Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Shapiro (journalist)

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. given article improvements and consensus. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:29, 12 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Peter Shapiro (journalist)

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Journalist falls short of WP:NBIO and WP:GNG tests; no evidence of WP:SIGCOV of him separate from his own writing and coverage of his books. (His book "Turn the Beat Around" would likely pass WP:NBOOK if an article were created on it, but Shapiro's notability cannot be WP:INHERITED from it.) Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:30, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Journalism and Music. Dclemens1971 (talk) 16:30, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Authors and United Kingdom. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 19:00, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Leaning towards keep on the subject of this article. I disagree with the nominators assessment here - particularly as the applicable guideline is WP:AUTHOR, where independent coverage of the author's work is sufficient to evidence notability; WP:INHERITED does not apply. I have found and added several independent citations to the article, including a number of RS book reviews and RS articles stating the importance of the works of Shapiro. As such I !vote to keep this article per WP:AUTHOR#3: The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews. Article could really use expansion however. Per WP:NOPAGE I also recommend a single central article on the author and his works, rather than multiple articles on the books themselves. ~~- I recommend Modulations: A History of Electronic Music is redirected to Shapiro if the result of this AfD is to keep.~~ ResonantDis_tortion 14:30, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate you adding reviews links to the article. I disagree with you on the eligibility for WP:AUTHOR #3. While the author has created a couple of independently notable works, none of the reviews or sources describe the significance of his body of work; they are about individual works. While I agree that Modulations and Turn the Beat Around are notable, I don't think there are any sources to describe them as "significant" nor do any sources discuss them in the context of Shapiro's body of work. Considering that the only available sources are reviews of individual works, the notability should go to the works themselves. Furthermore, the reviews provide virtually no WP:SIGCOV of Shapiro himself, which would leave this article a WP:PERMASTUB without verifiable biographical information. The absence of significant coverage points toward delete. Dclemens1971 (talk) 14:46, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But there is enough coverage to write a non-stub article on Shapiro that is focused on his works. Frankly I find the sourcing on Modulations: A History of Electronic Music to be limited - it struggles to meet notability guidelines and it should be merged and redirected to the parent article Modulations: Cinema for the Ear, as a section in that page. As for WP:AUTHOR#3 - I am struggling to follow the above logic as the guidelines clearly do not require secondary coverage of the works as a body; a single book suffices. In this case we have at minimum one fully notable work and several more works with RS secondary coverage over a WP:SUSTAINED period, and the best place to manage this would be the single article on the author. To support this with an example, His 2005 book, The Rough Guide to Hip-Hop, has reliable sources both recommending it and stating it is important; but this is likely not enough for a standalone article, so the author article is the next best place. (Note - given the age of some of the books - we can very likely presume that offline coverage exists beyond a standard search engine). ResonantDis_tortion 16:19, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's what I question on criterion 3: is his work "significant and well-known"? I agree the one book meets the standard of "notable," but "significant and well-known" is different, if undefined. I find it difficult to understand how someone's work could be significant and well-known and the author of them remain sufficiently unknown that there are no reliable sources to validate even birth date or country of origin. (Sources disagree about whether Shapiro is American or British.) I'd be OK with a redirect of this page to an article for Turn the Beat Around if one were to be created, but without anything significant coverage I'm defaulting to WP:COMMONSENSE for a situation in which we can't really construct a biography. Dclemens1971 (talk) 18:06, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we are going to disagree on this one. Given there are a number of reliable sources dedicated to the subjects' other books, but are not sufficiently SIGCOV in and of themselves to create several separate articles for each, the best option (per my version of WP:COMMONSENSE!) would be the other way round: Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco should redirect to Peter Shapiro (journalist) so we have a single page for all his works. ResonantDis_tortion 02:46, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - With the addition of new sources, I don't see any particular concern with notability. Shankargb (talk) 02:28, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. To elucidate why I think the (many) book reviews of Shapiro's work don't constitute WP:SIGCOV of Shapiro himself, here's what the sigcov policy states: "We require 'significant coverage' in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list." Right now, the article as it stands is just a few sentences, hardly any about Shapiro himself and about his work, and the sourcing doesn't really permit anything further to be written. As noted above, we don't even have the most basic information about his life. Thus my argument that the books are notable but that the author is not. Dclemens1971 (talk) 00:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting as there is a difference of opinion on whether WP:AUTHOR is met.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak keep~~ : I've also found this [1], but it also appears on the article author's (Howard Blas') website. I suppose it's a RS Oaktree b (talk) 01:36, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: and this in Variety [2] Oaktree b (talk) 01:37, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand this article refers to a different Peter Shapiro (concert promoter) - who also writes books on the music business. Which makes source finding doubly tricky! ResonantDis_tortion 05:41, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as I find no coverage for this individual, sources I'd identified are for a different person. Oaktree b (talk) 12:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Oaktree b - in the article are cited 14 secondary refs covering the books written by the subject of this article. This includes seven full page reviews of one of his works, multiple other reviews of his other works and further WP:RS stating the importance and recommending these other works. I personally do not see how WP:NAUTHOR is not met, and there's easily enough coverage to, at minimum, build a start class article based upon the works this individual has created (it took me about 5 minutes to expand the article by ~400%). ResonantDis_tortion 06:21, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Malinaccier (talk) 15:00, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With the biographical information identified and added by ResonantDis_tortion (thanks!) I now think we have enough basic information, paired with the criteria of WP:NAUTHOR, to keep, so I withdraw my nomination and change my !vote to keep. Dclemens1971 (talk) 12:07, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. ResonantDis_tortion 08:01, 9 June 2024 (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.