Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seán Yap Sei-Been Devlin

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. Daniel (talk) 09:23, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Seán Yap Sei-Been Devlin

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Advertorialized WP:BLP of a filmmaker, not making or properly sourcing a strong claim to passing WP:CREATIVE.
Nine of the twelve footnotes in the article are tying his notability to his participation in creating an election advocacy website in 2011 -- but across the board, those nine footnotes all either fail to mention Seán Yap Sei-Been Devlin at all, or glancingly mention his name in the process of not being about him, which means absolutely none of them are helping to establish his notability at all. Then there's a citation to Upworthy, a clickbait site that isn't a reliable or notability-supporting source, and a citation to a Tyee article that isn't about him, but just features a few soundbites by him about a subject other than himself, so neither of those are helping either.
A few additional sources that I've already removed included several IMDb profiles for other people's films that he purportedly worked on; a tourist information page that verified the existence of the Roskilde Festival while completely failing to verify the claim that his short film was commissioned by it; and a news article that verified the existence of Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm while completely failing to verify the claim that Devlin had anything to do with it. So none of those hits were helping either.
That leaves just one citation in the article that is actually about Devlin for the purposes of helping to establish his notability, but one good source isn't enough all by itself -- and his strongest actual notability claim, that he won a Best Emerging Director award at a film festival, is not sourced at all. (And while I could technically source that, given that I was the person who wrote our article about the film he won it for in the first place, the advertorialism and bad sourcing here are otherwise too egregious to just plop down one more footnote and walk away from it.)
Also, the article was created by an WP:SPA with no history of contributing to Wikipedia on any other topic, and thus may be an WP:AUTOBIO or some form of WP:COI paid editing.
So no prejudice against recreation in the future if somebody can write and source an article about Devlin properly, but in this form it's a candidate for the blow it up and start over treatment at best. Bearcat (talk) 22:10, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Update: Creator has since reference bombed the article further by adding many more sources that weren't present in the article at the time of nomination; however, they're still all either glancing namechecks of his existence in coverage that isn't about him, or just plain don't help to build notability since they're not about him doing notable or SNG-worthy things. Plus the tone is still too advertorialized to stand without significant rewriting even if the sources were good enough. Bearcat (talk) 17:34, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:10, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of British Columbia-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:10, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Man, is the evidence here pretty damning. The straight.com article plus the coverage of a website he founded does weaken my Delete !vote a lot, but not so much so to vote Keep. 👨x🐱 (talk) 22:35, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Qwaiiplayer (talk) 12:12, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete Per nominator. Article indeed is not properly sourced, not quite in encyclopedic tone, especially for standards on English Wikipedia in 2021. I could be OK with redirect to When the Storm Fades, article on film has been created couple years ago by experienced editor and has far more "what links here" than article on director. Content connected to this featured film seems be much more notable than anything else mentioned in the article (mostly trivia news stuff like arrests, activism etc.). In fact I would have bit more tendence to keep redirect than delte whole article because of biography could have eventually potential to be notable in far future and content of the article would be saved in "view history". Dawid2009 (talk) 17:33, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Even if we delete the article, an administrator will still have the power to restore it if there's ever any future need to recover the deleted content. Bearcat (talk) 17:36, 28 August 2021 (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.