Sally Boazman, known to her legions of fans as "Sally Traffic", no longer appears in Wikipedia. Why not? Apparently asking David Gerard gets the job done.

Quick and definitely dirty AFD here, and discussion of the circumstances leading up to it here.

If you book her as a speaker, be sure not to look directly at her, because she is apparently a very private person. Ask her to sign her book while she's there.

Can't see the issue; just because David Gerard is often wrong doesn't mean he's wrong on this occasion. Some public figures are important enough to warrant coverage regardless of whether or not they object to it, but the woman who reads out the afternoon traffic reports on Radio 2 is not at that level. There are enough BLP nightmares like Murder of Imette St. Guillen floating around on Wikipedia already, without having to keep adding more to the BLP pot just because the subject can be proven to exist.

Oddly enough, it is the fact that Mr "Dancing on Skulls" receives a personal approach and magically things get done right (and they want to keep the BBC sweet) yet people with real issues try and get things done and volunteers "hop on to them" not the article.


However, what it does show is that the drip, drip, drip of pointing out the potential damage has had an effect, and the "Wikipedia answers to no-one" attitude has been broken even amongst the old guard.

Good. One less shitty BLP to maintain. Less work for me.

Seconded. Obscure people who haven't done much don't get regularly looked at by either editors or readers, increasing the chances of libelous and incorrect info staying around for a long time. Smaller the number of articles on people like this, the more we can focus on not hitting the news because we've declared that Jim Carey ripped his anus open doing an Ace Venture reenactment, or something.

Doesn't David work for the BBC? Isn't this a conflict of interest?

That said, I have no problem with the deletion; Wikipedia doesn't need an article about a minor celebrity figure. Although it does impair its status as the web's best collection of pop culture trivia.

It also points out that the best way to get your article fixed is to inveigle yourself with one of Wikipedia's inner circle. Trying to get fair treatment via the published process is hopeless. Unfortunately, getting access to that inner circle is difficult.

David didn't really do anything apart from telling her how to email OTRS

Do you mean MY tax is paying for THAT man??

Isn't - or, rather, wasn't - this a BLP article and therefore in the non-searchable subforum?

It is quite wrong to get an article deleted because of who you know. They should just have sensible notability criteria and implement them rigorously and consistently. (Easier said than done, doubtless.) After all, that's what any proper encyclopaedia does.

No, not yet anyway - we haven't actually discussed any personal details about Ms. Boazman, other than the fact that she works for the BBC. That might be embarrassing for her, but if she only does the weather I doubt she'd care. It always rains in England anyway.


There's nothing wrong or right about it - they should simply extend the same considerations to everyone that they extended to Ms. Boazman. There is no hope of Wikipedia ever having "sensible notability criteria" - that concept is practically the very definition of the term "moving goalposts."

And needless to say, a proper encyclopedia would never have included an article on Boazman in the first place. Traditional encyclopedias probably do have something similar to "notability criteria," but the crucial difference is that their notability criteria are used to determine who should be in, not who stays (or gets) out.

Eh? I thought she did traffic?

Same same, though, there's always tailbacks on M-25.

I must have gotten confused after listening to the most recent Fountains of Wayne album...?

One of these silly Yank delusions. There's less rain in London than New York but whoever heard an American say it always rains there? And there's less fog in london than in Los Angeles.

That's not fog in Los Angeles...

In San Fransisco, on the other hand . . .

Looks like Britain's most popular traffic reporter will be making a comeback.

At the moment, "Sally Boazman" redirects to "BBC Radio 2" where they list dozens of people. Boazman is one of the few who does not have an article or a redlink. If she's less notable than all these others, why is she even mentioned in the article?

Gerard doesn't work for the BBC.


Correct.

SOME of it is. It was the Valley of Smokes to the Indians, long before autos.

It's not raining at the moment, nor has it rained all day!

Indeed, we are in something of a heatwarm wave.

We are? Well it rained on me today.

Sally's back and heading for the mainpage via DYK. That'll teach her to complain about her Wikipedia article.

This is of note.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Del...09_September_15

That may be the single lamest Wikipedia article I've ever seen.

Have you seen [[White Ox]]?