Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fast Walker

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 of the debate was no consensus. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:33, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fast Walker

Delete. This is an article about a very obscure UFO incident. The sources cited are weak, and most (or all) of the ones I can find seem to point back to some Discovery channel "documentary" of dubious reliability. The article itself consists of images ripped off of one website which themselves seem likely to have improper copyright status, and a large chunk of text quoted directly from the documentary. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 00:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

• Weak keep, but it could use some work. This seems to be a real phenomenon. [1]. Not that the theory isn't ridiculous, but it seems to have attracted quite a bit of attention. It seems to have had a fiction book written about it also [2] Adambiswanger1 01:53, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Needs work, but it's not hopeless and it seems notable. Since the text that came from the documentary is a direct quote, and is used as such, I'm not sure it counts as copyvio. The images appear to have come from Power of the Mind magazine, and not directly from the documentary. The uploader included a link on one of the two pages, and also tagged them as Copyrighted free use. Possibly the uploader should be contacted to confirm that this is the case? -- Vary | Talk 02:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. How notable is it really? The sources all point to the Discovery documentary, and not one claims to have any original information or have any information "from the horse's mouth". The first Google page only has a couple results that are actually related to the UFO, with the others talking about fast walking people or such. Generally, popular or well-known conspiracy or UFO theories with such distinct names have the first pages of Google tied up. I also don't see any real discussion occuring over this anywhere to make it any more notable than the thousands of other UFO encounters that don't have their own articles. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 04:08, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
    • As it's an extremely common phrase, I don't think the fact that there are unrelated links on the first page of search results is enough on its own to condemn the article. For a source other than the Discovery segment, see the one in my comment below, an article in Omni from 1994. It's on UFO sightings in the 1980's, and it spends a good chunk of time on the 1984 'fast walker'.
      • Arr, the other results on the first page that use "fast walker" aren't exactly popular webpages themselves. Anyways, with the Omni one we now have two sources. Not much. Any other sign of notability? As I said, there are hundreds of other UFO encounters out there with as much evidence and notability as this one. -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 04:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Without any references cited, it looks like complete bunk. But why not - nobody on Wikipedia bothers with references and most of the information in Wiki pages comes from google. Its like the old telephone game. First someone puts up a web page, then google catagorizes it, then it is copied into Wikipedia. Any original sources are long gone. Are we just supposed to assume this is true? george 02:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I don't really have time to work on this article myself right now, but if anyone's interested in putting in some time, I found an article on LookSmart Find Articles that talks quite a bit about this sighting. [3] It's from the August 1994 issue of Omni. Apparently, 'Fast Walker' is or at one time was the official military code for an unidentified object that might be a missle. -- Vary | Talk 03:37, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep The Omni magazine article makes this more notable/verifiable than loads of other things we have articles on. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 11:22, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Omni got to the point at one time where they would accept just about any story. It was like if the Weekly World News took itself seriously. Many UFO and paranormal stories went through there, but nothing is outstanding about this one in particular (especially as it wasn't even given a full article). -- Consumed Crustacean | Talk | 16:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete; the single website cited does not even remotely meet WP:RS, which leaves this one article in Omni, which cites one single "researcher" as pushing this theory. If this article is kept, it will basically need rewriting from the ground up to reflect the real facts, which are that (1) there is no evidence whatsoever that this event ever occurred (the "evidence" is a single supposedly leaked printout), and (2) if it did occur, as the Omni article points out, it is trivially explained as an SR-71 flight. Really, this might merit a paragraph in a general article on UFO conspiracy theories, but that's about the limit.
  And please, stop using the "this is more notable than other stuff we have articles on" line. We should be striving to ensure that Wikipedia's contents are of a consistently high standard. — Haeleth Talk 11:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment The website is not a reliable source. The article does not come close to meeting WP:V. I am now going to make my personal evaluation of whether this is a notable alleged UFO incident. I am going to do two things. I am going to search Google Books and I am going to search the New York Times via my public library's database. If it is mentioned in either I will vote to keep. I do not know yet what the results. will be. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:39, 14 June 2006 (UTC) Your search - "fast walker" ufo - did not match any documents. Proquest search of full text of New York Times, 1851-present to: "Searching for ("fast walker") AND (ufo) did not find any documents."
• Delete. Not an important alleged UFO incident even if it were to be properly sourced. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:42, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep if expanded --Xyrael ^T 14:25, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Per Vary B.ellis 14:44, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep It seems that, while it's not as well known as, say, the Roswell incident, it is fairly unique in that the supposed UFO was picked up by a satillite, a machine, not eye-witnesses. It still could have been anything, wasn't necessarily a alien spacecraft, but it is different than other UFO "sightings" and therefore merits a mention.
• Keep. WP is not paper, and it's exactly for articles like these that people come here. Notable enough. — 199 19:33, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete WP is not paper, nor is it for everything. NN incident without verification or references. per nom, copyvio. Tychocat 20:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Haeleth and Dbpsmith. Angus McLellan (Talk) 09:32, 16 June 2006 (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.