Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joel Furr


 * 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 of the debate was Keep. Ral315 (talk) 14:07, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Joel Furr
vanity page 4.252.250.72 05:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC) Keep. Ephemeral life 15:32, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep. --MarkSweep &#x270D; 05:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Do we really need an artile for the guy who might have been one of the first to call junk email "spam." What are the criteria for notability in a situation like this?&mdash;Gaff  talk  07:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Not vanity.  Logophile 07:51, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Not vanity, but is it really notable, ouside of a few usenet circles?&mdash;Gaff talk  08:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep: one of the most notable people in the history of the Internet. As for whether he is notable outside this topic area, this criterion would presumably be used as justification for deleting the article on Kip Thorne since he is not really notable outside the field of theoretical physics. —Phil | Talk 09:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Um, I don't think that Furr is to usenet what Thorne is to Physics. Thorne has made a career and a living out of Physics, and founded several areas of study.  If Furr had spearheaded DejaNews or the Google effort, or was the engineer at Google for the usenet-> groups transformation, then his efforts in usenet might compare to Thorne's in Physics.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.112.109.251 (talk • contribs) 18:59, 18 October 2005
 * Keep anyone who annoyed enough people to get a die.die.die newsgroup is worth noting /Rjayres 11:31, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete unless notability is asserted. The article makes no claim that the subject has actually done anything much besides being on Usenet and being "credited" with coining the term spam (no source cited for this). Speaking more generally, anyone whose primary claim to fame is "Usenet personality" is non-notable in the extreme. It's the pre-WWW version of forumcruft. flowersofnight 13:06, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep, as above. Trollderella 16:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep; he is a very notable, widely-discussed figure in the history of the Net. MCB 18:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * No vote for now, this article does not WP:CITE sources. Hall Monitor 19:25, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep after taking everything into consideration. Brad Templeton, the chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation apparently cites this person as one of the first figures, or possibly the first, to refer to unsolicited electronic messages as "spam" in 1993.  As was already mentioned, having three or three-hundred newsgroups named after you within the alt.* hierarchy is a very low bar to clear, so this was not taken into consideration; during the 1990s, all one needed to do in order to create an alt newsgroup was draft a proposal followed by a newgroup and ocassional booster message, and the servers would start picking it up automatically.  But it does appear that he played a historically notable role within the foundation of the alt hierarchy which is why I am supporting the inclusion of this article.  His part as member of the "Usenet cabal" and relationships with James Parry and Serdar Argic need expansion.  Hall Monitor 17:21, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Please note that I have not voted yet either and will not until I better understand The issues raised by Hall Monitor and the criteria for notability of an internet personality. What I see now seems unlikely to offer value to the encyclopedia, unless some sociologist somewhere wants to research history of spam and usenet personalities.&mdash;Gaff  talk  20:55, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Right, like articles about particle physics are unlikely to offer value to the encyclopdia unless some physicist somewhere wants to research particle physics. Wikipedia's written for a general audience, and there's lots you can do with an encyclopedia other than academic research. If someone sees a bunch of other people talking about Joel Furr as if everyone knew who he was, and can come here and find out who he is, there's your value. &mdash; mendel &#9742; 17:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * But that's incredibly unlikely to ever happen, given the subject and his level of notability.
 * Keep per Phil. &mdash; mendel &#9742; 21:02, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete; Can one of you PROVE that he is notable (was he noted anywhere?) or widely discussed? What sources refer to him?  I can't find anything.  Kibo, Serdar Argic, Robert McElwaine, Archemedes Pu etc, have had magazine articles written about them -- that's notable.  Joel Furr did not?  As far as I can tell, he's only 'widely discussed' among a cartel of old usenetters.  But I'm happy to be proven wrong by an enduring source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.252.249.219 (talk • contribs) 03:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, to begin with, the guy has at least three newsgroups named after him. --MarkSweep &#x270D; 07:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The article itself claims that essentially anyone can create any newsgroup. Given that, having newsgroups named after you isn't a high bar to clear. flowersofnight 13:25, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, having an alt.name newsgroup is really not a big deal, unless it gets a lot of traffic and actually perpetuates. alt.religion.kibology is a functioning 'religion', alt.fan.andrea.chen is not (even though andrea chen is one of the most inventive constructs in usenet history).  But there are literally hundreds of vanity newsgroups that are created and have no traffic.  There isn't a significant number of posters perpetuating any of the joel.furr newsgroups, so I don't think they should count.  Please look at the list of usenetters in wp and tell me why joel furr should be included.  Jorn Barger coined the term 'blog'.  Kibo is a verb in the OED.  Serdar Argric is known to almost anyone who read usenet at all, ever.  There were true architects of usenet, people who ran servers and made decisions for the good of usenet as a whole, not just as a joke here and there, who are not listed.  Those guys should totally have wp entries before joel furr does.  He never made any lasting admin-level decisions about alt.group propigation, his vanity newsgroups are empty and he was never written up in the print media.  Do you guys happen to know him personally or something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.252.249.219 (talk • contribs) 14:18, 18 October 2005
 * "These other people should have articles" is a peculiar reason to delete an existing article. The order in which articles are created is not a statement of notability! If you think they should have articles, sofixit. &mdash; mendel &#9742; 17:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * There are print sources that cite Furr (now referenced in the article). The other standards for notability are much too high: how many founders of enduring religions are there in total? how many of them hung out on Usenet? how many people have words named after them that made it into the OED? Also, the whole argument (I'm paraphrasing) along the lines "X cannot have a Wikipedia article unless Y and Z do first" does not make sense: the lack of articles about anyone you may consider more important than Mr. Furr does not necessarily reflect an editorial decision. If there is a shortage of articles, it's most likely due to the fact that nobody has written them yet. --MarkSweep &#x270D; 17:58, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * You're right, the argument that 'X cannot have a WP article unless Y and Z do first' is totally no good. What I meant to get across is that those other guys played a much, much bigger role then Furr did and this article is misleading about how big of a role Furr played in those decisions/policy/propagation protocols.
 * The standards for notability are not too high, I don't think. If you've been written about in the print media, you might be worth an entry.  If you haven't, then you almost certainly are not notable enough to warrant an entry.  Is that incorrect?
 * Ok, I think with the inclusion of the citations we'er finally starting to get somewhere and have some real concrete way to evaluate this guy's notability. Kudos to whoever provided them.  But these cites aren't enough in my mind to demonstrate notability.  Furr is not widely credited with coining the phrase 'spam'; one of his buddies (who happens to be in charge of the EFF) "thinks he remembers" that Furr was "one of the first ones".  This is hearsay.  Furr was a source for one article in the Nation -- not by any means the subject of that article (like Kibo and Argic were).  And then there are two FAQs, one written by Furr himself and the other written by a fellow usenetter.  These cites and the friendly tone of the "keep" votes here add up to a subjective, sort of buddy-buddy cartel among old usenetters to keep Furr listed.
 * As a data point from a quick Web search, Yahoo gives him his own category. Lightly populated, but still there. &mdash; mendel &#9742; 17:08, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * alt.fan.joel-furr.keep.keep.keep DS 13:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Totally keep. Greetings to Joel from Sketch the Cow; he is a very notable part of early Internet history. --Jscott 17:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Correction: he was a visible person during early Internet history. Would you also vote to keep an article on, say, a prominent moderator of Gaia Online? Gaia almost certainly has as many or more members than Usenet did during Mr. Furr's long-past heyday, and I'm sure the case could be made that the most prominent Gaia personalities are "a very notable part of 2000s Internet history". My point is: just being there at a certain time and making the occasional funny joke does not qualify you to be the subject of an encyclopedia article. Despite the additions to this article, no claims have been made for Mr. Furr's notability besides that he was a funny guy and Usenet moderator. Good for him; I'm sure he's a fine man. But he doesn't belong in Wikipedia any more than Gaia moderators do. flowersofnight 18:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * If there are Gaia moderators about whom an article would make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia, write or request them! I'm not sure I understand the difference between "X is a part of history" and "X was a part of history at the time"; isn't that how history works? &mdash; mendel &#9742; 02:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep If the standard was how how many people someone reached during the time that they were doing what made them notable, Bill Graham would be be more notable than Jesus Christ. While Usenet is sadly not what it once was (I fondly recall the days before the Web.) it was at one time the second most important thing on the internet after e-mail, and it still is quite useful.  Joel Furr is definitely one of the more notable persons from the early days. Caerwine 16:51, 21 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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.