Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark V Shaney

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. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 04:28, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mark V Shaney

Mark V Shaney (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Non-notable Usenet personality. Epbr123 12:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per nom. -- GarbageCollection - ^!Collect 12:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy delete According to the article, the person does not even exist, it's just a name attached to some machine-generated nonsense postings on usenet. Most of the article is just a lengthy quote from one of them. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 13:09, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Did somebody make today "Erase Usenet day"? Reasonably well known Usenet hoax from the formative years of that subculture. - Smerdis of Tlön 13:40, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
  • "Well-known" doesn't mean notable. Epbr123 17:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. Yes, and that somebody was Epbr1. "Garbage Collection" and "Starblind" seem to be following him around and nodding. Improve the article, don't delete it. Jeh 16:48, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  WP:CIVIL. Epbr123 17:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  i am not following anybody but applying my common sense. What about creating articles for some of the wikipedians? -- GarbageCollection - ^!Collect 17:39, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  Aren't those called user pages? ;) Jeh 17:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  Speaking of user pages, I think having a brag section of "articles I have helped delete" on his user page shows much of what Epbr123 is about. I consider this conduct disruptive, not to mention uncivil. Jeh 21:16, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  Well, I don't find your accusations very civil, to be honest. Epbr123 21:18, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  That doesn't matter - civility does not mean "ignore wrongdoing" or "overlook misguided intent to delete slews of articles" or anything of the sort. If he had called you "a big dumb jerk" it would be incivil. He pointed to what you put on your userpage. That's all. --Cheeser1 03:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletions. -- John Vandenberg 14:38, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
• Strong delete The article says that "Mark V Shaney" is a Usenet username and does not assert that "Mark V Shaney" is or was ever a real person. The article itself does not seem to be a hoax in any way-- it is just reporting of a clever hoax that was perpetrated on Usenet. And it's an interesting story, but that's not enough to qualify a subject for a Wikipedia article. But we need some cold hard reliable sources, not firsthand narratives here. There's got to be a showing of notability here, or the article can't stay. has any publication ever written an article about this hoax? That's what we desperately need. For example, there was a hoax on YouTube called lonelygirl15. It made such an impact on the YouTube users and fooled so many people that it was even reported in newspapers across America. Show us where something was published, please. If not, then the article has to go.OfficeGirl 18:56, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  Sorry but I disagree. The newspapers were not taking nearly as much notice of Usenet in the "Mark Shaney" days; you can't apply the same standards. Jeh 21:16, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The standard I was asking for was: "has any publication ever written an article about this hoax?" And newspapers were not taking nearly as much notice of Usenet in those days because there wasn't much going on there that was newsworthy or notable. Some newsworthy and notable stuff, but not much in those days. It wasn't the influential medium that it is now, either, and that may lend credence to the assertion that the subject of the article now being discussed is not going to be very notable.OfficeGirl 01:41, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Why should "reported in (general interest) newspapers across America" be a standard for notability? There are a lot of things that are notable within their sphere without being notable enough for general-interest news organizations to cover. A "Turing Test" experiment in Markov chains, foisted on an unsuspecting public, and generating the response it did, is mostly certainly notable... even though nobody at the NYT or USAToday likely ever heard of the concept of Markov chains, let alone this particular example. Jeh 02:04, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. This has problems akin to an in-universe article. Mark V Shaney was a Markov chain generator that received coverage in Scientific American, surely a reliable source, and generates several Google Scholar results as a precursor to other Turing test human conversation programs. It was also a USENET prank, from which its notoriety comes, but treating it as a "Usenet personality" (at least primarily) seems a bit off. --Dhartung | Talk 19:37, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that last part. The "Usenet personality" point is indeed misplaced. Jeh 02:09, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

• There needs to be evidence that it's been covered by reliable sources. Epbr123 19:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

  FWIW, the Scientific American mention of Shaney was in A. K. Dewdney's "Mathematical Recreations" column for June, '89. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:09, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, sounds like you've got hold of two good sources. If you can get those in to the article and clean it up a bit for clarity so that regular folks can understand what it's all about, you'll convince me to change my vote to keep.OfficeGirl 20:15, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. OfficeGirl, the Scientific American reference has been in the article since April 2005. —David Eppstein 23:00, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a big difference between saying that there's an article out there somewhere in Scientific American and telling us what issue and page number that we can look at to verify the information. Also, other than saying that the article discusses Mark V Shaney we are given no report of what this alleged secondary source material actually said about the subject. That doesn't count as being "in" the article in the sense of appropriate editing. If the Scientific American article turns out to be just a passing mention or a small blurb, that would not be what we are needing in the way of reliable sources to prove notability. OfficeGirl 01:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

PS We can't justify having an article on a topic just because it was mentioned in Scientific American. There needs to be real coverage or it's not evidence of notability.OfficeGirl 04:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

If the article required more sources, or clarification on sources, or more reliable sources, it should have been tagged {unsourced}, not nominated for deletion. WP:N and WP:RS are two different policies, with two different procedures to address problems. Articles with WP:RS problems are not (necessarily) subject to deletion. --Cheeser1 17:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

• Keep but find references. World Arachny 21:23, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but find more references. This was notable in its day, and notability is not lost over time. Tarc 13:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Keb25 22:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Notable, referencable, POINT nom. Georgewilliamherbert 00:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. Alternatively, merge into notable Usenet personalities. (There's nothing there requiring the personality to be human.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 03:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per GWH. --Cheeser1 06:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - have added Sci Am citation and another reference from PC-Computing, so article now passes notability test. Gandalf61 09:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Keep, especially per Tarc. Was highly notable "in the day", and it certainly wouldn't be less notable over time. Otherwise, let's delete all articles on old Europeon nobility. • Lawrence Cohen 16:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Epbr123's recent AFDs of nine Usenet personalities listed on the Notable Usenet personalities page, and of that page as well, seems to be contrary to the multiple deletion procedure. The purpose of that procedure is to allow reviewers to see and evaluate the collection of AFDs as a whole. That is not possible here because Epbr123 listed all of these AFDs separately. We therefore cannot have proper context for this discussion. Jeh 16:25, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
  • The snowball deletes at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ed Conrad show why it would have been inappropriate to nominate them all together. Besides, its only a recommendation, not policy. Epbr123 16:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm sorry, but to me it looks as if you're saying "I knew the whole batch would fail if I tried to get it through that way, so I ignored the recommendation and did them all individually." Yes, it's only a recommendation, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored completely just because doing so is more likely to result in success of some of your AfDs. Shouldn't voters for any of these pages be aware of the fact that you've nominated so many other related (in that way) pages in quick succession? I think they should. Jeh 17:22, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
    • You seem to think that by nominating together, they'd either all get deleted or all get kept, and since you apparently are very happy to get articles deleted, you think you'd have a better chance of getting a few deleted by hedging your bets. Unfortunately, this is completely wrong. Nominating multiple articles does NOT mean they all must suffer the same fate. Some can be kept, some can be deleted, but it centralizes discussion to avoid unnecessarily disrupting Wikipedia. You seem to have been aware of the policy, and split up the nominations in spite of this, for the express purpose of getting a few deleted by (absurdly) claiming WP:SNOW after 3 or 4 not-votes have been cast. This seems to qualify as an intentional disruption of Wikipedia for the purposes of trying to get as many of these articles deleted as possible. This is inappropriate. --Cheeser1 17:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Dhartung. Michael Hardy 23:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Widespread newspaper coverage is a sufficient, not a necessary, condition for notability. Pappus' theorem may never have been mentioned in a newspaper at all. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:59, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Article is sourced and notable. Xihr 22:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep; has actually been cited by other sources. [1] Feezo (Talk) 05:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep noticable on Usenet in the context of Usenet and outside; no reasons for deletion given. --Martin Wisse 10:58, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep no brainer. Cited in multiple print sources, notable usenet topic. Bartleby 12:48, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep iff reliable, non-trivial sources can be found about the subject. If such sources cannot be located this should probably be re-nominated for deletion as Wikipedia is WP:NOT a primary source of information. RFerreira 19:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment : iff means "if and only if." In case anyone is unfamiliar with that particular abbreviation. --Cheeser1 19:29, 9 September 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.