Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Car dealer fraud

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. JohnCD (talk) 17:53, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Car dealer fraud

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While a possible encyclopedic topic, the article starts with a link to http://dealerfraud.org/ (see WP:SPAM) and doesn't contain any references, which implies possible WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH. Barney the barney barney (talk) 10:23, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete possibly speedily. Artspam - an apparent article whose only purpose is the link. (Interesting that the quote marks in the top line are not the standard English flying commas, but those used in French and several other Continental languages.) Peridon (talk) 17:44, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unreferenced spam for a Los Angeles attorney specializing in car dealer fraud. I removed the spam link, which can be seen in the article's history.Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:48, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You removed one of the spam links. The "What to Do" section at the end plainly directs the reader to the law firm's website. Delete as an advertisement masquerading as an article. • Gene93k (talk) 21:54, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:47, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for noticing the second one, Gene93k. I removed that one too. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:06, 22 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

*Removed another link from the main body of the article. I did leave it as an external link, in case the original editor had intents other than spam and was just not sure how to go about posting references. Still, I recommend delete, because at the least, this is Original Research, and there's a decent chance that it's Outright Spam. Chri$topher 21:37, 23 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On looking at the article history, this is pretty likely advertising for the company, given that the original version of the article included a direct suggestion to visit the company website as a resource if someone felt that they had fallen victim to car dealer theft, ~~and given that much of its content was copied verbatim from the linked page~~. Recommend delete, and possibly speedy delete if an intentional violation of WP:NOTADVERTISEMENT is suspected by others, rather than an innocent mistake which looks like spam. Chri$topher 19:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as former artspam and current copy from outside source. Ansh666 21:30, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The car dealer fraud article now appears to have none of the links which originally led to the suspicion of spam, and has three references. The section "What to do when falling victim to car dealer fraud" has also been removed by the article creator. It appears that what I believed to be verbatim copying was actually just very similar wording to the website. Because of this, before a final decision is made to keep or delete the article, it would probably be a good idea to review the current iteration of the page. Grammar issues are still substantial, and I am unsure if the level of detail needs to be this in-depth. It does make me a little less skeptical that this article was created in good faith, though. I really hate to personally raise concerns of spam if they aren't totally justified. Chri$topher 17:31, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Did you look at those three references? Only one is half-decent, but even that only covers the last section. Most of it is still OR from a spam source. Ansh666 18:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Close copying that is near enough to make you even think it's the same is far too close. That sort of thing still falls under copyvio here. As to 'good faith', I see quite a lot of this sort of thing at CSD. It's known as 'art-spam', and it gets into forums and probably usenet as well. Anywhere you can post freely. Can be quite cleverly done at times. At others, they just stick links to fake handbag sites in at random in something totally irrelevant and often not even meaningful. (Those get chopped on first sight and the perpetrator gets auto-blocked to slow them down.) Peridon (talk) 23:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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.