Deletion of Sam Blacketer controversy

Comment: Article now shows it has had substantial mainstream press coverage, meets 
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:GNG)

Comment: because there isn't enough material for an article on this incident and the material would be better-placed and more understandable if integrated into one of the "criticisms of Wikipedia"-type articles. The fact the claims have been repeated in media in more than one country does not change this fact - and if we find 120 articles in media in 30 different countries that are basically rewrites of the same original news article, that wouldn't change this fact either. The point in question is not "whether there has been news coverage" but "whether we need an independent article on this incident" - and the answer in my opinion is no. I see no benefit from maintaining an article that essentially should be one paragraph's worth of material in a more integrated overview article, particularly when there are  and  concerns
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP||WP:COATRACK)

Comment: Wikipedia should not become a site devoted mostly to its own history. For many devoted Wikipedians the elections of Arbcom are much more important than, say, Iran 2009 presidential elections but for the readers of the site the inner working of Wikipedia has zero importance. Thus, notability of all the Wikipedia-related staff should be triple checked and in this case it is certainly not here. Aditionally there are significant  issues
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP)

Comment: The global coverage in major newspapers indicates that the nomination's assertion that this is a "non-event" is false.  The "Wikipedia community" is just about everyone who uses the internet so, if the article seems "unintelligible", we should just improve it in accordance with our |editing policy.  Deletion is not appropriate, especially as |Wikipedia is not censored
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Editing policy (WP:IMPERFECT||WP:CENSOR)

Comment: Reliable" sources whose accounts are wrong on almost every point. I know ... |verifiability, not truth ... That is all very well as long as the article is about someone else ;) Is it really compatible with  to have an article full of stuff which we ''know'' and can ''prove'' to be wrong, just by referring to our own archives? I have checked ''every edit'' Sam made to David Cameron going back to December 2007, when he became an arbitrator. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Cameron&diff=242271726&oldid=242266826 Here is the edit apparently mentioned in the ''Daily Mail'', where the Mail says he http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1191474/Labour-councillor-David-Boothroyd-caught-altering-David-Camerons-Wikipedia-entry.html "tried to remove a reference to the Tories having a 'consistent' lead in the polls.". This is the only time I found Sam actually added content, rather than http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Cameron&diff=290584120&oldid=290579332 reverting http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Cameron&diff=184084714&oldid=184084632 vandals, since December 2007. Now, if you look at this edit, you will find that what he took out was running commentary on '''2008''' opinion poll results, cited to a '''2007''' (!) Reuters article http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL1310900320071013?sp=true – material which he replaced with cited material which noted that Cameron had appeared on the cover of ''Time Magazine'', and was said by the ''Daily Mail'' to have been presented to the world as Britain's "Prime Minister in waiting". And Sam ''inserted'' the information that the Tories were "consistently" ahead. Some Labour activist! Sam actually '''put in''' the information these "reliable sources" accuse him of having taken out, just like he http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Cameron&diff=290192440&oldid=290191421 took ''out'' the unflattering attack picture these sources accuse him of having put in! Perhaps they don't know that if you look at a diff, it's the right side that has the new text, or that red text is text added, rather than deleted. What do I know. Our article here, citing the ''Daily Mail'', says that Sam was "trying to adjust the description of the Conservative Party's lead in opinion polls over the Labour Party." This stupid innuendo and twisting of facts is unworthy of an encyclopedia, and it is unworthy of our project
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V||WP:BLP)

Comment: There might be a case to be made for a section in Boothroyd's article if the individual was |notable, but he's been judged not notable. This non-event. |Wikipedia is not the centre of the universe
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:BIO||WP:NOT)

Comment: Per #NEWS - a short summary might be warranted in History of Wikipedia or a similar article, but this doesn't justify an entire article of its own
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT)

Comment: per #NEWS: this isn't a suitable topic for an article as it's basically a single news story
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT)

Comment: The deletion reasons are unconvincing. The deletion of the parent article does not affect this article the slightest.Many articles are unintelligible for people outside specific areas of interest but that in itself does not make it a good reason for deletion. Essjay controversy proves that it is in fact possible to write an article about a Wikipedia-related event based on external sources that is intelligible for people outside this community. Problems that the article might have in that regard can be solved via simple editing and while I understand the buzz the article creates here, we should apply our policies to all articles no matter the content. The article is sourced to multiple reliable sources (whether they got their facts right is not our concern, remember : Verifiability, not truth) establishing notability. Per  this is not an article about the person but about the event. No other policy-backed reasons have been mentioned (NOTNEWS gets thrown around but this has continued for multiple weeks now). Regards
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V||WP:BLP1E)

Comment: An interesting case, to say the least.  By  standards, I believe the controversy is notable, in view of the "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".  However, I do not feel the incident is notable enough for its own article.  Suggest Criticism of Wikipedia and/or David Boothroyd (if recreated, a movement to do so does exist) as appropriate places to merge to
Stance: merge
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:GNG)

Comment: There are big signs saying that this is ''not'' a majority vote, and yet when Daniel accidentally prematurely closed this debate, he said, "Therefore, the only way to determine which argument is applied in situations like this is to determine what portion of the community agrees with either - the discussion below shows a stronger agreement with the belief that this does not meet the standard for inclusion", but that seems to me to be treating this rather like a majority vote. Is there not a better approach here with respect to policy? Consider the recent |deletion review for Rognvald Richard Farrer Herschell, 3rd Baron Herschell, where a slight majority of comments were for deletion, but where the article was kept. There are explanatory comments there like, "We don't look at these discussions purely in voting terms. The emphatic principle of  is When in doubt, don't delete." And a second person endorsed the keeping of the article "as a valid reading of strength of arguments. We don't vote on Wikipedia, so the exact number of votes is irrelevant. Both sides have good points, so no consensus is the correct outcome." Applying that logic would seem to suggest that if, as Daniel concluded, there are valid arguments on both sides, we should not count votes but conclude "no consensus" and therefore keep the article (or keep the material under a new David Boothroyd article). I offer this as an attempt to interpret policy; not as a vote
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Deletion policy (WP:DRV||WP:DGFA)

Comment: or failing that, '''merge''' the salient points to an appropriate article. Given the extended international coverage, even by such publications as the Corriere della Sera (http://www.corriere.it/cronache/09_giugno_07/wikipedia_alterazione_brown_cacciato_66c7895e-537f-11de-b645-00144f02aabc.shtml), our notability standards are certainly met. Yes, the coverage may be wrong, but 's instruction to aim for "verifiability, not truth" does not contain an exception for issues about which we assume to know the (sadly unverifiable) truth, such as Wikipedia-related issues
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Verifiability (WP:V)

Comment: If this person weren't connected to Wikipedia, we wouldn't be having this discussion. This is a blatant ; as someone above says, unlike the Siegenthaler incident the long term impact of this on anyone other than the subject himself is going to be zero. This isn't "censorship"; if Britannica fired a writer for a perceived conflict of interest we wouldn't give it its own article, and I don't see how this case is any different.&nbsp;–&nbsp
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP1E)

Comment: I am concerned by the knee-jerk impulse to delete on display in this discussion. Notability is not subjective: it is conferred by significant coverage in multiple reliable sources, and whether or not that threshold has been met here is far from clear one way or another. The invocation of  and  is disappointing; the latter seems plainly inapplicable, at least to the http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sam_Blacketer_controversy&oldid=295234764 version I am looking at, which sticks very close to the issue at hand and the weight accorded by the sources, while former advises that content on individuals notable for one event be covered in an article on that event – which is exactly what this article proposes to do. There is a discussion to be had as to whether or not the coverage is significant or the sources reliable, but we haven't seen it here yet. I think it's too early to judge whether or not there will ultimately be sources sufficient to sustain this as a stand-alone article, but to dismiss the possibility out of hand would be narrow-minded
Stance: comment
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Notability (WP:ONEVENT||WP:COATRACK)

Comment: I agree with Ragesoss and per http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJoshuaZ%2FDavid_Boothroyd&diff=295509642&oldid=295490652 my comments at the Boothroyd userspace rewrite - the Register and the Mail's articles cannot be considered |reliable in ''this case''.  I would however agree with a '''Merge''' to any future Boothroyd article if reliable sources can be found for both that subject and this controversy.  Otherwise I suggest the info from the New Zealand Herald be merged with Criticism of Wikipedia
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS)

Comment: per , and per Skomorokh
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP1E)

Comment: This "controversy" is certaintly #NEWS|not news and all the sources in the world couldn't save it
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT)

Comment: Notability is permanent.  A year or two from now I doubt if anybody besides Wikipedians will know or care about these events.  Any accurate and reliably sourced content can be merged into Criticisms of Wikipedia or some such appropriate article, observing 
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (WP:UNDUE)

Comment: putting all other issues aside I am not at all convinced that Wikipedia is able to cover this topic from a |neutral perspective with the amount of source material that is available. Even the title of the article suggests this, most of the sources barely mention the Wikipedia user name and none use it in their titles. Beyond that the citation of example diffs and contribution logs is not at all ideal and the (presently) short term and small scale of the incident to me means that this looks more like a #NEWS|news story than an |encyclopaedia article. Some of the information given in the sources we know to be false, above someone says that this doesn't matter, just the sources saying it makes it |verifiable. To me this is a worrying interpretation of Wikipedia:Verifiability, all sources are situational to a degree and "verifiability not truth" - in my view - means something must be verified to be "true" by an appropriate |reliable source. Users compare this to the Essjay scandal but that has sources including the BBC, The Telegraph and many others, this has a few tabloid and local publications - some information from which has been shown to be false - and for an article primarily about a |living person (in whatever context and however the title is phrased) I do not think that is acceptable, especially when the information is largely negative
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (WP:NPOV||WP:NOT||WP:5P||WP:V||WP:RS||WP:BLP)

Comment: per sources noted by Cirt. It's a notable controversy. The nominators's claims that this is a "non-event" is voided by all the coverage, the claim that it's "unintellible for someone outside the Wikipedia community" appears to be untrue for the http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sam_Blacketer_controversy&oldid=296253088 current version. And I don't see any more  concerns than there would be for Essjay controversy. Of course, we could always delete it and then just recreate it later when there's even ''more'' coverage of Wikipedia sweeping it under the rug
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP)

Comment: after reading through the arguments pro and con, I find the argument that our own logs prove the sources are misleading, and hence not |reliable for our purpose, convincing. The picture edit is a non-issue on several levels (fairly accurate edit summary, fair-use vs. free-use, etc.) While Boothroyd might be notable enough to keep, this article definitely isn't
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Reliable sources (WP:RS)

Comment: I've been avoiding this particular issue, but I do want to be on record here. This is a pretty clear case of  and #NEWS. The long-term significance of this is likely to be zero. Does anyone think this will merit a mention in, say, Encyclopedia Brittanica's next edition? Or that of any serious, respectable reference work? Balance that with respect for privacy and issues of real-life harm.Top it off with a serious concern about a lack of perspective. Reality check - Wikipedia is not the center of the universe or the sole supplier of information, so we cannot "censor" anything. Anyone capable of typing "Sam Blacketer" or "David Boothroyd" into a textbox on Google will be deluged with information on this topic, whether or not we feature an article on it, so let's stop throwing around the word "censorship". We "censor" BLPs all the time when the subject is marginally (non-)notable, a private figure, and the subject of possible real-life harm - or at least we should.Most disturbing is the implication that a biographical article is a form of "accountability" or "punishment" for Wiki-sins like sockpuppetry. BLPs are not a form of punishment, nor a means of enforcing accountability. This is exactly the sort of issue where the more critical and disaffected segments of the community should be out front leading the charge to delete this article, since Wikipedia's fetish for these sorts of biographies is a common rallying point of critcism
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (WP:BLP1E||WP:NOT)

Comment: per #NEWS
Stance: delete
Cited policy: Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT)