musical Institute]. Diari de Tarragona (in Spanish). December 5, 1962.
St. Clair, Tim (June 7, 1989). "Fete honors architect, admiral, singer". West Seattle Herald. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
Morales Vélez, Alejandro (2012). Zarzuela, opereta y ópera en Medellín, 1864-2009. Compañías, obras, teatros y artistas (in Spanish). Medellín. p. 466-467. ISBN 9789587201307.
L. G. M. (December 3, 1962). "La Boheme En El Liceo, Con Dos Repartos Diferentes" [La Boheme At The Liceo, With Two Different Cast]. Hoja del Lunes (in Spanish). p. 36.
Barnes, Eleanor (May 25, 1935). "Actress Shakes 'Curse'". Los Angeles Daily News.

And that's all just a partial example from the coverage that's currently in the article. There's plenty more that hasn't been added as of yet, such as this, this, this, this, and this. She was very much more famous from her later in life opera career on the international stage than she ever was from her child film career in the US. So it's in the former where her notability lies and where all the significant coverage is. But, as you would expect, it's difficult to track down coverage from, say, 1950's Haiti, as an example. Their main newspapers aren't digitized properly at all. Regardless though, we clearly have more than enough coverage shown already to meet the WP:GNG. Silver seren^C 19:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep At the very least, meets criterion 4 of WP:SINGER "Has received non-trivial coverage in independent reliable sources of an international concert tour, or a national concert tour in at least one sovereign country." Wikipedia, in general, does a poor job of using non-digitized resources. I understand why, but people must recognize there's a large blind spot in searching for notability of older people. -- rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 21:33, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I do wish one of the archival database efforts would include older non-English newspapers. We have Newspapers.com, Newspaperarchive.com, and the British Newspaper Archive. But that's all almost exclusively for English language papers, even if they do go back several centuries. The best we've got is some non-English archival stuff digitized by the Internet Archive, but that's pretty much it. And sure, other databases exist, but they're not all that readily available, are only on very specific newspapers and nothing else and/or are difficult to search through, lacking the digitized text search function of the aforementioned archives. It's really aggravating. But I guess we're getting there, slowly. Silver seren^C 22:36, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep It is more than borderline notable, passing WP:SIGCOV. scope_creep^Talk 23:06, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I totally agree with User:Silver seren. This should be kept. PreppyElephant (talk) 16:23, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There is enough independent coverage to pass WP:GNG. Deletion is not the answer to the main concerns raised by the nominator. Any issues with original research, source quality, and conflict of interest are all solvable through talk page discussions and editing the article. Many of those problems have been solved already, or are in the process of being resolved.4meter4 (talk) 06:38, 22 January 2022 (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.