User:Tiggerjay/Famous

People all the time want to create articles about themselves, their band, or other people they care about. There is a great article about why an article about yourself might not be a good idea.

Notability is such a difficult topic, and something people struggle with all the time, especially when they personally know this someone is famous and should have an article. This is most often the case of fans and the person themself.

Here are some posterchildren that I have worked with over the years who have found themselves where they wished they didn't have a page on wikipedia. This isn't intended to be a wall of shame for these people, but rather to serve as a caution to others before a page about youself is actually created:

• Geoffrey Kabat - actively worked with this in 2024/2025, and allegedgly the subject of this article is trying to correct their public image, as the wikipedia article is very unfavorable about them and their role in Secondhand smoking research.
• Greater Grace World Outreach - a church with a lot of controvery which has been published in reliable sources about cult-like behavior.
• John Lott - who was discovered to be using a fake persona Mary Rosh to defend his work.

Once these pages have qualified as notable-enough they do not have control over the pages, and dispite their best efforts they cannot alter their public perception -- sometimes for their demise.

By at least the measure of many pages which have been attempted to be created. I saw something similar in someone else’s page and adapted it to my personal experience.

Tiggerjay has lots of reasons why he might think an article should be created about himself, including:

1. A reoccurring regular paid speaker at multiple industry "national events"
2. A reoccurring "expert" interviewed by "national media" on multiple occasions regarding national headline events
3. Published two books on Amazon
4. Nominated for an industry national award (runner up)
5. Multiple, reliable source, articles written about my background, and impacts I made to the industry I was working in
6. Owned two companies, one of which worked with at least 50 different companies or people with articles on Wikipedia

The above is often the sorts of things that people use to suggest that the article they’re creating is also notable -- and all of the above are TRUE for me - and in reliable sources.

But that is not the whole story (for me) any why it would not be appropriate for me to have a listing here.

First, please excuse the obscurity because I don’t plan on doxing myself...

Second, because of the wonderful essay at WP:PROUD.

But beyond that, here are the details that make the above "wow, Tiggerjay should have an article" become far less true...

1. While the national event brought in the single digit thousands of attendees, the compensation was in the few thousands of dollars, and was on a breakout room of around 100 people each instance, with a couple of panel interviews before several hundred. (eg, people were not coming to this event to see me, and only a fraction came to see my talk).
2. Realistically it is shockingly easy to become an media expert, as reporters are always desperate for a source. I started becoming interviews less than two years into the industry, and was quoted in non-trivial ways in about 3 years into the industry. This experience resulted in me becoming extreme skeptical of interviewed experts in media (even what we consider WP:RS
3. These were self published books, that I get enough revenue to buy a cup of coffee once in a while. No best seller here, in the top 300 in a category, not the top 10. And overall in the top 4-million books! Yeah, nobody reads it. But does average over 4 stars!
4. A dozen colleague wrote in to support me for this national award, and I made the front page of an industry trade magazine —- along with a dozen other people. If you’re in the industry you know the publication. If you’re not, you might even be surprised there is even a magazine for it.
5. These were actually decent article, of course one was about a younger person (at the time) getting into what most thought was a dying industry.
6. Without going into too much detail I’ll simply defer to WP:NINI. And also in case someone asks I have zero conflict of interest with any of those article, and probably haven’t edited any of them. But proximity to notability should not be confused with being actually notable.

The reason to document is not to show off that Tiggerjay is awesome, but rather that it would be easy to throw out reasons why I should deserve to have an article by using the true reasons I documented above. Moreover most of them can also be supported by significant, secondary coverage in reliable sources. Often most people who are trying to get an article are missing the whole truth (e.g. inflating the truth) and the reliable source requirements. But just like most things when you get down to the actual facts, given the grand scope of Wikipedia and human history, my contribution is just a tiny speck, that has no worthy place as an article.