Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Lane (sedevacantist)

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 delete. The subject of an article weighing in on the article on himself and agreeing that he is "famous" represents conflict of interest, and no independent reliable sources have been cited. --Coredesat 05:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John Lane (sedevacantist)

I initiated the entry on John Lane (sedevacantist) from personal knowledge as a 'fellow-Traditionalist', and from websites on the Internet with the intent of recording the history and personae of the Catholic Traditionalist movement. A person or persons claiming to be the subject of the entry and or his allies have 'vandalized' the page and reduced it to a ridiculous situation, with the intent that the page be deleted. As initiator of the entry, and in disgust at the behavior of these persons, which behavior prove that the subject is not worthy of an encyclopedia entry, except possibly from a viewpoint of notority, I vote for the deletion of the page. My Wikidness 16:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that this article should not be deleted. If it be deleted I foresee it will easily be recreated by someone else, and the same issues may be rehashed. It appears a reason given here for deletion is that this article became controversial. If this were a valid reason, the Wikipedia article on the Holocaust or Christopher Columbus, and many others, would also be deleted.

The following further reasons to keep this article....

• The subject of this article (John Lane) has weighed in on this article on Wikipedia and has shown that he believes the description of "famous" applies to him. He had no objection to that description when making several other edits to the article.
• In the world of Roman Catholicism, the Traditionalist Catholic is a major subject, most notably the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). This Society spends considerable time writing articles against Sedevacantism because among Traditionalist Catholics they are the next biggest group that opposes that Soceity for alleged errors.
• Among laymen associated with this priestly Society (SSPX), considerable time is spent on Internet discussion forums talking about the Sedevacantists.
• The subject of this article considers himself one of the "world's leading lay sedevacantists" according to an advertisement for a conference that was held in upstate New York in 2002.
• The CMRI, a major portion of sedevacantist Catholics, has just invited John Lane to their yearly conference in 2006 to give some talks, and to give the keynote banquet speech.

I think it is clear enough that this contemporary article is necessary, and if deleted, it will once again be created. I think progress has been made so far, and it has been well-established that more citations need to be used for various statements. Vandalism is not unusual on Wikipedia and this cannot be used as an argument to delete an article. --Glossando 23:24, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Mr. Glossando, - I believe that vandalism is intellectual terrorism. I do not ordinarily believe in giving into terrorism. However, as this seems to be merely a three-way controversy involving Mr. Lane (& Brian Boru IV and other of his allies), you and me, and as no other person / contributor seem to be interested to intervene, such as by protecting the page, etc., I do not see what good purpose can be served by this unseemly fight. If you can bring in more people, such as to protect the page from the Lanistas' intellectual terrorism, it would serve some good purpose. Incidentally, I believe that in my original write-up, I did provide reference webpages, references which were edited out by "Mr. Lane", Boru, etc. themselves, as far as I know (e.g. http://www.catholicintl.com/debate/debate.html). It is strange that "Mr. Lane" objects to facts collated here from those webpages, but not to those webpages themselves. He should, if he were honest, go to those pages and vandalize them with "citations required" notices all over them. But it is far more easier to do that with Wikipedia than at other places. Actually, I realize that Lane and Co. are a sectarian cult and I have a shrewd guess as to the real reason for their objection to this page. I have seen how they treated a recent interlocutor, Quirinus (http://quaesitoresfidei.blogspot.com/), on their St. Bellarmine forum (http://www.strobertbellarmine.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=178&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0), and it is typical of a sect or cult. Just for the record, I am not "Quirinus". I had been personally in correspondence with M/s. Daly & Lane a few years ago, and recently with another of the Lanistas. -- My Wikidness 02:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

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Delete or not, I don't care. But I want the original version deleted. It's libellous and even as an historical relic it should be expunged.

What is going on here is merely that a person with some malign agenda as a result of a personal disappointment (now openly admitted) has invented facts about me and published them here, and objects to my attempts to have these things rectified. Glossando appears to have (belatedly) begun to follow the guidelines here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biographies_of_living_persons

I read that this morning for the first time and it describes my own experience to a "t."

But Mr. Wickedness seems entirely ignorant of Wikipedia rules and guidelines.

As for the lack of objection to the use of the word "famous," Mr. Glossando, that was one of many words I thought inaccurate but not actually libellous, when I edited the article originally. I also left in numerous examples of bad English generated by the original author. This purely negative argument of yours therefore adds nothing to the discussion. If "fame" is measured in the awareness of a few hundred people that one exists and has an opinion, then I am famous. But I suspect even Andy Warhol would struggle to grant me that particular tag.  :)

John Lane.

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Mr. Lane, I have verified your IP address and am certain you are who you say you are. However, I have always acted in accord with the rules. Nothing belated about it. You have not. And it appears not only are you in league with the vandalism of Brian Boru (possibly even a sock puppet), but out of your ignorance of WP rules, you were also in violation severely, and basically demanded things without any proper discussion. Try to do the same to ANY watched article on Wikipedia and you will get reactions like mine. You were in violation, not I. And do you think further that when a month ago you conceded to the CMRI advertisement about you and then come here now and put requests for citations over the most common facts even contained in that ad you conceded to...that you should be taken seriously? Or making your own edits and keeping request for citations on them is a serious thing to do here? Things like that make it appear to be disruption, and for things like that reverts are expected. Don't complain. Would you like to now categorically deny you know who that person is behind Brian Boru IV's vandalisms? I have more to say, but I will leave it for the article's discussion page. --Glossando 11:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT 16:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

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You continue to attempt (via the article's discussion page) to provoke me to provide accurate (but irrelevant) data by speculating about the facts and prodding me to deny your unfounded speculation. You are a Wikipedia disgrace and I am reporting your behaviour to Jimmy Wales and Co.

Here are the guidelines you have violated:

<<Editors must take particular care when writing biographies of living persons, which require a degree of sensitivity, and which must adhere strictly to our content policies: Verifiability Neutral point of view No original research We must get the article right. Be very firm about high quality references, particularly about details of personal lives. Unsourced or poorly sourced controversial (negative, positive, or just highly questionable) material about living persons should be removed immediately from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, and user pages.>>

When I removed such claims, you blundered and reverted the article.

<<Jimmy Wales warns other editors to think twice when encountering such attempts:

"...reverting someone who is trying to remove libel about themselves is a horribly stupid thing to do.">>

Horribly stupid?

<<The problem can be compounded if the subject attempts to edit their own article to remove problematic content. Since they are likely not regular Wikipedians, they will be unaware of our policies, and will often be accused of vandalism or revert warring when they are in fact trying to edit in good faith.

Accordingly, editors must take particular care with writing and editing biographies of living persons with these key areas in mind:

The article itself must be edited with a degree of sensitivity and strict adherence to our content policies; If the subject edits the article, it is of vital importance to assume good faith in terms of dealing politely with them (see Wikipedia:Autobiography for content decisions in this regard); If an anon IP address or a new account turns up to blank a page about a living person, or a section of it, it may well be the subject. Try not to act aggressively, but instead engage the person in dialogue, and check that the article in question does not contain any unsourced or poorly sourced criticism. If it does, delete that portion.>>

It is true that having blunered initially, you became more polite and entered into discussion, but when you failed to verify the nonsense in the article, which anybody could see was the work of a biased writer, you refused to appply the guideline above - viz. "If it does, delete that portion."

You continue to violate this rule by repeating gossip somebody is feeding you in the hope that I will confirm or clarify it. You are a disgrace to Wikipedia.

<<Editors should remove any controversial material about living persons that is either unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Reliable sources, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source. In cases where the information is derogatory and poorly sourced or unsourced, this kind of edit is an exception to the three-revert rule. These principles apply to biographical material about living persons found anywhere in Wikipedia, including user and talk pages. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked.>>

Ditto.

<< Jimmy Wales has said: "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons." >>

Jimmy Wales does NOT say, "Try and provoke the subject by further lies until he coughs up the data we want."

<< He considers "no" information to be better than "speculative" information and reemphasizes the need for sensitivity: "Real people are involved, and they can be hurt by your words. We are not tabloid journalism, we are an encyclopedia." >>

You are, I repeat, a disgrace to Wikipedia. For the record, your gossipy lies are untrue, but I refuse to enter into a discussion of them in order to satisfy your perverse desire to discover irrelevant details about my life. Your game is contrary to the letter and spirit of Wikipedia and to the common rules of courtesy and honesty.

John Lane.

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• Delete. This looks pretty clear-cut to me. We have:

- Concerns from the subject, credibly expressed, that the article is being abused as an attack

- Questions over whether the subject meets our biographical inclusion criteria (which is mainly a reflection on the amount of external notice, of course, and is in no way a reflection of the person's worth)

- Lack of independent sources, identified and not remedied

- Edit warring by interested parties in flagrant contravention of WP:BLP

Overall, that puts it, in my view, in the "more trouble than it's worth" category. Let's wait until John Lane has been the subject of multiple non-trivial coverage in reliable independent (and dispassionate) sources, and a disinterested third party writes a verifiably neutral biography based on, and citing, those. Guy 18:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per Guy's comment above. And enough with the screeds. -Amatulic 18:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Guy. The lack of sources and of a claim to notability per WP:BIO are enough. Sandstein 20:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Does not meet WP:BIO - not notable QuiteUnusual 20:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. At least for the sake of removing all that history text from public access. --Glossando 21:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete due to lack of independent reliable sources. --Metropolitan90 23:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. I ignored all the debate above and just looked at the article itself, and it fails WP:BIO as far as I'm concerned. 23skidoo 18:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Being "well-known" in a small group does not seem notable without third-party references. Gimmetrow 00:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Question: Would a person who is a writer and advisor for a public periodical be considered well-known? In addition the person being published by a 3rd party web site to be an international speaker, invited to give a keynote speech by and for that same third party's annual conference, and arranged by that third party to debate another person publicly who also already has an entry on Wikipedia, as well as having that debate sold on the Internet by that 3rd party, as well as by that other well-known debater? Do I need to give the details? I have described John Lane (sedevacantist). If this is not well-known, I think we have a LOT of deleting to do on Wikipedia! --Glossando 14:09, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the guidelines for notability and it says, "The person made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in their specific field." This man fits this in regard to the field of sedevacantism having owned and run the domain www.sedevacantist.com for 6 years now. If not, I think the article on that field does not belong on Wikipedia either. --Glossando 14:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - to end fruitless controversy. The subject possess notability, as a matter of fact, even if it is only for the field of comparative religion, and regardless of the 'smallness' of the group; yet, it is not so small as is thought of, the subject being more than a fairly influential Sedevacantist, and also associated with the much larger CMRI entity. If another contributor can re-create the entry later with better research and facts, based on a greater number of sources, so much the better. My Wikidness 02:15, 26 October 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.