Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gerard van Herk

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 redirect to Deja Voodoo (Canadian band). MBisanz ^talk 22:29, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gerard van Herk

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Subject does not possess enough independent coverage to constitute a standalone article. TheGracefulSlick (talk) 01:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:52, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. There is coverage from the St. John's Telegram [1], [2], which show he was a Canada Research Chair, which at least indicates that he has some standing as an academic, given that right now there are only 9 of them in his field (linquistics) There's also coverage from Mashable [3], coverage of his research in books by other linguists [4], and he gets mentioned by name several times in the context of his band/labels to Canadian rock in this book [5]. My sense is that while he might not be a slam dunk for either of the two fields (though it's more likely that he passes WP:CREATIVE because of his involvement with more than one group), there is at least a borderline notable figure for inclusion. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 04:16, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep as, regardless of anything, the Professor Chair is in fact enough for WP:PROF and that's all we need. SwisterTwister talk 08:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'm not an expert in Canadian academics and I don't know much about musician notability, but since it has been raised here, I'm interested in clarifying the significance of having been a Canada Research Chair. I think that SwisterTwister might be getting a little confused with the WP:PROF guideline of a named chair appointment at a major institution (which van Herk wouldn't pass anyway because he is an associate professor rather than a full professor). The website says there are profiles of over 1800 Canada Research Chairs, and that presumably doesn't include any of the former chairs since our subject is not listed. I'm just curious how many of these guys there have been and how notable this is. Does anyone know? EricEnfermero (Talk) 09:58, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have an article about the Canada Research Chair. If the subject is a Tier 2 Chair then that certainly falls below WP:PROF standards, because it is for people "acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field". We don't base notability on potential. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 13:54, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. No, I don't see how he passes WP:PROF. Being cited a few times and publishing some works is business-as-usual. I don't see awards, or anyone anywhere saying he is significant in the field. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Deja Voodoo (Canadian band). To be fair, this was created at a very different time (2006) in Wikipedia's history, when our standards for the notability of musicians or academics were a lot less well-defined and a lot less dependent on reliable sourcing than they are now — it used to be the case, for example, that primary source verification of a professor's existence on his university's own website, even if it couldn't make the article FA or GA by itself, was enough in and of itself to stave off deletion of the article. But that's not the rule anymore. On a ProQuest search, I get a grand total of 37 hits on his name, of which 30 are about the band and just include his name because he's a member of it — so he doesn't pass WP:NMUSIC on the basis of his musical career, because NMUSIC specifies that if a musician's coverage consists of having his existence namechecked in coverage that's fundamentally about his band rather than about him as an individual, then he gets a redirect to the band and not a standalone BLP (for example, in general the lead singer of a band is a lot more likely to satisfy the conditions if and when he releases a solo album — although there are obviously exceptions at the upper end of mainstream popular music fame, the general rule is that "lead singer of a band" does not automatically constitute grounds for a standalone BLP as a separate topic from the band for every lead singer of every band.)
And of the just seven hits which are actually about him as a linguistics professor, I get three hits which are also just namechecks of his existence as a professor rather than being substantively about him, and four hits which are substantively enough about him to actually count for something toward notability but are actually just reprints of the same wire service article in four different newspapers — so per WP:REFBOMB, all four of those combine as one data point toward WP:GNG, not four distinct ones. A Tier 2 Canada Research Chair is not realistically an automatic WP:PROF pass by itself — as noted above the title represents "potential to lead in his field" rather than "already a leader in his field", so Tier 2 simply can't get the same presumption of notability that Tier 1 would get. It just can't be an automatic inclusion freebie in the absence of enough reliable sourcing to pass GNG.
Which, thus, sends us right back to NMUSIC: if he's not sufficiently notable for other things to qualify for a separate standalone BLP, then he gets a redirect to his band rather than a standalone BLP. And, in fact, the band's article already includes a small amount of content about the fact that he went on to become a linguistics prof, so it's not like we would even need to merge much of this as "new" content — the substance of what's here is already duplicated there as it is. Bearcat (talk) 16:12, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete. I would normally consider the Canada Research Chair enough, but his associate rank makes clear that this is not the sort of distinction above full professor that we usually consider for notability via named chairs. And his citation record doesn't make a strong enough case for WP:PROF#C1. I'd be open to evidence that he is instead notable as a musician but judging from the above discussion that isn't clear either. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:48, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Deja Voodoo (Canadian band) where a paragraph about his post-performing career as an otherwise non-notable academic linguist can be added.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:38, 25 December 2016 (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.