Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 February 7

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7 February 2007

JewsDidWTC

This article was speedy deleted right after being created based on the conclusion of a previous deletion review about the GNAA article. The GNAA article was not reinstated because the consensus was that one notable action does not necessarily make a group notable. There seemed to be some confusion about the CNN spot, though- to be clear, all the still images that CNN used in that six-minute segment were cribbed from jewsdidwtc.com. Under standard notability rules, having a CNN segment almost entirely about a website makes that website notable- especially considering the journalistic implications of not verifying if a website being quoted is for real, or not caring. So while the consensus was that the GNAA itself is not notable for having produced jewsdidwtc.com, I still think that jewsdidwtc.com is itself now notable under Wikipedia policy. The CNN segment is available on youtube here. Compare with the fan art section of jewsdidwtc.com, and see for yourself. Fellacious 01:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep deleted without predjudice - there's almost certainly an article to be written here, but the deleted article isn't it. Phil Sandifer 01:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any suggestions to improve it? I wrote that article quickly because I thought it should be written, after my suggestion to reinstate the GNAA article was denied- as I recall, JewsDidWTC used to be a redirect to Gay Nigger Association of America. The person who tagged it for speedy deletion was probably right that I was too harsh on the issue, and I was definitely focusing too much on the CNN segment and not on the ostensible topic of the article. Suggestions and even rewrites are welcome- I'm not suggesting that my prose is sacred and I have been personally violated by its deletion. Fellacious 01:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Find some third party sources that talk about the overall error on CNN's part. Phil Sandifer 03:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse deletion. CNN did not talk about the site at all. They used screenshots of the site to illustrate the story. Even if using images of a website constituted non-trivial coverage, CNN would not be a reliable source in this case. Their use of images from the website was entirely unprofessional and moronic. Though, I do give my personal congratulations to the GNAA for successfully trolling CNN. ----RockMFR 02:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They did, however, mention the website directly. I agree that it was mentioned a face of a group of people who actually believe that Jews are responsible for the September 11th attacks. However, it was one of a small handful of sites mentioned, and the source of most if not all of the pictures in their story- absent any interviews with people who believe that Jews are responsible (interviewing a vanilla conspiracy theorist doesn't cut it), CNN's segment appears to be entirely about jewsdidwtc.com. I suppose it's true that CNN is not a reliable source in this case- that's what makes this case so interesting. Perhaps we should wait until they issue a retraction? Fellacious 02:57, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse deletion as per RockMFR. (I couldn't see any of the "fan art" in the youtube clip anyway - I may have missed it as the clip seemed to skip when playing quite a bit) Bwithh 02:47, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse deletion Since "JewsDidWTC" was not actually mentioned or discussed during the clip, it can't be used as a source. Besides, there's pretty clear consensus that GNAA shenanigans don't really belong on Wikipedia. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 02:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion. This article seems like a WP:POINT creation to me, given how the last GNAA DRV went. Either way, the CNN report was not directly about the website at all, and gave it only a passing mention, which is not enough. --Core desat 03:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't just a passing mention, lots of images were used in CNN's report, making it look like CNN's report was mainly about jewsdidwtc.com. The last GNAA DRV was me trying to get the last article Wikipedia had about jewsdidwtc.com reinstated, thus the creation (and deletion) of this one. The conclusion of that DRV was that the GNAA is still non-verifiable even considering that they made jewsdidwtc.com, not that jewsdidwtc.com is non-notable. Subjects have been considered notable for less than trolling major news sources- see every other no-name band article. However, I will concede the point of verifiability- as yet, jewsdidwtc.com not being serious is not verifiable. Fellacious 03:45, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, major news sources are perfectly capable of trolling their own graphics [1], it's not really encyclopedically remarkable. Bwithh 04:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cyrus Farivar

A notification, rather than a request, but I'm not sure where else to put it. I am undeleting Cyrus Farivar as per Jimbo's previous endorsement of exactly this act: "Even if VfD _did_ produce a consensus that this article should be deleted, then VfD is broken and should be ignored." [2]. User:Jaranda expressed concern that this was not brought to DRV, so I figured I should leave notice here (and also on WP:AN before restoring it again. I will not continue to restore at this point, but I will bring the issue through proper dispute resolution channels should it continue to be an issue.

I am not asking for or opening a full review because, well, it's unnecessary and beside the point. DRV is a process through which we review deletions, but it is not the sole way in which they are reviewed. This is something that there is a definitive ruling on - journalists with the publication record of Cyrus Farivar are notable. Small segments of the community may create pages that proport to establish other criteria for notability, and AfDs can fail to attract the attention of anything but the mindset that currently dominates the page, but none of this changes the basic fact that a notability guideline of that extremity has been actively rejected from the very top, and the act of unilaterally restoring this article has explicitly been sanctioned.

This ought not only terminate the debate, but also serve as a rather sobering warning about the sad state of so-called policy on Wikipedia, whereby it clearly does not provide useful guidance on our actual best practice. Phil Sandifer 01:11, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

General reminder As the last community decision was the AFD, closed as delete, "Endorse" here at deletion review means the article should be returned to a deleted state. GRBerry 02:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question As the quote by Jimbo at the top of Wikipedia:Argumentum ad Jimbonem points out, arguments based on what Jimbo said are pretty weak. Given that it is policy that consensus can change, and given that the standard for biographies of living people have gotten a lot tighter since he made that remark 18 months ago, why should we believe that Jimbo would still endorse that old quote? There is not a single reliable source meeting the standards for biographies of living people used in the article, other than the Slate article on the greenlighting thing. GRBerry 02:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- If Farivar's blog is not being used as a source (and I'm fairly sure that it is), it should be - but the sources that Farivar's journalistic endeavors exist are transparently easy to find. Phil Sandifer 03:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion unless a better case can be made that the AfD was somehow improperly closed or had other outstanding circumstances. Much like the "Able and Baker" fiasco, a longstanding editor like Phil should be aware by now that the way to rescue articles from AfD is to improve them (particularly by sourcing them properly) rather than pretending to have some magical power to override consensus. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 02:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- A better option is for the collective community to not blindly follow sourcing guidelines that obviously lead to wrong conclusions. That was the argument last time, when the attempt to delete it as vanity came through, and it's the argument this time - this is obviously an article we should have a topic on. If our current guidelines on notability and sourcing prohibit it, the guidelines are broken and should be ignored. If the guidelines were established because of the overwhelming voice of the community, the community is broken and should be ignored. All of this is entirely within Wikipedia practice - it is in fact the model of it. Phil Sandifer 03:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - Or a better option - the guidelines be amended to allow for obvious cases such as this. Sadly, we're moving in the opposite direction. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - If you really believe that ignoring the community is within Wikipedia practice, then you're clearly too far gone for me to debate intelligently with. Sorry. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 03:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - He's not really wrong... --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - Did WP:NOT get edited to remove "Wikipedia is not a democracy" without my noticing it? Phil Sandifer 03:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - Last time I checked, no, but WP:POINT is still there. Krimpet 03:58, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        What point do you think I'm illustrating? Phil Sandifer 04:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      - Perhaps more relevantly, "Wikipedia is not a democracy" continues to say that "Its primary method of determining consensus is discussion". So I wouldn't call not a democracy a strong reason for overturning consensus. If you want to make the argument that consensus has been misread either in the AFD (potentially plausible), or in giving guidelines guideline status (unlikely to be agreed to), make that argument. But I don't see "not a democracy" as endorsing an attempt to ignore consensus. GRBerry 04:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        Midway through your comment, you switch from saying that consensus comes from discussion to seeming to say that consensus comes from a critical mass of voices, which is still a flavor of democracy. Consensus is what emerges when Wikipedians who are firmly invested in the project's aims and principles think about an issue. My contention is that the people who weighed in on this issue did a bad job of considering the project's aims. And I unfortunately don't think that the people who frequent DRV have ever shown themselves to be much better. Perhaps this will just take an arbcom case to sort out in the end. Phil Sandifer 04:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Obvious undelete. Phil is 100% on the money. --badlydrawnjeff talk 02:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse deletion. Jimbo's quote referred to a questionable AfD a year and a half ago, where an influx of new users and IP addresses contributed to the "delete" consensus and thus one could reasonably argue that particular AfD was "broken and should be ignored". It seems Phil Sandifer has instead taken this as a blessing upon his own personal standards of notability, and as a command to unilaterally enforce these "definitive rulings" that fly in the face of community consensus. Krimpet 03:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- That is a flat misreading of the circumstances of the past AfD - the decision was made based on notability. Phil Sandifer 03:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - It's certainly hard to tell exactly what the circumstances are, though, considering it seems the only place the quote can be found is out-of-context in the Signpost article. To avoid making interpretation of this quote an issue, I have humbly requested to Jimbo that he leave his opinion on this current matter to clarify things. Krimpet 04:13, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm about to head to bed, but I'll go find the original discussion on Jimbo's page. Phil Sandifer 04:20, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MSK-008_Dijeh

Several articles were listed in this AfD at once; let it be said that I am contesting the outcome of the deletion of the MSK-008_Dijeh and RMS-106_Hi-Zack; the other articles were indeed unsourced and with little or no real world impact that I could ascertain. Anyway. These articles were nominated for deletion due to being "unsourced and non-notable fancruft with original research". Upon discovering this AfD, I have sourced the relevant articles including specific citations of "original research" from official or semi-official sources (quite excessively, I might add) and was presently re-writing the jumbled text of the article itself when it was summarily deleted. I and others in favor of keeping the article believe that our rationale were given no weight or ignored entirely. This is demonstrated by the deletion of the article despite the original AfD criteria no longer being relevant, as well as the fact that apparently I and the other "keep" votes were "members of the project." I presume this is in reference to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Gundam, which I am not a member of. Furthermore, I was not aware that being in a WikiProject, for whatever reason, was grounds for having one's rationale in an AfD debate be discarded. This AfD was conducted as a head count, and nothing more.MalikCarr 01:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn I pretty much agree with this. I helped provide some sourcing to two of the articles, which was objected to despite the fact that they followed the correct policies for such things as far as I can tell. When User:Malikcarr provided some examples of many other articles that have similar sourcing, his argument was simply brushed aside. Furthermore, I would like to point out that fancruft is an essay and not a policy, and thus is not a valid reason for nominating anything for deletion. Jtrainor 01:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn I was actually putting up my own entry on this for this, but you beet me to it. The reasoning that the closing admin used has me troubled. It appears that he discounted all of the keep or merge comments because they were from members of WP:GUNDAM. Why should comments from a WikiProject be discounted so long as they give solid arguments? At best, this appears to be to be a no consensus once the WP:GUNDAM comments are taken into account. --Farix (Talk) 01:11, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn I agree as well. The Dijeh and Hi-Zack are both intrinsic parts of the Zeta Gundam universe that have been fleshed out to extreme detail by the developers of the show, through liscences with video game corporations and technical manuals of Bandai produced model kits. There is plenty of reliable information and source material for these particular articles, and the only real argument against it could possibly be that it is taking too much attention to detail, and is unnecessary. This line of reasoning might as well say that individual articles on breeds of dogs are unnecessary, and that there should only be a central article on dog breeding on wikipedia. That is silly, and so is deleting these articles.149.142.119.170 01:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Deletion Review isn't a reargument of the AFD, but whether the closing admin reached the proper conclusion based on the comments of the AFD. If you read the comments above, you will see how we are disputing the reasoning the admin used in closing the AFD and not with the reasons behind the AFD. --Farix (Talk) 01:28, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment My intention was to point out that the closing admin could only have used the logic that the articles in question were trivial and unnecessary in reaching his conclusion to close the AFD, and that that sort of a logic should not have been brought to the matter. However, I primarily agree that whether or not one sides supporters are members of WP:GUNDAM should have nothing to do with the subject, as per User:MalikCarr's assertion. Also I'd like to apologize for the change of IP, I'm currently at my university and they don't always have a static IP.128.97.146.224 03:17, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse perfectly reasonable closure. I didn't see any of the keep voters bringing forth multiple non-trivial published works about the "ENG-001 Estardoth" - because there aren't any. Now, without re-arguing the deletion debate, either point to such evidence having been presented, or just accept the deletion. - Tragic Baboon (banana receptacle) 02:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If you had read my review request above, you would have found that I am only supporting the recreation of two articles. The one you mentioned is indeed unsourced, and until I can find references for it, it's likely going to stay deleted. With that in mind I believe you should re-evaluate your decision, since there -were- "multiple non-trivial published works" about the other items in question. MalikCarr 02:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overturn. No policy reason was given for the deletion, and the original arguments did not even apply. Pretty straightforward. --- RockMFR 02:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]