Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Raymond Berthiaume

< Wikipedia:Articles for deletion
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 no consensus defaulting to Keep. This was pretty close to being closed as a Keep. I would suggest taking a deep breath before renominating. Ad Orientem (talk) 15:23, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Raymond Berthiaume

edit

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

Raymond Berthiaume (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Biography of a musician, whose claims of notability are resting entirely on a contextless linkfarm of primary and unreliable sources rather than any evidence of properly footnoted real media coverage -- and this has been flagged as lacking references since 2007 without ever having even one reliable source added to it. While there is a notability claim here that would qualify him for an article if it were properly sourced, as some of the albums were on a major label, that isn't an automatic inclusion freebie that exempts a person from having to be properly referenced -- passing or failing NMUSIC hinges not on what the article says, but on how well it does or doesn't reference what it says, and the "references" here aren't cutting it at all. And furthermore, for an artist from Quebec who primarily recorded and performed in French, the lack of an article in the French Wikipedia is not a good sign. Bearcat (talk) 17:09, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 17:50, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 17:50, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I can only ProQuest for wide Canadian coverage inclusive of Quebec newspapers from 1981 on — prior to 1981, all I can access is The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. Nonetheless, I did search ProQuest already, but I got just 16 hits on his name — of which 14 were just annual repeats of the same "today in history" listicle for the day of June 23, which briefly namechecked him only in the "people who died on this date" section and weren't substantive coverage about him, and the other two are unrelated people who merely happen to have the same name. I've already done the best I can do in terms of trying to salvage this myself, and basically found nothing. Bearcat (talk) 18:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Which is not an inclusion freebie that exempts a person from having to be reliably sourceable to media coverage about the albums. Bearcat (talk) 06:14, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. People do not have to have media coverage about albums to be notable. It does help for musicians though. Regardless, what is needed is verification form reliable sources that they satisfy some sort of notability criteria. In this case NMUSIC. The album notes themselves are reliable sources about the albums themselves. They show that this person has had multiple releases though a significant label (lot more significant in that time than now with the ease of digital release) which satisfies said criteria. You can see online pictures of these records [1], [2], [3], [4]. Criteria such as that is there because back then people weren't publishing stuff on the internet. They tell us it's safe to presume there was coverage in the papers and magazines of the times, people don't get that far without some sort of reasonable coverage. And lead singers of a band that sells ~40000 copies of a single in the 50s do get coverage. All that said I will provide some online coverage to the article. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, people do have to have media coverage to be notable. It is not enough to be able to nominally verify that the albums exist via discogs.com entries to get a musician over WP:NMUSIC — the notability test is never just the thing being claimed in and of itself, but the reception of reliable source coverage for the thing being claimed. A musician does not get over the notability bar just because the existence of his albums metaverifies itself, just as a writer does not get over the notability bar just because the existence of his books metaverifies itself — musicians (and writers) get over the bar when reliable sources have written their own independent editorial content about the musician (or the writer) and their work.
We do not keep articles on the basis of simply presuming that coverage probably existed somewhere, either — we don't even have a requirement that our sources be online at all, but do permit offline print sources, like books and newspaper or magazine articles, to be cited. So "back then people weren't publishing stuff on the internet" is not a reason why an article would get to rest on bad or unreliable or primary sourcing instead of media coverage, because the matter of whether the sources are online or offline is irrelevant. So it's not enough to simply assume that coverage probably existed somewhere, because literally anybody could simply say that about anything — to save an unsourced article from deletion, you have to actually dig into newspaper archives and show hard evidence that enough reliable source coverage does exist to salvage it with. Bearcat (talk) 15:37, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
"Yes, people do have to have media coverage to be notable." Nice strawman, I didn't say otherwise but that's still wrong, check out how many pass on WP:PROF without media coverage. I also never said discogs.com entries get anyone over.. Yes anyone can say about anything but we still need a good reason to presume it is true. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:44, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Found a half-decent obituary on Radio-Canada [5]. Had a look at the English-language Quebec papers on newspapers.com, but found little other than mentions of upcoming performances. I'd expect there would be at least some coverage in the Quebec newspapers or magazines, offline more than likely, but that's just a guess. Curiocurio (talk) 01:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I have updated the article and it now has sourcing to verify multiple albums through RCA Victor, amongst other things. duffbeerforme (talk) 11:40, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- RoySmith (talk) 03:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I can find other coverage besides that in the references - the English-language Montreal Gazette in 1955 confirms that N'oublie Jamais was the top tune on the French hit parade [6]; in 1961, the Gazette described the song Pourquoi Partir, sung by Raymond Bertiaume and the Three Bars as well worth listening to [7] (that song is not even listed in the article); in 1962, the Gazette reported that Berthiaume became musical director of the new French language radio station CKLM [8] (also not in the article); in 1963, the Gazette reported that Berthiaume and his quartet won the "all-around originality" category in the Grand Prix du disque canadien [9] (that is also confirmed in the 1977 book Gilles Vigneault: Bibliographie Descriptive et Critique, Discographie, Filmographie, Iconographie, Chronologie); the website Les auteurs et compositeurs de la chanson francophone includes in its biography of him that he won the Best Popular Singer award in the 1968 Festival du disque [10]; a film review in The Ottawa Journal in 1970 says that the best thing about the film was the music, "particularly a lovely song called Pauvre Amour, sung by Raymond Berthiaume" - "an attractive piece, with proper attention would easily make a hit" [11]; the Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Journal named Berthiaume as one of the four judges in the CBC Song Market competition in 1968 [12]; he is included in the 1983 The Canadian jazz discography, 1916-1980 and the 1992 Dictionnaire de la musique populaire au Québec, 1955-1992; The Ottawa Citizen TV listing in 2006 has a show called Où sont passés nos idoles? (Where have our idols gone?) [13]: the episode on Crooners included Berthiaume, suggesting that he had achieved idol status; a website called Biographies d'artistes Quebecois calls him the "crooner par excellence" in the 1960s and 70s [14]. I don't have access to most French language sources from Canada, which would probably have more coverage of him (the website Les auteurs et compositeurs de la chanson francophone mentions more hits, and more roles, eg as choirmaster), but I think there is enough to establish notability. RebeccaGreen (talk) 08:21, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I proposed this for deletion on October 18 but Atlantic306 pulled it. I'm only now aware that it has been proposed again. I had trouble finding independent reliable sources for this person. I'm not keen on using foreign language sources on English Wikipedia. That's a rule I would like to see changed. Machine translations are inadequate, to say the least. Sometime they don't even get the pronouns correct. I've seen people referred to as "it", which is troubling, sexist, and ironic coming from a machine. I'm not sure Berthiaume is a jazz musician, so I would be tempted to remove him from Wikiproject Jazz. The project's Cleanup Listing has about 5300 articles that need heavy work, with articles going back ten years, and there appear to be two or three of us working on it. I have barely put a dent in it after more than two years. AllMusic has no biography about him and lists only three of his albums, and none of those albums is classified jazz. The three-volume hardcover New Grove Dictionary of Jazz doesn't mention him. The Jazz Book by Joachim Berendt, which has more names than the New York City telephone book, doesn't mention him. This is a book that mentions Lebanese oud player Rabih Abou Khalil, Xu Feng Xia, who plays the Chinese zither (ghuzeng), and French tubist Michel Godard (he's in a band with Khalil!). We can't keep everyone. It's common sense. Evidence of caring about an article means working on an article. Evidence of notability means an abundance of available sources.
    Vmavanti (talk) 18:31, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia does not prohibit using foreign-language sources — there are a lot of people who we should have articles about, but couldn't if we restricted ourselves exclusively to English-language sourcing. For instance, we would likely not be able to maintain articles about most German politicians who aren't named Angela Merkel if the notability test required attention in anglophone media — and if French-language sources were verboten, then we would have to make a special rule that all Canadian provincial legislators passed WP:NPOL except the ones in Quebec. Yes, we do preference English-language sources over foreign-language sources when English-language sources exist — but no, we don't deprecate foreign-language sources as ineligible for use. As long as the sources are reliable ones, we don't care what language they're written in — there are lots of people on Wikipedia who can read and speak those other languages if you need clarification of what a source you can't read says, and there's this thing called Google Translate which, even if it ain't perfect, translates stuff well enough to give you the basic gist of what a foreign-language source says too. Bearcat (talk) 19:33, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep clearly passes WP:GNG as shown by the sources identified by Rebecca Green. To disqualify foreign sources would be a terrible idea as it would wipe out a huge number of articles and enshrine systemic bias. Its a pity the previous commenter didn' t fix the article himself instead of demanding others do it Atlantic306 (talk) 19:14, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You've got some unexamined assumptions that deserve examining. You speculate, you don't know, that "huge number of articles" would be "wiped out" without foreign language sources. The melodramatic rhetoric suggests a bias in favor of indiscriminate addition, which is contrary to Wikipedia's documentation, goals, and purposes. Wikipedia is already huge. Becoming huge was not one of Wikipedia's goals unless you can show me where. Making it less huge strikes me as a positive rather than a negative, especially after what I said about the cleanup listing. I don't know what you mean by "systematic bias". Not all bias is bad. We all have assumptions and presuppositions. The Italian Wikipedia has an Italian bias. The German Wikipedia has a German bias. It's natural and logical. How could it be any other way? People in those countries write about subjects closest to them, using sources available to them. So what? But that is beside the current argument. Last, Atlantic306 criticizes me for failing to fix this article and "demanding others do it". Did I demand that? I'm not aware of making demands. I do ask a lot questions. Is it too much to ask that if people care about an article they should work on it rather than vote to retain it and let it continue to rot like a condemned building? For how many more years? In the hope that a good Samaritan will come along? I can show you over five thousand articles that say that won't happen. Nevertheless, my proposal for deletion had nothing to do with my work ethic. Keeping aside the obvious point that insults are prohibited in Wikipedia, the implication here is that I shirked my duty or was lazy. If Atlantic believes that, he can take a look at the editing I've done. It's accessible to everyone, right? Judge for yourself. I remind participants to analyze comments rather than attack people.
Vmavanti

(talk) 00:55, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I didnt mean to attack you just your proposal. Jimbo Wales has described the purpose of Wikipedia as the depository of all human knowledge, while the co-founder left some years ago because in his own words the deletionists had taken over. English wikipedia is different to other wikis because English is the world's most used language so English wikipedia is accessible in most countries by a significant percentage of population who expect their country's topics to be covered even if they are only notable in one country which means foreign language sources should remain acceptable, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 15:33, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jovanmilic97 (talk) 12:02, 17 November 2018 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Raymond_Berthiaume&oldid=870550256"