Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sarthak Sharma (2nd 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 delete. Most of the Keep rationales are simply "it's notable" and I have concerns about some of the SPA issues (two of the users commenting have not been active for some while, on one case three years). However the biggest issue is that the article is simply the version deleted at the previous AfD with a very small section added about discovering a bug - it would not in my opinion have been wrong to actually speedy delete this as G4. When these issues are taken together, this pushes me towards closing this as Delete. Black Kite (talk) 13:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Sarthak Sharma[edit]

AfDs for this article:

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Sarthak Sharma (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Not enough work or links to realize WP:GNG. Laptopinmyhands (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]


  • Keep Enough mentions in reliable sources to be notable. Clearly meets WP:GNG bechmark. UA3 (talk) 05:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • can it be clarified which sources? To me they all look marketing posts. Laptopinmyhands (talk) 21:54, 7 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    None of the references looks marketing posts to me. There are quite a lot verifiable independent sources for the subject. In my opinion, NDTV India source can be adequate to pass WP:GNG. Angad.uday (talk) 06:14, 8 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
please see cnbc link too. Same content translated. Very clear they had same source. Why would cnbc copy Ndtv on purpose on this minor event?Laptopinmyhands (talk) 01:17, 9 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Not notable enough for a Wikipedia article. If there are many more independent sources confirming importance and providing sufficient information to support content in an encyclopedia article, then the article can exist. But that is not the case here. Seems too premature. Probably just another attempt for self-popularization. --Engineering Guy (talk) 02:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. There are significant coverages about him from reliable independent sources. Sources mentioned in the articles are enough to meet notability. Ashish065 (talk) 18:24, 11 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ashish has edited after a year almost. And this is his first edit. This is also first AFD comment. Laptopinmyhands (talk) 14:32, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Please discuss the sources, don't just assert that they are sufficient or insufficient.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 06:59, 13 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete (ref nums from this version) Refs 1 & 2 have identical opening paragraphs. Refs 3 and 10, while seemingly different from a vocabulary aspect, use an identical structure - covid, biz loss, "we had a chance to meet AutoForSure", quotes from founders, all in that same order. Thus none of these are independent. Ref 4 is an interview as every line is a quote. Refs 8 and 9 in Hindi again share the same structure. Note also that these articles are mostly from Jan 2021. All these along with Ref 5 are actually about the company and mentions of the subject are limited to quotes. Taken together, there is a strong hint of a coordinated marketing campaign by the company. The two remaining articles on bug-bounty cover the subject only briefly, telling us about the schools he attended. Whatever else search engines surface is similarly interviews or brief mentions. Hemantha (talk) 07:54, 15 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keepstruck duplicate vote Comment: NDTV and CNBC doesn’t seem “copy” to me as said by nominee. CNBC was posted before NDTV India, and by the format and details mentioned in NDTV article, they both are entirely different. CNBC clearly discuss interests, past experiences, career life of him, and ends with how Discord exploit was found. Same topic was picked up by author Bikram, but was primarily focused on Discord. Yet did mentions the details and information about the subject which makes both the independent references valid and notable. OneIndia, Navbharat Times, and Zee news are some of the journalist written articles which do talk about the subject and prove notability. Ref 5 (NewsX) seems to be a post for company, but do mention basic details about the subject. If someone is running a company, there will be some articles about promoting the business. If we talk about the subject, article seems neutral and doesn’t sound promotional to me. Someone mentioned about references being posted on same month. As far I can see references are of different months, January, March, July, August, October, January’22. UA3 (talk) 12:36, 19 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    CNBC and NDTV are refs 6 and 7 which I did not say were copies. I said their coverage of the subject was minimal, restricted to his schooling details. The claim that others are journalist written articles doesn't explain why they share sentences or the exact ordering of events. 5, out of the remaining 8 articles, are indeed from Jan 2021 ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5]). Hemantha (talk) 12:57, 19 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Please read my 'delete' comment closely once more. Your objections do not appear to be based on anything I've written. Hemantha (talk) 12:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • I was mentioning user Laptopinmyhands as he believes refs 6 and 7 had the “same source”. As per him, CNBC copied the NDTV article. However, CNBC was the first one to publish this article. I don’t think so user Laptopinmyhands has gone through any references. If you go through his contributions, you will find out user has requested deletion of many different articles in a short period.

Anyways, ref 6 mentions more than just schooling details. You should give it a read again. I’ve gone through all the articles, and the events and details explained are not correlated. Every article talks something different about it. The founder quote seems to be similar in a few articles, a generic one. They look independent from each other to me. However, I’ll go through them once again and edit my comment. Coming to your doubt that the articles could be a coordinated marketing campaign, indeed 5 articles out of 10 seems to be posted in January, dates are different from each other. Usually, marketing campaign articles are posted altogether, on a similar date +/- a day. If so, websites do mention the article being a advertisement/marketing post. Zee News, Amar Ujala, Navbharat Times are posted by journalists, not sure why an author would take up part in a marketing campaign. To me, the article sounds neutral and there is nothing promotional in it. I’m not sure why someone would run a marketing campaign to publish articles with no promotional/advertising intentions. In my opinion, this is just another poor case of nomination. UA3 (talk) 13:58, 19 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]


  • Comment. This is not a poor case of nomination. Your logic is flawed and your two times vote of keep is concerning. I read everything.

[6] No journalist credited. Very little information about Sarthak. Not independent. Not significant. [7] No journalist credited. Very little information about Sarthak. Not independent. Not significant. [8] Not about him. Not significant. [9] No journalist credited. Sarthak is mostly talking himself in quotes. Not independent. [10] No journalist credited. Very little information about Sarthak. Not independent. Not significant. [11] I agree that it is one source [12] Headline is about him but the text is not. [13] It might look like a good source. But read the last paragraph. It’s rubbish. Makes no sense. Looks like bad machine translation of some english content. No journalist who is native Hindi will write this. I fail to believe it is independent. [14] No journalist credited. Article doesn’t even make sense. Starts randomly with generic information about pandemic and then mentions some study. Again some cut copy paste from somewhere else

Even if there is a journalist credited, the way content is written, it is very clear that it was influenced. And that’s what is central to an ‘independent source’ from what I read in policy. Just because there is a journalist name, source doesn’t always become independent. This is also important here because there are so many sources with no journalist name, it means, even other sources should be read with caution. This is not a notable person because the sources are not independent. Laptopinmyhands (talk) 02:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Don’t worry, vote will be counted once. There is nothing to be concerned about. I still believe you did not read any references carefully. In your comment, Ref 8 (Zee news) you’ve said, Not about him. Not significant. What do you mean by “Not about him”? The article clearly mentions his name in the headline, I can see his picture in this article. The article content indeed reads information about him and the company. Ref 12 (Navbharat Times) Headline is about him but the text is not. A quick google translation of content can give you a brief idea that the complete article is based on him; text, as well as the headline, is about him. Please go through it again. Possibly you were reading Navbharat's article through phone, for me full content was not visible when visited through the phone. Try visiting this link from a Desktop. Ref 13 (Amar Ujala) It is indeed a good source, if some text appears to be rubbish, and makes no sense to you that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be useful to others. This is your opinion about the reference, and it doesn’t rule out the reliability of the reference. To me, it is a good independent piece of work. Ref 6 (OneIndia) is a journalist written article, there seems to be a glitch in their website where the name is not visible now. I took the Journalist's name from Wikipedia reference and checked his OneIndia’s profile. I did scroll back down to Aug 2021 and found the article under his author profile. I took a screenshot to save your time, do refer [15]. There is enough information mentioned and is independent.
Cut copy paste from where? You have vaguely stated “Not independent. Not significant.” to references without even discussing them and what is wrong. I remember your comment, NDTV article was a minor event and how CNBC was a copy of NDTV India. Once it was proved false, it seems a fair source to you. I still firmly believe this is a poor case of nomination. UA3 (talk) 08:05, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: As this is a BLP I'm going to re-list it again. I'm unconvinced by the Keep rationales but not quite enough to close it as Delete ... yet.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Black Kite (talk) 15:32, 21 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong Delete Article is basically the same as the previous one deleted (https://ghostarchive.org/archive/pqTWn) and new article does not address the issues brought up at the first AfD (regarding reliability of sources and possible "paid media") Rlink2 (talk) 16:55, 25 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I've visited the link and compared it with the previous article. I did notice a change, but a minor improvement. Furthermore, NDTV and CNBC are added to the reference list since then. In my judgement, both the sources are reliable and a notable one. Angad.uday (talk) 20:04, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I think the subject is notable. The article just needs to be improved a bit further. Upon assessing references and remarks thoroughly, I personally find sources to be independent and reliable showing subject is notable. Scerpellare (talk) 22:12, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Keep - I have looked through the sources given. While some of them just make a passing mention and company operations, there are several which provide sufficient detail for his notability. I concur with user UA3, sources are reliable. No such text or information which prove sources are paid for. Passes WP:GNG Blakesmith11 (talk) 10:19, 30 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: as per nom. Closing admin should note, the AfD discussion is being influenced by multiple WP:SPAs. - Hatchens (talk) 12:13, 31 March 2022 (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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