 | This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2011 July 19. For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review. |
- 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, although this will probably require some explanation. For the benefit of anyone wandering to this AfD after the fact, Ellen Kennedy is a Canadian actress who primarily works as a voice actor, providing voices and dubbing for foreign-language works and the like. The question is over whether or not she passes WP:NACTOR, specifically criteria 1, which states that a person is notable if they "[have] had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions". Those editors arguing for the article to be kept point to Kennedy's long string of voice acting roles, and the fact that she won a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award. Those arguing in favour of deletion state that voice acting does not on its own confer notability without reliable sources, and that there is no evidence that the Jessie Awards are notable, the sole citation coming from the Award's website.
The answer is to be found in the intention behind secondary notability guidelines such as WP:NACTOR. Wikipedia is built on the principle of verifiability, which is precisely why the general notability guideline and its subsidiaries mandate multiple, reliable third-party sources - the intention is to avoid having material that is not verifiable to such a source. If an article's subject is covered by third-party sources, chances are we can write an article in which every potentially controversial statement is verifiable. As well as these guidelines, there are also the secondary notability guidelines, such as WP:NACTOR. These operate on the principle that if someone is "important" enough, they will most likely be covered by reliable sources, and as such we should have an article on them and wait for additional sourcing to turn up. The question thus becomes whether or not voice acting is "important" enough that it will have coverage.
Keep commentators state that voice actors are not given the media coverage that they are due. This is fair enough. It also means that an article can't be justified under WP:NACTOR; secondary guidelines exist on the proviso that the person's role means they will, somewhere, be covered by the media or other sourcing. In the absence of such sourcing, and in a situation where even those in favour of keeping the article agree that sourcing is unlikely to turn up, such an article does not fall within the spirit of either the primary or secondary notability guidelines. Ironholds (talk) 03:00, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]