Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues


 * 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 to delete, default to keep. There is large disagreement below as to how WP:UNDUE should be interpreted in this case. I note that consensus appears to be against merging this content into the main MLK article. lifebaka++ 16:00, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues

 * - (|View AfD) (View log)

Delete or merge per undue weight, lacks context; page exists only to discredit King. Isolating the issue into a subarticle like this is not the right way to address it.--The lorax (talk) 10:29, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Oppose: --JimWae (talk) 17:05, 15 February 2011 (UTC) Page exists to deal with the issue. Page presents the issue in a balanced way. I did a lot of the early work on this article and it gave me no pleasure to have to deal with it. If people are NOT aware of this issue and do not have a resource to deal with it, they will not be prepared to answer people who bring it up. If you think the article is unbalanced, please say where & suggest alternative wording. The reason the page is on Snopes is not "only to discredit King", nor is that the reason here.

Oppose: --Seth W (talk) 17:15, 23 February 2011 (UTC) I agree with Jim Wae. The page addresses an important issue, and should remain in place. I would, however, note that the same professor did the first read of Boozer and King's theses. The professor may have simply messed up, but it is still a valid defense of King's work.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions.  —The lorax (talk) 02:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I think that more information about his plagiarism should be in Martin Luther King, Jr. but it is not reason to delete more detailed separate article. --Dezidor (talk) 19:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm interpreting this vote as a keep or merge, was that your intent, Dezidor?--The lorax (talk) 19:28, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep separate and more detailed article but add more information from this article into Martin Luther King, Jr.. --Dezidor (talk) 16:56, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with this suggestion. This sub-article not only offers an insight into King's work, but also touches upon the differing treatment of plagiarism in academic, folk and oratory fields. More work is needed both here and linking into the main biography, but this is a notable, verifiable (and interesting) topic. SFB 18:16, 2 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose. No matter what readers feel about the character of MLK and his plagiarism practice, it's a fact that he did it. I support the maintenance of this page, with necessary reference to the main MLK article. gchang6 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gchang6 (talk • contribs) 19:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. The page is devoted to a very important issue, broadly discussed at present. It is well-balanced and by no way discredits the great role of MLK in the American history. It might be connected with the discussions of (possible) Plagiarism in other important personalities such as the German poet Bertold Brecht and the Nobel Prize Winner Michail Sholokhov —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.2.102.141 (talk) 10:18, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * This AfD nomination was incomplete (missing step 3). It is listed now. DumbBOT (talk) 13:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - This is ridiculous. The BU investigation into the dissertation is worth a mention in his main article, but the "I Had a Dream" accusations are largely baseless, as even the snopes article acknowledges.  Even if the latter "controversy" was actually sound, we'd still be left with 2 cases.  Does 2 really translate into "authorship issues" ?  No.  Delete this undue weight nonsense and ensure that the dissertation question is in Martin Luther King, Jr.. Tarc (talk) 14:26, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and WP:FRINGE. The "oppose" votes smell like a canvassing. Brand meister  t   15:21, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. & Tarc. Worthy of mention in the MLK article, but not a page unto itself.--JayJasper (talk) 19:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete - per WP:Fringe and the rational arguments above. While I don't want to make any direct accusations, I'd also encourage the closing admin to look into the string of oddly formatted "oppose" votes, some of which are from editors coming back for the first time in years. But of course, hopefully my fears are wrong. Yaksar (let's chat) 21:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There's nothing FRINGY about saying there's a problem with his dissertation. There is no reliable source denying there is a problem with his dissertation. As for UNDUE WEIGHT, where is the violation of "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint." - there is NO viewpoint that there is not an issue with his dissertation. I agree the claim re the speech is dopey piling-on, but people need to be prepared to reply to it too -- And so I have recently added more material to make this as obvious as possible without saying so. I also agree there's not enough about this in the MLK article - but there has been consistent opposition to adding anything more there - and it's hard to be sure it's not just misguided censorship. If even half of this article were added to the MLK article, we would surely see complaints of UNDUE WEIGHT there (and such might be justified). Paragraph after paragraph of the dissertation is copied and unattributed - with estimates of about 1/3 of the total dissertation being copied. The investigation reports use the word plagiarism - and not just for his dissertation, but for several other papers. THESE issues are ALL dealt with at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute site. Are they also out to discredit MLK?--JimWae (talk) 07:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That's not the point. Yes there are recognized plagiarism issues with his dissertation, but after that its just a bit of fringe-ish caterwauling about the dream speech.  1 real issue and 1 not-really-an-issue do not justify a standalone "authorship issues", plural, article.  This is worth a paragraph in the main article. Tarc (talk) 11:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Plural is clearly appropriate as it extends to his other papers also, as already stated above. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute has more material that could be included regarding the speech. A paragraph in the MLK article is certainly called for. Such was removed several times long ago.<> But one paragraph cannot tell the whole story - that is the function of this separate article. It has long been my opinion that quoting from Carey's speech does not belong in the main text<> - but perhaps in footnote. However, there was nobody to back me up on this when the issue arose AGAIN. JimWae (talk) 18:19, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Plural is not appropriate, for reasons I stated earlier. What we have here is pretty much a WP:POVFORK of the main MLK article.  If it was rejected from the main article, I dunno, that is something that will have to be discussed editorially there on the talk page.  Splitting content, especially rejected content, is never a good idea. Tarc (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Everyone is welcome to point out anywhere in this article that there is an NPOV problem--JimWae (talk) 05:23, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Fascinating article. Some of the sources are questionable from a RS perspective e.g. the blogs. The Speeches section smells like WP:OR. But all in all there's enough here for notability. Lionel (talk) 00:42, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Everything you just said could be an argument for why this article deserves to be deleted.--The lorax (talk) 04:04, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep JimWae has made some strong arguments to keep the article, but I am swayed most by the suggestion that merging this into MLK would create WP:UNDUE problems. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 19:13, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If it is undue weight to have it in the main article, how would it be any less to devote a standalone article to the matter? Tarc (talk) 19:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The above comment seems to indicate a misunderstanding of what WP:UNDUE is about. 1> There are long sub-articles on Thomas Jefferson (and his problems). Including any one of them in the main article in their entirety would be undue weight. It is NOT UNDUE that those articles exist. There are articles on many conspiracy theories that WOULD be undue if they were fully contained in other articles. 2>These is NO reliable opposing view claiming that MLK did not plagiarize --JimWae (talk) 19:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm quite comfortable with my understanding of policy, buddy boy, and overblowing a single significant incident of plagiarism into a standalone article is running afoul of it. This is little different from people trying to create things like Barack Obama Muslim rumor a few years ago; an article on a "controversy" gets redirected to a sub-section of an existing article. Tarc (talk) 19:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * - no need to make it personal or bring in guilt by association. The main diff is that Obama is not Muslim & MLK DID plagiarize - and this is not a rumor. Or would you rather that people think it WAS a rumor & learned about this "on the street"? There is no "controversy" about whether he did it or not.--JimWae (talk) 19:46, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The "controversy" is whether it is a big deal or not. Tarc (talk) 21:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The standard for having an article is WP:NOTABILITY not Big Deal--JimWae (talk) 21:27, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No shit. The problem is, it isn't terribly notable...certainly not enough for an article, which is why we're here at AfD in the first place. Tarc (talk) 21:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Nobody, had claimed lack of notability until you just did. Seems like the reason for the AfD keeps changing. Check out WP:NOTABILITY - it clearly passes. Why would you want people to think this is a rumour? I started this article to keep the topic from overwhelming the main article, after someone inserted the topic, unsourced, in a somewhat scurrilous manner. I was going to just delete it, until I remembered that I had heard something about it before. I, for one, do not want this to become a rumour that people "learn about" on dirty blogs and have no readily-available way to research properly. --JimWae (talk) 21:37, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It is worth a mention in the main article. Not here.  Again, WP:UNDUE, and I am a bit tired of repeating myself so consider this the proverbial "last word". Tarc (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * thing is, you have done about as much (or more) "switching reasons" as you have done "repeating". Were I to repeat my response to UNDUE, then we'd have repetition. --JimWae (talk) 22:31, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Overall comment - Why are we still here? This has been open for exactly 1 month now, we're 3 weeks overdue for some sort of resolution. Tarc (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is an issue which has drawn controversy and significant academic debate, and thus should have coverage on Wikipedia. User:Malik Shabazz's UNDUE argument also has merit. —Lowellian (reply) 00:30, 17 March 2011 (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.