Talk:Hugh Atkin

Latest comment: 15 years ago by Vasant56 in topic Arguments For Deletion

Arguments For Deletion

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I feel compelled to propose the deletion of this article under Wikipedia's guideline of People only notable for one event . For those who aren't familiar with the context, Hugh Atkin created a video called the Barack Roll which is a Barack Obama related parody of the Rick Roll phenomenon that was released during the 2008 Presidential election.

Atkin's video, while funny, is really just a parody of a video that is essentially a parody of something else. Viral videos aren't uncommon, with new ones being released monthly. With a view count of 6 million, the Barack Roll is hardly the most popular video, with videos such as Star Wars Kid attaining over 900 million views. Still, it is one of the few that have a dedicated article for its creator (even though the video wasn't considered notable enough to have a dedicated article for itself). Ultimately, keeping this article might set a precedent for all viral video creators to try and get an article on Wikipedia in the future. While I have no qualms with the videos themselves appearing on Wikipedia, having biographies of the creators might begin to dilute the quality of the website.

Secondly, while his video was notable at one point in time, combined with the decline of the popularity of the "Rick Roll", since the election, the popularity of video has dwindled further. As the video falls more and more into obscurity, there is less of a need to have an article about its creator.

Lastly, looking at the sources I feel his fame seems to be localized to Australia, and most of his supporters seem to be from the region. While he does have a few other sources, they are mainly political blogs from the 2008 election that mention the video, and most just highlight Atkin in passing.

Ultimately I feel that since the video wasn't notable enough to have its own article, it creator isn't notable enough to have his own either. Doing so will only set a precedent for other one-off video creators in the future. Further, the the video's popularity has diminished greatly since the election, and it seems that all notoriety was limited to the election period. Lastly, while Atkin video did get some buzz from political blogs at the time, most of his popularity came from Australia where he was considered a local celebrity for creating it. Vasant56 (talk) 16:19, 22 February 2009 (UTC)Reply

Argument Against Deletion

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I only first heard of Hugh Atkin 10 minutes ago, but I believe he is of sufficient importance (even if still low importance) for a Wikipedia article. Just in the last week, his name appeared in a major newspaper, in a pictorial of the Prime Minister's first year in office (The Australian: Kevin Rudd's First Year in Office). This article has saved me a lot of Googling to find out more about the man. MikZ (talk) 21:11, 27 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Atkin writes about his page

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Atkin is a Wikipedian and is aware of this page. He has considered editing it. He wrote about this here:http://hmatkin.blogspot.com/2008/11/not-notable.html. I'd be in favour of keeping the page. Good work Hugh, your videos are hilarious. -- Aronzak (talk) 11:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)Reply