Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Johnny Issaluk

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. Ad Orientem (talk) 00:14, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Johnny Issaluk (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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WP:BLP of an athlete, actor and cultural educator, whose claims of notability are not properly referenced. As always, none of these are fields where a person is granted an automatic entitlement to have a Wikipedia article just because he's technically verifiable as existing, but the referencing here is not cutting it in terms of establishing that he's notable:

1. His claims of notability as an athlete derive from sporting events, such as the International Arctic Games, that do not confer an automatic pass of WP:NATHLETE without solid sourcing, but are referenced solely to a couple of short pieces in community weekly pennysavers that aren't widely distributed enough to pass WP:GNG if they're the best you can actually do for referencing.
2. His appearance in a short documentary film is metareferenced to a Vimeo copy of the film, rather than any evidence of reliable source media coverage about the film.
3. His authorship of a book about traditional Inuit sport is metareferenced to its own publication details, rather than any evidence of reliable source media coverage about the book to get him over WP:NAUTHOR.
4. His claims of notability as an actor boil down to supporting and bit parts, not major roles for the purposes of clearing WP:NACTOR, and are completely unreferenced. But actors do not get a free NACTOR pass just because roles have been listed, as that would hand a free inclusion pass to every single actor who exists at all — the notability test for an actor is the reception of reliable source media coverage about his work as an actor, but none has been shown here at all.
5. His claims of notability as a cultural educator include being awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, a one-off award which was presented to 60,000 Canadians in 2012 and thus does not instantly make them all notable in and of itself if no other notability for other reasons has been properly demonstrated; participating in an expedition that's "referenced" only to a photograph on the self-published website of the organization that sponsored that expedition; and winning a non-notable award from that same organization, as referenced only to an article in that organization's own self-published member magazine which glancingly namechecks Issaluk's existence in the process of being primarily about somebody else.

All of which means that none of the referencing here is properly establishing him as notable at all, and none of the claims are "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to have better referencing than this. Bearcat (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Actors and filmmakers-related deletion discussions. IntoThinAir (talk) 21:28, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

— KEEP:

@Bearcat, I've just updated the article based on the issues you reference above. I definitely feel the article should not be deleted, as I believe Issaluk meets the standards for NACTOR / GNG having been the lead in a film which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (Kajutaijuq), supporting roles in two other TIFF films (Indian Horse and Falls Around Her), supporting roles in high profile film and television (Indian Horse was produced by Clint Eastwood, and the Terror was produced by Ridley Scott), etc. Most recently he was Romesh Ranganathan's guest star on his primetime BBC2 program.

My sense based on the social media around him is that when people search for him they are looking for him as an actor, so I've revised the article so that that sections on Traditional Inuit Games and Community Work come later (and I've kept them intact because they are relevant to his career as one of the only Inuit actors to appear in feature films and television).

Let me know what you think. Qilalugaq (talk) 05:10, 6 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I already explained, actors are not guaranteed Wikipedia articles just because they've had roles, or even because of where the films they had roles in happen to have premiered or what other notable person happens to have produced them — notability is not inherited, so an actor is not automatically guaranteed an article just because he appeared in a film or TV show that has one. The notability test for an actor is not passed just because his performance in a role can be technically verified by IMDb, or the self-published website of the theatre where he had a stage role, or the inclusion of his name in the caption to a photograph — the notability test for an actor is passed or failed by the degree to which his performances have or have not made him the recipient of distinctions, such as Canadian Screen Award nominations and/or media coverage about him. None of your new sources are doing much to improve the notability case here — too many of the new sources you've added are still primary sources rather than reliable or notability-supporting media, and even among the ones that are media, the only one that's about him to any non-trivial degree, rather than just glancingly mentioning his name in the process of being about something or somebody else, is still a limited circulation local newsweekly and not a major media outlet. Bearcat (talk) 19:29, 7 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I think he clears WP:GNG, having good mentions in the Mississauga News, the CBC, and Nunavat News, with supporting documentation elsewhere. Curiocurio (talk) 20:04, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

He doesn't have a "good mention" in the CBC, he just gave a brief soundbite at the film's premiere in an article that's about the film, not about him. People get Wikipedia articles by being the subject of enough media coverage to clear GNG, not by being soundbite-givers in articles about other subjects — and neither the Mississauga News nor the Nunavut News are widely distributed enough to constitute "enough media coverage to clear GNG" if they're the best the subject can actually show. And "supporting documentation" doesn't carry notability either, if the person hasn't been properly shown to clear WP:GNG in the first place. Bearcat (talk) 20:09, 8 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Bearcat Thanks so much for following up. I 100% understand what you're saying and why you're saying it and appreciate the time you're taking with this. I have added new secondary sources from the Toronto Star which discuss Issaluk's acting more directly as well as an interview with him featured in this month's issue of Canadian Geographic. Part of the difficulty in sourcing this particular article is exactly why I wrote it in the first place: major media outlets (the kind that ensure an article easily passes Wiki GNG standards) don't tend to cover Arctic or indigenous issues and people. So as a writer who wants to see better representation on Wikipedia and help to grow WikiProject Arctic and WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America (both of whom Issaluk is indexed under), I'm often stuck using sources from less-circulated media (like smaller newspapers in the north that are often considered too local to be objective) or settling for small clips or soundbites of Arctic/indigenous actors in articles that spend the majority of the time talking about the widely-recognized Southern or European stars. (It's definitely disheartening to see so many non-white actors/artists on the AfD chopping block over precisely this issue.) In Issaluk's case, however, I genuinely believe we've reached the proper GNG threshold based on Wiki's guidelines, but of course I welcome further discussion, as I know we have the same goal, which is to democratize knowledge without sacrificing rigor. Qilalugaq (talk) 05:17, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, as important as it is to improve our representation of underrepresented groups, we don't and can't do that by creating special lowered notability standards under which members of minority groups can get in the door on less accomplishments, and/or less reliable source coverage, than a straight white man would need to show. As unfortunate as it is that some groups of people don't get as much media coverage as others do, it's also not our role to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS by waiving our notability and sourcing standards just because the subject happens to be a person of colour, or a woman, or LGBTQ, and on and so forth. (For example, it's not our responsibility to institute a rule that only straight white men would actually have to pass a notability standard before they get in the door, while women and people of colour and LGBTQ folk could get in the door just for existing.) Unfair though it may seem if you believe in the goal of improving representation (which I do as well, by the way), we can't do it by waiving our notability and sourcing rules just because the subject happens to be a member of one of the underrepresented groups — we do it by working harder to find the women, LGBTQs and people of colour who do meet our existing notability and sourcing standards and are just getting ignored or missed, rather than by creating special reduced notability and sourcing standards for them. Bearcat (talk) 23:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• A fair bit of Romesh Ranganathan's documentary, in which Issaluk acted as Ranganathan's guide to the arctic, was about Issaluk rather than just featuring him. Those in the UK can access it here. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:27, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Fails WP:NACTOR. Sportsfan 1234 (talk) 18:06, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Still firmly in Keep over here, especially since the Romesh's BBC show does focus quite a lot on Issaluk as a notable person (presumably also why he was chosen to be the star), though I understand that not all countries are able to view this so perhaps something could be added to the article to clarify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qilalugaq (talk • contribs) 22:13, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

* Do know that you cannot vote twice. Removed the bolded Keep vote. Jovanmilic97 (talk) 10:24, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I have found evidence of him winning medals at the Arctic Winter Games in 2002 (1 gold, 1 silver) in a Team Nunavut report [1]. The 2002 game results do not seem to be on the Arctic Winter Games website [2], and no years prior to 2000 are listed either. That aside, I believe he does meet WP:BASIC, as there is certainly coverage "in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." Some of it does appear to be significant coverage, and "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability". Besides the sources currently in the article, I found other coverage too, including a review of his book [3], and other news coverage, such as [4]. RebeccaGreen (talk) 08:42, 16 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. There is an article on his book in a children's lit review journal, and his book is also cited in an article in University of Kent's Transmotion (I have added these references to the main article). While I don't think he would pass NAUTHOR on its own, I definitely think he meets BASIC. Gilded Snail (talk) 20:13, 17 January 2019 (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.