Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/MI-5 Persecution

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 REDIRECT. This was a tough one and I will explain my rationale as fully as I can. If AfD were a simple vote, this would be Kept and I'd have had no aggravation deciding it, but it isn't. The subject of the article is "MI-5 Persecution". We are establishing the notability of this topic, not an opera or an individual who may have popularised the term. As such, it's an internet meme. These come along frequently and some are deemed notable, some are not. The article itself presents no evidence of notability of this term as a meme. Looking through the AfD contributions below, Michael Bednarek argues for the notability of the opera, not this meme. MMetro argues that deleting this article will create issues in another, but I'm unconvinced that this is valid argument for keeping something. I'm not sure a redirect to List of Usenet personalities is justified. Drutt says he's highly notable, yet we have no evidence of the masses of world correspondents who write on Internet issues making it so. Besides, we're not deciding the notability of the individual - that's already been decided. It was Chris, right at the end, who hit the nail on the head. This is a minor meme term, of dubious notability, but it can usefully point to The Corley Conspiracy, which seems to be able to hold its head up as notable. Dweller (talk) 09:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MI-5 Persecution

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mike Corley. Same subject, same issues. Yes, I was the creator of the Corley article. H2G2 have also deleted this. Corley is either insane (so we should not mock him) or some kind of Turing test experiment. Nobody knows which. Nobody cares any more. Guy (Help!) 11:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Notability has increased since November 2005, not least through Tim Benjamin's 2007 opera The Corley Conspiracy. Note: a Template:Db-attack was declined by Dlohcierekim (talk · contribs) earlier this year. Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:57, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The citations and notability would mean that the material would have to be merged back into Usenet Personalities. The resulting entry would place undue notability by creating an entry for him much larger than the other personalities listed. To his credit, I believe his website discusses sporgery as part of the conspiracy to make him look crazy. He may not be the one creating the postings. This should be noted within the article. WP:BLP should be adhered to. I had previously written the article to reflect that. Revert defamatory edits, but I've been seeing this stuff since the mid-90's. MMetro (talk) 16:18, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Irrelevant nutter. The article is also appallingly named. -- Necrothesp (talk) 19:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Highly notable internet personality. This nutter has single-handedly wrecked Usenet. Drutt (talk) 23:12, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I don't see a single reliable source there. Just Usenet links, which prove... that he's posted on Usenet. If the opera is encyclopedic, have an article on it. But there's no there, here. Particularly unacceptable are the unsourced allegations that he is mentally ill. FCYTravis (talk) 23:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have stripped the article of everything which is unsourced - and that leaves... the opera. Speedy delete now due to a complete lack of anything resembling a reliable secondary source. FCYTravis (talk) 00:02, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources are allowed in Wikipedia to describe the subject; interpretive claims, analyses must be referenced to a secondary source.
The phenomenon of Mike Corley, as described in this article, takes place on Usenet; thus, it is clear that sources to describe it will be found there.
Citing Usenet is not categorically verboten on Wikipedia; that's what why there is Template:Cite newsgroup.
During an Afd, editors are encouraged to improve the article, not destroy it by stripping it of any meaningful content.
As for "Particularly unacceptable are the unsourced allegations that he is mentally ill": references can be found by anyone who cares to follow the citations. Corey states on his own website that he repeatedly sought medical help for mental problems; e.g. "Olanzapine worked for many years on my paranoia, and sulpiride also worked for many years at a fraction of the current dose." He also refers to his psychiatrist. Secondary sources call him paranoid and schizophrenic.

I suggest to restore the article to its version of 13 May 2008 22:10 until there is a decision in this matter. Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that it "takes place on Usenet" is irrelevant. If there are no reliable secondary sources (newspapers, magazines, books, professionally-edited Web sites) covering something, particularly something involving a living person, we don't report it because we cannot verify it. If the only place for information about this person is Usenet and his own personal Web site then you've just made my case for me. We have no fact-checked, independent reporting on this matter.

Which "secondary sources" call him "paranoid and schizophrenic?" A bunch of newsgroup posts? And these newsgroup posts come from licenced mental health professionals who are qualified to make judgments about people based entirely on what they post on the Internet? Absolute tosh. FCYTravis (talk) 19:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As a phenomenon he is verifiable and notable. You can't pretend the posts don't exist. The interpretations that he is mentally ill, unless a UK contributor can find police reports, court proceedings, or hospital statements-- are a matter of opinion. The article must not be stripped during this nomination, but the phrases referring to his mental state may be removed due to WP:BLP.

What I strongly disagree with is the deletion of articles on the basis of disageeable subject matter. We can make a better article. We should make a better article. The result should be balanced. We should not be in the habits of censorship.

There used to be books that detailed what you can encounter on the internet, as well as many articles. Better sources are out there. Let the wiki do its work. MMetro (talk) 21:31, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If he is verifiable, then it should be trivial for you to list the reliable sources which we can use to verify the claims to encyclopedicity. Until then, the article must conform to our policies - and we don't have any reliable sources which discuss him right now.

It is not "censorship" to make articles conform to our fundamental content policies. If we do not have proper sources for something, we can't publish it. Right now, all we have is "This person posted on Usenet (link to posts here) and got banned from Google Groups (link to account ban here.) Oh, and someone wrote an opera about him."

How do we even know that the banned account is him? There's no name attached to it. We don't have any sources saying it. We're just supposed to take it on face value, I suppose. But that's unacceptable.

Seriously, if this person is so significant to the history of Usenet, there's got to be *something* published about him. If there is not, then we, in turn, cannot publish anything about him. That's... all there is to it, really. FCYTravis (talk) 22:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or move focus and title to the Opera - Nabla (talk) 00:12, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is your rationale based on the stripped version of the article that FCYTravis has left us with? Rather than flag the points he has found objectionable, he has near blanked the page. I'm sure that it is not what Wikipedia wants when it puts these articles up for debate, but there are more pressing time-sensitive articles that I must attend to right now. If you say delete or move because of a stub, please reconsider. That is not the article up for debate.

My other new comment is that the person nominating the deletion is nominating it because of his article based on Mike Corley himself. My article was based on the crapflooding, of which Corley, or someone wishing to either to discredit his theories or propagate them, is the suspected perpetrator. MMetro (talk) 03:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

@JzG (talk · contribs): Corley is considered insane, he considers himself mentally ill, people have met him; the sources say so (which unseats Nobody knows which). You don't seriously advance Nobody cares anymore as an argument for deletion, do you?

@Necrothesp (talk · contribs): Irrelevant nutter is not a convincing argument in a thread where BLP matters are being discussed.

Frankly, I think it's a very convincing and concise argument. We don't need an article on every paranoid delusional spammer, especially an article as badly named as this one is. The internet sadly allows these people to reach many more people than they could ever have reached before - that doesn't mean we should legitimise their ramblings with an encyclopaedia article. The fact this chap appeared on the internet makes him no more significant than somebody who endlessly wrote to The Times in similar terms in the pre-internet era. Luckily the editors then could choose who they published and so can we. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:00, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

@FCYTravis (talk · contribs): Your pointy edits have been noted elsewehere and you have now decided (paraphrasing) to take a wikibreak until the community wises up; I suggest to take those items into consideration when assessing your arguments (which to me smell badly of POINT, crusade, chip-on-the-shoulder).

@Nabla (talk · contribs): No argument advanced — nothing to argue with.

Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:37, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Corley is just a paranoid delusional spammer. He was much discussed back in the day, but these days most people have him in their killfiles. Guy (Help!) 06:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Having an opera written about you is surely enough to establish notability. The name is rubbish though, and it could maybe be cleaned up and moved to The Corley Conspiracy and this page turned into a redirect. Chris (talk) 12:56, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, apparently that already exists and duplicates much of what is here. Don't see the need for two articles. Chris (talk) 13:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So that's what Michael was up to. It does more than cover the same ground, so I won't mind a merge or redirect as much, although I think the M-5 Persecution article could be more open to covering possibilities that the opera article would have to bend from its bounds to allow for, namely that it could be debated whether or not Corley himself is actually involved with the posts. MMetro (talk) 06:15, 23 July 2008 (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.