Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eugene P. Watson
Well again, I don't think that anyone is claiming that references that aren't on the 'Net must not exist.  Of course there are other references and of course researching them takes time.  I'm not denying that, and I don't ''think'' anyone else is, either.  But the "burden of proof" in providing references lies with the article creator and/or those who wish to keep the content.  I freely acknowledge that there may indeed be such non-Internet references about Mr. Watson.  So if they are produced, I will not be stubborn, and I will change my vote accordingly and be happy to do so. In the absence of such explicit references, though,  is the guideline we use as to whether the subject can be expected to ultimately prove notable.  And in my opinion, Mr. Watson does not meet those guidelines.  Might a {{Notability}} tag been placed on the article prior to an AfD nomination?  Indeed, that might be a good way to go first.  I usually do so before I nominate for deletion.  However, I'll confess that in the case of ''this'' author, I am not always quite so diligent, since from my past attempts with him, I feel pretty confident that his response to such a tag is not going to be actually go out and research and provide better references, but rather to either ignore the tag altogether or to reply to it by insisting that the article's references are fine as they are.  With that background in mind, I have at times just gone straight to AfD with this author's article rather than bother with the non-notable tag first.  I probably should be more procedural about it regardless of my knowledge of the author's patterns, but since I have to admit that I haven't always been so, I can't really throw stones at this nominator over the issue either. As for the rest of the above, I hope I haven't given the impression I would ''ever'' defend such a practice as deleting the assertion of notability and then nominating AfD.  I agree with you that that's pretty awful.  I just don't see that that occurring on that article is germane to my vote on this article.  And with regard to how this nomination could have been better, as I note above, I agree with you and do not defend the wording of the original nomination here (beyond stating that I think it likely it was an honest mistake and don't see any reason to put it in the same category as something as nefarious as deleting the assertion of notability from an article and then nominating based on it failing to assert). I freely acknowledge that the path taken to get to this point was imperfect; but now that we are here, I still don't see that this article, with the references currently provided, meets 
— User:Mwelch, 22:09, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Stance: comment
Cited policy: WP:BIO||WP:BIO (Wikipedia:Notability)