Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Harvey

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 Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:48, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Arthur Harvey

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

No indications of notability, no in-line references. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 23:43, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 23:43, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 23:57, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 23:57, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete fails WP:SOLDIER and I'm not seeing anything that satisfies WP:GNG. Mztourist (talk) 07:57, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Plenty of indications of notability such as this. If inline citations are wanted then this is done by improving the article, not by deleting it, per WP:IMPERFECT and WP:ATD, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." Andrew🐉(talk) 11:52, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrew Davidson: I see that the subject is mentioned in a book; I don’t see any obvious evidence of notability there. If I’m overlooking something, please let me know. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 15:52, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You can't see the wood for the trees. Being written about in detail in a good source like a book is what we mean by notability. It doesn't matter what the details are. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:07, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I could find in any Sunday issue of The New York Times a richer and more detailed piece of writing on a person who wouldn’t be considered notable by current community-accepted criteria. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 16:44, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Detailed coverage in the NYT would usually be accepted as reasonable evidence of notability. JamesLucas seems to have participated in few AfDs and this may explain their different perception. My !vote stands. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:23, 14 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for the reasons given of those who want to have this article kept, and I even more so agree now that new evidence which has been shown by those who want to keep this article seems valid in my opinion. Davidgoodheart (talk) 09:45, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as above. It seems a fairly marginal case, but I think the coverage of his oil activities probably does meet WP:GNG. He seems to have a public park named after him too. —Brigade Piron (talk) 18:08, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Brigade Piron: Some notability debates are quickly determined by the existence of references, but this is one where I think it pays to read the content. It’s not a public park, it’s a real estate development named Harvey Park that was built on the land he was forced to divest when his other businesses failed. Currently that development exists on Wikipedia as a red link in the list of neighborhoods in Denver § Southwest. If that link were ever to turn blue, Arthur Harvey would merit a sentence or two in the neighborhood article. But he falls far short of the mark of notability for a dedicated bio. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 20:24, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
DELETE: fails BASIC and barely meets MILPERSON. The Ace in Spades (talk) 11:40, 15 December 2020 (UTC) — The Ace in Spades (talk • contribs) is a confirmed sock puppet of Waskerton (talk • contribs). [reply]
DELETE: Notable for precisely what? Did Harvey perform a notable act in WWI? Did he earn any distinguishable military awards in either World War? Any lifetime achievements beyond discovering several oil fields? (Possibly worthy of a brief mention in a subsection upon some oil-related Wiki. page but not his own.) Harvey led an impressive life, but, in my own humble opinion, what sets him above the canopy above any soldier, or entrepreneur?--Kieronoldham (talk) 05:28, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep I agree that it fails WP:SOLDIER, but he seems notable enough as a businessman. The article needs a cleanup and inline citations, but people who have been the subjects of books are reasonably notable. Dimadick (talk) 08:05, 18 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, Dimadick, he is not the “subject of books”. He’s the subject of 1¼ pages in a book. He made it into a book on Denver history not because of his business success, but because his name ended up on modestly sized housing development that itself has not yet been deemed sufficiently notable to have become the subject of an article. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 04:54, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 03:12, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, it doesn't matter why Harvey has 1 1/4 pages in Men Of Achievement (in around 70 libraries) that is not a trivial one line mention, article lists two other books where Harvey is apparently discussed (Farmlands, Forts, and Country Living 10 libraries, and The Realm of Rusk County 100+ libraries) if these can be confirmed, then wikinotability will be met. Coolabahapple (talk) 00:39, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, after doing a bit of digging, I was able to confirm that Farmlands, Forts, and Country Living does provide Harvey with SIGCOV, he gets just over a page of coverage as can be seen here:[1]. It is very likely that The Realm of Rusk County also provides SIGCOV of Harvey, as can be seen here:[2]. Therefore, he passes WP:GNG. Devonian Wombat (talk) 02:25, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Devonian Wombat: I’m still a bit perplexed that we might take books like these seriously as a foundation for notability. They’re county histories, one step above self-published, and not the subject of any serious research standards. There must be hundreds of thousands of twentieth-century Americans living during the heyday of local news and the rise of affordable publishing who were the subject of a one- to three-page write-up of this caliber. Clearly this can't be a good threshold, can it? —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 21:29, 26 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, thank you Devonian Wombat:). Coolabahapple (talk) 05:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep - some sources points to WP:GNG. BabbaQ (talk) 00:01, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: I think that the nominator's objections become weaker as more people find coverage. The Heritage magazine article, "Harvey Park: Building a Mid-Century Neighborhood for Denver", is a reliable source that disputes the nominator's claim that the neighborhood is not notable. County histories are not "one step above self-published". The coverage for this article is fine. — Toughpigs (talk) 20:20, 27 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Toughpigs: I apologize for my ambiguous wording regarding county histories: I did not mean to say that all county histories are one step above self-published. I meant to say that these histories are. (FWIW, I did not say that Harvey Park fails notability criteria, only that it hasn’t been notable enough for anyone to have bothered to write an article, yet.) The new source you bring to the conversation, “Harvey Park Memories” in Colorado Heritage, mentions Arthur Harvey only once. That instance, however, is of note because it actually contradicts the origin story told in Farmlands, Forts, and Country Living. The magazine article frames Harvey as a shrewd developer selecting ideal land for development, where as the mini-chapter in the book states that he sold his own ranch and implies that he did so when his oil and refrigerated storage businesses failed. So far WP:GNG is being offered as the only rationale for notability, and it’s now evident that at least one of these references is not to be trusted. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 02:27, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a new source; it's the one that Brigade Piron suggested above. In my opinion, you are trying too hard to get this article deleted. I suggest taking a step back, and allowing other editors to look at the article and sources, and reach their own conclusions. — Toughpigs (talk) 02:44, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Toughpigs: I’m not so much bent on the article’s deletion as much as I am frustrated that not once in this conversation have I gotten the feeling that participants have been looking at the article and sources. Many of the above responses strongly indicate that the participants haven’t even bothered to hit Ctrl+F to get the easiest possible overview of the content. Having said that, my raising questions is clearly not eliciting a dialogue, constructive or otherwise, about notability or quality of sources, so you might be right that it’s time to move on. (Regarding “Memories”, you are of course correct that that article is the same one Brigade Piron brought to the discussion last week. Who located it, though, is not central to my point about the contradiction illustrating the unreliability of these sources.) —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 14:22, 28 December 2020 (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.

Keep Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:47, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]