Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Thanabalan

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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. - Mailer Diablo 12:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stephen Thanabalan

Stephen Thanabalan (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

This page has some WP:HOAX/WP:VANITY issues. The name Stephen Thanabalan has been invoked in Wikipedia articles as the author of sources in well-known publications. However, these sources appear not to exist and look to me like very clever vandalism. This article seems to be part of the hoax or a vanity page by the creator. Search the wiki for about 50 examples of what I'm talking about. MrFizyx 21:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete Probable hoax, but in any case with only 54 GHits, nearly all, it would appear, added by him, definitely fails WP:NN--Anthony.bradbury 22:22, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment, Here is an example: this edit to Ellis Paul claims to take a quote from Thanabalan's writing in Rolling Stone. Those with access to the IIMP can search the full text of all RS issues since March 1995. There appears to be no reference to "Thanablan" nor "Ellis Paul" in last 10 years! (This is actually unfortunate as Paul is very talented and deserves better coverage.) -MrFizyx 22:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom and WP:V. -- Satori Son 04:31, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete hoaxalicious. Danny Lilithborne 22:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Good job in identifying an apparent hoax, and obviously a spam. Are you going to remove all the references from the 50 articles after this afd? Let me know if you need a hand. --Vsion 00:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • comment: I was hoping one result of posting the article on AfD would be that others might pitch in on the clean-up. Help would certianly be appreciated. It would take me a while to do it alone. This needs to be done with some care since in some cases the editor who adds the name seems to mix his/her own commentary into text that is already present. -MrFizyx 01:13, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • I've started a clean-up list at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Stephen Thanabalan. It would be great if editors could remove or strike articles that they clean-up so that we don't need to duplicate each other's work. (Assuming general agreement that this is a hoax, etc.) -MrFizyx 01:46, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Per above.--HamedogTalk|@ 04:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Per above. In addition, I just removed all instances of his name except the article in question. Many edits referring to Thalaban come from Singapore IPs, including
  • User:202.156.6.54
  • User:218.186.8.10
Most IP edits adding Thanabalan appeared to have been added in May 2006. Finally, it looks as if this is a real person who reports out of Singapore, but many of the alleged articles cannot be verified. Jokestress 06:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Del as n-n, per my belief that the arguments above are not an elaborate hoax to embarrass WP via inducing us to personal attacks on the bio'd person. [wink] Thanks for the thoro work by at least MrFizyx & Jokestress.
    --Jerzy•t 08:31, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Jerzy has a good point. It now seems Mr. Thanabalan is a real journalist, and since it is quite likely the fake references attributed to him were added by a misguided fan (as opposed to him personally), we should be careful in not accusing him of anything unethical. Sorry for paraphrasing, but I this is important and I agree wholeheartedly. -- Satori Son 15:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, WP:V, WP:HOAX. Terence Ong 09:48, 20 December 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.