[WikiEN-l] Deletionism

[Ilmari Karonen]

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> 
> I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but take
> for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest sailor to
> cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
> because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to cross
> the Atlantic". Clearly that's crystal-ballery, but a mere Google search
> would've shown he already finished the trip at the time and that there was
> plenty of news articles to use as sources.

While that was certainly a mistake, it (unfortunately) seems quite 
understandable to me.  If you've ever done newpages patrol even briefly, 
you've probably encountered several kids who are "going to be the 
youngest person to" sail across the Atlantic, fly to the Moon, win the 
Nobel prize, etc.  As a rule, they're all utterly non-notable.

Yes, Googling does often help catch the few that actually are notable. 
It was precisely for that reason that I originally wrote myself a user 
script that adds a "Google for this title" link to the toolbox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts/Scripts/Google_link

-- 
Ilmari Karonen