Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph Greenberg (economist)

Re Joseph Greenberg (economist)
Non-notable (but IMO not vanity): Google search on

"Joseph Greenberg" McGill OR economic -Linguist -Linguistic

yields 183 distinct hits out of 378 raw.
(Hopefully this is a no-brainer not deserving the space and attention needed to present my complex evidence on the bad faith i think the article was created in. But i will present it, for judgement as to its relevance, if i'm wrong in expecting a slam-dunk deletion.)
--Jerzy(t) 05:17, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)

• Keep. Neutral. He's a professor who has written 3 technical but perhaps interesting books on economics, game theory, and sociology; one was published by Cambridge University Press. His CV, available online, lists 50 publications. There is no obvious agenda in this stub. He sounds notable enough to pass as far as I can tell; Google is not God. If there's bad faith here, it ain't obvious. Smerdis of Tlön 19:34, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I understand Jerzy's concerns here better than I did before. Still, I'm not wholly convinced that an article about this particular economist merits deletion. Even if it were created to occlude Joseph H. Greenberg, disambiguation should point people looking for Greenberg the linguist in the right direction. The article should stay or go on its own merits, not on the motives of its first editor. As to whether he is significant enough to merit inclusion, I'm inclined to keep it, but not strongly. Smerdis of Tlön 19:07, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Smerdis found more evidence than I did so I'll work with his facts for now. Even with that, he looks like an average professor to me. My understanding is that the current standard requires more than average to be included. Probable delete for non-notability. Jerzy, I also do not understand your claim of bad faith. I think you're going to have to lay out your evidence. Rossami 05:36, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Wiki is not paper and I see no reason to delete it. He's published and might be notable in his field(s). Unless someone here is familiar with these fields and his works and says otherwise. MikeCapone 03:16, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Remove based on Jerzy's evidence. MikeCapone 18:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Remove. (Stance taken after reading Jerzy's documentation below.) Ruhrjung 12:09, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

Bad-Faith Issue

OK, i've been unable to get confirmation that the deadly effect of transcluding headings is a thing of the past, so let's just keep an eye open in case the ones i'm adding break the VfD main page.

The Bad-Faith Goal that i Allege

I will assert at the end of this heading's section that two edits were made in bad faith. The first, covered by the first edit-diff in the history of the nominated page, shows that the bio we are evaluating (created at 17:07, 2003 Dec 8 by User:145.254.194.65) overwrote a redirect to an existing article, Joseph H. Greenberg, which

• currently is linked by 25 articles (note: non-talk, non-user pages),
• currently runs to over 6 k-bytes, and
• covers a prominent linguist much better known than the new bio's subject, with views described at length in full-scale articles i read in Scientific American and Atlantic,
• albeit someone whose views are at least controversial and at best not-yet-ready-for a role as part of his field's conventional wisdom.

The redirect then had the title Joseph Greenberg, and i (not the author of the nominated article) was the editor who (3 months later) renamed it to Joseph Greenberg (economist) and converted the resulting redir to a dab that repaired that author's disruption of the former Joseph Greenberg redir.

The second of the bad-faith edits i allege is the creation of the redirect Greenberg at 17:25, 2003 Dec 8 by User:145.254.193.110 (that is, 18 minutes later, by an IP differing by 1 in the third byte of its dotted quad). Greenberg is currently an orphan dab, but until the time when i converted it into a dab, there was at least one page with a red link that, from context, was intended for the Joseph H. Greenberg article. (I think exactly one, and i think an article; sorry, i could check for my name in the histories of the 31 (counting user and talk pages), that now link to Joseph H. Greenberg, but i don't really want to.)

I assert bad faith in this form: that these two obviously coordinated edits were each performed with the goal of sabotaging access to Joseph H. Greenberg:

• in the case of the nominated article via various links coded as Joseph Greenberg, and
• in the case of Greenberg via links coded as Greenberg.

I assume the motivation to have been beliefs

• that Joseph H. Greenberg had undeserved influence, and
• that that influence would be diminished by giving most readers who previously would have followed the overwritten redirect, or searched to satisfy the red link, the false impression that WP doesn't regard him as worthy of an article.

Why Might Bad Faith be Relevant?

IMO, it is well established that deletion is directed at the content, not the motivation, of articles. However, assuming good faith implies trusting that the author of an article placed on VfD believed it met our significance standards, and made an effort at accuracy. I think articles written in bad faith should be retained if the subjects are notable and the content sufficiently accurate, but on VfD they should not, if the bad faith is verifiable, receive the benefit of those normal assumptions.

In this case only Joseph Greenberg (economist) is nominated; i mention Greenberg because the similar indications of bad faith in its coordinated edit are part of a pattern that strengthens the evidence that the nominated article (then Joseph Greenberg and now Joseph Greenberg (economist)) was made an article in bad faith.

Some Assertions about the Edits that i'm not (yet) Documenting

I've casually investigated a little further, and found evidence that the editor (or conceivably coordinated editors) has since

• edited elsewhere on WP on lingustic subjects,
• asserted linguistic ideas that are at least not slam dunks for acceptance,
• had linguistic edits reverted with less patience than they sought, and
• got blocked at one point.

(On the other hand, i found no signs of further interest in economics or game theory, which strengthens my opinion that the economist Joseph Greenberg was of interest only because the similarity of names could promote confusion that the author desired.)
I don't claim to be able to judge the wisdom of the actions against this editor. Still, the total picture of

• the two edits i document here and
• my further undocumented research

satisfy me that whatever normally flows from the asssumption of good faith should be "deducted" in judging this article.

I haven't investigated the size or ownership of the IP block involved.

I do not suggest there is any specific Keep vote that this evidence should change to a Del vote; that judgement is for the individual voters to make.

Questions on Content

My research on the content has been restricted to

• confirming that there is an academic economist to whom some of the particulars apply, and
• investigating briefly the "Towering Over Babel" article, which stands out in
  • being the only publication included in the very first edit, and
  • making seeming reference to language in its title.

I found possible evidence for the 1996 date, but clearer evidence for a 2003 December date, around the time of the edits. I'm not prepared to claim the article's value deserves downgrading for errors; on the other hand:

• Further research on the publication in question may be called for, e.g.:
  • is it published within pre-'Net academic standards;
  • is it accurately presented here;
  • is he the sole author, as suggested by the nominsated article, of any edition of it, despite "December, 2003" PDF with two additional authors), and
• If kept, the nominated article should go to WP:CU for fact checking.

--Jerzy(t) 06:48, 2004 Aug 24 (UTC)

This debate is now closed. 3 votes to delete, 1 to keep. Article deleted. DJ Clayworth 16:47, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)