A fact from Ron Hackenberger appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 March 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that Ron Hackenberger is selling his collection of 700 vehicles, including over 250 Studebakers?
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Why is this even an article... there's nothing notable here. The sources, while there, seem utterly thin. This article is a big so what?. The fact that the article made DYK is interesting, but looking at the DYK discussion makes clear that the review didn't cite any in depth review of criteria -- it was very cursory. The article itself reads as a promotion -- and one has to seriously wonder if the entire point was in fact to promote an auction? Clearly the article rests on the one fact that this wealthy man owned a large collection of cars. Again, so what? 842U (talk) 13:43, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
What policy-based argument are you trying to make? How more precisely does the article not meet our notability criteria? Edwardx (talk) 20:51, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
wp:Notability: "In general, notability is an attempt to assess whether the topic has "gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time as evidenced by significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic."
wp:Notability: "Publication in a reliable source is not always good evidence of notability:
wp:Notability: "Wikipedia is not a promotional medium. Self-promotion, autobiography, product placement and most paid material are not valid routes to an encyclopedia article. The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the topic itself (or of its manufacturer, creator, author, inventor, or vendor) have actually considered the topic notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works of their own that focus upon it—without incentive, promotion, or other influence by people connected to the topic matter."
wp:Notability: Independent sources are also needed to guarantee a neutral article can be written; see Wikipedia:Autobiography for discussion of neutrality concerns of self-published sources. Even non-promotional self-published sources, like technical manuals that accompany a product, are still not evidence of notability as they are not a measure of the attention a subject has received."
The article feels like its only reason for existing is to promote the pending auction. There are no truly independent sources that suggest otherwise. There is no suggestion that the topic is of any larger importance. There is no suggestion the topic is interested to people independent of the topic itself. There are no non-trivial works about the subject. There is no suggestion the subject has gained significant attention by the world at large — or attention over a period of time. It appears that most of the sources are regurgitating the same information — and though it appears there are many sources, they're mostly all cribbed off the same wire reports. The DYK review appears cursory, at best. It's obvious also that the auction house itself is used as a source, a source which by definition has a direct conflict of interest on the subject of the article.
The next step is for the creator of the article to see if there are any other reliable sources that would suggest Ron Hackenberger is of any wider notability, or that his collection is of wider importance or significance -- for example, if say the Smithsonian Institution or Henry Ford Museum or some other noted museum with an automotive collection had expressed an interest or somehow vetted the collection for wider significance — or a resource more distant and of broader interest that identified the collections significance beyond its mere size. Another alternative would be to suggest merging this article with another article -- possibly Studebaker, but again, why?
Short of success in establishing wider, non-commercial interest; or finding a place for some of the content to be merged, the article will be nominated for deletion.842U (talk) 21:35, 10 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
