Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victor Cannella

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. RL0919 (talk) 19:13, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Victor Cannella (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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I simply could not find any sourcing to verify that this Victor Cannella ever existed. The only source cited is IMDb, which is user-generated and thus unreliable; my search of Newspapers.com, Google Books, the Internet Archive, ProQuest, etc. found no coverage at all. I suspect this is a hoax (indeed, the editor who created it had a history of unconstructive edits), and in any event it is unverifiable. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:02, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Bands and musicians-related deletion discussions. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:02, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:02, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Italy-related deletion discussions. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:02, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: there are literally no reliable sources at all about this person, so even if it isn't a hoax, the article doesn't pass WP:BASIC. He isn't credited on any of the animations that he is supposed to have played on, so either he didn't exist or he was simply a session musician and doesn't pass WP:MUSICBIO. Richard3120 (talk) 20:24, 28 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete We hold IMDb to not be a reliable source. We should have 0 articles with this as the only listed source, instead we have thousands if not tens of thousands of such articles.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:57, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I'm getting some hits on the name with location in LA in Ancestry, but only on voter registrations, not in census records or anything else that would help me confirm a profession. Exact searching for this name ONLY would be a mistake. If he indeed existed and was born in Italy or was of Italian descent, his name was probably something more like Vittorio and his last name was probably spelled different ways--maybe with double Ns and Ls, maybe single, maybe a mixture; and wildcard that e for other vowels. I've added him to my weekend research list this weekend. Probably a delete, but I'll look anyway. --DiamondRemley39 (talk) 14:17, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  DiamondRemley39, I did actually check the genealogical sites (which are usually pretty good about searching for spelling variations with Soundex and the like), and the basic problem is that nothing lines up with the dates we've been given, particularly the very specific death date of February 3, 1946 (in Florida, according to IMDb). I don't seem to have Ancestry access anymore, so would you mind telling me what the voter registrations say? The street address might be useful. Thanks in advance. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:07, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  Extraordinary Writ, good stuff.

  I can't say where he was when or why (or even *if* he was...), but here are some things...

  • Victor Cognina Cannella marries Marie Scozzaro Baio in Hillsborough, Florida on January 24, 1936.
  • Voter registration, Los Angeles County, California, 1944, 1946: **Cannella, Victor, 455 E 134th St, occupation: aircraft worker (only given 1944).
  • Voter registration, San Francisco, California, 1936: Victor A Canilla, 825 Howard, San Francisco, occupation: cook.

  I didn't find any good hits in member trees, though I didn't look very hard. I also didn't check Family Search. My work is piling up and I'm not sure I'll have time to do all of those things. I may just check for him in Proquest Entertainment Industry over the weekend.

  I don't like to say hoax or not without solid evidence or lack of evidence, but the very first draft of the article didn't even have an IMDb link. The cause of death changed from cardiac problems to polio between an early draft and now. Seems the person who thought this wasn't a hoax was a (regrettably) late admin, who added IMDb as a citation. I am scratching my head over the IMDb edits. It is difficult to get IMDb edited--much more difficult than to get anything on Wikipedia edited--but maybe several years ago it was easier; I don't know. I'll look a bit more. I'm leaning hoax. Wouldn't surprise me if the creator had a relative by this name, or something like that. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 19:41, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  The first one is this fellow, a "retired dental technician" and "lifelong resident of the Tampa Bay area" (i.e. Hillsborough County) who lived c. 1911–1987—definitely not a match. The other two are surprisingly difficult to place, but I find it rather hard to believe that either a cook or an aircraft worker would be performing in Hollywood on the side. FamilySearch finds me a few more people with similar names, but they're mostly farmers from Louisiana with birth dates that don't match. It is a bit odd that IMDb would be so far off the mark here, but there have been plenty of horror stories about their questionable or non-existent fact-checking: see e.g. here. (Indeed, they may have accepted it just because it had a Wikipedia article.) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • "Florida" Cannella: WWII draft card has him born 1910. Correct, not a match.
  • "San Francisco" Cannella: I would think that an elderly immigrant pianist might find himself working as a cook on the side during the Depression... or maybe a cook with piano skills lucked out and got work in films that early on? Seems unlikely that this is happening with him living in a different part of the state, though people did get around.
  • "Los Angeles" Cannella: Aircraft worker at 70+? Quite unlikely, even during the war.
  • Another: "New York" Victor Cannella, b. about 1887 in Italy, working in NYC in sanitation in 1940. Another no.
  • Louisiana: Concur these are not matches.

  I once found IMDb off by 25 years on a death... and it was a front-page of major newspapers suicide. ::shrug:: They don't fact-check, or they didn't at one time.

  I'm at 99.9% hoax. Looks like a hoax, sounds like a hoax. One more database to check. Possibly tomorrow. Let me know if you find anything else, @Extraordinary Writ. It's been nice to collaborating on the research. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 13:20, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - I don't think this is a hoax because a man of this name has some credits as a musician in a few classic Warner Bros. cartoons (at least according to a fan community that is usually pretty good at historical research). But that just indicates that he was a working studio musician like thousands of other people. Delete per WP:EXIST. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 13:53, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  @Doomsdayer520: I'd love for it to not be a hoax. Where do you see that a fan community contributed to research on Cannella or at least credits him as a musician? Can you please provide some links or something?

  So far, we've got:

  • 0 credits, actually, on IMDb--everything is uncredited.
  • 0 radio credits at Radio GoldIndex, so he's not working in that industry.
  • Nothing in newspapers.com, newspaperarchive, Proquest newspaper major dailies
  • No loosely matching name/date/location in Ancestry, Family Search, Find a Grave... and we're not even looking for occupation.
  • No authority records indicating anyone at Library of Congress or elsewhere has seen anything
  • Most importantly: WP page history is sketchy, with one key contributor, changing info, and no data to back anything up.

  Two amateur (or one amateur and one professional, as I don't know of @Extraordinary Writ's credentials) genealogists here haven't yet confirmed the man breathed, much less played a musical instrument. We're eager to look at anything remotely credible, at anyone's research. Please, show us. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 14:16, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@DiamondRemley39 - To answer your basic question, Cannella is listed in a few places at the Warner Brothers fandom site, e.g. [1]. That's why I merely stated an opinion that the WP article may not be a hoax, because from personal experience, the Warner Brothers fan community practices serious research. But that was not even the basis of my vote, which I suspect you did not read in its entirety. This is a deletion discussion and what matters is notability, which Cannella does not have whether he really existed or not. I do not need to prove to you that it isn't a hoax, especially because I merely opined that it isn't. I don't know if you intended your message to be accusatory, but it looks that way. ---DOOMSDAYER520 (TALK|CONTRIBS) 17:52, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for answering my question; I asked about it because you gave some weight to the unnamed fan community saying he has credits. Thank you for providing the link; I checked it and all exact hits for that name on that site are database-style pages without citations and with brief edit histories. So short of contacting the page creators to ask how they verified their information, it's a dead end.

I understood your vote, which I read. I didn't disagree with your call to delete. I wouldn't disagree with it if I believed he had been a real man. Some of us try to help each other out on Wikipedia, so when you came forward with some information, I asked for details, like Extraordinary Wit asked me for further information on what I found on Ancestry. Some of us collaborate and communicate and all that. We build. If you don't want to be a part of that, be wary of stating that you've got information when you're in the presence of researchers. We do like to get to the bottom of things! Best. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 19:04, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - I found information about a currently living Brazilian, but nothing additional about an Italian who passed in 1946. I searched Google, newspapers.com, and newspaperarchive.comJacona (talk) 00:09, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, above analysis makes it extremely likely that this is a hoax. It's likely that the fan communities that picked up on the name just scraped it from this article and/or previous references to it. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 16:22, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete No hits on name variants in Proquest Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive. I can't prove he existed, much less that he worked on films. DiamondRemley39 (talk) 22:56, 1 April 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.