Talk:Black Flame (book)

Proposed deletion
I'm proposing this article for deletion, due to violation of policy Wikipedia:AUTO (see #9 from Reasons for deletion). In December 2015, Lucien van der Walt was identified as the user Redblackwritings with autobiographical contributions on this and other pages concerning his career and books. These articles contain unsourced personal and career information that only comes from the subject/author, Lucien van der Walt. After being confronted with this information and the fact that his nom de plume was exposed, Lucien van der Walt admitted to owning the Redblackwritings account, which has been editing only articles related to his career (such as Lucien van der Walt and Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870-1940).

This article was heavily edited by Redblackwritings/Lucien van der Walt, with the express purpose of promoting the author's career (alongside the Lucien van der Walt article). Furthermore, it is questionable whether this article reaches the criteria of notability. See Talk:Lucien_van_der_Walt for more evidence of IP addresses which may be associated with Lucien van der Walt that also contributed to this article.

Lucien van der Walt's admittance of this blatant autobiographical, unsourced, non-encyclopedic editing is available in the "Personal statement" from February 2016. In it, he describes his use of the Redblackwritings account: "I apologise sincerely and unreservedly for engaging the issues under the Red.Black.Writings identity without clearly identifying it as mine. I should have done so, from the start. I am sorry if it was misleading. I acted emotionally, and without care. I am truly sorry... But that does not excuse me."

As an aside, it's rather embarrassing for a serious academic to be engaging in such blatant self-promotion, especially under a "once-well-known name I used to use". Since that username was an open secret amongst Lucien van der Walt's friends and colleagues, it displays the author's brazen will to violate Wikipedia policy... it's almost like editing this article under the nickname "IamLucienVDW" - Africanarchist (talk) 21:56, 23 March 2016 (UTC)