Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brooklyn Central University


 * 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   speedy delete. not all the unlikely material was present initially, but the most likely explanation is indeed a hoax  DGG ( talk ) 00:39, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Brooklyn Central University

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Fails WP:GNG, WP:CORP, WP:UNIVERSITY, WP:YOU NAME IT, IT FAILS IT. This purported University claims to be accredited by the non-existent "Global Distance Learning Education Authority" and "International Distance Learning Accreditation Council". Quite possibly a speedy deletion candidate: though WP:A7 does not apply to of educational institutions, this one doesn't appear to exist outside of its website. Shirt58 (talk) 14:05, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Strong delete per nom. This appears to be a SPAM article promoting a degree mill. Big hat tip to Shirt58 for catching the bogus accreditation. I had looked at this fishy article earlier but missed that. -Ad Orientem (talk) 14:29, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * probably keep First, A7 does not apply to this; what would apply is speedy G3 as an undoubted hoax if it does not exist at all, but it is not quite that obvious on the face of it,  and impossible to tell without some further investigation . If it an unaccredited university with real existence, we usually do keep the article if we can verify the data. (I would  define real for a school like this as having real teachers, students, and courses.)   I have no great trust in the information on their website, and would not include this one without reliable 3rd party information  DGG ( talk ) 17:10, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Question Is there a guideline or consensus that supports notability for degree mills? I haven't been able to find anything supporting that interpretation. It's pretty rare that I disagree with you, but barring some clear indication of consensus I would be very uncomfortable extending presumptive notability to these kinds of institutions. Obviously if there were enough WP:RS sources to meet GNG that would have to be considered very seriously. But so far I haven't been able to find anything that comes close to ringing that bell. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:30, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * not automatically, of course not. What evidence do you have that it is a diploma mill? That's a pretty strong charge. Not all unaccredited institutions are diploma mills. A diploma mill is an unaccredited institution awarding degree with out having a bona fide education program. I too need to do some checking.  DGG ( talk ) 16:22, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell the claimed accrediting entities do not exist. If they do, they have somehow escaped any notice on Google. Almost every hit in a search for "Brooklyn Central University" has produced promotional sites. In many cases these have been created or added recently. The article originally claimed the school was Ivy League. I deleted that claim. It's hard to prove with absolute certainty that a school is a degree mill. But in this case all of the available evidence strongly suggests that it is either that, or a complete hoax/fraudulent entity. -Ad Orientem (talk) 16:52, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete absent strong and immediate verification. Something is extremely strange about a claimed university whose top Google hits include DeviantART pages and Vimeo. Images from throughout their website appear to be taken from stock images and other unrelated pages. Parts of the website are strewn with unidiomatic usage and grammatical errors (including, ironically, "The foreign language test will be conducted to check the proficiency of the foreign languages"). The university is not mentioned on the list of colleges and universities in New York maintained by the New York State Education Department. As for the Wikipedia article, it was created by a new single-purpose account (never a good sign in the case of a suspect article); the claimed university endowment of $30.8 billion is patently fanciful; the numbers of students in the infobox bear no relation to the numbers on the university's own website; the "mascot" of the Brooklyn Bridge suggests someone just randomly filling in fields in the infobox. There are no Ghits for James Harrison Ford Jr., the supposed founder of the university, and no explanation is given as to how this online-only institution is the continuation of a bricks-and-morter school supposedly founded in 1953. There is an additional suspicious circumstance revealed by Checkuser that I can't discuss here but that buttresses my concerns. Something is radically wrong. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:27, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That's enough for me. I'm tagging this for CSD (G-3). -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:45, 5 May 2014 (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.