Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bernard Courte

Bernard Courte

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Bernard Courte (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Biography of a journalist and activist, not adequately referenced as passing our inclusion standards for journalists or activists. The only references here are the biographical sketches attached to an archival fonds and a portrait -- but neither having his personal papers preserved as an archival fonds nor the existence of a portrait are notability claims in and of themselves, and none of the work summarized in the article body is "inherently" notable enough to exempt him from having to have been the subject of actual reliable source coverage by journalists in media outlets or books. And even on a WP:BEFORE search for other sources, all I can find is a couple of glancing namechecks of his existence as a giver of soundbite in articles about other things, with no evidence of any sources that are actually about him for the purposes of establishing his notability. Bearcat (talk) 12:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 12:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 12:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Bearcat (talk) 12:30, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• Keep. The subject has a lengthy entry here in Who's who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day by Robert Aldrich and was an Honor Roll Inductee in 1998 for his work with AIDS for the Ontario AIDS Network (link here). His papers/fonds are held in The ArQuives and they have a biography on him here. He has additional fonds at the Quebec Gay Archives (link here), and they also have a biography on him here. The ArQuives states "Everyone who worked in the gay and lesbian community in the 1980s remembers Bernard Courte, journalist for Le Berdache... He was also one of the founding members and then Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Sortie... He was one of the first in Montréal to truly understand the importance of AIDS and its impact upon gay people." (link here). When Gary Kinsman interviewed Ross Higgins, Higgins called Courte a "crucial figure" and "very instrumental in the francophone community in Toronto" (link here). --Kbabej (talk) 18:48, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Being inducted into an organization's own proprietary "honour roll" is not an automatic notability freebie in itself, especially if you have to rely on the organization's own self-published website to source the claim because journalistic coverage about it is non-existent — in order for any award or honour to make its winners notable for winning it, it has to be an award that gets media coverage to establish its notability, so you have to be able to source the claim to journalism in media, where somebody wrote a news article about the presentation of that award, before it counts as a notability claim.

Having his papers held by archives is not a notability claim per se, and the biographical sketches attached to those archives' collections of his papers are not notability-making sources — because by virtue of directly holding a collection of his personal papers, the archives are not fully independent of him.

Transcripts of Q&A interviews, held in PDF form in the private website of an organization and not published in real media, are not notability-supporting sources, and being editor-in-chief of a magazine is not an "inherently" notable job that guarantees a Wikipedia article in the absence of any WP:GNG-worthy media coverage about him.

Notability is not a question of simply being able to show primary sources, like interview transcripts or the self-published websites of directly affiliated organizations, as technical verification that he did stuff — it lives or dies on the amount of third party journalism that has or hasn't been published about him and the things he's done in media. Bearcat (talk) 16:11, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

@Bearcat: I don't agree with your assessment completely, but that's neither here nor there, as I've located additional sources (below) that are standalone news articles in a notable publication. Those, combined with his entry in Who's who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day, meet GNG in my opinion. --Kbabej (talk) 20:47, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I found two newspaper articles on newspapers.com. There's an in-depth article on his views on AIDS by Heather Hill of the Montreal Gazette called "AIDS plague spawns epidemic of defeat" (August 13, 1983) (paywalled); there's another in the Montreal Gazette on if the Gazette had been biased in their coverage of a gay story when Courte complained in the article "No bias found in homosexual story: council" (June 10, 1986) (again, paywalled). --Kbabej (talk) 20:44, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Do you see in my nomination statement, where I said "all I can find is a couple of glancing namechecks of his existence as a giver of soundbite in articles about other things"? Congratulations, you just found the exact same two articles I was talking about.

They don't change anything, though. "AIDS plague spawns epidemic of defeat" just briefly quotes him as a giver of soundbite in an article whose core subject is the HIV virus, and "No bias found in homosexual story" just mentions his name as the plaintiff in a press council complaint about the tenor of other news reportage in the Montreal Gazette. Neither of them are about him for the purposes of helping to make him notable — we're not looking for how many sources we can find that happen to glancingly namecheck his existence, we're looking for how many sources we can find that have him as their subject: news articles about him winning notable distinctions, critical analysis about the significance of his work, and on and so forth. Bearcat (talk) 02:06, 5 April 2021 (UTC)