Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher Burke Gibson


 * 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 on a Votes for Undeletion nomination).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was Delete (4d/1k/2dis) Ryan Norton T 07:46, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Christopher Burke Gibson

 * Various formating, & italicized annotations relevant to vote, by Jerzy•t 07:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC).

Nom & vote Del. (Copyvio now mostly resolved & presumably fully resolvable.) Apparently lovable but apparently non-notable "philosopher". * Only Google hits on full name are WP and a personal site apparently connected with the same on-line pub (Contrary Magazine) that did the obit that was the source of the initial article. * First relevant hit of 153 Google non-dupes on
 * "Christopher Gibson" philosopher

is #9,  local paper whose most notability-suggestive content is
 * On Tuesday, friends of Gibson described him as a self-taught scholar and storyteller with a "voracious love of knowledge."
 * "What was remarkable about Chris was that he was an extraordinarily astute communicator," said Peter K. Kardel, who had known Gibson for 15 years. "When he would tell a story, it was hypnotizing to listen to."

_* Nothing else that looks relvant thru the 40th hit. * He's described as a writer; the only item listed under "Original works" [Did he do unoriginal works, but nevermind] is apparently now published posthumously, bcz after urging him "for years" to submit, the publisher lost the file for 3 years and the author chose not to keep copies of what he wrote. --Jerzy•t 19:42, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. I will assert that he was a notable philosopher. That his obituary contains description of being "the most intense person that I have ever met," written by notable thinker and commentator on society and technology, Langdon Winner, lends credence to this.  Jerzy's comments regarding "unorginal works" do not add anything constructive to this discussion.  That Gibson's only item listed under Original Works--since changed to Publications-- was published posthumously is irrelevant.  Chris Gibson was an important figure on the modern American literary and philosophical scene.  A walking encyclopedia in his own right, meeting the definition of polyhistor if not polymath, he certainly belongs in wikipedia.  The "notability" of his life is already attested to by the numerous external links, containing references to his life and work from publications in New York, Chicago, Portland, OR and San Luis Obispo, CA.  I also do not understand how copyvio now only mostly resolved, as the original publisher granted permission on the articles talk page.  And in any case, although the initial template for this article was based on his obituary, significant revisions have already been undertaken. Granted, it may require further additions and clarifications.  That Google does not produce many hits on his full name could be due to the fact that he often did not go by his full name. -Daniel Lotspeich, MD. --Daniel Lotspeich 20:40, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
 * First of 53 edits.
 * I risk distraction by several red herrings, in addressing them:
 * _ _ To quote without the misspelling you introduced, and with relevant context, i said, parenthetically, "... unoriginal works, but nevermind]", bcz i thot the point too minor to make in a way that would invite effort to respond to it; as to "[nothing] constructive", i suppose you are free to regard anything you disagree with as unconstructive. Since you have taken issue with that throw-away thot, i point out its relevance to the air of vagueness and the bizarre that pervades the assertions of Gibson's notability. You quote "the most intense person that I [the eulogist] have ever met", and i have two reactions. One is to recall the description of Spinal Tap's status among the English heavy-metal bands: "certainly the [skipped beat] loudest", and to wonder whether the eulogist was conscious of damning with faint praise. The other is to wonder whether the eulogist was deficient in experience with under-medicated schizophrenics, or whether Gibson, who ended arguements by screaming obscenities, said he wanted to die, and did so by drowning in the dark, perhaps was an under-medicated schizophrenic. I hasten to add that schizophrenia, even under-medicated, doesn't preclude notability; still, it can interfere with attaining it, and a brilliant schizophrenic IMO can attract a sympathy that makes it hard to keep clear the distinction between achieving notability and being brilliant enough to deserve a notability that the schizophrenia denies them.
 * _ _ Your being non-plussed by my other parenthetical (tho i would hope it made clear that the subject as not germane to the purpose of this page) is understandable, as i was intentionally terse. I needed to mention it as being no longer germane, since an unresolved Copyvio problem precludes consideration under AfD; i thought this one might still be technically unresolved, since i had read an instruction earlier this week that permissions (i.e., placings of works under GFDL by a copyright holder who did not perform the relevant edit) should be directed to the WP publicity dept, rather than e.g. being placed on the talk page.  I did not feel at liberty to give the impression that everything was taken care of, when there was no indication of that step being taken. (FWIW, i've since seen suggestions to put permissions on the corresponding talk pages, without mention of Pub Dept., so my scruple may have been unnecessary. [shrug]). --Jerzy•t 11:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * In addition, Jerzy's references regarding the events which kept Chris Gibson's work from being published before his death are misleading, if not inaccurate. Reviewing the available information in the refereces shows that the article was not lost, but the publisher's computer crashed and all files were unreachable.    Gibson was approached prior to his death for an additional copy, but stated "I don't save things because it increases my natural tendency towards self-deleteriousness."  This is very much in keeping with his philosophy revealed on even a superficial reading of his text Wages of Insomnia, which coins the phrase "Profligate Metaphysic."  The text was later recovered using software that could salvage material on the hard-drive.  Admittedly this article is overly detailed.  However deletion is too harsh a penalty for the long-windedness of the submitter. --Daniel Lotspeich 05:24, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The only relevance of the content or its long-windedness (i doubt i mentioned that) is as evidence on the issue in this process:
 * Is it reasonable to hope that this article, or some other, with Christopher Burke Gibson as its topic, could turn into an asset to WP.
 * Attention to the relevant pages in the Wikipedia: ("project") namespace, and to other AfD discussions on bios claimed to be non-notable, will arguing relevantly on question, than will going with your gut in responding. --Jerzy•t 11:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * _ _ (It's time for me to risk rubbing salt in a wound by calling a spade a spade: If he ever published anything else, one of you should have bloody well said so before now. I assume he did not. ... Yet, you also should have been gracious enough to say explicitly "While it's true that he never published anything, ...", and i may be trusting something obvious but false. But the first full calendar day is almost half gone, so time is a-wasting. Onward.)
 * _ _ Well. I actually made a fool of myself by consulting my dictionary to be sure that lost has verifiable senses like "ruined or destroyed" and "no longer possessed", before re-reading Chris Gibson, philosopher, 1954-2005. Congratulations, you sucker-punched me: he says "I lost [emphasis added by Jerzy•t] the file when I transferred data from the old computer on which I'd received his essay to the new one on which we built the magazine." Now, i'm not going to beat you up with a technical discussion about what it takes to lose sectors without scraping the oxide off the platter, and the claims that Apple software protects you against what MS carelessly doesn't, and how i've read and altered raw sectors on an IBM PC long before this file got lost. Our Spotlight (software) feature list may be out of date, and i admit "unindexed bowels of the hard drive" would be more accurately used to mean "lost sectors" than (what i inferred at my first reading) "cryptically named files that you can only locate in a content search". Nor do we need the missing contemporaneous accounts of whether he "grimaced for three years at the loss."
 * _ _ That's bcz we have what we need at hand: There was a time when he had no way of recovering the essay. Then there came a time when he had "the penetrating vision of a new search technology", but did not use it. Then, the day he got word, "suppos[ing] the irony appropriate" would no longer wash, and the same day, it stopped being lost. If your belief is that the period of not using the available technology was insignificant in length compared to a day, you should cite something more convincing than this eulogy as evidence.
 * _ _ Because here's the picture i find most plausible: [Repeat N times, on N visits:] "Gibson, you should really write some of this down." "- - - ". [Visit N+1:] " ... and now I can be your publisher." "OK, you asked for it." "Oop, send another copy." "Sorry, no gots." [Some selection from the following:] "It was good, give me more of whatever catches your fancy." "Why don't i publish me interviewing you on the same subject?" "I wish i'd read more than the first and the final 'graphs, so i could interview you on the same subject."  "Why don't i publish me interviewing you on the another subject of your choosing?"  "Here's a tape recorder, do some raconting and i'll be your editor." [One selection from the following, for each of the preceding:] "No."  "Maybe." "Not now." [Repetition of these exchanges, with decreasing frequency.]  "Grimace." [Once only:] "Regret to inform you..." [Whatever:] "Gosh, he's dead, why him and not me?" "Could I have been more helpful in pulling together something publishable?" "Could I have made his death less likely?" "Well, at least i can get off my ass and try to recover the file again." In a line, there's been no evidence that his intellect was stunning enuf to produce another essay, or a fistful of aphorisms, or to motivate recovery of the essay a week, a month, or a year before grief or survivor guilt had an opportunity to change the subjective situation, where the objective situation was on a clear track toward him either dying, in a "timely"  or untimely fashion, but in any case unpublished.
 * _ _ So it appears he impressed a bunch of first-hand acquaintances -- something loads of physicians, and pastors, and community-theater actors, and really cool mail carriers do, without becoming notable -- and produced an essay that has not yet had a chance to get evaluated in the cold light of day. In the unlikely event that a single essay is compelling enough to develop him a following, or that one of the first-hand acquaintances can produce a memoir that develops him (rather than the memoirist) a following, that will not be clear until others, less willing than i to speak ill of the recently dead, have their chance to mull and then speak.  In a world where a million people amount to small change, the claim that acquaintances can make you notable does little more than impeach the credibility of those who present it. --Jerzy•t 11:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Although this man is not amazingly well-known, and although the article is over-detailed, it is definitely solvable. Google isn't the best metric of the notability of philosophers, because they generally don't have a huge internet presence. Grobertson 09:08, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
 *  Not a new editor: 59th and 60th edits. First 25 in 2004 Nov; two in two sessions, 2004 Dec; one each in April & June; 19 in 8 or 9 sessions in Sept.; 14 in 5 sessions, Oct. 3-6.
 * Of course it doesn't. Google is only the best metric that has been presented. We start by assuming non-notability.  Failure of a straight forward Google test merely assures voters that verifying notability is not a trivial task.  Come up with a better metric that does verify notability. --Jerzy•t 11:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. First of all, he went by "Chris Gibson." Try googling ["Chris Gibson" philosopher]. He was more than simply a philosopher. Raconteur is a title he wore just as well. It is true that Mr. Gibson is not yet widely known nor widely published, but the same facts were true of Vincent van Gogh when he died. It is a consequence of Mr. Gibson's embodiment of his philosophy that he did not participate in the culture nor the orthodoxies of philosophy, academia, publishing, nor much else in society. Nonetheless, the brilliance and originality of his mind is recognized by a select few and by all accounts an increasing number. Check with Langdon Winner, professor of humanities at Rensselaer University. http://www.langdonwinner.org/index.html This is a good opportunity for Wikipedia to rise above the tyranny of the mundane order that decides who gets famous, instead of appealing to it as a justification for reproducing it. By these rules, you would have excluded Emily Dickinson early in her posthumous career.  Jeff McMahon.
 * 5th thru 7th edits by IP.
 * Indeed we would exclude those two figures, and without apology. Magazines can discover unappreciated geniuses; encyclopedias consolidate established knowledge. --Jerzy•t 11:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Point Taken, and it's your encyclopedia after all. I'm sorry to be a "meat puppet," if that's what I am; I only entered the conversation because I was asked to clear the copyright, which I was happy to do for Wikipedia. And I confess to misunderstanding the mission of Wikipedia. I thought it meant to be larger and more inclusive and not necessarily to conform to the confines of the standard paper versions. Because it would be easier to just scan in the Brittanica after all. I'll mind my own business. Jeff McMahon
 * I like this...I suppose it forces me to take a step back and consider whether or not I should have any interest whatsoever in Wikipedia's mission. Apparently, this place is unwilling to admit anything that is not already widely accepted.  What is its purpose then, really, other than to satisfy the needs of amateurs and hobbyists who find pleasure in cataloging and arranging articles and facts?  I put up another couple of articles, out of boredom one evening (just that hobbyist's inclination to catalog something).  I stuck in an article on John Brombaugh and another organ builder (Hendrik Niehoff, 16th century Dutch) than I learned about by studying Chris Gibson's life and work.  I stuck in another couple of articles as well:  one on an artist whose works I admire and another on an interesting, but somewhat unknown song by Woody Guthrie.  But truthfully, if Wikipedia is stictly the province of mirroring accepted dogma,  my time may well be best spent pursuing other, more fruitful endeavors. --Daniel Lotspeich 02:25, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * _ _ At the risk of rudely appearing to respond to two people as if i thot they were of one mind, i'm going to address some common threads between DL & JM'M. And worse yet, compare their situation to my own, vaguely similar, initial response.
 * _ _ My reaction was "Nice that i found what i needed, but i don't need a WiccaPedia." -- falsely assuming that "Wiki" was just a cognate of "wicca" and "witchcraft". I had to stumble on WP a few more times before i realized anything about what it is, and edit for months before beginning to suspect its significance.
 * _ _ The WP issues that you each are raising are ripples on an ocean. While such numbers prove nothing important, something about that ocean is hinted at by Alexa rankings: IMDb tied WP on only 3 days in the last 3 weeks, and can be expected to drop increasingly far behind; WP's starting to contend w/ Craigslist.  Those are (depending on the timescale you look at) 40th to 43rd and 32 to 34 on the whole Web, and 23 and 18 among English-language sites. (Compare with caution: WP is 40% foreign languages.)  I usually can stop myself before i say "a new force of nature", but WP is certainly a phenomenon sui generis; while i have only suspicions about what it means, i feel confident that you two have so far almost nothing but misconceptions about it; my guess is that even if you walk away at this point, it's going to tap you on the shoulder sooner rather than later.
 * _ _ I'm gonna shut up quickly, but the last things i need to say are
 * the issues you are raising are so far from central that if WP's approach started changing in that respect tomorrow (started, bcz WP changes course like a supertanker), i'd go "tsk; too bad", shrug, and carry on with my work here;
 * almost no decision affects the big picture, except the choice of MediaWiki as infrastructure, GFDL, and NPoV;
 * this all has to have a lot to do with information "wanting" to be true and free (tho i am no expert on those theories).
 * And IMO explaining in any detail why i believe that would be an arrogant waste of our time. I dunno if they get it in Peoria, but the points you raise convince me you're going discover it for yourself before too long, with >90% probability. --Jerzy•t 20:22, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * BTW, abt the "meatpuppet" thing (mentioned in JM'M's first sentence, above), the term itself is IMO a more offensive one than "sock puppet", applied to a less offensive behavior, and i wish i had promptly objected to an editor raising their "annoy[ance]" (below) as being contrary to our policy of "not biting the newcomers" (whether or not i may have strayed into that as well). It suppose it annoys me somewhat too, but i'm opposed to complaining about it, bcz it's part of the "cost of doing business" rather than being the result of bad behavior, and there's no point in complaining about it as if the newcomers were in the wrong. --Jerzy•t 20:22, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete article on non-notable figure. And meatpuppets annoy me. Ambi 11:32, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * WP:SOCK clarifies this term, which i found new and not immediately transparent. --Jerzy•t 19:03, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * ''The following contrib is restored, but struck thru, after deletion by its original contributor; this avoids changing the meaning of my response by removing it from its context. Hopefully the strike-thru captures the intent of removing it, presumably withdrawl of the request.


 * Request to JerzyJerzy, please move comments above that you are placing in the middle on mine and others requests that the article on writer Chris Gibson be kept. They would be better placed at the bottom of the page They create an unnecessary disctraction from the points that I and others make, which stifles discussion. Your comments would be less disruptive, though should still able to be reviewed if listed at the bottom of the discussion, giving everyone an opportunity to make their point in turn. Thanks! --Daniel Lotspeich 15:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid your expectations are badly out of synch with WP practice, & i've already over-invested in responding to you. In lieu of my going into detail, WP:AfD should be a reasonably efficient starting point for self-orientation. --Jerzy•t 19:03, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The following was used to replace the entire text except for the section hdg:
 * I have blanked the discussion for the following reason: as the original submitter of this article, I would like for this article to be removed from wikipedia. --Daniel Lotspeich 21:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Due to the less than flattering conjectural remarks regarding Christopher Burke Gibson (who was in fact a living member of a real--not virtual or abstract) community, I repeat my request:

I have blanked the discussion for the following reason: as the original submitter of this article, I would like for this article to be removed from wikipedia

Those wishing to review the history of this article may do so, but out of respect for Chris' memory and regards for his family & friends, I request the article not appear here any longer. --PooterCobb 05:30, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Changing my vote. Strong Delete or Speedy or whatever.  Abstain.  The guy was a close personal friend of mine and the article is clearly not written from a neutral point of view.  Additionally, his notability hinges on a few scraps gathered from internet blogs and local press (one article from an alternative newspaper).  The page would be better placed on a personal website. Daniel Lotspeich 15:35, 12 October 2005 (UTC)PooterCobb 06:48, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete Sounds like a fascinating man but doesn't pass WP:BIO. The entry, of course, is far from encylcopedic. And what the hell is going on with above verbiage and subsequent cross-outs? Marskell 17:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete - seems like he may have been an interesting fellow to know - but not notable enough for this encyclopedia. Like someone above said, magazines are free to discover unknown people or the "next best thing" - encyclopedias, even one that is not paper, should stick to subjects that are notbale before we write about them.  We can and do have broader inclusiveness than a paper encyclopedia, but we still need to keep a threshold of notability. Johntex\talk 20:42, 12 October 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.