Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sharron Proulx-Turner

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. -- Scott Burley (talk) 05:38, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sharron Proulx-Turner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Biography of a writer, whose claims to passing WP:AUTHOR are not reliably sourced. Of the 22 footnotes here, 14 of them are just metareferencing the existence of her work to its own publication details, while the other eight comprise two blogs, a YouTube video clip of her speaking, three pieces of purely tangential verification of the existence of other things or people in sources that don't even namecheck Proulx-Turner's existence at all, the login screen to a university library database that only students at that university are allowed to access (thus leaving me with no way to even guess at what's on the other side, because whatever the source really was the creator didn't attribute it correctly in the actual footnote either), and her routine paid-inclusion obituary on legacy.com. Exactly zero of these are reliable or notability-supporting sources at all.
I've already had to strip the closest thing to a genuinely strong notability claim, "shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award", as verifiably false, because it very definitely did not happen. (Certainly pieces of her own self-promotional material can be found that claim it, but at no time has her name ever actually made the actual Canada Council-issued shortlist in any GG category. This looks, rather, more like that classic writer's PR trick: whitewashing the distinction between "nominated in the sense of actually making the shortlist" and "nominated in the sense of having their work submitted to the award committee for consideration" so that they can claim award nominations they don't really have.) And the other two awards still named here, the Lampert and the Staebler, are both on a lower tier of literary award notability than the GGs: they would be valid notability claims if the article were sourced properly, but are not "inherently notable" awards that would guarantee her the right to keep a poorly sourced article just because she was shortlisted for (but did not win) them.
As always, the inclusion test for a writer is not just that her work metaverifies its own existence on WorldCat -- to be notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia, a writer has to actually have reliable source coverage about her in media, such as newspaper or magazine journalism about her as a person, critical reviews and analysis about her writing in literary journals or newspaper book review sections, and on and so forth.
As important as it is to improve our coverage of underrepresented groups in Wikipedia, we do not do that by suspending our reliable sourcing rules -- the rule is not that if the subject is a queer woman of colour then you're allowed to use weak and primary sources to support her notability, while only straight white men actually have to have any real reliable source coverage. Male or female, straight or queer, white or POC, you still have to show reliable sources no matter what. Bearcat (talk) 22:05, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 22:18, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:51, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:52, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Poetry-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 23:52, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep RefsAvailable (talk). Good prompts on how to improve this article - she is, as per WP:AUTHOR, "regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors" - her work appears in anthologies (An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English, Crisp Blue Edges: Indigenous Creative Non-Fiction, My Home as I Remember, and Strength and Struggle: perspectives from First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples in Canada), she was a mentor in Canadian lit:(https://www.folio.ca/supporting-aboriginal-writing/),(https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/106372), as a judge for the unleaded literary awards (http://www.fillingstation.ca/news/2015/10/1/unleaded-literary-awards) and in acknowledgements from books Stories in a New Skin, First Person Plural, and Jonny Appleseed, among others. Her work was the subject of a roundtable during the Indigenous Literary Studies Conference in 2016 (http://www.indigenousliterarystudies.org/conference-program) and the subject of a literary symposium held at the University of Calgary in 2018 (https://www.tiahouse.ca/creole-metisse-of-french-canada-me-symposium-in-honour-of-sharron-proulx-turner/) and she was memorialized by Frontenac House, her frequent publisher (https://www.frontenachouse.com/r-i-p-sharon-proulx-turner-author-of-she-is-reading-her-blanket-with-her-hands/). There is critical engagement with her work; here's a quick selection:
Cowan (2005): https://tessera.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/tessera/article/view/25575
Sing (2006): https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/scl/article/view/10202/10552
Wunker (2007): https://canlit.ca/article/speaking-pausing-for-breath-and-gardening/
Karpinski (2015): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08989575.2015.1088714
Jacobs (2001): https://canlit.ca/article/vocations/

Good catch on the "GG shortlist" - it's actually her work being submitted three times, in two years (2002 and 2008) (https://ggbooks.ca/past-winners-and-finalists/titles-submitted). The article needs some work, but it seems to be a situation of poor sources and poor formatting rather than non-notability. Paskwamostos (talk) 23:55, 15 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of that doesn't actually work as evidence of notability.

Being included in anthologies is not an automatic free pass over "regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors", if your source for her inclusion in the anthology is the publication details of the anthology — to turn a book into a notability claim, you need a critical review about the book in a source other than itself.

Similarly, being the subject of a roundtable at a symposium is not a free pass to importance, if your source for that is the symposium's own website about itself — again, you need to show media coverage about the symposium to make the symposium a notability claim.

The unleaded literary awards are not a notable literary award for the purposes of handing their judges an automatic notability freebie — "notability because awards" does not attach to every single award that exists, but only to a certain elite tier of literary awards (the GGs, the Giller, the Griffin, etc.) that get media coverage from sources other than their own organizers.

Being thanked in the acknowledgements section of other writers' books is not a notability claim at all, and neither is being memorialized by her own publisher.

You are on the right track with the critical reviews, but they still need to actually be added to the article, and all of the sources that are currently in it still need to be removed for the reasons I identified — the rule still isn't that most of the sources are allowed to be junk as long as a few of them are passable ones, it's that all of the sources have to be good ones with zero junk. Bearcat (talk) 00:54, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep per User:Paskwamostos. A lot of my decision comes from how the Say magazine coverage here is considered, since I can't seem to access anything else. If it's considered an obituary then it can't be used for notability per WP:MILL. However, given that it wasn't published immediately after her death (at least to the best of my knowledge, given that it mentions her posthumous work published in December 2017) it doesn't fall under that same caveat. With that interpretation in mind and assuming that at least one other of Paskwamostos's sources is notability-establishing that means she barely passes WP:GNG, and barely notable is still notable. On the other hand, I also have to look at the spirit of notability rather than its letter, leading to the "weak" keep. If I'm not mistaken, we have notability guidelines to prevent hopeless stubs and hinder policyvios (such as conflicts of interest, no original research, etc.). I doubt anyone's going to violate policy in this article in particular, but the article itself is a mess and I'm not sure that the sources available can help fix it drastically. Hope this helps! John M Wolfson (talk) 04:27, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per User:Paskwamostos. Mosaicberry (talk) 15:46, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Response to Feedback - From Page Creators We have implemented a number of suggestions from the feedback above and removed weakly referenced statements that exist only within the realm of Proulx-Turner's works. We will continue to revise as required by the Wikipedia Notability policy. MichaelBroadfoot (talk) 21:25, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep: This is a Metis writer, which is a small minority group within the indigenous communities of western Canada. These people are traditionally under-represented, and the sourcing I see has been added to this article is extensive and reliable. She easily passes GNG and, in my view NAUTHOR is also met. This was more a problem of inexperienced editors than non-notability. Montanabw^(talk) 23:27, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep: Meets GNG, per Montanabw. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:50, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep meets GNG and NAUTHOR. Furthermore she is representative of a minority and we need that portion of knowledge on an encyclopedia for people who want to be informed about it. More time will allow the article to grow and other sources to be added, that may not have been found online. Her works were also shortlisted for literature and poetry awards : Where the Rivers Join (1995) finalist for the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction, What the auntys say (2002) finalist for the Gerald Lampert Prize for first book of poetry, She is reading her blanket with her hands (2008)shortlisted for the Governor General Award. This shows she has achieved notability and recognition of her work, albeit coming from a disadvantaged community, This leads to scholars evoking her work in academic settings when speaking of first nation's francophone heritage in Canada. see https://ustboniface.ca/presses/file/actes-colloques/colloque20.pdf. Nattes à chat (talk) 09:08, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

She is reading her blanket with her hands was not shortlisted for the GG, as I pointed out above. Her own marketing materials do claim that, yes, but they're wrong: the Canada Council never placed her book on a shortlist in any GG category. Bearcat (talk) 13:04, 27 April 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.