Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Martin (humorist)

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. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:18, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

David Martin (humorist)

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Fails WP:BIO. The article is unreferenced, and all I can find is a number of his own essays (e.g. this New York Times satirical piece from 2000, this Chicago Tribune piece from 1993, and one Huffington Post article in 2015) and some promotional pages covering his more recent gigs and appearances. His IMDb page shows no significant roles or performances, so WP:ENTERTAINER isn't met either. No real coverage of any of his published books. GhostOfNoMeme 22:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. GhostOfNoMeme 22:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Law, Politics, and Canada. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 00:03, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - completely unreferenced WP:BLP, which normally would rate a speedy deletion. The problem with what I see online is they are tangential to him (a couple of political new stories where he’s mentioned briefly), books and essays by him - but not about him, and unreliable sources. That results in a situation where there is not significant coverage of him. Sorry. Bearian (talk) 02:38, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I can't prove this is copyvio, since this article was created in 2006, but it's basically identical to his author blurb (see eg on this amazon listing: [1]). -- asilvering (talk) 06:40, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch! Looking through the Wayback archives for his book listings, I noticed one change (the addition of his marriage) appeared in his Amazon bio first, and only later was added to this article. So I'd be inclined to suspect his Amazon author blurb may be the sole source of this article, copied wholesale – especially considering the article is completely unreferenced. But unfortunately Wayback archives are incomplete and don't seem to extend earlier than 2010 for any of his books that I checked, nor for his Amazon author listing, so I can't say for certain. I'd be very curious to compare the earlier ~2006/7 versions of this article with his Amazon bio, but I can't seem to do that via the available archives. GhostOfNoMan 17:28, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although, to be fair, it could be that his Amazon bio is simply copied from this article; but if that were true, I wouldn't expect to have found additions (like where he lives with his wife) that appear in his Amazon bio before appearing in this article. I tried again to find earlier Wayback archives that I could link here to firmly establish this as a wholesale copyvio, but I don't think any early archives exist. So maybe I'm wrong and instead the Amazon bio is copied from here, and the addition of "David Martin lives in Ottawa, Ontario with his wife Cheryl" is the only copy that happened from Amazon→Wikipedia. GhostOfNoMan 23:13, 21 September 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.