Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Piotr Blass

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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 delete. --Sam Blanning(talk) 15:29, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Piotr Blass

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Vanity article, appears to have been written by subject. Has made exordinary claims like co-inventor of the WWW. Author has removed sources cricicism relating to implausable claims of compression algorithms [1] [2] [3] [4] and concerns over withholding evidence about tampering with votes through hacking of Diebold vote counting machines in the 2000 presedential elections. [5] [6]. Salix alba (talk) 19:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I totally support this claim. As a mathematician I can say with full confidence that he is unremarkable. Looks the same as a "computer pioneer" and politician, though I am not an expert here. 81.17.146.136 19:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Speedy delete page is being used as part of his 2006 election campain, and he links to it from the front page of his 2006 campain page http://piotrblass.com/ --Salix alba (talk) 21:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Since the article is in clear violation of WP:VAIN (and in regards to a non-notable person), and is actually being actively used for promotion, I think (while the article may or may not fit any CSD criteria) speedy delete is a reasonable conclusion. -- Kicking222 00:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete — Don't think it fits any of our speedy rules unfortunatly. (not that it should) it will be off in 5 days, provided no-one is able to show why this piece of WP:VAIN is here. Also really can't see why he is important either. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 00:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Ryūlóng 01:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedia community The attacks against my good name are politically and racially motivated.

Let me calmly respond: Jeff Fisher is a well known unstable person currently unfortunately homeless. His claim that I rigged the 2004 election is of course pure fantasy and as such needs immediate removal (Removed legal threat). Ryūlóng 01:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The Ulam Quarterly Journal pioneered the entire web movement in the USA. We were the eggheads who did it for free and for love. Give me credit and enjoy the web with my best wishes and my blessing

I cannot tell you about being an unremarkable mathematician. Please ask for example Zariski,Grothendieck,Mumford and Deligne Field's medallists or anyone of my students including for example Chris Skinner who went on to work with Andy Wiles or Scott Flansburg who went on to have thousands of students of his own. Finally I ask the community to protect me from defamatory attacks against me and my family. If you are unable to do it then indeed we need to part company today. Ulam Lives! dr piotr blass

Let me comment on the last part. We can't ask Zariski since he is dead. Mumford and Grothendieck are no longer working actively in mathematics, but neither is Piotr Blass of course (last paper dated 1996). I doubt Deligne uses email but certainly wouldn't bother him with this. Finally, according to Math.Genealogy Blass had a total of three grad students (neither of the two mentioned above) [7]. None of them had any students of their own. How about that. Mhym 16:58, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


  • Keep. Seems somewhat notable as a politician, and as a mathematician. Vanity and/or unfamiliarity with Wikipedia procedures are no reasons for deletion if the subject is notable. His research in Zariski surface seems somewhat notabale, and this compunded with being a candidate for an important election makes him notable in my book. Claims for work on early Internet and being an advisor/close coworker of some famous people, while they would make him clearly notable, need independent sources, but even without them I think he fits the borderline claim for notability. See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#Piotr_Blass, and consider WP:PROF and WP:C&E.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  01:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Still, those are not official guidelines that Wikipedia follows at all. The IP address editor who has been doing the majority of edits has been blocked because of legal threats made in the edit summaries, and you, too, may be biased. Ryūlóng 02:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment. I am not defending the person, I just think he is somewhat notable. Btw, can you point out to me where do you see the legal threat? I might have missed it, but I did not see any legal threat in his post. I have taken the liberty to link the text you've removed in the your edit above, I hope you don't mind. PS. As an inclusionist I am of course biased for keep :) PS.2. this is a legal threat and for that an anon may be blocked (although I would go with 1 day after first warning, not a month... it seems rather excesive), but why remove his post above? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  02:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
        • Actually, it seemed like a long-winded "Don't delete this article about me". The legal threat can be seen in this edit summary. Ryūlóng 02:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
          • Therefore if anon's comment here does not breach our policies, I think it can be restored: he is entitled to a 'long winded complain' or whatever here, just like all of us.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  03:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
            • A part of it does breach policy; I have restored the rest. I cannot say that it convinces me to keep the article, however. Septentrionalis 16:26, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Speedy Delete. This is a vanity article written by the subject from scratch. Not notable as a mathematician by any stretch. Not notable as a politician (e.g. NYTimes does not list him among 2004 independent candidates). Mhym 07:13, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete per WP:VAIN as blatant self-promotion (he even mirrors this self-written article on himself on his own campaign website [8]!). Also an utterly embarrassing case of name-dropping (note also his recent edit to Adam Michnik.) No notability as a politician whatsoever (and the sheer lack of professionalism in this effort as well as the dumb campaign design do not promise great things for the future). If he is notable in the field of mathematics (on which I am no expert), he really should have the patience to wait until one of his colleagues or students writes an article about him. The keep vote by Piotrus ("seems (!) somewhat (!!) notable") appears to be somewhat sentimentally motivated, for a namesake and a (former) compatriot... 213.76.22.170 14:14, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Ignoring for the sake of argument the blatant WP:VAIN violations, he has had a few papers published, and so the existence of an article might be borderline acceptable (note that I said borderline). But since it's all written by the subject, and he insists on putting ridiculous claims that border on vandalism (you and Al Gore should hang out together), it's just not worth the trouble. --Jaysweet 19:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. I don't see a valid reason for deletion. Most comments refer to WP:VAIN, however, this guideline says "vanity by itself is not a basis for deletion, but lack of assertion of importance is". According to Zentralblatt MATH, review 1028.14006, Piotr Blass did introduce the notion of Zariski surface, which is important enough that we have an article about it. If that had been all described in the article, then the article would clearly have been kept, showing that he's passed the notability threshold. By the way, an IP editor cleaned up the article. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 09:26, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, I checked Mathematical Reviews. I found that of the 20+ collaborators Blass mentions one (Mark Levine) is a pianist, two more (Stan Klasa and Tim Ford) have indeed co-authored papers with him, while the others have not. The point being the whole paragraph is misleading at best and completely wrong at worst. It seems that the whole article is compromised with this kind of vanity issues. Even if Dr. Blass merits an article this one has to be deleted and someone with NPOV should write it from scratch. Mhym 11:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong delete WP:Vain violations, not to mention the unverifiable nature of much of the content. In addition, the person himself lacks any sort of importance. A minor mathematician who happens to dabble in politics is not a notable person. Interested2 18:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment The article has been substantialy copyedited since the start of AfD, and new references has been added.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  03:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete: non-notable vanity article. MaxSem 09:05, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep The attacks against my good name by two anonymous users

mhem and ryulong have been truly astounding. They seem to be rather young and I choose to forgive them and to ask them to sin no more. My mathematics speaks for itself and the theory os zariski surfaces which i created with zariski and hironaka has inspired top quality work all over the world---especially lately in Japan where Shimada has made great strides. Moreover the work is being generalized to higher dimesions as we speak with applications to cryptography and physics (parallell universes). Several papers in Compositio Mathematica and in Paris Academy Proceedings may be an indication that the mathematical beginners attacking me need to get a little more sophistication. I shall be happy to tutor them. Let us not have Cultural Revolution a la Mao in Wikipedia with hatred filled youngsters intimidating older faculty. As one of the pioneers of the web I wish Wikipedia well and shall continue to work with you Ulam Lives! dr piotr blass —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.168.221.213 (talk • contribs) .

Comment: I just want to point out that accusing people of a racially-motivated Cultural Revolution-style crusade against you is not really helping your case. If Piotr Blass wants a Wikipedia entry on Piotr Blass, the best thing for him to do right now would be to back off and hope that somebody else creates an unbiased article. Even if everyone agreed that you were notable enough for inclusion, creating and/or editing an article about yourself is explicitly prohibited by Wikipedia policy. Accusing people of a vendetta on the AfD page is arguably even worse. --Jaysweet 17:38, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Comment: While I agree with most of Jay's points, I'd like to note that WP:AUTO only discourages, not prohibits writing autobios. I have seen fairly neutral autobios (this was not one, but has improved more towards neutrality), and even more edits by notable people who came to Wiki recently, found article about themselves and have no idea about WP:AUTO. Finally, please remember about WP:BITE: even if the newcomers are not aware of our policies, we should be and try to educate them to be civil.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  19:17, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep.From my research the first electronic only copy a journal is correct.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.33.49.251 (talk • contribs) .
Comment do you have references to back this up? --Salix alba (talk) 17:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
Comment There is now a reference for this on the article page, however, the reference only states it is one of the first peer-reviewed electronic journals. Out of the four journals listed by the source as early peer-reviewed electronic journals, only the Ulam Quarterly is mentioned in Wikipedia -- and ironically, all of the other ones were more successful that UQ. The source does back up the claim somewhat, but simultaneously strikes a blow against the notability of the publication or Dr. Blass. --Jaysweet 17:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

KEEP (Vote struc out as repeated vote by same IP address) I am so happy to see decent people come to the defense of my page and of the truth . The people attacking us are anonymous and not well informed. My friend and relative Emmanuel Ax is a pianist Mark Levine my collaborator and friend is a very strong geometer in Boston. The red guard type calls him a pianist! The primacy of the Ulam quurterly can be checked with Odlyzko who wrote about us before 1990 as one of the early models of electronic publishing .Reference will be supplied as soon as you stop blocking me or even sooner. Also the journal was typeset in or very close to einstein's office at IAS princeton. I can probably can testimony from there if necessary. Comments by ryulong and salix users are anonymous attempts at smearing us. Perhaps we should just ignore these attacks with so little integrity. As for the links added to my allegedly forging the 2004 election ---let us just laugh---were caused my mental patients. Perhaps it would be best to remove that . It is up to you. The Zeosync drama keeps unfloding. I am the one person trying to salavage this intellectual property---i am the good guy who gets criticed---- There is hope for wikipedia if we can talk at this level. My hero einstein was often criticised I am trying to imitate his dignity and good humor. love and all that stuff to wikipedia honest guys ulam lives!!!!!!!!!! piotrek blass—Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.168.221.213 (talk • contribs)

  • Week delete Following Jitse Niesen I think there is enough to warrent sufficient notabliity. However I'm still voting delete as I am not convinced we can keep this page sufficiently objective. The page has improved somewhat but we still have not got to the root of how Ulam quarterly and the role it played in the development of the internet, was it just an early use, or did it effect the development of any of the protocols or browsers, or increase its popularity? Do we have any documentation about it? More concerning is the many mentions of Blass in a negative light, in conection with evidence he may have had about posible tampering of vote counting machines. There are many references to him in left-wing/democratic blogs, another recient one is Roger Rancourt, and there is even a signed afidavite which mentions his name (link escapes me). It seem like Blass is a contriversal figure at the moment and it may be simplest simply not to have an article, rather than an article which we cannot effectivly maintain.
  • p.s. As for my anominity, I'm not I have a user page with links just about all there is to know about me. As for anit-jewish motives, I had not even relalised that until Poitr mentioned it. It may actually be the case that the cricicism and attacks on external websites on Blass may be more to do with the fact that hes caught up in a situation which could damage the current govenment (and hence of interest to the left) than for any grounds of race. Still thats politics. --Salix alba (talk) 00:45, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: There's a lot of name-dropping that still needs to be removed and unsourced material needs to be expunged also, per Wikipedia policy (WP:Verifiability). What will be left after all that is a bio with some basic background on family, education, etc., references to Zariski surface, and possibly the Zeosync stuff and political campaigning stuff. With all this other non-mathematical stuff, it seems there is enough notability (notoriety?) to establish a keep vote. However, I really have no wish to keep a bio that is mainly kept because of minor scandals of dubious notability or verifiability. Additionally, Blass' mathematical notability was marginal anyway; it's no real loss or gain to have this mathematician's bio or not. As others have commented, it may just be too much trouble. After all, don't we have better things to do than patrol this page with the goal of what, not improving the article (since there's not really much potential in it), but instead with the goal of keeping it trimmed down to a stub or semi-stub? That's really the problem with these marginal mathematician bios. Most of the time, people say "keep" because they don't see the harm in it, and there is some marginal notability. In this case, we have the subject insisting on spending his free time changing the article to his blog/webpage. It's really too much trouble to bother with, I would think.
  • One last comment to Piotr Blass: if Piotr Blass is reading this, I think he ought to know that he really does not want a Wikipedia bio. It's near certain that people are going to eventually edit out most of his additions to result in an article that, in his viewpoint, attacks his reputation and reflects badly on him. I really think if he understood this, he would vote "delete". --C S (Talk) 06:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
  • SPEEDY KEEP

LETTER TO JAY SWEET AND ALL OTHER PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL

DEAR JAY SWEET I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT MERITAS IS SCOUT'S HONOR I SHALL RESPOND TO ALL YOUR OTHER SUGGESTIONS A LITTLE LATER SINCE I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT. I HAVE TO BE FRANK WITH YOU I AM MORE PASSIONATE ABOUT THE WEB THAN PERHAPS ANY OF YOU GUYS HAVING BEEN IN ITS LABOR DELIVERY ROOM SINCE 1987 IT IS MY BABY AND I LOVE YOU GUYS MAKING GOOD USE OF IT.

NEVERTHELESS I DETECT CULT LIKE TENDENCIES IN THE CURRENT WIKIPEDIA ALSO YOUR BOSS JIMBO HAS NOT HAD A GOOD START IN HIS WEB LIFE THAT HAS A DEFINITE EFFECT AS I SEE IT.

I CHOOSE NOT TO GIVE UP IF YOU GUYS DELETE ME THE WORLD WILL KNOW AND ULTIMATELY CHANGES WILL BE MADE EITHER IN YOUR GROUP OR AROUND YOUR GROUP THE WEB IS TOO PRECIOUS TO BECOME CULT LIKE.

THAT DOES NOT DENY YOUR FINE CHARACTER AND INTENTIONS PLEASE READ UP ON THE CULT DYNAMIC A BIT

I FEEL THAT IT IS AN HONOR FOR YOU TO HAVE MY PAGE IF YOU DELETE IT OR TRASH IT IT IS YOUR LOSS FINALLY JEFF FISHER IS NOT RELIABLE AND REPEATING HIS STUFF IS KIND OF.....

SHALOM

ULAM LIVES

EINSTEIN LIVES I WILL BE HAPPY TO MENTOR YOU

YOU KNOW WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME

LOVE AND ALL THAT STUFF

DR PIOTREK BLASS

PS I HAVE A LETTER FROM EINSTEIN'S OLD OFFICE CONFIRMING THE PRIORITY OF THE ULAM QUARTERLY JOURNAL

YOU MAY CHECK WITH PIOTR KONIECZNY WHO HAS A COPY NOT FOR PUBLICATION


PEER REVIEW FROM ULAM PRODUCED HIGHER QUALITY THAN WIKIPEDIA IN MY OPINION PB

ALSO JEFF FISHERS CAMPAIGN MANAGER WROTE TO ME CALLING FISHER'S TALK BABBLE....

ENOUGH SAID


PLEASE SHARE WITH ALBIX AND RUOLONG PLUS ALL NEGATIVE GUYS

WHOEVER THESE GUYS ARE

THE TRUTH WINS IN THE END

PB

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jaysweet"—Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.168.221.213 (talk • contribs)


To give some context here... I took some time the other day to try to explain to Dr. Blass on my talk page why his page has been marked for deletion. That is why he is addressing me here. (Though frankly Dr. Blass, you still seem to be very confused about proper Wikipedia policies, e.g. signing your posts with --~~~~, as I tried to explain to you...)
I said on the article talk page I might be convinced to change my vote if we could get a promise from Dr. Blass not to touch the article about himself. Based on his comments here, I don't think we will be getting that promise... --Jaysweet 17:15, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
Dr. Blass - I am of Jewish ancestry (from the former Soviet bloc) as well. That said, you are casting yourself in a very negative light - playing the race card, as it were, immediately after someone suggests deleting your page. You've already stated your keep vote, so there is no need to repeat yourself - your opinion has been noted, but it is not the end-all and be-all of the discussion here. As much as I hate to say it, you frankly lack the notablity to have a page on Wikipedia. May I suggest that you sign up for an account and create a User Page? Interested2 17:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
See Pblass2002 (talk · contribs). Interestingly this user(s?) stopped posting from his account and started using IP very quickly (the account doesn't seem to be blocked). PS. As I was mentioned above by the anon (presumably Piotr Blass) - I did ineed get get an email copy about this, but verifiablity of the email is rather low. The only ref I could find on G.Scholar was to show it was 'one of the first' journals - but nothing about THE first.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:20, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I don't see a real article here, just an enormous amount of random and unverifiable name-dropping. There are only 1460 Google hits for the name "Piotr Blass", most of which looks self-written [9]. Yes, he appears to have been a candidate in a Senatorial election, but it was only as an independent write-in candidate. Even CNN only had a minimal page on him [10]. And the self-written bio at piotrblass.com does not look like a "serious" bio to me, with claims like "true co-inventor of the world wide web." [11] There is insufficient verifiable notability here to justify a Wikipedia bio at this time. --Elonka 22:59, 11 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.