Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lee Asher

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 of the debate was No consensus -Obli (Talk)^? 23:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Lee Asher

Created apparently as a vanity page; Nagle reports an email from the subject denying this but the evidence is strong. This alone not grounds for deletion. Not much in the way of sources. This alone grounds only for cleanup, not deletion. I inclined to support this article for inclusion; I considered researching the subject and making it a proper article, eliminating the taint, etc. But I did a Google test with surprising results: 60,200 hits and only 425 of them unique. This smacks of relentless self-promotion by a small-timer and utterly undermines any claim to true notability. Combined with the weakness of a vanity article, charges of sockpuppetry, and lack of sources -- sorry, delete. John Reid 06:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

• delete per nom. See Talk:Lee Asher for discussion of notability, possible sockpuppet issues, spamming of other Wikipedia articles, etc. Phr 06:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment Neither the alleged sockpuppetry nor spamming of Wikipedia articles is relevant as to whether this article should be kept. --David.Mestel 10:40, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, not notable magician, and a bit of a vanity page.--Dp462090 | Talk | Contrib | 07:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep While the article isn't very well written, Lee Asher is a very well known and respected magician. His work wouldn't be listed in amazon (as remarked on the talk page) as most magicians work isn't released in general book stores. 70.60.152.14 17:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - a lot of people that aren't really notable are on Amazon. --Khoikhoi 23:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Wikipedia isn't a PR vehicle. --Calton | Talk 06:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep 69.219.154.4 11:12, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: It's unfortunate that some of the shenanigans is distracting people from discussing the actual issues. Lee Asher is undoubted a well-known close-up magician; it's a discipline that is very difficult to make a regular living in, let alone get your name recognized, even if you are very good. The fact that his tricks are carried by major magic supply houses and that he is a somewhat sought-after lecturer should clearly show he is somewhat noteworthy. On the other hand, I'm not sure if in analogy to university professors and the "professor test", he is far enough above the average recognized magician to merit inclusion. I don't know, as I no longer keep up with the magic community (although I used to as a teenager). Nor do I know if we should apply that kind of stringent criterion here (as I think people are). I would say that winning IBM close-up champ twice in a row is a notable feat; however, web searches show it was probably junior close-up champ which I suspect has a lower level of competition. There's also the issue of whether he won the actual IBM international competition or some local Ring version.

• Comment (continued): I should add that a magician's credentials are not really suited to Wikipedia: Verifiability, unfortunately. It's true that many magic manuals are for those "in the trade"; thus one has some extremely well-known and influential books that don't have ISBN numbers or are known outside of the magic community. Using the analogy with professors, one can imagine a pretty famous physicist that publishes in very specialized journals whose names or fame aren't known by those outside of physics. If you were to take a very famous close up magician such as David Roth, I suspect it would be extremely difficult to verify he was famous without knowing a lot about magic. One might get a suspicion he was when one notices his books are sometimes very prominently displayed on some magic store webpages, but that could easily be dismissed by someone who wants to paint Roth as just "someone good at self-promotion". Another clue would be when one searches say, Hank Lee's magic factory's webpage (a pretty well known magic supplier), one finds that on various product descriptions of various magic products, there is included a quote by Roth saying this product is the finest such-and-such he's had the pleasure of using. These endorsements by Roth indicates, to someone who knows what to look for, that he is pretty influential. On the other hand, searching for endorsements in ads is not the way we usually establish notability. Anyway, this long diatribe is just to point out something I think has not really been understood by everyone: Wikipedia has very little experience in verifying magician's credentials. In conclusion, my own feeling is that if we were to have a reasonable bar for inclusion for magicians in Wikipedia, Asher would probably make it, even if by a thin margin; on the other hand, there are plenty of famous guys like Roth that don't have bios. I feel we should be working on those as in the end, they add more to Wikipedia. --Chan-Ho (Talk) 04:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I started this mess, and I still don't know. I searched the major trade magazines in magic, The Linking Ring (the International Brotherhood of Magicians) and Genii, and Lee Asher has one hit in each. So he's at least known. I can't judge "notable". I'm inclined to let him have his article, but I think the product list needs to come out, on the grounds that it's advertising. Wikipedia ordinarly doesn't allow vendors to post their whole product line. --John Nagle 06:00, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment John Nagle's and Chan-Ho's recent posts are very helpful. Wikipedia already does have guidelines for notability of performing artists, e.g. WP:MUSIC, and for authors (WP:BIO). Being mentioned a few times in trade mags doesn't seem to be enough. People who develop magic effects are maybe more like instrument makers; Roger Mayer (developer of guitar effects used by Jimi Hendrix), is very easy to find verifiable cites for, Stradivari is still famous after many centuries, etc. As for David Roth, a ProQuest search found numerous national newspaper hits for him (with the keyword "magic"), e.g., an NYT article about David Copperfield (1996-12-26 p. C11) described Roth as "commonly called the best coin man in the world". But it found zero hits for Lee Asher with "magic". So I'd say David Roth is reasonably notable but Lee Asher's notability is marginal at best. I agree with John Nagle that if the article is kept, the product list has to go. I thought magicians wanted to keep that kind of stuff out of view of the public anyway, so it's odd that he's trying so hard to flog it on Wikipedia. Phr 08:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Found some more cites indicating notability:

* Lee Asher at Las Vegas Magic Invitational, 2006

* Lee Asher at UK Session (magic) Convention, 2006

And he's apparently a regular performer at the Magic Castle, the private magician's club in LA. All that indicates that other people in his field think he's notable, which is good enough for Wikipedia. --John Nagle 18:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep The above sources show his notability, and ""Lee Asher" magic" renders 58,600 Google hits. In combination, that's good enough for me. --David.Mestel 10:40, 9 April 2006 (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.