Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Fisher (architect)


 * 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. ✗ plicit  12:19, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

David Fisher (architect)

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

I think that it is not possible to have a proper biography of this subject. I think that a proper biography of this subject does not in fact exist anywhere. There are three versions of this article: There are essentially three sets of sources available, from looking around, and they are all bad: The Dynamic Tower is documented by newspapers as a proposal, but the biography of the person making the proposal is highly suspect. The supposedly reliable sources have clearly based it upon autobiography alone. There are strong doubts about its veracity, especially given its slippery nature of changing when people have attempted to verify one of its claims. The consulship is sourced, ironically, to something that says that it wasn't really the case. And the sourcing for the one other thing, the court case, is insufficient; as people have observed the three times that this article has come upon the Project:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. I thought about redirecting this article to Dynamic Tower, but (a) that seems a useless redirect, and (b) upon reflection I think that this whole edit history needs to be deleted, not just the article blanked. Uncle G (talk) 05:47, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * The version that has been pushed by single-purpose account : This is largely the version at the time of nomination.  Whilst superficially it may appear reliably sourced, there are serious problems with the sourcing, starting with Special:Diff/769482745.  As textbooks on Italian law reveal, an indulto is a form of pardon in Italian law.  The translation to pardon has been edited out several times in the article's edit history.  This misrepresentation of the source is not accidental.  Other sources for the legal proceedings are either now nonexistent or don't report the outcome.  Then there's the Business Insider, which uses a question headline in standard journalistic fashion to avoid stating things as fact.  Everything else in this article is in fact about the Dynamic Tower, more on which in a moment.
 * The version that has been pushed by (by my count) 8 single-purpose accounts and 9 distinct IP addresses : This is mostly the Hakaik.wiki version with most of the negative information taken out.  The latest in this 14-year-long parade of single-purpose accounts,, actually went so far as to make on-wiki legal threats: Special:Diff/1082103565.  There have been more veiled threats for years, including the edit summary in Special:Diff/453418632.  Some of the single-purpose accounts have put discussion page edits into the article, such as Special:Diff/453229803 where there is a claim of "my client", notice, and a lengthy argument about Italian law.  And of course there has been one that follows that oft-repeated law about account names: .  Interestingly, single-purpose account  and the edit summary at Special:Diff/421338522 demonstrate that the perl version of the law has a bug.  &#9786;
 * The version that has been also pushed by single-purpose account and others : This is just a straight up copy and paste of the subject's autobiography, full of stuff like "Dr. Fisher has a 360-degree experience".  This has been done multiple times over the edit history, but Special:Diff/499193893 is particularly of interest because of its statement of how the article subject has approved only that, and the veiled legal threat, in article space, at the bottom.
 * In 2008 there was a flurry of uncritical inexpert press coverage about the building proposal, and there have been a few more in the intervening years asserting things like how the building will definitely be built by 2010, or by 2020, or at least within a mere few weeks of the start of construction whenever that happens because it is so "revolutionary". Special:Diff/778223714 has quite a list, and the one of particular interest is .  "But it's the Daily Mail!", you may cry.  Yes, and the Wikipedia editorship has a problem with the Daily Mail ' s journalistic standards.  But one thing to say about the Daily Mail is that in many cases it actually specifically states how poor its standards are.  This article is a case in point: it actually tells the Daily Mail ' s readership outright that the only source here used by the Daily Mail is this article subject's own claims from this article subject's own WWW site. The problem here is that all of the other, supposedly more reliable, sources just did the same as the Daily Mail.  There's not a one of them that hasn't sourced the biographical statements that they make in their coverage of this person, as background to news on the tower, to autobiography and statements made by this person.  Even the books that come up in a book search, most already cited in the article, have done this.  The 2008 book by Randl is quite clear that it is sourcing to the article subject with "Fisher expects" and "Fisher recalled", and it's actually nothing more than yet more gushing uncritical coverage like the newspaper articles.
 * There was coverage of a bankruptcy case in Italian sources. Most of these sources do not exist, now, and the single-purpose accounts are claiming that that is not just link rot but because their publishers actually retracted them.  The main detailed source, an analysis by a firm of lawyers involved in the case, is obviously partisan and a poor source.  And it also doesn't seem to exist any more, in any case.  I looked on the hyperlinked WWW site, and there's only a paragraph there, now, and it doesn't support what this article says.  It doesn't name names, for a start.  The Microsoft Word documents cited in edits years ago are not to be found, and wouldn't be independent sources anyway.
 * There are a fair number of self-published, anonymously-authored, sources around the WWW casting doubt on all of this. The subject's autobiography has been accused of being highly suspect, and actually the sort of false autobiography that is the reason why Wikipedia has rules about trusting autobiographies.  They point out that the building doesn't exist, there has never even been a construction project begun, there have been a string of highly dubious excuses, no-one even seems to know what continent it is purportedly going to be built on, and that the journalists don't seem to have asked properly probing questions about any of this in their rush to fill space with fluff pieces about a building that is definitely going to be built, any day now, honest.
 * There was coverage of a bankruptcy case in Italian sources. Most of these sources do not exist, now, and the single-purpose accounts are claiming that that is not just link rot but because their publishers actually retracted them.  The main detailed source, an analysis by a firm of lawyers involved in the case, is obviously partisan and a poor source.  And it also doesn't seem to exist any more, in any case.  I looked on the hyperlinked WWW site, and there's only a paragraph there, now, and it doesn't support what this article says.  It doesn't name names, for a start.  The Microsoft Word documents cited in edits years ago are not to be found, and wouldn't be independent sources anyway.
 * There are a fair number of self-published, anonymously-authored, sources around the WWW casting doubt on all of this. The subject's autobiography has been accused of being highly suspect, and actually the sort of false autobiography that is the reason why Wikipedia has rules about trusting autobiographies.  They point out that the building doesn't exist, there has never even been a construction project begun, there have been a string of highly dubious excuses, no-one even seems to know what continent it is purportedly going to be built on, and that the journalists don't seem to have asked properly probing questions about any of this in their rush to fill space with fluff pieces about a building that is definitely going to be built, any day now, honest.
 * Delete, because cutting to the core of the matter, we have someone who's possibly been associated with a scandal that went nowhere, and who hasn't yet built a rotating tower. The first bit can't be included in an article without good sourcing, and the second bit must be written off as WP:TOOSOON, and that leaves absolutely nothing. If the tower appears, and rotates, and someone writes about it from various angles, then the article can be rewritten. Caveat, I haven't verified Uncle G's analysis of the history and sources because I'm certain he will have done it a darned site better than I can. Elemimele (talk) 07:37, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * If it helps; two samples of the flurry of 2008 coverage:
 * &mdash; The New Yorker writing about a press conference; biographical information about Florence from what was said at the press conference.
 * &mdash; Biographical information from interview with subject: "he told me".
 * The Daily Mail articles are examples of similar waves in 2012, 2013, and 2017. Some in the 2012 wave mention how they were e-mailed a press release.  Some skeptics:
 * &mdash; Question headline, mention of the lack of any details, and April Fools reference.
 * &mdash; Betteridge's Law can be applied.
 * &mdash; Betteridge's Law cannot be applied.
 * Uncle G (talk) 10:13, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete It doesn't look like we have the material needed to build a biography that meets our standards, or much reason to try. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:24, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete this is turning into WP:SNOW based on the lengthy discussion above, which seems to say way to much for what it is, non-notable. Oaktree b (talk) 19:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Inadequate sourcing to meet notability for WP: GNG. NiklausGerard (talk) 06:08, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per those above. Best, GPL93 (talk) 19:46, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete The topic doesn't satisfy WP:GNG as per cited resources. JoyStick101 (talk) 06:01, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete this is turning into WP:SNOW based on the lengthy discussion above, which seems to say way to much for what it is, non-notable. Oaktree b (talk) 19:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Inadequate sourcing to meet notability for WP: GNG. NiklausGerard (talk) 06:08, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per those above. Best, GPL93 (talk) 19:46, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete The topic doesn't satisfy WP:GNG as per cited resources. JoyStick101 (talk) 06:01, 19 April 2022 (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.