Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/V. Alexander Stefan

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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. --JoanneB 20:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

V. Alexander Stefan[edit]

Also nominated are:

V. Alexander Stefan is an American physicist who seems to be committing the faux pas of writing his own autobiography on Wikipedia and promoting his own publications at the same time. The bulk of the edits made to the above 5 articles have been from either Stefan1 (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) or anonymous accounts from the IP range of 66.81.0.0/16 whose edits almost never stray from the above 5 articles. This strongly points to Stefan alone writing his own articles on Wikipedia which has led to the article resembling a resume rather than a biography with blatant embellishments such as He is revered among his colleagues as "the master of the multiverse." Fails: Wikipedia:Vanity guidelines.

Further doubts as to his notability as a physicist are raised when attempting to review the references cited in the article. Google Scholar lists only one paper [1] published by his very own Stefan University Press. None of his papers seem to have been published in any independent peer reviewed journals. A Google search for ("V. Alexander Stefan" -wikipedia -site:stefan-university.edu) to exclude self-references only returns 64 hits. [2] Fails: Wikipedia:Notability (academics) and quite possibly Wikipedia:Verifiability due to a lack of independent sources referencing Stefan. (see below)

Fails: Wikipedia:Verifiability on sections pertaining to Stefan's biography. --  Netsnipe  (Talk)  18:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Amazon does list 44 books for the author V.Stefan (though all of them are published by Stefan University Press). Stefan's novel Doctor Faustef is listed, but is currently unavailable on Amazon and no sales numbers are listed which raises the question of whether the novel is notable enough to have an article written about it on Wikipedia.

All five articles have massive conflict-of-interest problems since they all seem to be self-writen with the purpose of raising the profile of Stefan and his business interests of selling self-published books via his self-run online "educational institute" Stefan University. Fails: Wikipedia:Spam --  Netsnipe  (Talk)  20:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete all - per excellent documentation above for the entire V. Alexander Stefan collection of articles/templates. KarenAnn 10:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Massive merge Not sure Some of the physics articles from the 1980's do appear legit (i.e. in real journals). They are cited as "V. Stefan" so a search for "V. Alexander Stefan" would have missed them. A case can be made for retaining a single biographical article. Even so, it might be easiest to delete everything and start over. Phr (talk) 11:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Legitimate academics always use the same name for that very reason. Notability in their field depends the accessiblity of their work to others in their profession. KarenAnn 13:54, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - You were right. A Google Scholar search for (author:"v. stefan") only in Physics, Astronomy, and Planetary Science returns 38 hits. So he may not fail Wikipedia:Notability (academics) after all though per Phr's recommendation, V. Alexander Stefan would need a start from scratch written by a 3rd person for it to ever work. I still can't justify any of the other articles though. --  Netsnipe  (Talk)  18:22, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - Anyone can write and publish articles. The question is, were they published in peer-reviewed jounals of his profession? Do others in his profession cite his work? KarenAnn 19:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
  • The journals themselves are quite respectable, citeseer is down so I can't check for cites there. I should try out Google Scholar but haven't yet. Phr (talk) 19:37, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
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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