Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sollog (2nd nomination)

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 keep (no consensus). 1ne 06:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sollog

Sollog was nominated for deletion on 2004-12-04. The result of the discussion was "kept". For the prior discussion, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Sollog.

Sollog is not worthy of an encyclopedia article. He is of no significance or importance. Documenting his alleged crimes in this article also violates the guidelines of WP:BLP, which indicate that such titillating details should be left out when they aren't important. Also this article has major problems with WP:Verifiability. It uses Usenet posts by third parties as primary sources of information. It also uses personal web pages and blogs as sources for claims. Sollog trolled for attention here and he shouldn't be rewarded for his trolling with an article about him. Vivaldi (talk) 05:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Please note that I (Vivaldi) added this for Steve Dufour (talk • contribs) who put up the AfD. Mr. Dufour is a new user and appeared to have some difficulty getting all the procedures worked out, namely he forgot to use the procedure for (2nd Nomination), which I corrected. Here is Mr. Dufour's reasoning (copied from AfD/Sollog):

I do not think this article, Sollog, belongs on Wikipedia. The person is not at all important, he made some kind of "psychic prediction" back in 2001 and has not done anything very notable since. Most of his "fame", as much as there is, seems to come from Internet postings from him or people who claim to be him or his "followers", there is no way to sort them out. There is also lots of discrediting personal information in the article which seems to be put there out of spite and has nothing to do with his alleged "notablity". I had never heard of him until someone mentioned his article as an example of the kind of unimportant person who can get a Wikipedia article. Thank you for considering this request. Steve Dufour 04:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your help Vivaldi. I seem to have messed up a couple of other topics when I tried to post my remarks here. I hope someone can fix that. I couldn't figure out how to.Steve Dufour 05:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

• Weak delete. If he were someone who hadn't been involved with Wikipedia in a freakish way, we'd be agreeing to delete his article right now. However, that alone makes him somewhat notable. 1ne 05:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Never heard of that guy before, but now I'm really interested. Also keep his crimes, since psychics are fraud or delusional anyway, so its no surprise that they commit "ordinary" crimes. All seem to be very well sourced. --Tilman 06:38, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep as he seems to meet WP:BIO. -- Koffieyahoo 06:04, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - He's been mentioned in a few newspapers. WP:BIO seems to justify this article under "Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events". If nothing else, he gets 32,800 google hits. I'd say he's notable enough to have an article. --Daniel Olsen 06:09, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable enough and verifiable. I heard of this person even before I started editing Wikipedia. —Quarl ^(talk) 2006-08-17 06:23Z
• Delete. Doesn't seem to be notable. Note that almost all of the sources are primary, so much of the article constitutes a synthesis from these (a.k.a., original research). What would be left is a non-trivial couple of articles by a journalist he antagonised, and little else. I do understand that self-published sources (such as his books and website) are admissible for verifiability, but they don't count when determining notability. We don't seem to have multiple non-trivial independent sources to satisfy the notability criteria. And, I must note finally, this is the state of affairs after two years: things are unlikely to improve. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable to scholars and others interested in both religious fringe movements and Internet phenomena. Robertissimo 07:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as far as I can see, the primary claims to notability are posting on usenet and being involved in some not-very-special legal troubles. Sorry, but that's just not enough in my book. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 11:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. What are the arguments for keeping? "He's been mentioned in a few newspapers." Yes: mentioned, as opposed to described, written up, profiled, etc.; and a few. "WP:BIO seems to justify this article under Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events." Very tenuously newsworthy non-events; no renown; minimal notoriety. "If nothing else, he gets 32,800 google hits." That's where chronic, relentless self-promotion (assisted by WP and its commercial recyclers) can get the more persistent and luckier of trolls. -- Hoary 13:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, he was "described, written up, profiled, etc" in the articles about him. It was all in one Philadelphia paper, in one writer's columns. However, he hasn't been notable enough to merit a mention in any major newspaper and no other smaller ones. --Habap 17:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The Philadelphia City Paper that "profiled" him, is an alternative news weekly. Its headlines read like Jerry Springer show titles. Recent stories that made the front page of this "paper" include the plight of hermaphrodites in Philly. Being the subject of a single tabloid article in a single town is not a measure of noteworthiness. Vivaldi (talk) 20:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete in the absence of any more worthwhile sources. It seems the last AfD (neé VfD) only failed due to a huge vandalism/spam/ballot-stuffing operation by Sollog's very few fans. Wouldn't like to see that again. Soo 17:14, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I tend to believe all of those fans were actually Sollog himself. (Wait, do I need to capitalize "Himself"? hehe) --Habap 17:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete I can't imagine anyone caring about this in five years, which makes it rather unencyclopedic. --Habap 17:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - seems to be that he's a self-proclaimed everything, but until someone credible proclaims him something interesting he's not worth keeping. Arkyan 18:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Son of Delete, Delete of God (i.e. delete) per Saxifrage and Hoary. Barno 20:08, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you for giving me a very good laugh with that vote. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:38, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
    • SODDOG! :-P 1ne 21:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete. I think I made fun of a relative of this dude outside the Student Union back in my college days. He's got some small notable refs in the Philadelphia paper, but I don't think he's got enough to meet our needs. (And that last VfD is hilarious reading.) Tony Fox (arf!) 20:10, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable enough, especially with the Usenet crowd. Article is pretty well written and would be a shame to lose it. Masterhomer 03:01, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

EDIT: I would also like to add that the talk page includes 8+ pages of Archives. That is alot of history.

I'd like to add that a considerable percentage of the archives of the talk page consists of tiresome non-arguments with self-described "fans", who share a remarkably small number of idiolects. What a waste of time that was, and what a waste of hard drive space that continues to be. -- Hoary 03:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll second that. That goes twice for the article's history, too. — Saxifrage ✎ 07:05, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per above. --badlydrawnjeff talk 03:18, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Can't really see the notability here. Raising a ruckus on Usenet and Wikipedia doesn't count, and the press coverage is really marginal. Sandstein 04:53, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Saxifrage and Sandstein above. Unless, of course, Sollog comes here in a huff and ardently demands that it be deleted for privacy reasons. Then I may have to reconsider per the Jim Hawkins precendent.205.157.110.11 09:04, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep notable enough per WP:BIO - negative information should be presented as neutrally as possible. Wikipedia should have articles about persons of notoriety because readers come to wikipedia wanting to learn neutral, unbiased information about someone they hear about in the press, from friends, etc --Trödel 13:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. If the guy's biggest claim to fame is "Usenet personality", then that's a big, red, flashing neon sign saying "NON-ENCYCLOPEDIC". flowersofnight (talk) 13:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per the above comments; meets WP:BIO guidelines and the "I heard of it before coming to Wikipedia" test. RFerreira 21:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: I don't understand how "Sollog" meets WP:BIO guidelines, as claimed above. This has a list of ten alternative criteria. Of these, it's very obvious that the first six, the eighth and the tenth are utterly irrelevant to "Sollog". As for the seventh -- "Published authors, editors and photographers who received multiple independent reviews of or awards for their work" -- we might allow "published" to include "self-published", but there are not multiple independent reviews, let alone awards. The ninth is "Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events"; there's no renown whatever and there's very minor notoriety for his trolling and misdemeanors in events (or non-events) that are barely newsworthy, and of course for his risible attempts to claim after very newsworthy events that he predicted them. WP:BIO does add that failure to meet any of these criteria is not reason for deletion; I do not claim that WP:BIO is a license to delete the article, but I don't see that it gives any support for retaining it. (Incidentally, for me "Sollog" fails the "I heard of it before coming to Wikipedia" test; moreover, he fails any "I heard of it outside Wikipedia even after I read of it at Wikipedia" test.) -- Hoary 03:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Also wasn't Klerck more of an internet troublemaker then Sollog? If there was consenus and precedence in AfD for a delete of that article as non-notable, certainly some of that same thinking would apply here. 205.157.110.11 17:56, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • In so far as this is a voting process, if you'd like to "vote", you're going to have to log in. -- Hoary 05:29, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment-AfD is not about counting heads. It's a discussion and I like to talk. :p Anyone can count or discount whatever I say for whatever its worth. 205.157.110.11 15:42, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Notable enough in my view. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Notable for what? -- Hoary 05:29, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Unimportant as he may be, the man has indeed been "newsworthy". Though I wouldn't even care about his article, its notable enough under wiki policies, no personal judgements, to warrant having one. He's no psychic and wiki's no paper. --Clementduval 14:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Gotta get in my vote since it looks close.  :-) I can see that the tendency here is to keep everything in case someone, somewhere might be interested. Steve Dufour 15:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Enough media coverage to make the cut for inclusion. More notable than the GNAA and lots of other bits of minor net ephemera on WP. Gamaliel 16:53, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • "More notable than..." isn't a reason to keep. 1ne 21:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Why not? Wikipedia standards of inclusion are decided by consensus, and one way consensus is determined is by which articles are kept and which are deleted by consensus. The GNAA was deemed worthy of inclusion by six or ten or thirty VFD discussions and thus is a reliable indicator of consensus. If something is more notable than the GNAA, then it obviously meets the Wikipedia bar of inclusion. Gamaliel 14:53, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
      • I don't think the GNAA article is a good metric as I think it's a special case. Not a special case by design, mind: It's systematically-connected to Wikipedia closely enough that I believe the Wikipedia system operates strangely in relation to it. (As an example, the huge number of deletion nominations is an obvious abberation indicating strange currents are at work.) Because I don't think the Wikipedia system operates as expected in regards to GNAA, I throw it out from the pool of data, as a statistician would, when trying to find a best-fit line that would indicate the cutoff point for notability. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Fascinating stuff. He has been covered by several mainstream media outlets including Washington Post and The Guardian. I also think that because he has explicitly accused Jimbo Wales of attacking him rhetorically deleting the article may appear to be a response related to that charge - regardless of whether or not it is related. --AStanhope 18:45, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: "Covered"? Hardly. The WP does indeed give him three short paragraphs within a longer article. (It's a strange article, seeming to imply that Dan Rather is the summit of news/punditry.) The Guardian gives him just two short sentences. Both dismiss him as just one among many internet trolls. But there's no accounting for fascination. -- Hoary 22:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable charlatan "psychic", and article of interest as per Robertissimo, Trödel, and Masterhomer. Orsini 05:45, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. The article doesn't seem to follow biographical guidelines and is argumentative, failing NPOV. It is also dubious whether Sollog is notable enough to warrant an article. —XSG 07:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
• weak keep Nutter, yes, but multiple non-trivial mentions in mainstream news media indicates he passes WP:BIO. Just zis Guy you know? 18:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Which non-trivial mainstream mentions are those? My vote is based on there not being any, so if there are any I'm unaware of I'll be changing my vote. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep notable through being unique! Mallanox 22:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm unique too but I'm certainly non-notable. How is this an argument for keeping? — Saxifrage ✎ 22:31, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Have you read the article? This guy is unique to the nth degree. I realise it's not the most eloquent of arguments but he defies description on anything shorter than an encyclopaedia entry! Mallanox 22:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
      • There are a lot of things that are unique and defy description. Editors generally agree that notability is determined by other things though, which resulted in the creation of notability guidelines. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:43, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
        • I'm well aware of that. Guidelines are just that, they are not rules. Editors may generally agree on a lot of things, this is a debate, a forum for opinion. If guidelines were rules we wouldn't need to debate, but we'd be the poorer for it. Mallanox 22:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
          • Fair enough. I only mean that your argument would carry more weight both to others here and to the closing admin if it appealed to the consensus on what makes a subject notable or not. — Saxifrage ✎ 22:53, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
            • His lifestyle is very unusual. His name is a tetragrammaton which ties in with his apparent spiritual beliefs though this seems to clash with his brushes with the law. His is a personality that I would imagine only a very small number of people in the world will have met. He is high profile and has managed to get himself noticed by newspapers and has entered into a pitched battle with at least one of them. Plus, I'm not a fan of renominating articles for deletion with a very compelling reason. Confusing unverified with unverifiable is not good enough. Mallanox 23:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
              • Now that argument has a little more punch to it. :-) — Saxifrage ✎ 23:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep and take a firehose to the article. Remove every last irrelevancy, scandalous personal detail, and anything not backed up by a source which is of the highest reliablity and verifiability--I suspect we'll be left with a {{stub}}. Which is about right, sollog is barely notable enough that Wikipedia should acknowledge his existence, but not worthy of any article which makes the scrollbar appear. --EngineerScotty 00:09, 22 August 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.