Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stanislav Menshikov

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. Consensus is to keep. I realize this article might be at the hand of a sock of a banned user, but G5 would obviously get countered by many people in here and sent to an AfD. Since it passed the AfD, and that I've been convinced of his notability, it's a keep. Valley2city^‽ 20:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stanislav Menshikov[edit]

Article created by the sock of a banned user, and the subject's notability is not exactly evident. He gets many Google hits presumably due to his prior service as a Soviet spokesman to Western media and because he is a published author, but no clear sign of extensive coverage. I'm bringing this to AfD per the discussion at Wikipedia:ANI#Poor_judgment_and_questionable_timing_on_a_speedy_deletion. Sandstein 21:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete – per WP:BAN (having after read the ANI post, naturally). We cannot recognize contributions from banned users. They are banned, which means they are not welcome, plain and simple. MuZemike 00:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- G5 is a license, not a mandate. We have it so we can quickly delete problematic material from banned users that doesn't specifically meet one of the other CSDs. But if the article is otherwise useful...--chaser (talk) 03:30, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - per WP:IAR. The subject clearly meets the standard of WP:NOTE, although the article could be improved. Sometimes I think that the goal of building a good encyclopedia ought to take precedence over the ever-important mission of punishing banned users. --Leatherstocking (talk) 01:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Writing a book with John Kenneth Galbraith goes a long way to putting you over the threshold of notability. This guy looks like <redacted> but that's neither here nor there. I looked over WP:ban and there is no absolute requirement to delete articles by banned users; that would be a very baby/bathwater nose/spite-face sort of thing. Hairhorn (talk) 03:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have redacted a violation of WP:BLP in the above comment. Sandstein 05:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is not a violation of WP:BLP, and relevant to the discussion here, to observe that Menshikov has some sort of association with Lyndon Larouche (the Larouche article mentions Larouche's presence at an 80th-birthday celebration of Menshikov, with a source, as well as the fact that a Larouche organization published a Menshikov book) and that this might imply some level of fringeness on Menshikov's part. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't see which part of BLP I violated. Could you clarify? Expressing your opinion ("looks like") is not libel, except perhaps in extreme cases. And there is no requirement of neutrality in a deletion discussion; in fact it would make deletion discussions rather difficult. Hairhorn (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The redacted text can be see here (please ignore the wrong edit summary). WP:BLP requires more than just refraining from libel. It strictly prohibits all unsourced derogatory content concerning living persons on all of Wikipedia pages. It is certainly possible to refer to this man's adherence to this or that movement in a non-derogatory manner. Sandstein 09:20, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sandstein is right. We should never use derogatory language like "crackpot" about living people (whether editors or subjects). This isn't a forum where cutting remarks are clever. The encyclopedia covers all topics, including beliefs, some of which are strange or unusual and held by a relative few. We're not here to judge. Every topic and subject should be treated in a neutral manner. Will Beback talk 09:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The comment in question was probably careless on my part, taking it out doesn't change the essence of what I said. So I'm not going to whine. However, I will point out that this issue brings up a flaw in BLP, because it requires many other things that are impossible in a deletion debate: neutrality, you can't "appear to take sides", you shouldn't represent the views of a small minority, and so on. There is a "non-article space" section of BLP, but it does little to paper over the hole. Hairhorn (talk) 15:37, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. It seems very clear to me that G5 speedy deletion is not appropriate in this case: per the ANI discussion, the page was created six months prior to the imposition of the ban, so it is not true that the page creation happened in violation of the ban. I think we should decide this case on the merits of the article rather than blindly applying rules. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless the article is much improved. The link to the alleged Galbraith book is dead, what is required are reliable independent sources of recognition and these don't seem to be here. However, the fact that the LP is a fringe operator and is banned from Wikipedia, in my view, does not affect criteria for inclusion. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC).[reply]
? unless the article is much improved ? We should not keep/delete on these grounds. Is the subject suitable for an article? (Otherwise all stubs should go.. well there is merit in that argument...) Rich Farmbrough, 17:23, 28 May 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Keep: Given that the link to Galbraith is referring to this book and is trivially replaceable, it seems the threshold for NOT is met. The complaint that he gets many Google hits because he was a spokesman seems specious; Tony Snow would have disappeared without a trace (notice there's not a single ref in the Early career section) if not for the fact that he was the White House spokesman and worked with Rush. I fail to see the distinction between these two cases - if Snow gets an article, why not Menshikov? Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Delete as created by a banned user (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche 2). Failing that, Delete - marginally notable if that; no reliable sources to support a biography. I might speedy delete this myself if it won't cause confusion. Tom Harrison ^Talk 14:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Tom, check out the ANI link at the top of this discussion; the deletion of the article due to its being created by a later banned user is what started this whole thing. --GRuban (talk) 15:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Herschelkrustofsky was blocked 5 May 2006. He used sockpuppets to evade the block, causing it to reset. The article was created 18 May 2007 by one of his socks. The probelem isn't the perfectly correct speedy deletion of an article created by a banned user, it's the (botched, necessarily corrected) recreation. Speedy delete was and is appropriate, but if that might cause confusion, the article should still be deleted for the reasons above - lack of notability, and no sources to support a biography. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Herschelkrustofsky's account was not blocked between 5 may 2007 and 27 July 2007. The article was created on 18 May 2007, not by a banned user, but by a sockpuppet of a user who was not blocked at the time. He wasn't evading a block (whether or not he thought he was). Gwen Gale (talk) 01:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the logs and Gwen Gale is correct, to my surprise. (Not surprised that she's right, just that I'd forgotten the sequence of events.) It appears that HK's one year block had expired and it wasn't reinstated until July. Though he never returned to editing under his own account, he was apparently using four different socks that month, plus IP adresses. Those accounts had started edited while HK was still banned, and previous socks had been found as late as November 2006, so the ban should have been extended then. I think it's safe to say that his short unblocked period can be ignored considering his bad faith activity before, during, and since. Anyway, let's keep this discussion on whether to retain the article or not. We can't fix the past. Will Beback talk 07:25, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. As I said at ANI, I couldn't get too stirred up about seeing the speedy deletion of an article begun by the sock of a user with such a long and woesome block log but otherwise, this AfD is the most straightforward way to deal it now. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:33, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Writing a book with John Kenneth Galbraith (one that gets mentioned in Galbraith's obituary [1]) is notable. Writing other books, lecturing internationally, being an official Soviet govt representative on US television, being interviewed by Pravda [2] would probably qualify even without it. Supporting Lyndon LaRouche is ... not a disqualifier. :-) --GRuban (talk) 15:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Arguments that the article was created by a banned user are COMPLETELY irrelevant. A speedy is wholly out of line. The user was banned for edit warring over the controversial Lyndon LaRouche, which apparently is still a battleground and currently protected. There is no evidence whatsoever that the subject of this AfD Stanislav Menshikov was created in an attempt to disrupt Wikipedia, so we should relate strictly to the merits of that article. To repeat what has been stated above, writing a book with John Kenneth Galbraith is a clear pass for notability. I agree with the analogy to the Tony Snow article. Power.corrupts (talk) 07:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Yes. Notability of the topic is the only thing which should have sway in this AfD, rather than the contrib history. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:37, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. We shouldn't care about what a banned user did - we banned them because they were being disruptive. Deleting what they did merely because they did it merely extends that disruptiveness beyond the ban. So to address the issue at hand: is the subject notable enough for inclusion (WP:N)? Probably yes. Certainly if Wikipedia had been around in the late 70s when he was at the UN this wouldn't be an issue, I get the impression there must be many sources from that period. Rd232 ^talk 12:41, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, per GRuban, & the fact that he was a diplomat at the UN -- this is how I understand the passage "spent six years on the Secretariat of the United Nations in New York". -- llywrch (talk) 16:57, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Google Book Search [3] shows many print references to, or publications by the individual, unfortunately many are snippet view, and it is not easy to discern which are reliable and independent sources, or which are from some moonbeam press. But [4] calls him "former UN official and staff member of the Communist Central Committee." [5] says he is of the Russian Academy of Science. He was written about in Newsweek back in 1963[6]. The Hoover Institution in 1974 called him "the third ranking member of the Central Committee's International Department[7]." His co-author Galbreath called him a "[8] distinguished Soviet economist."These bonafides would suffice for anyone else to satisfy WP:BIO. We should be in the business of having as complete and accurate an encyclopedia as possible, and not get into a snit because someone who worked on an article touched it and gave the demonstrably notable subject cooties. If the bad guy put POV material or unsourced statements in the article, then edit it from the sources available down to a referenced stub. Edison (talk) 20:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep notable for soviet governmental positions if for nothing else. Bigdaddy1981 (talk) 07:47, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Menshikov is a leading Russian economist. I have expanded the article slightly. --Coleacanth (talk) 22:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question So what happens when a banned user does write an article about something that is bulletproof notability? Delete it until someone else rewrites it from scratch? rootology/equality 23:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Any topic of "bulletproof" notability will probably be notable enough that an editor in good standing would want to write an article about them. Everything in Wikipedia is done on a case-by-case basis. Any editor in good standing may restore edits made by banned editors, but by doing so they take full responsibility for the material. See WP:BAN They should not give the appearance of being a meat puppet who acts at the behest of a banned user.
- A particular habit of this banned user, along with many POV pushers, was creating content that supported the POV he was pushing. While in some cases the individual contributions may have appeared NPOV at first glance, a little research showed that they in fact skewed the overall project. While I don't care so much about the notability of Menshikov, I note that this case is a good reason for the rule. Based on how rarely this article has been linked to,[9] it does not appear that anyone other than SPAs have shown interest in the subject. If an involved editor hadn't complained I doubt that the initial deletion would have been noticed by anyone. Will Beback talk 00:00, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- I suggest further discussions of this policy are best conducted at WT:BAN. Will Beback talk 00:54, 2 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. As long as we continue to pretend this is an encyclopedia, I support greater lenience in applying notability standards for articles about legitimate scholars/thinkers than those conerncing pop culture flashes-in-pans. I find the discussion as to whether the article was crated by a (gasp) banned user to be petty and somewhat surreal.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 03:16, 2 June 2009 (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.