Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kathy Chitty (3rd nomination)

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 merge to Paul Simon. v/r - TP 20:29, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Kathy Chitty

AfDs for this article:

• Articles for deletion/Kathy Chitty
• Articles for deletion/Kathy Chitty (2nd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Kathy Chitty (3rd nomination)

Kathy Chitty (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Was deleted in a previous AFD, but there was no quorum and closed by Cirt, so one user suggested it deserved another AFD. causa sui (talk) 05:08, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect to Paul Simon. WP:BLP1E. --causa sui (talk) 05:08, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

  To amplify on this, I feel that very little content (if any) should actually be merged (per strong arguments below), so this !vote should be counted as in a coalition with delete !voters. causa sui (talk) 19:40, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

  The Paul Simon Songbook is also a good merge target. causa sui (talk) 16:49, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• Delete. Do not merge or redirect, since there are BLP issues. (Maybe a tiny merge of a small portion would be OK.) Regarding the BLP issues: "Kathy was quite shy and wanted no part of the success and fame that awaited Simon" and "Kathy is a very private person; all attempts by the press to cajole information or her whereabouts out of Simon have failed" are the operative factors here. Assuming these are true statements, then Chitty would probably be horrified at the existence of this article and we should treat this situation as if she had contacted the Wikipedia or the Foundation and requested the removal of the article. This is not a request the we will always honor (if the person is truly very notable) but it something that we do consider. The very most that could be said is the she just sneaks in below the lowest threshold of notability (I'd say not even that), so we should consider the WP:BLP cost versus the very low encyclopedia value.

OK then. Putting aside for now the serious BLP concerns, and turning to the merits of the case. I think that we do, and should, include articles for person who are artistic "muses" -- persons who inspired the works of notable artists. However, we want to be reasonable about this (especially as most of these people are essentially private persons) and I think reasonable criteria for inclusion would be:

1. The artist is a very important A-list artist, and
2. The person was truly an important inspiration for major works or otherwise a significant factor in the artitst's life or output.

It's hard for songwriters to be truly A-list artists for this purpose because songs are so short that it's difficult to develop deep and fully realized characters in them -- the kind of character (such as we might find in a novel or long poem or screenplay or (for that matter) a portrait) where we can recognize a person and the influence of their personality on the character.

I think an exception could be made for Bob Dylan and Lennon/McCartney because they are so very popular, influential, and (according to many critics) of high artistic merit. Steven Foster, Irving Berlin, maybe a very few others. Does Simon make this select company, either through notability or artistic merit? Maybe. It's debatable.

OK then, moving on, what about Chitty's influence on Simon? Are you kidding? There isn't any, not compared to real muses like (let's say) Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe or Gala or Zelda Fitzgerald or people like that. If I may take the liberty of copying in my comment from the previous recent AfD:

It's instructive in my opinion to compare this article to Barbara Bakhmetev. (Bakhmetev was Mikhail Lermontov's muse and inspiration, as Chitty is claimed to be Paul Simon's.) I translated Bakhmetev'a article, so I'm not averse to articles about literary muses. But in my opinion Barbara Bakhmetev is marginally notable -- notable enough to have an article, but not inarguably so. Chitty falls quite far below this standard.

I mean -- Lermontov anguished over Bakhmetev his whole life and not only wrote much poetry (and made paintings) about her but also based a major character in the seminal novel "A Hero of Our Time" on her as well as (in part) characters in other works. In contrast, Simon had a short affair (about 1.5 years) with Chitty such as young men have, moved on and married three other people, and wrote one song about her ("Kathy's Song") which was an album track and not a hit song, an acknowledge great artistic achievement, or otherwise notable.

He mentioned her briefly in three other (more important) songs, but only in passing.

• The reference in "America simply uses the name "Kathy" as a name -- the pair was never together in America and the events described could not have involved Chitty.
• Another song has the throwaway line "It was 1964. I was living in London with the girl from the summer before" which hardly bespeaks a profound influence.
• The reference in "Homeward Bound" (the refs are off-line so I'm taking on faith that statement that it's "widely believed that this song is also about Chitty", although off the top of my head I can't see why that would be so or who the "widely" in "widely believed" actually is) is slightly more developed, although the song is mainly about the touring rather than Chitty and the joys of home life.

It's not enough. It's not even close. I'm granting that the recent AfD (result was delete) did not have a quorum or a proper close, but can we put this one to bed now? Herostratus (talk) 06:09, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

• Keep. This page was deleted for the reasons stated by Herostratus above. I missed the 2nd nomination discussion and so have reinstated the article pretty much as it was when it was deleted. My reasoning for wanting to keep the article was that Kathy Chitty either inspired or is mentioned in a number of Paul Simon songs and consequently her involvement is worthy of note. Most of these songs have an article of their own so a large part of this article could be included in the individual song articles to put their inspiration into context. However, on balance it seems better to have a separate article regarding Ms Chitty rather than repeat the same wording in the different song articles.

This article had originally been longer but has been (quite properly) edited down to remove references to Kathy Chitty's later life, but those references indicated that Paul Simon considers Ms Chitty to have been important to his inspiration at the time. For example, at least twice at huge concerts Simon has mentioned from the stage that she was in the audience. These were not casual references to a passing acquantance but to someone he ackowledges to have been his muse at the time.

We must be very careful of BLP issues but I believe that the reference to the reason Ms Chitty broke off the relationship 45 years ago is acceptable. If others feel that is too intrusive then that is a separate argument but not one for deletion of the article.

Also, I think the views expressed during the discussion for the 1st nomination for deletion are still valid.

So a "keep" from me. It may well be close to the boundary, but definitely on the "keep" side.

If there are factual mistakes as Herostratus indicates, then these need to be corrected. Rickedmo (talk) 09:04, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

• Delete My vote last time as WP:BLP1E. To be frank, I'm not sure even that covers the situation, and WP:NOTINHERITED comes closer. Ms Chitty was Paul Simon's girlfriend whilst he was in England. He was thinking about her when he wrote some of his songs (to which, I am tempted to add, so he should have been), he was attached to her (ditto), she was doubtless a source of comfort and encouragement. If he had married her and she had gone with him to the US it would still not make her notable in her own right without some much more significant and verifiable influence on the music. So the argument for keeping the material in the article is that it is relevant to the songs and to the biography of the artist. That I understand, and the same situation can arise with visual artists and novelists for example. No coverage of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood would be complete without Elizabeth Siddal, but her involvement with DG Rossetti was of an altogether different order. I still think that Ms Chitty should be mentioned in Wikipedia only insofar as it is directly relevant to the context, for example where it is verifiable that a reference in a song is to her, or the relationship had a direct impact on Paul Simon's mood at a relevant time, and not have her own biography. --AJHingston (talk) 10:27, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
• Delete or (2nd choice) Merge and redirect to Paul Simon. WP:BLP1E, WP:BLP. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 16:29, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect to Paul Simon. Suze Rotolo is a good example of a solid article of a person with a similar relationship to a pop star. However, this particular article is just a line or two of Simon-related biography and long quotes from song lyrics. I suggest we move the line or two to the Paul Simon article and a solid article can be broken out later, if a solid article can ever be written. Gamaliel (talk) 16:49, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
  • And re Rotolo, that's Bob Dylan. While Paul Simon is very very notable, Dylan is in a Valhalla of notability with very few other artists, the place where one's used kleenex are notable (I exaggerate, but Dylan has his own category (38 pages + 7 subcategories), his own wikiproject, a Nobel Prize movement, yadda yadda. Dylan is ranked the #2 artist of all time by Rolling Stone, behind the Beatles and ahead of Elvis; Simon, together with Garfunkel, comes in at #40). And even then, you might compare Chitty to Echo Helstrom -- and Helstrom's article was deleted (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Echo Star Helstrom) notwithstanding that 1) she is willing to talk about her past with Dyan and 2) she just might be the the Girl from the North Country). Herostratus (talk) 18:31, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
• Delete - really, it could just be deleted G4 as nothing whatsoever has changed since it was deleted before. The previous AFD was closed as delete ... an editor asked the deleting admin to restore it to userspace so that it could be referenced/improved/whatever ... the article was moved back into articlespace with no changes. That's a horrific circumvention of our deletion process. --B (talk) 21:06, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
  • It's a technical, not a horrific, violation. The previous AfD had a grand of total of one vote (not counting the nominator) even after relisting. That's not really a quorum and it should have been relisted again probably. Herostratus (talk) 22:42, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

• I’m sorry if I did not follow the proper action by reinstating the article in the way I did.

The reference to the Suze Rotolo article is interesting. She is definitely worth having an article about. However, if the BLP policy were applied to the article when she was alive very little of the article would remain – it would be comparable to the present article on Ms Chitty.

If we consider what should be done with the article generally, Kathy Chitty is only notable for her connection with Paul Simon. The options seem to be:

• delete the article. This does not seem to be the correct thing to do as Kathy Chitty has some notable connection with Paul Simon and someone coming to Wikipedia searching for Kathy Chitty should be able to find something.
• merge part of the article with the article on Paul Simon. The obvious place to place it would seem to be in the section “Personal life.” A couple of the paragraphs of the original article would fit here. However, the references to the individual songs and their circumstances would be out of place here, so that is not entirely satisfactory.
• merge parts of the article with the existing articles that deal with the relevant songs of Paul Simon. That would work but would mean repeating identical wording in a number of different articles and you would loose the overall connection between the background to the songs.
• leave the article generally as it is. It may be a small article but to me this option seems to work best.

The article must be accurate and consider BLP policy. Rickedmo (talk) 00:56, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

• I see a chunk of the article that helps to set the context has already been deleted while we are debating its future. I feel that is a pity so I have re-instated it. Rickedmo (talk) 12:08, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
• Delete - seems to be quite a private person attached to a notable boyfriend for a while, clearly does not quality for a wikipewida BLP under her name. Fails WP:NOTABILITY, main claim of note is to have been mentioned in a few of her boyfriends songs. and has clear WP:BLP1E issues. [[Off2riorob (talk) 16:53, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 19:24, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

• Delete - Not notable in her own right. Notability is not inherited. Arzel (talk) 00:03, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

• Keep - I stand by everything I said in the first discussion (which by the way was an overwhelming keep). There is nothing in here unsourced or controversial,and so what if she's a marginal case for inclusion? Over the long term, somewhere between 50 and 80 people a day look at this article - I don't see the point in deleting something two years old that has survived two AFDs already, and which people obviously find useful / interesting. This is the kind of thing that drives people away from WP. Is it ethical to just keep nominating articles until people get so tired that they don't care any more? Chris (talk) 20:21, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

• Merge and redirectDelete - While it is understood that Ms. Chitty was at least as great an influence on Simon as Patti D'Arbanville was on Cat Stevens, and that Simon is far closer to being "a very important A-list artist" than Stevens is, Ms.D'Arbanville is not notable solely as being Stevens' muse. Having one song written about her, being mentioned in another and being alluded to in two more is probably not enough for Ms. Chitty to be a notable muse

Anything relevant to Kathy's Song can be added to The Paul Simon Songbook, anything relevant to The US bus trip that inspired America (Simon & Garfunkel song), which Herostratus states did not happen but for which a reference is cited in the article, can be mentioned in that article if the citation is genuine, and other cited and relevant information about their relationship can be mentioned in Paul Simon#Personal life. It is probably best to transfer the information before the article is deleted. Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 20:57, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

• merge I said keep previously, on the basis that while my knowledge of this music is pretty minimal, even I know the relevant songs and would be interested in the person behind them. As far as BLP goes, I am unwilling to assume from the information given in the article what the person might now want over 40 years later. However, the suggested merge to the Paul Simon songbook is plausible and might solve the problem. DGG ( talk ) 21:48, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

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.