Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 August 5

New Utopia (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD)

This article has survived three deletion discussions:

• No consensus: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/New Utopia, November 2004
• Keep: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New Utopia, March 2007
• Keep: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lazarus Long (micronationalist), May 2007

The third nomination produced a consensus that the article should focus primarily on allegations that New Utopia is a fraudulent micronation investment scheme rather than on (self-published) details of history, "population", geography, and so on.

The article was deleted on June 15, 2007 by administrator User:JzG, with the following deletion summary:

OTRS ticket 2007060110014307 - sole claim to notability is the SEC case, but that has only passing mentions and is largely smoke & mirrors, no fines, no convictions, no evidence a single bod was ever sold.

The reason for deletion seems to be the claim that the SEC case is a weak one and that the allegations of fraud are therefore unfounded. For context, please view the pre-deletion version of the article, read the discussion at Talk:New Utopia#Start again, please, and/or note the following excerpt from an SEC press release about New Utopia reproduced in this source:

Today Judge Michael Burrage, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma, Tulsa Division, granted the Commission's request for an emergency restraining order to halt a fraudulent nationwide Internet scheme involving the offer and sale of a bogus $350 million bond offering. (emphasis added)

I bring this matter to deletion review so that it can be put to rest. I believe we have two options:

1. The scam allegations have a weak basis and the article should make little or no mention of them. If so, it should be deleted, since such an article could not be neutral or prove the subject's notability.
2. The article should reflect the evaluations of reliable sources which discuss the subject and should thus discuss the scam allegations, without giving them undue weight. If so, the deletion should be undone, so that the article can be modified.

• Overturn as nominator. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:57, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn, and, obviously,, option 2. A sufficiently widespread asserted fraud to be notable, and the article should reflect it. An OTRS complain that the material about the asserted fraud is included would seem totally unjustified, depending of course on how it is worded and sourced. To put it bluntly, asserted fraudsters should not be able to removes RSs about their schemes from WP, and the preliminary injunction is sufficient if cited as such. DGG (talk) 22:30, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• Except that it is not and never was a fraud, as far as I can tell. SEC called it one but no evidence has ever been produced that any meaningful number of US citizens actually bought these bonds, and as far as I can tell the site specifically said not for sale to US citizens. Guy (Help!) 22:50, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

OK then, widely thought to be a fraud--editing needed for POV, with 3rd party RSs used. DGG (talk) 21:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• Overturn - I've checked the article on Answers.com and it's a hell of a lot better than this. Send it back to AFD if you don't like it. - hahnchen 23:28, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn as per the reasoning of the nominator. — xDanielx^Talk 23:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn as per the reasoning of the nominator. Mathmo ^Talk 03:53, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn. Solution is to make the article NPOV, not to sweep the allegations under the rug. -- DS1953 ^talk 05:30, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The Club of Useless but True Info (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Deleted purely because of Page's title Not an anon anymore!!!! Yeah!!!! 16:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• ...And this is DRVed because you didn't like the obvious delete conclusion. Endorse deletion. —Kurykh 16:58, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment, It was deleted because you wanted it to be a Wikiproject. Instead, restore the page and move it so it will be a DoF game instead. Marlith ^T/C 17:00, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment, Good Idea Marlith, I think I'll do that if it gets recreated. Not an anon anymore!!!! Yeah!!!! 17:06, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion, valid MFD, project promoted the creation of nonsense pages and pretty much amounts to trolling. --Coredesat 20:21, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion. The outcome of the MfD was unambiguous. In response to this comment by the nominator, wherein s/he states that "all I want is to be the founder of some Wikipedia Community", I ask that s/he review the "Wikipedia is not a social networking site" and "Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy" provisions of the What Wikipedia is not policy. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:44, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse Deletion and Speedily Close this DRV. Nominator's actions should be viewed as disruptive after these recent shenanigans. Tarc 22:16, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy Redeletion After much thinking, I've decided you are right. Nonsense is unacceptable, and Wikipedia is not Myspace. I will from this point on follow all the rules. I am closing this review. Not an anon anymore!!!! Yeah!!!! 00:28, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy Endorse - The nominator's rationale is unfounded and inconsistent with the overall consensus of the MFD.--WaltCip 04:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians by generation (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|UCFD)

This was a group nom. There were several well-though-out comments in the discussion. Half the commenters suggested that though some of the categories should be deleted, other categories of this group nom should not be. This should probably have been relisted as two or more separate nominations (at least ages and generations) for clarity in determining consensus. - jc37 11:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Note, this nom includes:

• Overturn and relist as at least 2 separate nominations. - as nominator. - jc37 11:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse self - This was one grouping of age based categories. More than half of the users chose to delete all of them, so for those persons there is no lack of clarity. Of the 4 users who users chose to comment on them in 2 separate subgroups, only 1 was in favor of keeping the "Generational" categories. So either way that you look at it, this subgroup of categories was delete. For the "Wikipedians in..." categories, there were some arguments in support of keeping these, but I found Black Falcon's and Haemo's arguments to be more convincing. For that subgroup, if you "count votes" it was 6-3 delete, so between both the numbers and the strength of the arguments, I think that deletion of these is also appropriate. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 12:47, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

  Maybe I'm missing something, but I only count 8 commenters in the discussion? (4 general deletes, and 4 conditional, with Xaoflux's being the reverse of the others) Besides that, I agree wholly with your assessment above of the generational cats, it's the "Wikipedians in their..." cats that seem "no consensus" to me. The strength of a group nom is to minimise duplication of discussion. The weakness is "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". And we should do whatever we can to retain "the baby", of course. And if these should so obviously be deleted, as you mention, then a relisting should "do no harm" in the meantime. - jc37 18:53, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

  I count 9 participants, of which 1 recommended deleting the "in their xx's" categories only (Xaosflux), 3 suggested deleting the generation categories only (Espirit15d, Bduke, DGG), and 5 suggested deleting them all (^demon, me, Octane, Haemo, Bushcarrot). However, vote-counts aside (since XfD is not a vote), the keep argument mainly consisted of a hypothetical connection between age and access to particular sources (the question I raised about the efficiency of actually attempting to utilise that connection went answered) and an unexplained reference to correcting systemic bias. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

  Ah, I missed counting the nominator : ) - Though, as we seem to agree, it's not a "vote". However, I still see this as "no consensus", as I noted above. - jc37 20:27, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• Endorse closure. Attempting to establish a connection between age and interest would involve blatant and inaccurate stereotyping. Attempting to establish a connection between age and access to sources involves dealing with the inefficient "hit-and-miss" approach of contacting users in a specific age group to see if they have access to a particular source (You were born in 50s ... have any sources from back then?). Neither one of these issue was addressed by those arguing to keep the categories. In addition, although there were references to correcting systemic bias, it was never made clear what relation these categories have to systemic bias. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn, relist, and bring to wider attention. The small number of people active at UCfD should not be able to dictate the interface. The interface should be discussed by the people interested, who should be notified. Generation is relevant to collaboration on articles. the discussion of these wide ranging heavily populated categories should require adequate notice, though obviously most of the regulars at UCfD do not like that idea. I'll just note I do not use such categories myself, but I see no reason why others shouldn't--except for categories indicating one is a child. DGG (talk) 22:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse, we've had plenty of discussion on this, several times, repeating every argument at least thrice. Can we put it to rest? This really isn't worth all the fuss. >Radiant< 08:21, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• 'Endorse, this has been gone over many times before. Neil ╦ 14:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse. I'm interested to know why people think generation is relevant to collaboration. --Kbdank71 14:30, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Endorse - WP:DRV is not a second chance, and though it would be nice to notify more people of it, it is not required for a proper close. Given the latitude admins have to interpret discussions, this appears to have been interpreted properly. --Haemo 17:31, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Admins should simply implement the will of the community. They should have no freedom to act on their personal preferences. Golfcam 18:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • And how should that be done? xFD isn't about vote counting. --Kbdank71 19:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Even if we operated solely on the basis of vote counting, the result was 6-3 against the "in their xx's" categories and 8-1 against the generation categories. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
    • (In most cases) admins should discern the consensus of the discussion (rather than "implement the will of the community", whatever that is meant to mean), and AFAIK, they attempt to do so on a regular basis. Could you (Golfcam) further explain your concern? - jc37 21:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn There was clearly no consensus for this. Golfcam 18:42, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
  • On what do you base that claim? You made a broad statement above regarding (essentially) abuse of administrative tools, but have said nothing as to how or whether that applies to this particular situation. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Icebox.com (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|cache|AfD)

credible sourced material to justify notabilty Dwanyewest 02:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[1][2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] evidence provided Dwanyewest 02:29, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• List at AFD - Has enough to deserve a run through. But this website has essentially petered out, it's by no means a success. - hahnchen 10:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Overturn protection, clearly a notable startup in 2000 although Alexa shows it never even had significant traffic. Notability does not expire. If the original was not sourced recreating a new sourced article should be acceptable. --Dhartung | Talk 13:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment See discussion at User talk:RHaworth. --Dhartung | Talk 13:29, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Unprotect, list at AfD if desired (following recreation--I'm not sure that any of the old versions merit being restored). This was also covered in Newsweek a few years back, FWIW. Heather 21:50, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
• Unprotect. Mathmo ^Talk 03:54, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• User:Selfworm/VandalizeMe (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

I created many months ago the user-space page User:Selfworm/VandalizeMe and transcluded it into my main page with a show/hide option that was hidden by default for the purposes of

1. Preventing vandalism to my main page by giving users their own page to "vandalize".
2. Lightening the mood of Wikipedia editors that view and "vandalize" my main page for fun.

This user page was deleted without warning by the administrator Ryulong and the explanation that was given was "Seriously, vandalism only page". When asked about the reason for deleting the user page he responded that "It doesn't really do much for the encyclopedia." When asked to show that deleting user pages that don't "really do much for the encyclopedia" was Wikipedia policy, he ignored this request and changed his defense to the new claim that the page fell under the category of patent nonsense. I rebutted that "Vandalism is not necessarily the same thing as patent nonsense and not all patent nonsense is vandalism" and that this page was one of the exceptions; he did not respond to this rebuttal. The conversation between myself and Ryulong can be viewed here. Another conversation on this matter between myself and the administrator Pax:Vobiscum can be viewed here and here (under the heading of Speedy deletion).
I believe that this page did not violate any policy of Wikipedia and that it should be restored.

Please note that some user recreated this page after Ryulong deleted the original page and filled it with nonsense. Ryulong then deleted this page again. I am arguing in favor of restoring the original user-page that I created and not the second userpage that was created by some other user. selfworm^Talk) 08:09, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

• Overturn. Wikipedia is not MySpace, but it seems clear from Selfworm's long-term contributions that contributing to the encyclopedia is still his primary goal here. Wide latitude is generally offered to established contributors in userspace for harmless diversions, as long as the project remains their primary focus; many other established users have boxes like these as well. --Krimpet 08:34, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
• Speedy overturn, if that's an option. Zocky | picture popups 08:36, 5 August 2007 (UTC)