Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Wetzel (historian)


 * 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 Anagnorisis.

This AfD was never properly opened, and it was never properly closed. Technically, it has still been open for the whole seven years since it was created.

During this time, an actual AfD ran its course at Articles for deletion/David Wetzel (historian) (2nd nomination), which was confusingly originally named this, and the page you're reading right now was called "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Wetzel (historian))" with two closing parentheses. So I shuffled the pages around and edited all the backlinks to fix it, and make the second nom the second nom, and make this the first nom. I used at least three different pieces of software in the course of doing this. I have become effective at doing useless things.

I guess Professor Wetzel is in the same boat as me: he wrote this very long defense of his article, and took the effort of posting it while it was being discussed for deletion, but formatted it incorrectly -- such that it was posted on a new page, instead of on the existing AfD page -- and, as far as I can tell, it was not seen by a single other human being in the seven years afterward. The article was kept, and Wetzel's comments here were never mentioend or even alluded to during that discussion. Perhaps it is a strange irony for me to be the first to read them, since I am myself a historian of Wikipedia deletion processes. Perhaps it is not, and I am just a fool.

Closing this discussion may be the most pointless task I've ever performed in my entire life. Logpages for old AfDs are almost never viewed, except by software, and even then rarely. I spent weeks writing a Python application to automatically process old AfDs, and even the summaries of AfDs from 2015 are hardly ever viewed. So the odds of anybody reading this, as far as I can tell, are about zero. Mostly, I am just working through a list of old orphaned AfDs, and dealing with them all gives me some sense of satisfaction in an otherwise frustrating world. Here, I am alone. This is my zone. And even if it is infinitesimally unimportant, it is something, and I have succeeded in doing it.

Why did I do this? Who cares? I don't even think I care. But I did it anyway. Maybe I am a crank. But maybe in a hundred years someone (or something) will see this close note in the course of making a comprehensive and exhaustive review of all Wikipedia deletion discussions, and thank me for being so diligent. Who knows? Maybe it was worth ten minutes of doing this. I'll never get to know.

This is the first, and likely last, AfD closed as "anagnorisis" in the history of Wikipedia.

Nobody else could ever be admitted here, because this door was made only for you. I am now going to shut it. (non-admin closure) jp×g 03:53, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

David Wetzel (historian)

 * – (View AfD

This template contains four objections to which I wish to respond.

OBJECTION 1: "The article is written like an advertisement."

RESPONSE: Really??? The only thing I say that is self-promotional is my designation, in April 2012, by The Princeton Review as one of the best 300 professors in the United States. According to The Daily Cal, six other Berkeley lectures fell into this category. But I consider this an honor. A perceptive editor wrote me that if I have other 3rd party sources, especially reviews of your books....add them! As will be seen from what follows, I have taken this advice.

OBJECTION 2: "The article is an orphan."

RESPONSE: A dead dog. This may have been true when an editor wrote me on 2/26, but it is true no longer. My entry now links to other Wikipedia pages on a) UC Berkeley; b) The Crimean War; c) the Franco-Prussian War; d) the German magazine DAMALS.

OBJECTION 3: The Notability Issue.

RESPONSE: The editor wrote me (in late February) that a search disclosed no more than one publication in which my name appeared--to wit, The Daily Cal. But what about The Princeton Review? DAMALS? The American Historical Review? The Journal of Modern History? Times Higher Education?'' the "TLS? To be fair, the names of these last three did not appear when I first read the edit. But they appear now.

A few facts: According to The Princeton Review, there were, as of April 2012, 1,700,00 professors or other academics in the United States.. According to Wikipedia, DAMALS had (as of 2009) a quarterly circulation of over 30,000. I do not know the figures for the Times Higher Education, but since it's a product of The Times of London, the figure can't be a lowl one. And what about the TlS itself? Ditto the AHA and the JMH- they are almost universally regarded as the most esteemed historical periodicals in the United Sates. What their respective reviewers had to say about my book, A Duel of Nations, I leave the reader of my entry to judge. Ditto the comment by Dennis Showalter.

OBJECTION 4:  The COI. You can't write about yourself. RESPONSE: And I haven't.  The identity of the author of the deleted entry David Wetzel; The Dream Historian remains a mystery to me. But clearly someone tried to help. I understand Wikipedia editors have access to deleted articles. They can verify this for themselves.

The above reasons are compelling ones. Please save my entry. 02:36, 4 March 2015 (UTC) 02:33, 4 March 2015 (UTC)~ ```1


 * 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.