Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infinite Energy (magazine) (2nd nomination)

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. There was not consensus to delete this page at this point in time. It was not a particularly strong keep consensus, but it was for keep. Could certainly revisit in a few months' time, with a later AFD at some point. -- Cirt (talk) 00:21, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Infinite Energy (magazine)[edit]

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I believe this particular magazine with a very limited circulation and not much in the way of outside notice is not notable. Two years of limbo makes me think this publication is destined for extreme obscurity. Deletion is appropriate until it becomes more famous and encyclopedic. ScienceApologist (talk) 01:28, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - It's mentioned in this news article [1] and this one [2] and this one [3] (all about Mallove's murder) and its sold via Amazon [4] as well as in my local bookstore - you may "believe" it is limited, but it's certainly worth noting. (Not sure what you mean by "two years of limbo"?) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:20, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Simple mention in news articles about arresting Mallove's murderer does not make the magazine notable. Neither does its availability on Amazon. I cannot verify that the magazine is available in your local bookstore, but I imagine it may have something to do with the fact that you seem to be in New England where the magazine is based. The onus is on those wanting to keep the article to show it is notable enough to have received independent, third-party coverage which this magazine decidedly lacks. We gave the peanut gallery two years to establish notability, and there isn't a single citation to an independent third-party source to be had. Time to throw this away. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:13, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose- I find it hard to take this nomination quite seriously. ScienceApologist is notorious for his/her extreme disdain for everything not embraced by mainstream, institutionalized science. Same nominator nominated this article for deletion last time. I'd like to know upon what the belief that this magazine has a very limited circulation is based. I'd also like to know what the nominator means by asserting that it has been "in limbo" for two years (i.e. since the last AfD nomination). Does ScienceApologist command some paranormal abilities that lead him/her to gain insights on factual matters which for the supernatural origin of these faculties makes it hard to add these facts to the article? __meco (talk) 14:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Your personal animus towards me is irrelevant. Your arguments have no real content. The onus is on those wanting to keep the article to show it has a circulation that makes it inherently notable. Good luck finding some independent third-party sources to establish this. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:13, 4 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I hold your track record in some esteem, i.e. in most situations I believe you maintain the required focus, however, this nomination is not among them. __meco (talk) 18:42, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Merge. Merits mention in Eugene Mallove, but not enough independent third-party sources for its own article. Qrsdogg (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:08, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, JForget 00:21, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete 2 years and no reliable sources other than primary sources to confirm it exists. sale on amazon does not confer WP notability, and the magazine's mention in the articles on the founders murder are not significant, ie they arent about the magazine itself. anyone who feels this is a notable magazine has had 15 years of publishing history to show it, and 2 years since the articles creation. I have read the previous afd, and the news articles. the only thing i did NOT read until just now was scienceapologists rationale. i wanted to come to my own conclusion, after noting the personal attacks here. well, i concur with scienceapologist, and last time i checked my waist there isnt a huge wrist where my stomach should be, nor am i made of nylon reinforced cotton/poly knit fabric:) I would, of course, welcome any sourced evidence of notability, but im not hopeful. no prejudice to recreation once cold fusion is proven scientifically:)(no, truly, i am open minded)Mercurywoodrose (talk) 02:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 22:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 21:14, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or (weak) merge with Eugene Mallove^{(see below)}. Although the above sources only contain trivial mentions, sources like [5] and [6]^([7][8]) suggest notability. — Rankiri (talk) 14:42, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Bart Simon's book is wonderful, but I don't think that it really establishes notability for the magazine, per se. Can we write an entire article based upon a page and a half of writing about Mallove's pet project from Simon's book on cold fusion? The mentions in the Best of the Magazine Market do not seem to contain any information beyond the magazine's existence. Can you explain how you would write the article based on these two sources? ScienceApologist (talk) 15:13, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Come on, are you seriously dismissing three pages of book coverage as a trivial mention? As for the Best of the Magazine Market, its snippets show that the magazine is discussed on at least three different pages. The fact that the index page doesn't even mention the visible coverage on pages 26 and 27 only suggests that the inaccessible page 525 has more detailed information.

In addition, the magazine gets a good number of hits in Google Books, Google News, and Google Scholar. Most of them are completely trivial, but many are not fully accessible and can possibly contain non-trivial coverage:[9], [10], etc. Considering that I only skimmed the results for "Infinite Energy magazine" and not the hundreds of additional results for "Infinite Energy"+magazine, I have all reasons to believe that additional significant coverage in independent sources can be found. When in doubt, don't delete, remember? — Rankiri (talk)

I find it a bit amusing that you keep referencing all these books I've read about cold fusion. I didn't even remember that the Sun in a Bottle book even mentioned Infinite Energy so I went and looked and realized that it is essentially a two-sentence mention. Non-trivial? Hardly. Evidence that an article can be written that is encyclopedic beyond a simple posit would be nice. How would you incorporate all these "non-trivial sources" into, say, an additional paragraph for our article? ScienceApologist (talk) 17:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please recall WP:NOTCLEANUP. My only point is that the magazine seems to pass the general notability guideline. If you're looking for ways to improve the article, Bart Simon's book is a good start. You can also find bits of useful information among trivial mentions: [11]. — Rankiri (talk) 18:26, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you're paying attention. Bart Simon's book does not really describe the magazine as anything more than an offshoot of Mallove's idiosyncracies, and the trivial mentions do no more than establish the existence of the magazine. I'm going to assume that the answer to my query is that you are actually unable to write a paragraph for insertion until I see evidence otherwise, WP:NOTCLEANUP does not trump WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:17, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, your request is unreasonable and has nothing to do with WP:AFD or WP:DEL. The same goes for your preposterous use of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Considering that I see no reason to believe that your seemingly preconceived opinion represents the consensus of the community, I'm going to go with the book that dedicates almost three full pages of the subject. — Rankiri (talk) 19:50, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's very sad to learn that the level of editorial discourse here at AfD is at counting pages in a book. I look forward to seeing whether you actually contribute anything. If not, delete by redirect will work fine considering that the AfD lurkers rarely bother doing anything after the debate. "It's notable, but don't make me write anything about it!" Classic. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've reviewed the refs in the book by Bart Simon. I dont think they establish this as a notable magazine. the first mention describes it as a "private" magazine, which i believe qualifies it as in the realm of a self published, or vanity, publication, with a single purpose of promoting the subject. While that doesnt automatically negate it as a notable magazine, the lack of other mention, even controversial mentions, such as a mainstream scientist denouncing the magazine publicly, or an investigative journalist covering it extensively, points to it not being notable yet. Unless we have a copy of the book to look at, and can confirm a nontrivial mention on pages blocked on google books, we cant assume the mentions are notable. this book seems to be about the cult of this scientific idea, so multiple mentions of the mag would make sense, but that actually only shows its nonnotability as a minor fringe magazine noted only for its connection to the fringe (not clear if this is the correct use of fringe on wp, just pointing out its "fringy") scientist who created it. if this magazine cant even get a chapter in a book on this subject, i say its not notable by our standards. i still welcome any sourced additions, though.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 20:23, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For crying out loud, it seems that you only look at the selected instances of "Infinite Energy" in the text. I'll try to paste some of the quotes without violating WP:COPYVIO.

In general the magazine defiantly promotes the idea of cold fusion and new energy, while at the same time acting as a conduit for technical information...

Fusion Facts and Infinite Energy publish articles about colf fusion as well as other radical claims related tot he production of energy, but much if their material and readership...

[One issue of Infinite Energy] lists an article . . . by researchers at Osaka University. This appears along with articles on modern methods of transmuting mercury to gold . . .

In addition, each issue also features technical letters from researchers, advertisements . . . book reviews, and comics.

The July 1999 issue of the magazine, for instance, celebrates the tenth anniversary...

The contents of this issue demonstrate the degree to which core-group scientiests have been integrated...

Although the magazine is written for the most part in a popular and accessible style, many of the contributors and readers of Infinite Energy are the same as those...

Infinite Energy provides an important alternative by supplying new technical information...

The magazine is published and edited by Eugene Mallove...

Mallove started Infinite Energy in 1995...

Infinite Energy has the highest production value and the widest circulation amongst the CF newsletters. Mallove routinely prints about five thousand copies of each bimonthly issue, which is anywhere from fifty to a hundred pages. The magazine has several thousand subscribers and sells up to 80% of the additional 2,400 newstand issues in prints.

Like the cold fusion conferences, Infinite Energy becomes a context in which the publicly accountable identities of scientists...

And so on. Saying that the book doesn't provide nontrivial coverage of the subject is disingenuous at best. — Rankiri (talk) 20:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As for the rest of the sources, I see numerous citations in the media and academic publications. The Best of the Magazine Markets for Writers already contains some visible coverage on the pages that are not even listed on its index page. As far as I know, WP:RS does not require all potential sources to be fully available online. — Rankiri (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Let me venture to summarize that for you, Infinite Energy magazine was founded by the late Dr. Eugene Mallove and discusses cold fusion; vacuum energy, or zero point energy; and so-called "environmental energy" which they define as the attempt to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, for example with a perpetual motion machine. This is done in pursuit of the founder's commitment to "unearthing new sources of energy and new paradigms in science." Aside from the incredibly interesting details about the number of pages and the circulations, that's the sum total of the "non-trivial notice" you outline. Already in the article, it makes me totally confused how this could be said to be anything we can work with to write an encyclopedic article. WP:NME#Newspapers, magazines and journals. ScienceApologist (talk) 21:10, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notability of media topics in a nutshell: there is significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. Significant coverage means that sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. When this changes to something like "an AfD participant must write a paragraph about the subject or otherwise satisfy the nominator's every whim" and "significant coverage refers to the type of material that isn't already present in the article", be sure to let me know, ok? — Rankiri (talk) 00:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I read the snippets provided by rankiri. while the statement that it has the widest circulation helps towards notability, i still say that mention in this book doesnt establish notability. the way the quotes were cut off (regardless of the respect paid for copyvio, which i get), i cant tell if the author of the book is praising, criticising, or dismissing the magazine as ultimately trivial. it still seems like the mag is a small fish in a small pond, and no one who is not a club member is fishing in it. I would welcome this being listed somewhere so we can get other peoples comments, but i dont know how to do that yet (and of course i wont canvass).Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:58, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

to show my sincere NPOV towards this subject, here's some possible references i found: [12], good to show here though it doesnt help with notability (does reflect on magazine), [13], minor report on the mags expose of mit blunders (not very notable), and HERE IT IS, [14] new york times mention (in passing) of the mag. I would prefer to see articles on mr malloves books here at WP. i also note that this mag article was not tagged as fringe science or physics, and has links to real science ideas, giving the impression to some that its not fringe science. also, the mallove article has multiple external links to memorial websites. why do i bring this up? i think it shows a tendency in these two articles towards POV promoting this fringe topic and minimizing its relative unimportance compared to mainstream science, thus anyone who is strongly opposed to deletion, who has not fixed up the article even a little to try to give it NPOV, has a likely bias towards promoting the subject.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 05:23, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And I could argue that anyone who unprecedentedly dismisses whole pages of book coverage as irrelevant and is quick to jump to the seemingly unconnected policy of disruptive editing and accuse dissenting views of personal bias shows a certain degree of predetermination as well. According to WP:AOBF, making unsupported accusations of bad faith can be seen as a personal attack. As far as I'm concerned, AfD is not cleanup, and if the page can be improved, this should be solved through regular editing, rather than deletion. So unless you can support your insinuations with any type of evidence, I suggest you apologize. — Rankiri (talk) 13:33, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, calm down everyone. I am a fairly active editor in these areas and I've actually read the book in question. Of course, Rankiri doesn't seem to agree with my analysis, but also has no desire to actually edit the article. So if a keep does emerge, a redirect to Mallove might be the best. Would that be okay with you Rankiri? I think it would be okay with me. Then we could close this as a procedural close, redirect and all get back to writing the encyclopedia. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merge? Perhaps. Considering that the independent coverage is fairly borderline and the rest of the sources only cover the magazine in connection with its author, I guess I don't have any strong objections to a merger. But how is "deletion by redirect", as you called it, any different from regular deletion? Wikipedia is not working to a deadline. Just because I refused to follow your request, it doesn't mean that the article will remain in this form forever.

I also want to add to my earlier response to Mercurywoodrose. This is not an article about fringe theories. It's an article about a magazine that publishes or otherwise promotes fringe theories. Valid or invalid, the magazine's views and topics of interest are completely irrelevant to this discussion. If the subject is directly covered by several seemingly reliable secondary sources and additional coverage is likely to be found, WP:N is satisfied. — Rankiri (talk) 17:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete by redirect is often the complaint that people who own various articles use when an article is merged soon after surviving AfD, and I was using it somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The biggest difference is the preserved article history which can be useful if, in the future, it is determined to undo the redirect by an enterprising article writer who isn't an administrator. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fine with some sort of merge of contents. Rankiri, you are correct, there is no evidence of POV on your part, only the lack of willingness to immediately correct POV or undue weight in the article, which of course you are not obliged to do, nor am i (its a volunteer project after all). But, the magazine is exclusively devoted to fringe theories, so it really should be categorized or mentioned in this context. stating the magazines approach to the Second Law, without some sort of sourced comment about how this is commonly understood as the very definition of fringe science, is POV. I do know that AFD is not cleanup, but some editing during afd, esp adding sources, is sometimes appropriate, esp. when rescuing the article, and can help others to see notability better. The only reliable sources (source?) we have are ones severely critical of the magazines fringe views, so that should be here. having said that, i do apologize for the insinuation.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:56, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Black Kite (t) (c) 06:28, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - I don't see enough WP:RS external coverage to justify meeting WP:GNG. Shadowjams (talk) 06:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Eugene Mallove. Shadowjams' succinct analysis is correct:- this obscure publication is not notable. But per WP:BEFORE, there are sometimes better ways to deal with un-notable things than deletion.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 09:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
merge with Eugene Mallove. Whilst there does seem to be some referance to this mag it also seems to be so minor as to really produce a stub, and nothing more. Seems to me its best served by being part of another article.Slatersteven (talk) 10:00, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
~~Keep~~You're right, you had already !voted - I've lost track of this endless debate, perhaps I've already voted in this AfD. The big argument against merging is that Mallove has been dead for - what, four years? - and the magazine continues, so that merging them would be like merging Amazing Stories and Hugo Gernsback (assuming I've remembered my sci-fi early history correctly). - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:55, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I had no difficulty expanding the article from a good source which demonstrates the topic's notability. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:02, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The Google news search at the top of the AFD shows that the magazine is notable enough that its editors are often quoted for their expert opinion by various major newspapers. Dream Focus 09:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Passes WP:GNG per source found by Colonel Warden. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:54, 27 April 2010 (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.