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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Virginia Good

: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. I am willing to userfy, however. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:11, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

=[[Virginia Good]]=

:{{la|Virginia Good}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Virginia Good}})

No apparent signs of notability. Good is apparently the subject of a biography (Ginny Good: A Mostly True Story) by a little-known writer based on his own personal relationship with her. The book appears to be less a biography of a notable person than a personal memoir of the writer's own youth. (You can read the book for yourself [http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn1.html here]). (Note that the Gerard Jones who authored Ginny Good... is not the same Gerard Jones who has a Wikipedia article, as clearly indicated on the notable Jones' [http://www.gerardjones.com/ website]). WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 15:08, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Added disclaimer, however the biography Ginny Good is not what is being covered here, rather a few brief facts about the person. It should therefore not be considered for deletion on this ground. Moreover, there was no claim that Gerard Jones (author of Ginny Good) was the same author as Gerard Jones. This was made clear by the disclaimer. This point should by no means have any bearing on the deletion or inclusion of this article into Wikipedia. If there is anything further that needs to be clarified before this AfD is removed, then please tell me. Gaggleoffools (talk) 16:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

: My point in making the notes about the authorship of the book Ginny Good... were to establish that neither Good herself nor the author of her "biography" are notable. A person's notability might well be established by the creation of a significant biography of that person by a significant author; that is not the case here. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 17:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Delete no significant secondary sources and does not meet notability guidelines. Warfieldian (talk) 18:31, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:36, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

WikiDan your comments are wrong on both points. She was notable just as the author of the book was notable.

Here's a review that calls it an important book, just as Ginny was an important person.

  • [http://www.januarymagazine.com/biography/ginnygood.html]-http://www.januarymagazine.com/biography/ginnygood.html

Here's what Hank Harrison, manager of the Grateful Dead when they were called "The Warlocks" had to say about her at Amazon:

"Giny Good is a great name for the book because this woman was, although petite in apearence, bigger than life. Anyone who knew her knew she was a big deal on a small planet...she was, without doubt, the quintessential bohemian princess.Get the book and capture the feeling of how things realy were in the Summer of Love. HH"

This makes more than one quantifiable source that she was indeed notable. I am working now to include some other sources -- Stand by. Gaggleoffools (talk) 05:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

BTW, Amazon lists this book and I forgot to include the link where you can find that along with the quotes from people like Hank Harrison said *[http://www.amazon.com/Ginny-Good-Gerard-Jones/dp/0972635750]http://www.amazon.com/Ginny-Good-Gerard-Jones/dp/0972635750 Gaggleoffools (talk) 08:08, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

  • I agree that this entry should be deleted, not because Ginny Good isn't a worthy entry but because Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion is silly and biased. Being the subject and sole title of a prize-winning and acclaimed narrative nonfiction account of San Francisco in the sixties...and a whole lot more...is by no means sufficient for inclusion in such a scholarly undertaking as Wikipedia. Here's a sample of the prizes and acclaim:

:*http://www.monkfishpublishing.com/pages/Ginny-pressrelease2.htm

:*http://januarymagazine.com/features/bestof04nonfiction.html

:*http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/may/29/featuresreviews.guardianreview34

:*http://grumpyoldbookman.blogspot.com/2005/06/gerard-jones-ginny-good.html

:*http://www.januarymagazine.com/biography/ginnygood.html

:*http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=888

:Oh, here's a random sampling of more reviews, too:

:*"Comparisons with Salinger and Twain are not overstated..."

:*"...of all the books I've read, Ginny Good is the only book that had me simultaneously crying my eyeballs out and laughing my head off. Several times throughout, in fact. In a word: WOW."

:*"...turned my soul inside out. Ginny was one of the most lambent pieces of writing I've ever read. It ripped me apart on the inside so much that I couldn't function for days...the best of tragedies, top notch Greek quality..."

:*"I was not reminded of any other book when I put this book down, and so I can only come to one conclusion: this is a great and new kind of literature!"

:*"Though not a short book, it can be read in one gulp-it's so seamless and effortless and is obviously the work of a tremendous craftsman."

:*"...it's great to read a book that actually means something. To the author, and to me. It's heartfelt, real, and incredibly funny."

:*"I've got three kids, and it's been a long time since I had the time, energy, or room within me to let a book suck me in the way this one did. When I got my copy of Lolita, years ago, the cover quote was, 'The only convincing love story of our century.' That was the 20th century, however, and as far as that quote goes, the torch ought to be passed to Ginny Good."

:*"...makes Angela's Ashes look like a Harlequin romance."

:*"I've chosen to take the dark sadness that I found in some parts of Ginny Good and attribute them to the author's skill rather than things he had to endure..."

:*"....Jones cares deeply about everything that befalls him and Ginny and the others we meet in Ginny Good. And he wants us to know he cares, but he wants us to find our own way to that conclusion. It's this intelligent respect for the intelligence of his reader that makes Ginny Good sing."

:*"You are, well, you are the real thing. Your book is the real thing. Absolutely beautiful writing. Damned near perfect. Maybe even flawless. Yow. Thank you."

:*"...for a while I thought the fire of literary creation had gone all the way out. In this book I think I see a coal still glowing in there somewhere."

:Nobody ever heard of her 'cause she was a schizophrenic drunk but she had a pretty big influence on what went on in Haight-Ashbury in the sixties and what went on in Haight-Ashbury had a pretty big influence on international culture for the past fifty years. Here's another quote from Chapter Fourteen. You can read and/or listen to it anywhere, any time, on any device for free:

::http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggcha.html

::''"It breaks my heart sometimes still after all these years to know what Ginny would have been if she hadn't been such a schizophrenic drunk. She would have been a god damn icon. She would have had followers, worshipers, acolytes, an entourage. She would have given Zelda Fitzgerald and Anais Nin and Isadora Duncan and Josephine Baker a run for their money in the memorable chick department." --Gerard Jones, http;//everyonewhosanyone.com

: -- 97.94.225.44 (talk) 17:58, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

::* Comment Based on comments at User talk:97.94.225.44, I'm working on the assumption that this IP user is (or claims to be) Gerard Jones, the author of Ginny Good. The obvious conflict of interest must be noted. That being said...

::: Those are all excellent reviews, and might argue for the notability of Gerard Jones, the author of this book, and possibly even for the notability of the book itself. But they still do not argue for the notability of the subject of the book, Ms Good herself. Claims that Ms Good is notable as "the first hippie" are untenable because there is no verification (other that Mr Jones' saying it in his memoir) that she is the first hippie. Such a claim would be impossible to verify, and can only be taken as hyperbole. Therefore, Ms Good is only "notable" as the subject of this single memoir, which is to say, not really at all.

::: As for the notability of the book or its author: the book received only a handful of reviews at the time of its publication (good reviews, to be sure, but scant few) and has since fallen into relative obscurity, I think it would be a hard argument to call this book notable. (Not all good books are notable, and not all notable books are good. This is unfair, but it is true nonetheless.) And since the author is known only for publishing this single, relatively obscure book, I think an argument for his notability would be difficult to make also. (Again, not all gifted authors are notable, sadly.) WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 13:54, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not logged in and yes I wrote the book called Ginny Good and no it's not a conflict of interest...the book is out-of-print, I don't "profit" from it, in fact I give it away. Here's a quote from the book vis-a-vis the origins of the notion that Virginia Good was "the first hippie."

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn14.html

"...She was the first hippie, for one thing. I've mentioned that. Yeah, well, she was. I have proof. Documentary evidence. You could look it up.

There's a picture of her in the school paper at San Francisco State: The Gater. The picture was taken in the spring of 1963. Ginny's dancing on the lawn across from the library; her hair's kind of in her face, but you can still tell it's her. Jim Moss is in the background, egging her on. And the first time the word "hippie" was used to describe the sort of person who we all know now as a "hippie" was in the caption to that picture. She may even have had some flowers in her hair—which, in my book, makes her the first hippie. Merriam Webster may wish to quibble, but hey, she's got her own damn book. In my book, Ginny Good is the first hippie. Ha!

It wasn't just the picture, either. She was an icon in all kinds of other ways, too. She ironed her hair and put cucumber slices on her eyelids at night. She ate alfalfa sprouts and Northridge Farms Honey Wheatberry Bread and tofu and great vats of zucchini, parsley and green beans, all on the personal recommendation of Dr. Henry Beiler himself. He hung out with Ginny's aunt and the Vedanta Swamis in Laguna Beach and literally wrote the book on hippie food. Check it out. Food is Your Best Medicine, the book was called. While everyone else was still drinking Nehi Grape, Ginny Good was guzzling frothy concoctions of Tiger's Milk, Brewer's Yeast and Blackstrap Molasses. While everyone else was just beginning to catch on to the idea of eating Big Macs and Round Table Pizza, Ginny Good was the first one on her block to cook brown rice to perfection.

Nor did it end there. She was the hippiest little hippie chick who ever lived. She defined the whole idea in about a billion ways. Later on, she carted boxes of her old clothes down to the Digger's store so other chicks could become hippie chicks too, then so did they and so on and so on. It wasn't just a matter of appearances, either. Ginny was all up into astrology, astral projection, past lives, psychic this and New Age that, the I-Ching, Eastern Philosophy, Paul Reps, Alan Watts, Fritz Perls, R. D. Laing, Arthur Koestler, Wilhelm Reich and Sam Lewis—Sufi Sam."

Your definition of "notability" is that some bunch of publicists were paid lots of money to make someone or something "famous" so it would make money for whoever paid them to publacize it. Poor dead Ginny was easily as influential a force in the creation of the culture of the sixties as 99.3 percent of the people with articles about them on Wikipedia. Ask someone who was there. Don't believe everything some bunch of well-paid publicists con you into believing. Notability can be bought. Authenticity can't. The kid who stuck the article up in the first place is over in Japan and probably has other things on his mind at the moment. G.

Gerard Jones

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggcha.html

97.94.225.44 (talk) 15:34, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

It would be a great shame if this story ended here. Nasnema  Chat  15:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

: Reply to Nasnema What Wikipedia policy allows for the inclusion of articles because it would be a great shame if a story ended? Please keep AFD discussions focused on the relevant policies. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 11:30, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's a cursory sampling of other "notable" people or groups with whom Ginny Good interacted and/or influenced in one way or another:

Sandy Good, Charlie Manson, Squeaky Fromme, Donna McKechnie, Michael Bennett, Jill Clayburgh, Gordon Lish, Ken Kesey, The Charlatans, Jefferson Airplane, Sopwith Camel, Sons of Champlin, Moby Grape, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Emmett Grogan, Steve Gaskin, Hank Harrison, Courtney Love, Pigpen, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Neal Cassidy, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Gia-fu Feng, Sufi Sam, Phil Schultz, etc. Look 'em up. Man, could I ever not care less whether you stick her in your little dictionary or not. G.

Gerard Jones

http://everyonewhosanyone.com

97.94.225.44 (talk) 16:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

: Reply to IP: If you have "documentary evidence" that Ginny Good is the first ever hippie, please provide a citation to that fact in the article. If that fact can be proven, then Good may be notable as claimed. Otherwise not. Any associations that Good may have had with other famous and/or notable people is irrelevant; a person is notable on their own, not because of whom they know. And whether or not you stand to make a profit from your book, your conflict of interest stems from the fact that you believe Good to be notable because you wrote a book about her. The question isn't whether you think she is notable, but whether she meets the criteria for inclusion that have been set down by Wikipedia. If you don't like those criteria, then by all means take up a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) to change the criteria. But the criteria as they stand now preclude an article on Ms Good. As you and I have both made our thoughts on this topic quite clear, why don't we both take a rest from this discussion and let other voices be heard. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 11:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I gave you the citation: "There's a picture of her in the school paper at San Francisco State: The Gater. The picture was taken in the spring of 1963. Ginny's dancing on the lawn across from the library; her hair's kind of in her face, but you can still tell it's her. Jim Moss is in the background, egging her on. And the first time the word "hippie" was used to describe the sort of person who we all know now as a "hippie" was in the caption to that picture." Look it up.

Your flawed thoughts are clear to me but mine are obviously not clear to you. Your criteria are biased. If Tom Brokaw tells you the emperor is wearing a fine suit of new clothes you say, oh, yes, and ignore the kid tugging at your sleeve, trying to tell you that Tom Brokaw doesn't know his ass from his elbow. The book called "Ginny Good" is a primary source. It was edited by David Stanford, Kesey's editor for awhile and now part of the Dunesbury staff, and vetted by the law firm that handles Allen Ginsberg's estate. That it didn't get a lot of hype is testimony to it's authenticity. The gatekeepers of Wikipedia want second-hand "facts," not first-hand knowledge. If you read the book, as the guy over in Japan who put the original article up DID, you would instantly apprehend Ginny's "notability," but you're not gonna read the book, you're gonna believe what Tom Brokaw tells you to believe and you're gonna be misled and misinformed and your thoughts are gonna continue to be flawed. Ginny's been dead for thirty years; neither she nor I have any stake whatsoever in seeing an article about her in Wikipedia. Exclude her. Fine. Knock yourselves out. Keep sticking in recycled Tom Brokaw opinions about the elegance of the emperor's new clothes. But the kid over in Japan who thought she should be included had good reason to want her included or he wouldn't have tried to include her. Oh, oh, I found a picture of her:

http://www.classherder.com/memoriamdetail?id=10900&cls=pointloma59

Pretty cute, huh? Ah, but would Tom Brokaw think so? G.

Gerard Jones

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch07m.mp3

97.94.224.14 (talk) 15:16, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I've got my hands full with all kinds of disaster over here in Tokyo. I feel that some inclusion as to first hand accounts of a persons notability should be appended into the Wikipedia system. So many famous people know her and can account to her notability. I wish some of them could find this article and append to these notes. As soon as I can I will be posting more to this. Thanks for your understanding while I'm in this crisis. Gaggleoffools (talk) 04:20, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

:Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Logan Talk Contributions 00:10, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Delete - Seems non-notable, though the author of the book itself might be able to make a case. The website referenced by the ip is entirely unreliable however - full of conspiracy rants and anti-semitic comments. Also brought up an anti-virus warning to let other editors know. Skinny87 (talk) 09:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete That she is important to people who knew her personally does not confer wider notability. —Lowellian (reply) 10:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Man, I just wrote all kinds of gorgeous stuff but when I was trying to stick in your little tildas the whole thing exploded...rats. I'm not gonna try to recreate it. It was good, though. I'll talk instead about the website you call "entirely unreliable." That's a crock. The site has been online and hosted by a reputable hosting company for ten years and, to my knowledge, does NOT elicit an "anti-virus warning." Why someone would say that, I do not know. Some kind of smear campaign? Probably. Here's a quote about one small part of the site from the NY Times:

"Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing (www.everyonewhosanyone.com): One of the great treasures of the Web, this site is a listing of every agent and publisher the writer Gerard Jones contacted in his quest to get his various manuscripts published -- in other words, everyone who's anyone. Jones has reproduced many of his e-mail exchanges with his targets verbatim, which in some cases makes the publishing community look like decent, sensitive people doing the best work they can in a difficult field (here's to you, Daniel Menaker!). Other times, not so much. Either way, the site will tell you more about the book world than any five How-to-Publish treatises combined."

"Ginny Good" is one of the books on the site. It's a good book...read some of the reviews. Not many people read it. Not many people read "The Great Gatsby" until twenty years after it was published. Same with "Sister Carrie." Kafka died before any of his books were published. Fortune in men's eyes ain't all its cracked up to be. You guys have Ginny's sister Sandy in your little encyclopedia 'cause she hung out with Charlie Manson. Whoopdeedoo. Here's a comparison of Ginny and Sandy:

"All I personally remember about Sandy is that she used to work as a sales clerk at the Emporium on Market Street. She sold scarves and plastic headbands and was a lot less charismatic than Ginny—less compelling, more drab. That was before she shaved herself bald, carved a swastika into her forehead and hung out with the rest of the Manson chicks chanting spooky stuff outside the Hall of Justice in L.A., and way before she and Squeaky set up their own website."

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn02.html

Ginny was a subtle and ubiquitous influence on the phenomenon of San Francisco in the sixties. She was there when Kesey told Lish about selling the rights to Cuckoo's Nest to Kirk Douglas for ten grand. Sam Lewis, "Sufi Sam," gave her the name "Mumtaz" 'cause he thought she was a notable person. Remind me to tell you what she did with Cassidy sometime, or better still just read and/or listen to the book anywhere, any time on any device and see for yourself. It's free. Like me. G.

Gerard Jones

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch103clip.mp3

96.39.161.35 (talk) 15:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Comment. I'm not going to rule out the possibility that Good may have been notable enough to warrant an encyclopedia article, but this article needs significant cleanup. If her claim to notability is as the first known hippie, that needs to be mentioned a lot earlier in the article, like the first paragraph or maybe even the first sentence. Right now, if one starts reading the article from the top, it looks like Good's claim to notability is as the daughter of a stamp collector or something like that. Furthermore, the article claims that Good died at a young age, but gives no indication of what year or even decade she died in. Basically, this article needs to look a lot more like a traditional Wikipedia biography, with inline references and such, as well as being better organized to indicate the subject's notability. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:23, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree about cleaning up the article...its substance was taken from a biography subtitled "A mostly true story." A few names of non-public people were changed--there was no "Roger Singmaster," for example...well, there was but his name wasn't Singmaster. Jim Moss was a fake name, too, as was Pigpen's girlfriend, Mary whatever I called her.

According to Wikipedia's article on hippies, the earliest known use of the word "hippie" was in November of 1964. I saw an article in the SF State Newspaper called "The Gater" which used the word "hippie" in the caption of a picture of Ginny Good dancing on the lawn in front of the library in the Spring of 1963. I don't have the paper, nor do I know whether it still exists, but I know what I saw. That's the thing about a primary source. If someone dug up a first-hand account of the seige of Troy written by one of the Greek soldiers, Wikipedia would dismiss it 'cause it wasn't written by Homer.

I didn't write the article, I wrote the book. What Wikipedia does with the article on Ginny is of no consequence to me. I was there. I don't need Homer to tell me what happened. G.

Gerard Jones

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/other.html

96.39.165.78 (talk) 14:08, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

::Re: Homer. WP:PRIMARY, GJ, like most WP rules, is a matter of expedience that WP has carved into a silent and important-looking stone for us all to genuflect at. The real rationale is that hardly anyone at WP knows you, so it is impractical to take your word for it. I can empathize with both you and WP, truly, I just sometimes wish WP would grow a spine and admit that the rules are there for the convenience of the running of WP, rather than being a mandate handed down by God. Anarchangel (talk) 02:31, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

::: Despite the cynicism of {{user|Anarchangel}}, the policy stated at WP:PRIMARY serves a very important purpose at Wikipedia. We are building an encyclopedia here, a compendium of verifiable facts. Primary sources are essentially the writing of a subject about themself, with no editorial fact-checking, and therefore cannot be used to objectively verify the facts in an encyclopedia article. However, that point is irrelevant here. The book Ginny Good is not a primary source, because Ms Good did not write it herself, nor did Mr Jones write the encyclopedia article himself, so there is not a question of relying on primary sources. The only problem with this article is one of notability. As far as I can tell from any argument made here, Ms Good is only "notable" because Mr Jones, an otherwise unknown writer, but a sensational gadfly about the publishing industry, has chosen to call her so based on his personal experience with her, and has written a good, but obscure, book about her. This in no way confers notability upon her. The fact that she moved among a circle of notable friends also does not confer notability, as notability is not inherited. If anyone can make a single argument for the retention of this article based on Wikipedia policies rather than on one's own personal opinions, that might make a difference in this discussion. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 11:32, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

::::Archangel, tagging on to what Wikidan61 said I think it ought to be noted that wp:primary as well as everything else about sourcing (wp:v, wp:rs and so on) are actually for the protection of article subjects as much as they are for the protection of wikipedia. Yes protection, not convenience. Without the ability to independently verify truth it is impossible to know if information inserted into an article is true or not. the requirement that every fact is proven true in a way that can be verified and every article contains only those on whom there is verified importance protects subjects from unverified half-truths and lies as well as protecting the reputation of Wikipedia as a whole. I never understand COI article writers fighting over RS and sourcing requirements, they are there to protect them as much as anything. HominidMachinae (talk) 08:38, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for renewing the article so I can have more time to clean it up. This was my 1st Wiki article, and I am really learning about Wiki syntax, etc. I thought I could just cram in all the details originally and come back and clean it up later. It's getting there but needs more work. Anyways, I just left Japan for awhile and got to Texas so I'll have time to clean it up. Appreciate your understanding during this trying time. 70.140.96.75 (talk) 01:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the article quite a bit to reflect more direct points and also mentioned the word "hippie" earlier in the article as mentioned. The result is much easier to read. I'm also trying to find a copy of The Gator article mentioning Ginny. Please let me know your comments if anything needs to be changed in the meantime. Thanks! Gaggleoffools (talk) 01:08, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh my stars and garters, that "hardly anyone" at WP "knows me" makes Ginny Good non-notable? Let's all live in a solipsistic submarine. One of the strengths of WP is that, as I understand it, it was designed to encourage hitherto "unknown" sources to come out the woodwork and make worthwhile contributions to its living body of knowledge. Virginia Good was a major, heavy-duty catalyst in the ongoing phenomonon of the culture of the sixties. How does one define and verify the effects of catalysts? They don't do diddly themselves and yet without them the reactions everyone goes around bragging about wouldn't have happened. There are subtleties that go on among blunt facts. If you ignore the subtleties the facts are worthless. I wrote a book that quantifies Ginny as such a catalyst, that shows her subtle influence on the "notable" people with whom she interacted. The kid who wrote the article about her READ the book, recognized the significance of those qualities, and wrote an article about her for WP. She didn't just "hang out" with all the notable people mentioned above (and a bunch more mentioned in the book), she interacted with them, she influenced them, she affected them, she had a hand in making them "notable," and making their contributions worth sticking in WP. Let's spend more time looking a gift horse in the mouth. G.

96.39.165.78 (talk) 16:30, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

:Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:12, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Relisting comment: This is an unusually long AfD to relist, but I feel that some of Mr. Jones's concerns have still gone unaddressed (partly because the one-liner "delete" !votes are not enough to say much). Do the reviews make the book notable? If the book does not make her notable, is it because the author is affiliated with the subject or because it is not significant enough? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:17, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete Due to the lack of notability and relevant references. I fail to see how the Amazon review page is a reference, as it falls under self-published sources (not to mention that the quote is taken from a profile named 'Hank Harrison', supposedly the same Hank Harrison who was the manager for the Grateful Dead, yet this book review is the only activity on said Amazon account). Also, notability is not inherited. Famous people knowing her does not make her notable. She did nothing notable other than apparently "knowing people". This is not enough to warrant an inclusion in Wikipedia, especially without relevant third-party sources to verify her notability, which are not in the article, and I was unable to find any through various search engines. - SudoGhost (talk) 08:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Delete as non-notable. Even if the biography passed WP:RS muster, which I would think unlikely, one source does not confer notability. I can't find any other sources that even mention her, much less cover her in the requisite detail. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:55, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment As I've mentioned before (a point which may have been lost in the noise), the book received some good reviews, and apparently an award. Thus, the book might pass WP:NB, and, as an award-winning author, the author of the book might pass WP:CREATIVE. However, since the book is essentially a "mostly true" memoir of the author's experiences with the subject, the subject herself does not pass WP:BIO. I emphasize the "might" in the prior sentence because I don't actually believe either of those things to be true, but that is a topic for another AFD, should an article be created on either of those subjects. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 10:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, boys and girls, that Hank Harrison would go to all the trouble of creating an Amazon profile just to talk about Ginny Good fifty years after he knew her has to say something about her "notability." I don't lie. The Audio Book of Ginny Good is the best, most important work of literary art made anywhere in the world so far this century. Listen to it and see for yourselves. It's free. Here's a whole page of reviews, including the Hank Harrison review:

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggrev.html

This one's kind of slick...I left it out of the others I listed above:

http://www.chronogram.com//issue/2004/07/bookshelf/reviews.php

WP devotes a lot of bandwidth to "hippies" and has thus far ignored the definitive books about San Francisco in the sixties, i.e., "Ginny Good" and "The Audio Book of Ginny Good." As the title of said book, Ginny's gotta have some kind of notability. Here's an excerpt from Chapter Twelve which takes place in March of 1964 and says more about the "origins" of "hippie" culture than any Wiki article I've read...and that's just half a chapter out of thirty-five.

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch12clip.mp3

All that WP says about hippies "Ginny Good" sums up in two short paragraphs:

"...the whole hippie thing was over by 1966. A few minds got blown on acid. That was it. The culture was ripe. It had nothing to do with the war or civil rights or free speech. All that riding around in flower-power VW busses was the commercialization of the experience. The music, long hair, beads, dope, bare feet, brown rice, free love, Mr. Natural, psychedelic art, Timothy Leary turning and tuning and dropping, Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid hogwash, Cassady tooling Kesey's Merry Pranksters around in their funky bus—all that was nothing but advertising by people who'd already taken acid to get other people to take acid, and by then the advertising was getting mistaken for the only thing that really went on. A few minds got blown on acid. That was it."

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/ggsyn22.html

"Then it was the summer of 1967, "The Summer of Love." Scott McKenzie sang his dork song about how everybody ought to go to San Francisco and wear some fucking flowers in their hair. It was far out. It was groovy. It was over. Then it was early October, the Fall of Love. All the hippies gave Haight Street a funeral and Ginny got her ass thrown in jail. The guards squirted mace in her face. The skin peeled away from around her eyes. She looked like a raccoon."

http://everyonewhosanyone.com/audio/GGch23m.mp3

That the book is not an "original source" 'cause Ginny didn't write it isn't entirely accurate, either. She did write some of it, like this for instance:

"Sandy is a total hippie who was living with the Beach Boys in Malibu and now is with prospectors in the desert teaching Dean Martin's daughter how to lose her ego. They cluck their tongues about what bad shape Mia Farrow and Nanci Sinatra's heads are in, altho Miss Farrow gave away her clothes and is living ascetically, 'she just can't give up her image.' I would certainly like to see my sister after reading her letters. She hikes barefoot in the desert forever, and she used to deride my mystical propensities. She is an Aquarian—Pisces cusp—which goes right along with what she is now doing. An absolutely rebellious, unconventional mystic. I sort of envy her."

"The Autoboigraphy of Alice B. Toklas" wasn't written by Alice, or did you know that already? G.

96.39.167.145 (talk) 14:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

  • Delete but maybe Userfy to allow this to be converted into a a properly written and sourced article about the book. Here's independent confirmation that the book won the 2005 Independent Publisher Book Award for Autobiography/Memoir.[http://www.independentpublisher.com/department.php?page=985] That plus the other press (for example the interesting Guardian review) might support a book article. The Independent Publisher article, entitled [http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=888 "Way Cool: Gerard Jones Finally Gets Published! The long-suffering creator of the popular Everyone Who's Anyone In Publishing website gets his book published. So why is he still so cranky?"] is useful background as well. This AfD has become deeply confused, but I agree with WikiDan61 that the evidence just isn't here to support the notability, in the Wikipedia sense, of the subject of this article.--Arxiloxos (talk) 15:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

You guys don't know how lucky you are. I had all kinds of eloquent stuff written in here that would've demolished your craven notion of "notability" and just as I was about to save it lightning knocked my computer out for about one second and it all went away. Rats. Oh, well. If you stick in the book, which according to the Library of Congress is a biography, wouldn't it be sort of silly not to stick in the subject of the biography, i.e. the girl named Ginny Good? I say don't stick in either of them. Who needs more hype disguised as reliable information? Not me. G.

96.39.167.145 (talk) 15:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

: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.