Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher Michael Langan

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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. Richard 07:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Christopher Michael Langan

Christopher Michael Langan (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article appears to be a vanity article. It is a fairly long article which goes into significant detail about the man's childhood, while there is little about why he is notable. The little about his notability says that he has done well in IQ tests and formulated a theory. The theory has been hotly debated on wikipedia and deleted, so clearly is not counted as notable by wikipedians. Simply doing well on IQ tests is also not enough to deserve such a detailed article, unlike vos Savant this has not made him famous. The article itself has obviously been subject to a lot of POV editing, two users are blocked due to suspicions that they are Langan himself, and the discussion page is over three times longer than the article itself. Which is perhaps why it is longer and more detailed than pages dedicated to Nobel prize winners. 4MillLane 21:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like an editing dispute--there's an immense amount of dispute on this at the talk page. do we delete pages to stop editing disputes? There are sources, and it has presently content all of which seems to have been approved of or derived from material published by the subject, and so doesn't violate BLP with respect to him. But I've removed a paragraph of text where he talks about his relations in a way which clearly violates BLP with respect to them. DGG 21:50, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I perhaps should have been more concise with my complaint. I simply think this article fails WP:BIO 4MillLane 22:33, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep per mainstream media coverage. Langan is notable for (1) being billed as possibly "the smartest man in America", with an IQ reported by 20/20 and other media sources to have been measured at 195, and (2) combining that IQ with (a) a childhood of poverty and abuse and a working-class lifestyle and brawny physique, with jobs as a bouncer and horse rancher, and (b) a philosophical "theory of everything", his Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU, among his claims for which are that it proves the existence of God. (We should present this material neutrally, of course.) He easily meets WP:BIO, which says that a person is generally notable if they have been the subject of published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. Media coverage of Langan includes:
  • Sager, Mike. (November 1999). "The Smartest Man in America". Esquire.
  • McFadden, Cynthia. (9 December 1999). "The Smart Guy". 20/20.
  • Wigmore, Barry. (7 February 2000). "Einstein's brain, King Kong's body". The Times.
  • O'Connell, Jeff. (May 2001). "Mister Universe". Muscle & Fitness.
  • Brabham, Dennis. (21 August 2001). "The Smart Guy". Newsday.
  • Quain, John R. (14 October 2001). "Wise Guy" (Interview with Christopher Langan and Science Works in Mysterious Ways). Popular Science.
  • Preston, Ray (15 November 2006). "Meet the Smartest Man in America". News 4 St. Louis. KMOV.

Tim Smith 01:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Keep. If the guy has had that many articles written specifically about him over a period of years, he passes WP:BIO with flying colours. All these sources are reliable third parties; this is how notability is assessed. --Charlene 02:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Satisfies WP:BIO by having articles from a variety of reliable and independent sources over a 7 year period or longer. He is said to have a high IQ of 195 or so. Whether or not true, that has been reported in numerous reliable sources. He is said to have left college after a year or so and to have been working as a bouncer, and to have a theory of cosmology, or of reality, or whatever, which has been written about in the popular press, but not published in a refereed journal. Before voting, please take a scan of the references, and of the talk page with its 3 archives, including input by User:Jimbo Wales and several other well known Wikipedians. I have to say, he seems less kooky and way smarter than the average kook, and somewhat notable based on wide reportage over an extended period. Edison 02:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Notability clearly established through sources, regardless of whether some people consider him "kooky." Clearly he is an unusual combination of things--bouncer, smart-guy, cosmic philosophico-theorist of some kind. He has also been the subject of a documentary by Academy-award winning director Errol Morris. The length of the talk page is irrelevant (as many other articles prove). The main reason the talk page has been so hotly debated is that some editors (falsely) believe Langan is an advocate of intelligent design, and thus take him as a legitimate target in their war against creationism. These arguments have been settled and the article stabilized. One can only hope that this AfD does not represent the beginning of another utterly pointless campaign against the subject of this article. Also, I cannot help but notice that opening this AfD was the very first edit by user 4MillLane, which suggests the distinct possibility that this is a bad faith AfD. BCST2001 04:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
    • That it's his first edit is not grounds to abandon WP:AGF. I assure you there are many of us who think articles like this are ridiculous.--RandomHumanoid(⇒) 04:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
      • The question is not about "articles like this"; it is about this article. I am not abandoning good faith, but I remain convinced that the fact it is the first edit coming from this user is relevant in evaluating this nomination for deletion. BCST2001 04:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
        • Okay, if you prefer references specifically to "this article," then I'll assure you many of us think "this article" is utterly ridiculous. FWIW, "articles like this" are part of the reason Wikipedia is viewed so poorly in many academic circles. There is a fundamental misconception here that a score on an IQ test means something. If this supposedly clever fellow actually did something with his brain, then his IQ might be an interesting footnote. By itself, this measure is meaningless. I won't bother arguing further as I know this article will inevitably be kept. I regret that Wikipedia doesn't have higher standards.--RandomHumanoid(⇒) 06:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment I have no doubt this article will be kept given the media coverage, coupled with the sad assumption that media coverage somehow makes this fellow historically notable. However, I feel obliged to remark that anyone who says "you can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics," is unworthy of discussion, yet alone an article. He might like to brush up on his Frege, Russell, or Godel and perhaps read some Turing while he's at it. As for his "IQ," Richard Feynman, among the top minds of the past (or any other) century, had his "IQ" measured in the 130s. Go figure. --RandomHumanoid(⇒) 04:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 05:45, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep If it goes, it's no big lose. But the guy really isn't "non-notable." He's really just as notable as the tallest person in the world was. Maybe more so. So keep but don't care much if its deleted. Bulldog123 08:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
    • I think the analogy is apt. The primary difference is IQ is an artificial construct that is highly controversial, whereas height is a naturally occurring metric that provides scientific information about human growth distributions. As far as I know, there is no controversy about the meaning of "height."--RandomHumanoid(⇒) 19:02, 25 June 2007 (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.