Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Weber


 * 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. Sarahj2107 (talk) 09:56, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Gary Weber

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

self published author; claimed spiritual teacher, No evidence beyond his own blog postings. Possible speedy G11 as entirely promotional  DGG ( talk ) 19:13, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Into the stillness is a peer reviewed book, article in Psychology Tomorrow is of course independent, as is the interview with Rick Archer. Compare to Adyashanti. Presentations at Science and Non Duality conference are competitive and vetted. Not intended to be promotional, all teachings are free, with considerable scientific content. Author is a PhD in Materials Science from Penn State University, with work at GE, Oak Ridge National Labs, and elsewhere. Please advise for changes that could make this clear. Notability has been addressed due to the peer reviewed book, vetted presentations and independent article and interview. Thanks.Wetwarexpert (talk) 19:36, 22 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wetwarexpert (talk • contribs) 19:28, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I just added a few more independent sources - interviews with Voice of America ( 2 parts), The secular Buddhist Association, Buddhist Geeks. and Conscious.TV. There is much more and I will add them as I have time. I also corrected one biographical detail as revealed by research. Wetwarexpert (talk) 00:11, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

I second Wetware expert's assessment. The author has had interviews that are independently selected (not self-promoted) and extend beyond his blog, including a Buddha at the Gas-pump interview (https://batgap.com/gary-weber/ - this series has interviewed a wide variety of well known figures, from Mooji to Deepak Chopra), an interview with Buddhist Geeks, another with "secular buddhism" (http://secularbuddhism.org/2014/04/27/episode-198-gary-weber-happiness-beyond-thought-a-practical-guide-to-awakening/), an review from SpiritualTeachers.org (http://www.spiritualteachers.org/gary-weber/), and another podcast through Mystic Wealth (http://www.mysticwealth.in/podcast/a-fascinating-conversation-with-gary-weber/)--these are the ones I could find. Note, as well, that his YouTube channel has nearly a half-million views. It doesn't seem correct to say, then, that he is entirely self-published or that there is no evidence beyond his own blog postings. Thanks. Etherfire (talk) 19:58, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * — Note to closing admin: Etherfire (talk • contribs) is the creator of the page that is the subject of this XfD.


 * Delete of the sources only one is not created by Weber, and that does not look to be in a publication that would count as a reliable source, but even if it was it would not be alone enough to justify an article.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:39, 24 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:39, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Do Not Delete There are numerous reliable independent sources under External Links, including a two part interview with Voice of America, the previously mentioned Science and Nonduality conference, Secular Buddhism, Buddhist Geeks, The Buddha at the Gas Pump. Rick Archer interviews are sourced at the aforementioned Adyashanti. i will integrate more of these sources into the life heading. Thanks. § — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wetwarexpert (talk • contribs) 13:47, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - There are literally zero reliable sources about this person, to the point of my being able even to verify his real existence. All of the references, except one, are articles by him, and the other single one is from Psychology Tomorrow, a non-notable web publication, not Psychology Today, which would be a reliable source. The rest of the arguments are hand waving. Our policy on bios of living people requires significant coverage in multiple sources about a person. This person is by all appearances just another one of thousands of ordinary therapists and writers. He is not notable generally and certainly not notable as a researcher. The only person with even a similar name who is cited on Google scholar is plainly somebody else. Bearian (talk) 13:24, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. One article is the popular journal psychology today. I see Into the stillness : dialogues on awakening beyond thought by Gary Weber and Richard Doyle published by : Non-Duality Press, an imprint of New Harbinger Publications, 2015. with WorldCat showing only 10 copies in libraries anywhere, (New Harbinger is a specialist in books on mindfulness and related topics), some of whose books are widely held in libraries; this particular imprint describes itself as "A publisher of books on the contemporary expression of Advaita by mostly western authors and teachers." and its claimed best-selling book in in 9 libraries), 2 self published books, a doctorate in an field irrelevant to his professional work, and some invited lectures. The contributor has confused the need for this article to be non promotional with the references that claim to be supporting it being nonpromotional. One book that is, to put it mildly, not a best seller and from an extremely niche imprint, s is not evidence for notability under any criterion. User: DGG, 18:18, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Wetwarexpert (talk) 19:03, 29 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment'. According to its website, New Harbinger publishes books for mental health professionals with "research based scientifically sound books." Most libraries have cut their acquisitions drastically, so it is unclear if the number of copies of a book released in 2015 is indicative of the book's impact and notability. As New Harbinger states that "All of New Harbinger’s books are grounded in science, careful research, and a tradition of empirically validated clinical practice", it seems unfair to refer to the book as an "extremely niche imprint." The Psychology Tomorrow article, the interview with Rick Archer, the interviews with Voice of America, The Buddhist Geeks Interview, the Secular Buddhist podcast would seem to fulfill the notability of criteria of receiving significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources. I will tally the views of each of these sources in order to evaluate notability, but Voice of America would seem a priori notable.


 * New Harbinger does indeed publish mainstream mental health books, many of which are quite successful. But SWeber published his one book  under their special imprint  Non-Duality Press, which does not publish for mental health professionals, ("Founded in 2004, Non-Duality Press has established itself as the leading publisher of contemporary literature on the subject of non-duality...Since 2004, Non-Duality Press has been the leading publisher of contemporary literature on the subject of non-duality, a translation of the Sanskrit word “Advaita,” meaning “not two”—not separate from the universe or from each other. Contemporary non-duality stands firmly in the immediacy of the present moment, but often draws on the wisdom of ancient teachings, such as Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism, to bring them into the intimacy of our modern lives.") and has never published a book with more than 9 copies in libraries. Not even they would publish his other two books, which are self-published.  DGG ( talk ) 05:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)


 * There are a couple of assumptions here in the above that I am confused about. The first  assumption is the idea that an imprint within a press somehow has different standards than the press itself. Non-Duality Press is a subset of New Harbinger, and  New Harbinger clearly states that "All of New Harbinger's books are grounded in science, careful research, and a tradition of empirically validated clinical practice." "ALL" would be a category that includes the imprints here, as Non-Duality is part of and not distinct from New Harbinger. The second assumption is that somehow New Harbinger refused to publish "his other two books", when research indicates that both Happiness Beyond Thought and Dancing Beyond Thought appear to have been published before Into the Stillness. Information on both books indicate that all proceeds go to charitable sources, so there are number of explanations for self publication that do not point to any inability to be published. Again, the comparison would be Adyashanti, all of whose books are self published by a non profit. Given that according to his webpage that there are other venues of publication including Mountain Path and Direct Path, this assumption that self publication indicates an inability to be published elsewhere would not seem warranted. Thanks. Wetwarexpert (talk) 14:42, 30 September 2016 (UTC)


 * If I may chime back in here... I know and understand that Wikipedias editors are primarily responsible for ensuring that only quality and significant articles are posted on the encyclopedia and I think both wetware, myself, and others working on this article respect that endeavor. We also understand that conflicts of  interest and lack of cooperation are often reasons for deleting articles of living persons. Thus, I will speak personally and note that I have little personal connection with the subject in question  besides keeping up with his blog and YouTube videos and having  attended two  of his meditation retreats. This in itself cannot be reason to disqualify me from writing, editing, and arguing for  the article given that articles must be written by those who find the subject at hand interesting, meaningful, and noteable. It is hard with figures known for spiritual topics because it is easy to perceive the desire for an article as proselytizing, but I want to be clear that I have no personal reason or motivation of this sort, nor does Weber have an organization to proselytize for.


 * I had heard about him primarily through his increasing web presence  and increasing Notability within the circles who are interested in nonduality. I recognize that this is a small subset of interests within a small subset of people (those who engage in various forms of localized and non-denominational spiritual practices) but within this group, Weber has become increasingly noticeable. Again, I am not interested in proselytizing only in providing information about a figure that is worth noting within this community and, increasingly, beyond it. Wetware keeps pointing to Adyashanti because he is a comparable sort of figure, except with a larger organization built around him largely because he has been at it longer and has also been more interested in working with a formal foundation... Something that Weber has repeatedly refused. I don't think having a formal nonprofit is a standard for Notability, especially within this kind of domain.  But even with Adyashanti, he self published at first, as Wetware indicates. This  may be, like Weber, in order to avoid traditional constraints and money-making elements so essential to publishing with  presses. If anything, the fact that Weber has moved into an imprint (one entirely relevant within the interest  he is known for) is an argument for him having become noteworthy enough to warrant a page. At least this was my understanding and  my motivation in helping to put a page together for him.  I understand he might be on the fence from the perspective of the general public, but Wikipedia often  publishes articles about figures who are of note within special communities as long as they bear relevance to public knowledge.  Given the number of articles published on him within this community (as had been listed several times by myself and wetware) and a few that extend beyond it, I think that this warrants keeping the article, or, if nothing else, taking Wetwares arguments above as serious engagement with your concerns.   [in fairness, a Full disclosure: I know Wetwares personally but was not contacted by him to write this post. I am trying to be as neutral as possible while still helping contribute to Wikipedia. Thank you for your time and efforts] Etherfire (talk) 19:07, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * the more exact way of putting it is that we cover material of interest to special communities if it addressed to whatever interest the general public ay have in those communities and subjects, but not if the purpose is to promote the views of the individual or community. The discussion above indicates to e that the purpose of this is indeed promotional. The problem of dealing with people on the fringes of various fiedls is a difficult one, because they tend not to have adequate coverage in any one thing.   There is also a difficulty in covering people whose accomplishments lie somewhat outside what is covered by the usual sort of sources available to us.   Advaita Vedanta is a recognized spiritual mode about which a great deal of commentary and discussion has been written, but his exact relationship to it seems to depend upon his own opinion, and the intent of the article is to promote it.  DGG ( talk ) 22:28, 1 October 2016 (UTC)


 * DGG, I appreciate your work here and your willingness to work with me and the others who have contributed to this article. I really appreciate your clarification on this issue of this being a somewhat fringe field. As you note, Advaita Vedanta is indeed a recognized spiritual mode. Weber's relationship is not, as you say, of his own opinion but has been verified by the interviews cited. I have read through or watched through most of them; they are independently produced by various authorities on these matters, including the TAT foundation and Rick Archer.


 * Let me add another disclosure and another citation (although this will likely void my anonymity): I am an academic who now holds a tenure-track position at a major university. I study issues of science and mysticism and have written over 400 pages on the topic. In my Ph.D thesis I discuss Weber's work, it's relation to neuroscience, and it's relationship to Advaita Vedanta (among other things). This dissertation was defended in front of 5 tenured academics and is considered published, although it won't be available to the public for another 2 years so that I have time to get a book version of this dissertation together (it was for this reason that I also did not cite it originally). I am laying this on the table both to note that a) my interests are entirely scholarly here and b) I can add this citation in as additional reference if it would help solidify the independent notability and clarification about Weber's position. In saying this, please note that I took care to avoid Wikipedia's "No original research" policy; I have helped put this article together not as new research (that was done in my Ph.D thesis) but as an encyclopedia entry apart from my original research, although it draws on the same interviews and posts that I cite in my thesis. If I have violated another policy in doing so, please let me know. In addition, although I have professional connections with Weber's co-author for his last book, I do not think this constitutes a conflict of interest since I am no longer in an academic relationship with this co-author and have never been in a COI-risk relationship with Weber himself.


 * If I or the other contributors to the article have made mistakes in the tone or shape of the article, this is a different point than the question of notability. I am more than willing to work to make the article sufficiently neutral to a public audience looking to read about Weber. But this is a different question than notability and one which can be easily remedied by edits in tone and perhaps by more careful citations of the interviews rather than the blog posts and by adding in the aforementioned scholarly work. Of course, you have more experience with wiki page editing than I do and probably see problems here that need to be addressed. But if notability is at least sufficiently established, can we not work on it from there? Since you understand the policies better than I do and are in an even more neutral position, I'll leave the final say up to you, DGG. But, if it is alright to you, I'm going to wait to work on the article any more until this decision is made so that I don't put any more time into an article that is going to be deleted even if I add the things I mention above.


 * The last thing I'll say is this: as you can see from my talk page, my first serious attempt to contribute to wikipedia was during graduate school when I was doing research on another scholar. I had some trouble then with navigating the demands of wikipedia and was less careful about reading the policies. This time around I thought I'd give it another try, taking much more care to follow the policies. I read the guidelines for notability and looked through some of the recently deleted persons discussions, trying to make sure that this time a deletion would not occur. I also followed closely the form taken by other articles of this sort. I expected that the question of notability would remain separate from questions of tone and quality; I see that this was a bit naive and indeed they can be difficult to disentangle. I also expected that editorial relations would remain sufficiently civil so that people who are still trying to learn the ropes have sufficient time to work out what is at issue and what they need to do to make a quality article. Your last response to me was quite civil; I appreciate this and hope that we can continue to work to keep up the quality of Wikipedia. I say all of this because part of the reason I wrote this article was that I am planning assignments for future Editing and Writing courses and was considering including a Wikipedia assignment. I wanted some experience crafting posts of my own before asking students to engage in Wikipedia, particularly since I knew, based on my experiences before, that sometimes your work can miss Wikipedia's policies. Perhaps helping to write a biography of a living persons was not the easiest place to start, but, having heard about the recent deletion of the previous Weber article, it seemed like worth a try. This has been a good lesson for me that I will undoubtedly pass along to students but with the hope that I can encourage them to participate in quality collaborative and open-source projects like this, rather than discourage them. Again, a sincere thank you for helping me navigate Wikipedia policies. Etherfire (talk) 23:54, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello DGG, I am writing on this page because I can account for the notability of Gary Weber in my personal accounts and through the accounts of his predecessors. As a meditation and yoga teacher in Los Angeles, CA. I am affiliated with Keck Hospital of USC and have been a practitioner of Gary weber since 2008. He is understudy of Russil Paul a great spiritual teacher of India. He has received praise from Gary Kraftsow, Amy Weintraub, James Lough, and Richard Miller in his 2007 publication Happiness Beyond Thought. Gary Weber is a devotee of Ramana Maharshi and has published several works under The Direct Path and The Mountain Path    --JGmeditationandyoga (talk) 06:21, 5 October 2016 (UTC)  — JGmeditationandyoga (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete I'm not seeing the multiple, significant coverage in reliable sources needed to establish notability. The support for this article from an editor with very few edits who has not been active for more than two years, and from an SPA raises the possibility of WP:canvassing. Meters (talk) 18:26, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 20:06, 9 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. Article's sources are his own website and blog, and there's virtually nothing else to be found about mr Weber. Non-notable.  Yinta n  14:34, 10 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, thank you all for considering the article. As I said above, I am an academic who has had contact with Mr. Weber and have studied his work with neuroscience and Vedanta. I, perhaps mistakenly, thought that he had reached sufficient coverage based on his new book and prevalence among the circles I have studied. A few people I have met in my studies had alerted me to the deletion of the wiki article that they had tried to start (without Mr. Webers involvement) and so we made a good effort to put together an article of sufficient quality and meeting Wikipedia guidelines (the other poster above was one of those individuals who independent of Mr. Weber, was involved in the editing) . If there is not sufficient Notability, this is perhaps understandable and, as I said above, we all respect your work to keep Wikipedia of high quality. I say all of this because, from what I understand, the accusation of canvassing hurts both the chance of a future article on Mr. Weber should he ever warrant it as well as my capacity to work on future Wikipedia editing. As I said above, I am very much interested in learning the ropes and contributing in the future. Thanks for the enlightening editing process. Etherfire (talk) 01:11, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * — Note to closing admin: Etherfire (talk • contribs) is the creator of the page that is the subject of this XfD.
 * I'm confused. You created this article, not the other editors. Or was there a previous article that was deleted? Meters (talk) 01:39, 11 October 2016 (UTC)


 * There was a previous article, not created by me (I didn't know of it until it was deleted) that was subject to speedy deletion, yes. That's what prompted me to help put together  (with a few others) this article since a full discussion wasn't able to be held at that point.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Etherfire (talk • contribs) 01:58, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks Meters (talk) 02:04, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi All, I apologize for continuing to speak up after my notes above, but a few more citations came to my attention this morning that are worth mentioning. I added them to the article. I think that these are legitimate and sufficient to warrant keeping the article. If you would like I can post them collectively here but I think that we can all reference both the external links at the bottom of the page and the citations I have inserted to get a full sense of where he has been talked about. Also, I ask that we all keep in mind the issue of largely oral, informal, and relatively small, yet noteworthy communities (both Advaita Vedanta and the Science and Nonduality cohort classify as these) noted in the discussion with DGG above. Thanks Etherfire (talk) 18:11, 11 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete -- a vanity page on an unremarkable self-published author, who also "offers talks, online videos, and a blog on non-duality". Strictly WP:PROMO. K.e.coffman (talk) 14:08, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete, not notable; WP:PROMOTION applies. Kierzek (talk) 17:56, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Do Not Delete -- considering the fact of what I have seen thus far, Notability is incredibly subjective. Author Adyashanti has worked with Oprah, although recognized, it is up to editors whether that seems notable.  Spiritual teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj references are mostly from himself with a few outside sources.  It does seem that Gary Weber meets the criteria presented in General notability guideline and has met each of the criteria for "Creative Professionals".  Instead of remarks presented by K.e.coffman and  Kierzek please provide specific examples of how to improve  General notability guideline for the editors to meet.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by JGmeditationandyoga (talk • contribs) 15:15, 15 October 2016 (UTC)  — JGmeditationandyoga  (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Your welcome &#124; Democratics Talk→  Be a guest 09:00, 17 October 2016 (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.