Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Acharya S (3rd nomination)

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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 keep. All points considered, also noting that consensus can change. Regards, Arbitrarily0 (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Acharya S (3rd nomination)[edit]

AfDs for this article:
Acharya S (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Non-notable author, and a recreation of a previously deleted article - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Acharya S (2nd nomination). Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 23:06, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Subject is a notable and very popular underground author dealing in facts controversial only to the fringe hijackers of the page. I haven't been here since before 2008 at the least and I was here nearly at the beginning of it's construction, but this page is still being tinkered with in everyway to mess it up by those who disagree with her position. I returned the name back to Acharya S (mistakenly using caps for which I am thankful that was corrected). I also reverted to a position, I did not realise was under a deletion nomination, but I felt was closest to a fair representation. Apparently, others can't just be satisfied with that. Skull (talk) 00:03, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This user has been indefinitely banned for making legal threats regarding the article up for deletion. --Ari (talk) 07:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect, perhaps, but rename preferrably, and redirect. The author is not sufficiently notable to have a separate entry for her nom de plume. Put the article at her real name, and redirect this name to that article. WP has plenty of small-time crackpot authors, so I see no need to delete, but in this case, the author is sufficiently irrelevant to literature to warrant separate articles on the level of Mark Twain vs. Samuel Clemens, and per what I understand to be the spirit of WP:NAME, I believe the article should be at the author's given name, rather than at her penname, which, to repeat myself, should redirect to an appropriately-named article addressed at the author's given name. Regards, Tomertalk 09:46, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    hmmm... it appears my statement was premature. I wish we had separate articles for Samuel Clemens the person from Mark Twain the author, but it appears WP is yet deficient, unfortunately, in that regard. That notwithstanding, I still think this pseudonym should redirect to the author's real name, since neither is well-known outside conspiratorial [+advocacy] circles. Opinion unchanged. Tomertalk 09:50, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    As discussed in WP:COMMONNAME, we normally follow the most common usage in sources for deciding the appropriate article naming when a subject is discussed under multiple names. For many authors this means the article is under their pen name (Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, etc.). Regardless, the naming of an article is something of a minor side note compared to whether it is deleted or not. We don't typically delete articles just because of disputes over how to name them. --RL0919 (talk) 15:33, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    ORLY?! :-p Tomertalk 23:32, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The last discussion ended in delete as neither the author nor the writings are notable. There is a lack of reliable sources that attribute notability to the subject. Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 14:18, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for reference, Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_March_10#Acharya_S. At that time it was decided that Acharya S' writings were notable though she herself was not. Essentially the problem is her books are very famous (among the conspiracy / Christ myth crowd) but little is known about her personally. :So a compromise was struck to create an article "Writings of D.M. Murdock". The nominator participated in that compromise. From the start however there is a problem in that with most writers we discuss their works under the name, i.e. if a an author's books are notable they are seen as notable. To pick an extreme example we have an article on Anne Desclos, who is only notable because of her books. Moreover Story of O was published under the name Pauline Réage, and the author was unknown for decades. Had she not come forward decades later Desclos would not have been notable, but because she did (credibly) she is considered notable.
In the case of Murdock / Acharya S, her books are obviously notable. Christ Conspiracy has an Amazon sales rank of 18,883 11 years after it was published and Acharya S generates just under 1 million Google hits. The first 1/3rd of Zeitgeist, the Movie is based on her work... Whenever the topic of astro-theology is mentioned her name is used interchangeably with the entire theory, meaning that both critics and friends alike agree she is RS in this field (regardless of what they think of the field). I can keep going with dozens more examples why her books are notable. As far as I know she is the most influential and read conspiracy theorists in the United States on the left. Quite simply we must have an article on her, and if I had more time I'd improve the one we do have updating it with the (rather substantial) information for the last five years. Given that her latest books like Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection and The Gospel According to Acharya S are being published under her real name I think the article should be renamed to D.M. Murdock and kept. The move without having a consensus was perhaps mistaken, but deletion is not a remotely reasonable solution on how to handle this author / article. jbolden1517Talk 14:36, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Though she's fringy and restricted to a cult following, she has been discussed at length in a number of reliable sources--this in itself establishes notability. Since Acharya S appears to be the name under which she is most commonly discussed, D.M. Murdock should be merged and redirected here. Nathan McKnight -- Aelffin (talk) 18:26, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note I made my above comment without realizing that no separate D.M. Murdock page existed. Nathan McKnight -- Aelffin (talk) 18:31, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The author is well known in her genre, and numerous popular books reference her work. ^^James^^ (talk) 21:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The author is notable, has been discussed in reliable sources, and is popular. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BruceGrubb (talk • contribs) 18:23, December 29, 2009
  • Delete. Whatever the interest in including the theories in WP, which can be done under suitable topics, this page is effectively a recreation of the old page, for which there was a deletion discussion and decision to delete. I spent much time as an admin trying to enforce BLP policy on that page, and eventually the business led to an Arbitration case. The recreation of the deleted page invites a re-run of the same business. I doubt that there are actually reliable sources to establish biographical facts to current standards on verifiability: the sources cited look familiar and I would argue that as we now look at things, they are inadequate. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • So would you favor excising the bio info and moving the article back to a "Writings of..." format, as it had existed since the prior AfD? There are really two issues here--1) Are her works covered enough to be notable? 2) Is she herself covered enough to be a BLP? I think the evidence for the former is quite a bit stronger than the latter. Jclemens (talk) 19:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • The current page and history, going back to 2005, needs to be deleted. A title like Writings of X is not adequate, in my view. If the idea is to discuss a central topic T in those writings, such a title means you can only add what X writes about T. So it is really a POV fork in disguise, of the potential article on topic T, which is what should be there; certainly in this instance that is exactly what it would be, since what Acharya S argues has roots in some quite old "freethinkers". Charles Matthews (talk) 20:05, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • When that was done with substantial parts of this content (merging them into Christ myth theory, IIRC) they were rejected as placing UNDUE emphasis. Jclemens (talk) 22:22, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • That is not an argument that this article should be kept, is it? It is an argument that whoever did that merge was clumsy about it. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:16, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, and at the current name. While I appreciate the circumstances that led to it, the "Writings of" compromise was never a good solution. It is not uncommon for someone to be notable for their intellectual products but for there to be relatively little personal biographical information in the article. This is true of subjects from ancient times (e.g., Alexander of Aphrodisias) to the present day (e.g., William F. Vallicella, recently an overwhelming "keep" at AFD). The articles for these subjects are routinely named for the individuals, even though the content is mostly about their writings/ideas and the response to them, and the sources for their notability are usually focused on their works and not the person. There appears to be enough commentary about her ideas in independent reliable sources to qualify. As one might expect for a fringe author, the materials tend to be polarized and sometimes dismissive, but the point at AFD is only to establish that sources discuss her, not that her theories are widely accepted. I've recently added commentary about her ideas from three books, including one by a respected religious scholar. I count at least six reliable sources for commentary on her ideas where the authors of the source material are themselves notable. So while she isn't the most notable person on the planet, there is enough for an article. --RL0919 (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment How is this article different than the one that was deleted - per the last Afd? The article still lacks reliable sources that attribute notability to the person. Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 02:47, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • What is the difference between the present article and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Acharya S (2nd nomination)? Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 02:52, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • As of the latest revision, the diff from the time of the last delete comment in the prior AFD looks like this. Since the diff is a bit hard to read, let me summarize the key point: Independent reliable sources cited in the old version: one. Independent reliable sources cited in the new version: about a dozen (there are more third-party citations than that, but I'm allowing that a few may be considered non-reliable). Surely that is a relevant change? --RL0919 (talk) 04:22, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • What/where are these "dozen?" Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 05:00, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • This is silly. If you have challenges to specific sources, then go ahead and challenge them, don't just assert deletion without giving your reasons. Unless you're asserting that all the sources are unreliable, in which case, you need to re-read WP:RS. Nathan McKnight -- Aelffin (talk) 15:56, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
            • I've just removed personal information that was in flagrant violation of WP:RS. Asserting there are reliable third-party sources is not the same as checking that policy is being followed. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:15, 31 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Note that the nominator has been removing content from the article while the discussion is ongoing. Jclemens (talk) 03:30, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply Note that OR and violations have been removed - per BLP. Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 21:15, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • The problem with that is that editing to remove OR or subtle BLP violations presume the article will be kept in the reduced form. You're arguing that the entire article should be deleted. Thus, removing content is a conflict of interest--pick which one you want to do: improve the content by editing, or delete the article. Furthermore, calling the material you removed a BLP violation is problematic: what, exactly, about the entire sourced paragraph you removed was so egregious that it couldn't have either stayed put through the rest of the AfD, or been improved by you based on the other references clearly available? AfD is about improving Wikipedia, not "winning"--or at least, it should be. Jclemens (talk) 22:20, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Let's see. The AfD notice hidden comment: "End of AfD message, feel free to edit beyond this point". Must mean something. AfD discussions are supposed to be about the topic, really. Not the current state of the article. I have no idea why you are introducing theories allowing you to attack the nominator in this way. Tell you what, it would be more constructive if you also attempted to improve the article, rather than assuming bad faith in someone else's efforts to do that. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:51, 1 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • No one's attacking anyone. If anything, the fact that the nominator is aggressively removing information from the article, citing BLP for things which only marginally fit those criteria is a multi-front attack on the article. It's certainly his right to do so, just as it's well within my rights to point that out. Actions that demonstrate such a multi-pronged all-out effort to delete an article may be viewed dimly by other !voters, hence the relevance of this discussion. Really, the most productive AfD discussions are the ones where the nominator takes a more hands-off approach and lets the article stand or fall on its merits, in my experience. Jclemens (talk) 23:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • You continue to personalise the discussion, while resisting the application of WP:BLP. Please note once more that AfD relates primarily to whether the topic is worth an article, not your theories about who is "attacking" it or "supporting" it. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Please note that per BLP - "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion.Biographies of living persons must be written conservatively, with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid paper; it is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives. The possibility of harm to living subjects must be considered when exercising editorial judgment. This policy applies equally to biographies of living persons and to information about living persons on other pages. The burden of evidence for any edit on Wikipedia rests with the person who adds or restores material. Therefore, an editor should be able to demonstrate that it complies with all Wikipedia content policies and guidelines." In any BLP, such material is removed per policy. Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 01:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • For what it is worth, I do not think anyone should give Ism schism a hard time for the edits to the article. I think this AFD was unnecessary and I've already registered my "keep", but challenging specific material and asking for better sources is part of the natural improvement process for an article. That doesn't mean the material Ism removes/challenges won't end up back in the article, but at least if it comes back there will be better sources or a fuller discussion of why the original sources were adequate or not. --RL0919 (talk) 00:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep Within her area of activity there is quite a bit of comment floating around so writing an article is doable.©Geni 01:01, 3 January 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.
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