Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Olen Steinhauer

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. ---J.S ^(T/C) 20:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Olen Steinhauer

Olen Steinhauer (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Unremarkable people, groups, companies and web content. This page appears to be self-promotion of a non-notable person.--Bryson 21:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per WP:AUTO or WP:BIO, non-notable person, self-promotion. SkierRMH 21:38, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Little assertion of notability, linkspam, reads like a copy of a CV - looks like a Speedy delete to me. So tagged. Tubezone 22:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment The Bridge of Sighs (2003)--Emil Brod, 1948 (nominated for five awards) seems to assert (though not cite) notability, and I can't see how this is, in the words of the speedy spam criterion, blatant advertising for a company, product, group or service. Tonywalton  | Talk 22:55, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I have removed the {{db-spam}} tag, as it's for corperations. -Royalguard11(Talk·Desk·Review Me!) 23:19, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I was set to vote to delete, based on the self-promotional tone (at least to my eyes) of the article, until I went to Amazon.com and saw that he had positive reviews from both Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal for the Bridge of Sighs book. He's published by a real (non-vanity) press. He's a young author with several published books to his credit. I see no basis at all for deletion. In fact, cut him now and we may end up putting him back in later, if his body of work and critical raves continue to grow.Shawn in Montreal 02:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment WP:BK says Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal are trivial reviews, and don't count for establishing notability of books. However, if you look him up on Amazon, he does have other reviews.. but OTOH, his best seller has an Amazon rank of 366,080, you can buy used copies for three bucks. Not exactly Tom Clancy territory. BTW, a book is a product, articles solely put up to promote a book or author are spam, spam isn't restricted to corporations. No problem putting him back in later if he establishes more notability, that's happened before. Neither Amazon nor the WP article mention which "five awards" his novel was nominated for. Tubezone 04:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting point about Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal, thanks for that. I disagree with you that an article about a published author constitutes spam, though. I'm still for keeping it.Shawn in Montreal 05:24, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached
 Please add new discussions below this notice. Thanks, Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:10, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Definite keep - has books from a large commercial publisher. Rightly or wrongly, we count an author as notable if he or she has even a single book that has sold 5000 copies. Any book published anywhere by HarperCollins will easily meet that test. Personally, I think the test may be too easy, but that's a debate for another forum and lots of much more crufty stuff gets into Wikipedia. Metamagician3000 02:56, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, nominated for an Edgar Award[1] (by itself short of notability), nommed for an Ellis Peters Dagger[2], RS reviews from Guardian, NYT, Edinburgh Review. Additionally author is a former Fulbright Scholar. --Dhartung | Talk 03:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Metamagician3000, that's not the criteria given in WP:BK.

    This is an article about an author not about a book - obviously we have to be tougher about what individual books get articles. If you are saying that the policy on authors has tightened up recently without my becoming aware of it, that's a different matter. I'm relying on my memory of what it used to be, so I'm happy to be corrected if something has changed. Metamagician3000 03:19, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

    Interesting. I've now checked: the policy always used to say: "Published authors, editors, and photographers who have written books with an audience of 5,000 or more or in periodicals with a circulation of 5,000 or more." That wording seems to have been deleted recently, and replaced by ""Published authors, editors and photographers who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work." I can't quickly see what the circumstances were. This is surprising because such a change could render a lot of people with articles retrospectively non-notable. I don't necessarily disagree with the change, actually, despite that. Oh well ... Multiple independent reviews is not that much harder - any book published by HarperCollins will almost certainly meet it. Metamagician3000 03:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Weak KeepThe Fulbright award doesn't mean anything much in Wikipedia terms, but judging by website, this author seems to have picked sufficient positive critical attention in mainstream media Bwithh 03:17, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• Don't agree with Bwithh about the Fulbright award: per guidelines "Published authors, editors and photographers who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work." --Kevin Murray 08:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

• The Fulbright award is unlikely to be encyclopedically notable, and it is not at all clear that it was awarded for his work as an author. His website simply describes it as a Fulbright grant for a year abroad[3]. This means it was probably a Fulbright student or scholar grant for study abroad of which there are 1,200+ US citizen awardees every year[4]. There are thousands and thousands of "awards" and "prizes" and "scholarships" and "fellowships" and contest honours etc. which are not encyclopedically notable. Bwithh 09:22, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

keepThought the Fulbright alone does not make someone notable--it might have been to a graduate student who did no further work-- the Fulbright along with contributions in one's field does serve as a criterion of notability. I would not be surprised if we tracked them that more than half were in WP already or obviously ought to be. There are not thousands of awards of such prominence. Cf. Fulbright awardDGG 09:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

• Keep per Dhartung --BenWhitey 03:27, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Dhartung's comments, but I think that there should be some better references at the article --Kevin Murray 08:16, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as per above - but needs work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anjouli (talk • contribs) 08:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC).
• Keep He is a published author though a major publishing house. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 00:50, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep recognized author. --Duke of Duchess Street 02:04, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete obviously a self promotion FirefoxMan 18:04, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Dhartung. -Toptomcat 13:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

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.