Talk:FTC v. Balls of Kryptonite

Speedy deletion nomination of Wikipedia:Template messages/Deletion


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Adam Assahli
{ping|Daniel Case}} (talk | contribs) (Undid revision 654431569 by Staszek Lem (talk) It is an academic paper published under academic auspices, and reviewed by someone academic—we can cite it)
 * It is a paper uploaded at academia.edu. it is not "under academic auspices" despite the title. Anybody can upload there, including me. How did you conclude that it was reviewed by "some academic"? And who the heck is Adam Assahli ?

Staszek Lem (talk) 17:31, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Who's Stasek Lem? I don't know him from a hole in the ground. Why I am listening to him? Daniel Case (talk) 20:57, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Staszek Lem is a wikipedian, nice to meet you. Now, address my concerns about the reliability of the source, please. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:55, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * In edit summary you wrote " we have accepted plenty of other papers published at academia.edu" - This means that we are probably sloppy. If this is so, will raise the concern at the WP:RSN. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:59, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * As for Mr. Assahli, he seems to be a real person, with a Twitter feed, a LinkedIn page and an Instagram feed. And he's mentioned and depicted in a UCD press item So, are you satisfied he's a real person? Daniel Case (talk) 02:57, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * No, I am not satisfied. Sorry for my inexact English. Let me clarify: "Who the heck is" intended to mean: "Is this person commonly recognized as an expert in the discussed area?" Normally wikipedia does not accept references from self-published sources (which acedemia.edu evidently is), but if the person is widely recognized as an expert and his publication seems uncontroversial, then in non-critical cases it can be accepted as a reliable source in wikipedia. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:50, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * In our particular case, as your links show, he is a college student. However bright he may be, I doubt he acquired a wide recognition as an expert. I will be happy to reconsider my opinion, if you demonstrate that he is accepted as an authority in the discussed subject. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:54, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * In writing articles on court cases, especially ones that, though notable, would be ridiculously obscure were it not for their unintentionally humorous titles, there is often very little commentary—basically, these are the only two things where I could consider the authors to have some credence to speak to the subject: the lawyers at the firm who specialize in consumer-protection law who wrote the firm's blog post, and Assahli (unfortunate name in an English-speaking country, but I think he's aware of that already) is a law student (and thus inherently a graduate student, not an undergrad) wrote a very long paper that cites its own sources extensively about the many, many problems with the EU's Data Protection Directive, including the joint EU-US Safe Harbor Framework, upon which this case touches and he mentions in passing. My experience is that lawyers/legal commentators who specialize in narrow areas of law are often the only ones who specialize in those areas. Now, I grant, the EU's Data Protection Directive probably has other specialists, but I couldn't find them. Daniel Case (talk) 18:07, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I understand and accept your explanation as a "private citizen", but as a wikipedian, I am only interested in addressing my specific concerns, which I don't see. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:55, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Please notice that the disputed edit is not about fact finding, but rather an opinion, which is definitely bears no weight when coming from a student. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:55, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * P.S. I noticed myself the situation about court cases; most of wikipedia articles about them are just recapitulation of the proceedings (and possibly news noise around them). And IMO there is nothing wrong with this. Of course, one could have accumulated WP:COATRACKs (akin to "In popular culture" sections elsewhere), with all possible comments and derivations, but they will be mostly tangential to the particular case. Of course, if a case is a textbook case, then there can be written more about it. So, it is a wikipedia "business as usual". I would compare this with articles about minor geographical locations or about various rare bugs and plants: while they are notable by our criteria, there is not much to write about them. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:17, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I am coming around to agreeing with you about not including it, primarily because it's a rather minor observation about a case that didn't set any binding legal precedent (it is notable, as noted, as the first time the FTC targeted a company that did business exclusively abroad). However, as a secondary, I would agree more about the self-published nature of academia.edu papers—not the student aspect. Many universities publish grad student (or even undergrad) papers on their own servers, where one can assume it was looked over by a faculty member before such publication. But there is no such oversight on academia.edu. Perhaps, though, we should distinguish between student and faculty papers published there. This is, as you suggest, really something that should be taken up at RSN. Student papers, I think, reach the level of reliable sources when they have been subjected to some sort of oversight. Per your postscript, I have written about many cases at law, often including lengthy sections summarizing the commentary on those cases published in law reviews (as commentary is an important part of legal discourse). So I decided to do so for this one if I could find any. There are, in law reviews, quite a few student papers (it's often a degree requirement). Sometimes these papers get cited in other papers, sometimes even in decisions ... but to me if they are good enough for the law review, they're good enough for us no matter how much they might have been cited. Daniel Case (talk) 04:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)