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. ✗ plicit 12:21, 22 September 2022 (UTC) reply

Otto Wilhelm Lindholm

Otto Wilhelm Lindholm (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)

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This article came up by way of an ANI complaint, and after some measure of work, it's apparent that the subject just doesn't meet the GNG (or any other relevant notability criterion). The article is overwhelmingly sourced from the subject's own memoirs -- and edited by his own great-grandchildren, and such other sources as are mentioned involved casual and often tangential namedrops. Nor, when the verbiage is boiled down, does this article contain useful and encyclopedic detail beyond a straight CV of the areas he went whaling and the ships he bought.

We wouldn't accept a contemporary bio of a businessman with so little a level of notability, sourced from his own memoirs. It may be an interesting read, but it cannot be used as the basis for notability of its author. Ravenswing 07:22, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Businesspeople and Russia. Ravenswing 07:22, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply
• Delete "Between the fall of 1861 and the spring of 1862, Lindholm traveled across Siberia by sleigh and steamer to Nikolayevsk. From there he sailed in a small sloop to the Sea of Okhotsk, where he spent the summer collecting whalebone from the shore left by stranded whales. Beaching his sloop near the mouth of the Uda River, Lindholm and his companions traveled upriver to Udsk for the winter. The following year..." Fails WP:GNG, WP:GOODGRIEF. Okay, I made the second one up. Tendentious minutiae dressing up a non-notable person. Best Alexandermcnabb ( talk) 10:32, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply

  ... and that's after I did some serious pruning of the aforementioned tendentious minutiae. It was twice as long before I started. Ravenswing 11:50, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply

• Delete no claims to notability, just because something's published about someone doesn't make them notable. Canterbury Tail talk 12:54, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply
• Delete because he killed my best pet whale. And other than that, no notion of notability. (PS. I've never had a pet whale.) - UtherSRG (talk) 15:08, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply

  If you need a cetacean, you should talk to tamzin. -- Deepfriedokra ( talk) 15:17, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply

  Actually, my wife DOES have a pet whale. She's an Atlantic humpback, and her name is Midnight. (One of those adoption-to-benefit-the-fund things.) Ravenswing 20:08, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply

• Delete couldn’t find anything resembling a credible source to establish notability. 2604:2D80:6A8D:E200:157B:E272:A36F:CB09 ( talk) 16:49, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply
• Comment - Only thing I found in the National Archives of Finland newspaper archive is this 1926 article (continues on next page), which could be about him. I'm not sure how to concisely characterize the story, but it discusses a Finnish captain called Otto Lindholm who had gone to Russia for seal hunting and had died there c. 1912. It includes a bunch of biographic info, but is written in a style where it doesn't really sound too reliable (e.g. ...where he had died, unless I'm mistaken, in 1912.). The story is ostensibly about the Russian Far East military forces in 1903, but spends a bunch of time talking about the Finnish captain. He is not mentioned in Suomen kansallisbiografia. As for the sourcing currently in the article, Ref #1 seems rather non-independent based on author list. The History of Modern Whaling (Ref #3) appears to have approximately one page of content about him, which is a bit so-and-so in terms of establishing notability but not horrible. It does describe him as a the pioneer of Russian coastal whaling in the Far East, which I think could be be interpreted as a claim for notability. I don't really have visibility to Refs #2, #4, #5 and #6, but Google books gives a bunch of hits in Eurasian Environments (Ref #6) and there's at least a mention or two in the Anderssen book (Ref #5). Does anyone have visibility to these sources? Leaning towards a "weak delete" unless we can get descriptions of refs #2 and #4-6. - Ljleppan ( talk) 21:23, 15 September 2022 (UTC) reply
• Weak delete - as per my rationale/comment above - Ljleppan ( talk) 10:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC) reply
• Delete couldn’t find anything by Googling to find evidence of notability. ZanciD ( talk) 16:15, 17 September 2022 (UTC) reply
• Delete No reliable sources and nothing to prove notability. NMasiha ( talk) 19:10, 18 September 2022 (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.