Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Srini Kumar

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 delete. Missvain (talk) 15:48, 20 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Srini Kumar

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Sources are either broken or non-existent. Page reads like a resume. Of the sources that are available, they are placed on oddly construed websites and not verifiable. Megtetg34 (talk) 15:28, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 15:52, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 15:52, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and Dismiss. Not knowing about a topic is not the same as a topic not being notable. Also, notability does not expire. Furthermore, WP:INTROTODELETE says:

When to not use deletion process?

Articles that are in bad shape – these can be tagged for cleanup or attention, or improved through editing.

As notability is not at issue, nor is WP:POV, WP:OR, or WP:NOT at issue, there isn't a valid deletion reason. These are WP:SOFIXIT reasons.

Moreover, link rot is also not a deletion reason. Link rot should be addressed via WP:DEADREF.

These are issues for cleanup, not for deletion. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 08:30, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment No, I totally disagree with you. None of the sources are verifiable, and there have been no additional sources found online to establish notability. Page reads like a resume. I'm going to let the AFD stand. Megtetg34 (talk) 14:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ✗plicit 03:59, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete These aren't independent, reliable sources - WP:RS. Fails WP:GNG. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 11:10, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm asking over at WT:N if link rot and loss of prominence over time are legitimate deletion reasons. I don't think they are. Keith D. Tyler ¶ 09:39, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sources should still be able to be located, archived or otherwise. If link rot was in fact a question, then the reliability of said source would also come into question. Megtetg34 (talk) 19:25, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Link rot doesn't really matter here, since there's other pathways to notability (the short answer is no, link rot shouldn't make someone non-notable: the question is whether he was ever notable in the first place.) The article, in its current state, is terrible, and likely fails WP:GNG on its face. However, I am finding book reviews for his book online - I'm not entirely sure if they're reliable sources or not - but there is a good argument he passes WP:NAUTHOR, but I will leave this for someone else to make (I honestly don't care, I was interested in the link rot discussion and got sucked in.) SportingFlyer T·C 20:23, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - poorly sourced and I can't find other sources with a simple Google search. Fails WP:GNG. TimTempleton ^(talk) ^(cont) 00:17, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:25, 1 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I have so far not been able to determine if Srini Kumar satsifies my sense of notability, but as it stands, it would be no great loss to the encyclopedia if the current edition of the article were to be deleted, since it is not clear from it what his claims to notability are supposed to be or what the relationship is between the text of the article and the references provided. There is a bunch of stuff on SK, he seems to have been a visible figure in 1990s internet counterculture. Some links:
1. Amazon listing for first of his two sticker books
2. Interview with Will Hines of Spite magazine
3. SK answers 15 questions posed by Jeffrey Zeldman
4. Overview at Rediff magazine from which I learned his Unamerican ~~won one of the early~~ was nominated in the 'Weird' category for the 1999 Webby Awards

Pure nostalgia might lead me to dig further. — Charles Stewart (talk) 18:30, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More non-WP:BASIC-level evidence of general visibility:
1. An odd story found on Jason Kottke's blog: apparently SK killed a kitten belonging to his business partner, which set the business back a bit in 2000: Kottke's first post and Kottke's second post, which has a broken link to SK's version of the account.
2. The incident seems to have pretty finished off the business: while he published a book the following year, Fuck Work: Do you believe in liberation?, unlike the sticker books, this seems to have disappeared without creating a ripple.
3. Somebody didn't like some unamerican.com content going down, so created a Perl module to simulate it, Unamerican::Truth
4. A thread on the Boingboing BBS from 2017 has some reminiscing on SK, including someone who says SK was a comparable influence on him to influential gay counterculture filmmaker Gregg Araki
5. Both Sticker Nation and Sticker Nation 2 were mentioned in Publishers' Weekly, although I could find only the earlier mention through the site's search.

My general feeling is that web content predating the waxing of SEO technnology is just less epistemically dangerous and more historically interesting than today's content, and so can be held to a more lenient verififability/sourcing standard. I doubt my opinion is all that widely held, but I welcome other perspectives. — Charles Stewart (talk) 14:29, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"he seems to have been a visible figure in 1990s internet counterculture." How does that not indicate notability? Again, there is no standard I'm aware of that suggests notability is ever lost. Inarguably, he was notable at some point. Thus, he as a topic is notable. I don't know where this is ever up for debate. And frankly, WP has had a real problem with perspective bias in AFDs for a long time -- "if I haven't heard of it, it's not notable" is a DOA argument. - (sig added by Chalst: Keith D. Tyler ¶ 06:48, 11 May 2021 (UTC))[reply]
- It's a clear claim of WP:SIGNIFICANCE. That doesn't tend to satisfy many AfD regulars alone, who want to see evidence of independent reliable coverage that can be used to build a substantial and verifiable article, and especially for WP:BLPs. — Charles Stewart (talk) 08:01, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
More sources:
1. https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2007/book-review-sticker-nation-by-srini-kumar/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqW8BT0yJk8 Srini SXSW 2011 talk about TinyVox. There are plenty of sources out there on TinyVox.
3. https://boingboing.net/2007/03/21/big-book-of-unameric.html Another BoingBoing post about Kumar and Unamerican.com and his book Sticker Nation.
4. https://vvstaging.villagevoice.com/1998/03/17/the-end-of-the-beginning/
5. https://newspapers.bc.edu/?a=d&d=bcheights20001114.2.77&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------- "Anarchy's Ad Agency", The Heights (Boston College).

Keith D. Tyler ¶ 06:48, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: per nom, no verifiable, independent sources at all, fails WP:BIO and WP:GNG CommanderWaterford (talk) 12:16, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is overstrong: the sources we have found don't fit WP:BASIC, but there is clearly at least some loss of material on the subject visible to Google-depth research. It seems quite possible that there are sources out there that do fit BASIC, but which are in web archives or print fanzines. — Charles Stewart (talk) 13:21, 10 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It isn't merely overstrong, it's patently false. - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 06:43, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The Village Voice article KeithTyler found (above, 11 May), meets WP:BASIC. Additionally, SK organised the first WEBZINE conference in 1998, which also attracted BASIC-level coverage of both SK and the event:
1. Return of the Killer Zines, R U Sirius, Wired, Oct 1998
2. Famous to 15 People, Michael van Leet, SF Weekly, 1998
3. 'Zine but not Heard? / The Faithful at Webzine '98 Say 'No Way', Josh Wilson, SF Gate, Nov 1998
4. There was further coverage of the event around the time reachable from the press section of WEBZINE 98, although the other coverage less clearly meets BASIC
5. Chapter One, Independent Publishing on the Internet: Webzine and Fifteen Megs of Fame by Ryan Junell, of Alternatives on media content, journalism, and regulation (ed. Gangadharan, De Cleen and Carpentier, 2007, Tartu University Press, Tartu, Estonia, ISBN 9789985405215) has a lot on the WEBZINE conference series and a little on SK.

While there is sometimes a question mark over the reliability of articles in student newspapers, the article in The Heights mentioned in the article and which we finally have the full text of, above, thanks again to Keith, seems to be decent, qualifying as a mixed primary and secondary source, and useful for sourcing the article. I think this also reaches BASIC standard. — Charles Stewart (talk) 07:56, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, based on the ample WP:BASIC-quality sourcing that has been found in the course of this AfD. — Charles Stewart (talk) 07:56, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: I'm not sure I'm convinced enough that this should be kept using WP:BASIC. Other thoughts?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 23:15, 12 May 2021 (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.