Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joseph McMoneagle (2nd nomination)


 * 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   no consensus. One (talk) 05:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Joseph McMoneagle
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Article has been tagged with notability concerns for a while. AFD from several years back didn't establish notability, and some votes were keep pending a cleanup that never happeded. Only argument made for notability on this person made on talk page has been to say he got a medal, but the article is priomarily about highly POV claims of psychic power and not the medal, and the medal wouldn't demonstrate bnotability for a Wikipedia article even if that's what the article were about. The article right now is one massive WP:BLP violation and needs to be deleted. (TWINKLE botched on me again, so original description disappeared.) DreamGuy (talk) 20:06, 3 May 2009 (UTC) Keep / Stub: This guy's on telly *a lot*, often in a non-Stargate capacity. Quite apart from all the UK and US coverage, his appearances on FBI: Psychic Detective on Nippon telly (17 million viewers) run into double figures for example, and that's not including multiple two-hour "Joe McMoneagle Specials". If anyone repeatedly secures primetime coverage across multiple continents wiki notability seems clear-cut to me.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 21:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 21:31, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Google Scholar also reckons his books get cited so secondary sources do appear to be out there.

The article could be stubbed down for NPOV reconstruction perhaps - I'd like to see it done properly. K2709 (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep Evidently notable. AFD is not cleanup. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. There are already two TV appearances, obviously a notable guy. Some more sources I dug up: (in Romanian!); ;; ;;. This is an interesting account of a physicist's interaction with McMoneagle, which ends with the physicist believing in his powers:. I'd say it's a good example of credulity and how physicists are prone to mystical thinking, but that's just me. Fences and windows (talk) 00:28, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep but with a substantial overhaul . He certainly seems to be notable enough, as Fences and Windows has demonstrated; the problems with the article can be fixed. Which isn't to say there aren't a lot of serious POV problems with it, but a rewrite, and not deletion, is the solution Changed to neutral, see my comments below --Miskwito (talk) 00:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * After reading Ryan Paddy's comments, I've changed my !vote to neutral. Since some people have been asking how the article violates BLP, my impression is that the following policy statements are violated or should apply here: "While a strategy of eventualism may apply to other subject areas, badly written biographies of living persons should be stubbed or deleted"; "The article should document, in a non-partisan manner, what reliable secondary sources have published about the subject and, in some circumstances, what the subject may have published about themselves" (my emphasis); "External links in biographies of living persons must be of high quality and are judged by a stricter standard than for other articles"; "Material that has been self-published by the subject may be added to the article only if...the article is not based primarily on such sources." I'm remaining neutral, however, because again, he clearly seems to be notable, and Fences and Windows' work on improving the sourcing of the article has me optimistic that it can be salvaged --Miskwito (talk) 01:08, 7 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. Notability has been established. The article does need serious work, but AfD is not Cleanup. Firestorm  Talk 04:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * When it comes to biographies of living persons, if serious problems are not cleaned up it does need to be deleted, so AFD is, in fact, cleanup when previous attempts to let people know the article needed cleaning up didn't result in any substantive action. This is a put up or shut up thing. Fix it or delete it, per policy on BLPs. DreamGuy (talk) 14:01, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Question The additional sources do seem to push the subject closer to notability than what's on the page. Could the nominator please expand on what makes the article a "massive BLP violation" in their opinion? Is it just the biased tone, which can be fixed, or something more intrinsic? Ryan Paddy (talk) 05:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If reliable sourcing can be found (no attempt had been made in the years since the first AFD) and the article can be totally rewritten to follow our other policies then of course it would not be a BLP violation anymore. On the other hand, saying it can be cleaned up and never doing it continues the violations. It needs to be fixed before it can be kept, and the people saying it can be ought to back it up and do it. We know from experience the last time around that the people supporting it didn't actually care about fixing it. DreamGuy (talk) 13:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You still haven't told us how the article violates WP:BLP. What part of the policy in specific does it violate? If you don't say what the problem is, how do you expect it to be fixed? Firestorm  Talk 15:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Attempted initial cleanup, but found that the article is based primarily on WP:SELFPUB sources. - LuckyLouie (talk) 14:49, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete There isn't enough to say about the subject, that can be reliably sourced, to merit an article. None of the reliable sources examine his history as a "psychic" with rigour, and that's the topic of the article. As a result the article largely references his own writings, which appear far from reliable. With the sources available, the article can never be well-sourced in regards to the bulk of the info it should contain. Ryan Paddy (talk) 19:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There is plenty of material to establish notability; I've added some more sources. We don't need to believe in remote viewing to have an article about one of the main participants. I fail to see the POV pushing, the article neither endorses nor criticises McMoneagle, it just presents what the sources say. Further, there is no BLP breach at all. Dreamguy needs to back that up, not just assert it. Self-published sources are allowed, and I don't think the use of them in this article is overly "self-serving". I think this is a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I don't like claims of remote viewing either, but that doesn't stop this guy from existing and being notable. Fences and windows (talk) 21:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment What I don't like is a BLP that consists almost entirely of "the subject claims X about himself", and for which insufficiently detailed reliable sources have been found to expand the article beyond that. Looking at your recent expansions, presumably based on your new sources, they are almost all of the "McMoneagle states X" variety. That just doesn't fly. WP:BLP states that WP:SELFPUB can only be used if "the article is not based primarily on such sources." This article is, and while you have found some independent sources the info they contain is still sourced from the subject, so they break the spirit of not basing an article on self-claims. With the sources available, this article can never be sufficiently detailed without violating BLP, in spirit if not in letter. Which is why it should be deleted: an article that can only consist largely of a subject's claims about themselves should not exist. While I'm a sceptic, I do my best to be even-handed about paranormal articles. I would make exactly the same argument regarding any BLP that can only largely consist of the subject's claims about themself. Ryan Paddy (talk) 21:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * There are reliable sources that discuss and quote McMoneagle - that's not self-publishing. I think a solution is to cut down the detail that is sourced only from his writings, to leave a much shorter but better sourced article. Fences and windows (talk) 01:33, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment (undent) Can you point to a reliable source that describes his work as a psychic without just parroting his claims? His work as a "government psychic" is his claim to fame, and all we have is his own word on it. Therefore the cutting-down you describe, if done well, will result in a non-article because there is insufficient independent research on this subject. When a subject appears makes numerous unlikely and unverifiable claims about himself, does it really matter if those claims are quoted in reliable sources? Show me an in-depth reliable source on his psychic career that demonstrates editorial oversight and fact-checking, not just quoting his claims, and I'll give it to you that there is an article to be had. Otherwise all we have is a pile of steaming "what some guy claims about himself". I'm not denying that he seems to be mildly notable, but that's not sufficient to warrant an article in every case. In this instance, the only verifiable information about the subject's psychic career appears to be self-claims. Do we really want Wikipedia articles about what people claim they did in a secret government program that no reliable source corroborates with independent research? Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:57, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's an authoritative source. The military operations officer for the Stargate Project (F. Holmes Atwater) writes about him in "Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul", p127-131. ("We contracted privately with Robert Monroe to work with Joe McMoneagle, our best ERVer...").  K2709 (talk) 11:39, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul: Living with Guidance, by F. Holmes Atwater, contributors Joseph McMoneagle and Dean Radin does not appear to be an "independent view" of the subject. - LuckyLouie (talk) 12:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Their contribution was front matter, not any of the chapters themselves, which are predominantly auto-biographical. Also, wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth.  This data from another world authority on RV matches other sources about McMoneagle - that is verification in action.  I don't care if in reality it's all a massive conspiracy, it's still a consistent conspiracy, and everyone who bought his books still finds it notable either way.  K2709 (talk) 18:21, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think individuals promoting themselves as world authorities in a pseudoscience lend verifiability to McMoneagle's claims. All they can do is add more claims to an already claim-heavy article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:36, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd be genuinely interested in knowing in what way you find eg. this fairly typical article by him pseudoscientific. It's fully relevant to McMoneagle as the technology that is its focus is precisely what McMoneagle was immersed in during his training with Robert Monroe (as described in the book reference). K2709 (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep per Firestorm Jenuk1985  |  Talk  11:15, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. How about this article from TIME Magazine in 1995, which calls him "a Pentagon psychic from 1978 to 1984" while criticizing Stargate and the large budget it had. Or, there's Harold Puthoff's paper "CIA-Initiated RV Program at SRI," which describes him as "well-known in the field." Jessica Utts wrote a paper called "AIR: An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning" which calls the work SRI did while McMoneagle was there as "statistically significant." Does this bolster the claim of notability? Firestorm  Talk 14:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Notability is not being questioned. What's in doubt is whether there's sufficient independent coverage available to write an acceptable BLP. See Miskwito's notes above about the special expectations of a BLP. The Time article only mentions the subject in passing, it's not sufficiently detailed to provide more than a line or two of information for the article. Based on your description, the other articles are similarly lacking in detail about the subject. Ryan Paddy (talk) 02:29, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Google Book Search lists literally hundreds of books mentioning him but not by him. Judging from a few I've sampled (eg. "Miracles of mind" By Russell Targ and Jane Katra p54-61 or "Psi Spies" by Jim Marrs p131) I'd say there's easily enough suitable objective material to go beyond a stub. K2709 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 19:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC).
 * Hate to be a broken record, but a "renowned spiritual healer" and a "famed conspiracy theorist" don't qualify as non-partisan, reliable sources. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This dismissal doesn't apply to the quotes and tabular results within them that come from referenced sources who are clearly neither author, and what's more there are still several hundred unaddressed books on that list. Also, someone like Russell Targ having an interest in a non-McMoneagle-relevant topic such as spiritual healing does not automatically make them unreliable in other respects - by such reasoning, the "hundred papers in lasers, plasma physics, laser applications and electro-optics" Targ also published must be considered dodgy as hell - unlikely.  In a similar vein, being a prominent researcher into a topic, RV or otherwise, hardly implies a partisan nature with respect to whether a person called Joe McMoneagle was in certain places at certain times in his life - the non-controversial meat of a BLP.  It may easily suggest bias with respect to RV's validity or estimates of McMoneagle's hit rate and to this end I'd like to see treatment of either basically avoided in the article, but that still leaves plenty of workable material.  K2709 (talk) 22:56, 7 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. For the same reason invoked by LuckyLouie (WP:SELFPUB). Sophos II (talk) 18:39, 9 May 2009 (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.