Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rob Levin (fourth 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 for deletion, default to keep. Big Dom  20:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Rob Levin
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log )

Fails to meet even the basic criteria established in WP:BIO. After looking at the sources, and the available information found on the web. I see no reason why this page should be kept. The only reliable source is the "Register" article talking about how he mismanaged OPN funds, the rest are just links to freenode.net, unreliable "chat news" sites (the citations to which I have removed), and a page that he himself wrote. In addition, this seems more like a memorial than anything else. A guy who has been dead for years will most likely not become notable in the future, either. LiteralKa (talk) 06:46, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

The rationale behind the second AfD is even more relevant than ever now: "WP does not have an article on the creator of DALnet, Dalvenjah, nor the original admin of EFnet, Greg Lindahl. Those networks have at times been much more popular (and are much more legendary in the IRC business) than Freenode. There is no reason to consider it as anything else. [...] It isn't notable enough to warrant anything other than an article about the network itself (which we have)."

Sad to say, I find no citations for his death AT ALL, his death, even, is hardly notable.


 * I would also argue that the PDPC is not notable, but I will wait and see how this deletion discussion goes, first. LiteralKa (talk) 06:51, 6 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep Let me see... IRC is notable, Freenode is notable, and was founded by him. The previous couple deletion discussions were practically Snow Keeps. An important piece of internet history. Eauhomme (talk) 17:17, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Notability is not inherited. LiteralKa (talk) 19:19, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Computers are notable. Computer Security is notable.  I helped found Goatse Security which is also notable.  Can I have my own article?  nprice (talk) 19:52, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Misapplication of WP:NOTINHERITED, which specifically recognizes that notability is regularly "inherited" between notable creations and their creators. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 22:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * First, I would argue PDPC is not notable. Second, WP:NOTINHERITED also says that "parent notability should be established independently". Can you establish independent notability for Rob? I sure can't. LiteralKa (talk) 23:52, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong Merge As best as I can tell, he is a very successful person who is "notable" in the general sense of the word but does not meet the technical requirements for notability here. He doesn't appear to have had articles written about him specifically, so I think the relevant information about him should be merged into the works that he has created. There are only a few paragraphs here, so that should be pretty easy. I'm more than willing to strike my !vote, however, if someone with better research skills than me can find some detailed articles about Mr. Levin himself. Qrsdogg (talk) 02:16, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would also support a redirect for the reasons that Mr. Marshall eloquently explained below. Qrsdogg (talk) 00:56, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Same. LiteralKa (talk) 01:03, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * keep sorry, he's notable, he was notable then, he is notable now. notability is not lost because people do not want to think that the history of an irc network is not notable.  please revisit and rebut prior afd's before nominating with the same old same old, if you think you can argue against those afd's and win, fine.  but this nomination is the 4th, even jimbo said lilo is notable, i mean come on.....--Buridan (talk) 13:48, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Where did Jimbo say that? Would you be so kind as to provide a link to him saying that? (You should probably read WP:JIMBOSAID.) I would also suggest taking a look at the dates of the last AfD's. (Hint: they were right after he died, the entire reason for keeping the page was because he died.) LiteralKa (talk) 14:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * it is actually in the archives of the discussion page... and no... they aren't right after they died.  two were, and the last to were a year and around the next year.   still doesn't change the situation, notability doesn't go away and you should have read the old one first and not even started this one.  and one thing you really shouldn't do before an afd is to stip the article for content... it makes us question the purpose of the afd.--Buridan (talk)


 * Strong Vote for PURGE (delete) There's very little redeeming quality in this. I've got to agree with the person who nominated this for deletion, there's only one real reliable source for this, and we can't accurately call the freenode.net or freenode blog sources "reliable". --TrekCaptainUSA (talk) 03:47, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * strong keep This is an obvious troll Kunwon1 (talk) 03:53, 8 March 2011 (UTC) — kunwon1 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Yes, an obvious troll with noble intentions. Go back to plotting my downfall, kunwon. LiteralKa (talk) 03:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong Vote for Keep I'm not sure how a person can not be notable and yet have their death as a major story on Slashdot: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/06/09/16/2152243/Rob-Levin-lilo-of-FreeNode-Passes . Rob created freenode and ran it. Maybe he would have done interviews with blogs and that sort of thing if he had known that some jerkfaces were going to come on here and continually try to make this page not notable. The man has been dead for years now, and this continues to keep going on? Seriously, this is childish. The deletionists need to back off. User talk:The_Tick —Preceding undated comment added 04:30, 8 March 2011 (UTC). — The_Tick (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Slashdot is not a reliable source, nor was it a "major story". You are greatly exaggerating the importance of this man. I would also appreciate it if you didn't call me a "jerkface". :x LiteralKa (talk) 12:40, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would say that Slashdot is a source of variable reliability. I think it's sufficiently reliable in the case of this particular story. --RussNelson (talk) 01:09, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They cite IRC logs. Not very reliable in this case. LiteralKa (talk) 01:12, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * "Maybe he would have done interviews with blogs": then he still wouldn't have any reliable sources! LiteralKa (talk) 16:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep I do NOT believe this is a legitimate CfD since the person issuing the call had eviscerated the article prior to deciding that it should be deleted. This kind of behavior should not be rewarded. RussNelson (talk) 04:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:CFD applies to categories, not articles. The page literally cited IRC logs and blogs about IRC. These were clearly not notable and needed to be removed. And there didn't need to be a section on the origin of his nickname, either. LiteralKa (talk) 12:40, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with you that this behavior was unhelpful, but it doesn't automagically invalidate the policy-based arguments in the AfD rationale; just like we shouldn't reward LiteralKa, we should not keep a deletable article just to punish them. WP:ADHOM. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I apologize for removing citations to blog posts and an "IRC chat mag" as well as a section about the origin of his IRC nickname. LiteralKa (talk) 22:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * When police use unlawful means to get information, they are punished by having that information banned from the courtroom. Applying the same principle, this CfD should be immediately resolved in favor of Keep. If, at some time in the future, someone else (not LiteralKa) is inspired to delete this article, they can re-open a CfD. Perhaps you disagree? Then I think at a minimum, LiteralKa should be prohibited from arguing his case, since he tried to prejudice it by removing arguable citations. If there is no penalty for prejudicing a CfD, it will happen again, and again. --RussNelson (talk) 01:09, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If you think someone is removing reliable sources from an article it is best to bring the matter up at the Reliable sources Noticeboard. It would be wise to review the page on Identifying reliable sources first though. Qrsdogg (talk) 01:22, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The nominator does not really own an AfD, the closing admin makes a decision based on the entire input received. If a user is acting in a disruptive manner, this weighs heavily against them and may even get them blocked. But if an AfD discussion is grounded in the deletion policy, it continues. Had this process been entirely improper, an admin would have closed it already. The criteria for that is described at Speedy keep. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 09:29, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment This article has been plagued by subjectivity since many years ago, and this discussion is following suit, sadly. AfD is not a vote and if everyone registers strong opinions that just looks silly. Anyway, the article is really short on quality sources. Significant coverage by secondary sources is very scant. IMO, Rob Levin's personal notability could derive from the basic fact of running OPN/freenode/PDPC for some time, but this may reasonably be contested as not particularly notable per se, not only because of the general notability guideline but because several other people held positions of similar importance/relevance in these organizations and aren't considered notable enough just because of it. However, again IMO, the actual source of his personal notability would be his running OPN/freenode/PDPC in a manner that attracted much negative attention in the community at the time. This should help the notability argument in general - he didn't just fulfill a role, he did it in a manner that was noticed. Yet, that could be contested as unverifiable because apparently we've lost (or never had) the reliable sources attesting to the variety of peculiar practices that made him stand out in a negative manner. Once the article is gutted of this information, it does look non-notable - a lot of people found charities and a lot of people operate IRC networks. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 10:02, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * In the meantime I skimmed the previous AfDs, and found that none of them seemed to demonstrate much in the way of WP:RS for notability - it was mostly people offering personal opinions on notability, rather than demonstrating reliable sources for it. This looks like a good place to remind people of Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 22:12, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions.  —• Gene93k (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  —• Gene93k (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete or Merge With the unreliable citations gone, the article does not have much basis. I suggest full deletion, or possibly merging with the PDPC or Freenode articles. I think a delete would be best though, due to the limited number of citations. Harry (talk) 15:35, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * are they gone, or did someone remove them without first checking to see they were in archive.org? or otherwise available?  --Buridan (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that by "gone", he meant "removed from the page, as they failed WP:RS". LiteralKa (talk) 18:11, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * strange they were reliable for what 3 or 4 years.... and now they aren't.  i wonder why the webpage doesn't mention the change in standards somewhere.  --Buridan (talk) 18:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They were never reliable. The page was deleted during the first AfD because of that. That's a logical fallacy: "because they were used for so long, they must be reliable". If this were a more well-known article, perhaps that would be true. But it isn't. LiteralKa (talk) 18:48, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Procedural Keep - This biography already passed AfD three times, the last two not even close. Notability is not temporary. Improve through normal editing. Move along. Carrite (talk) 21:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC
 * It failed the first one, and the only reason the last two passed were because people were emotional because of his death. Also, the last AfD is five years old. LiteralKa (talk) 21:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Guys, please stop using this quick retort style, you're not helping your arguments and it's detrimental to the discussion process in general. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 22:04, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Please elaborate how your comment isn't a case of WP:NOTAGAIN. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 22:14, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep per Eauhomme, although there is a possibility that some of the content could be copied and pasted from http://sportifi.com/Persons/Rob-Levin/bio without permission of the copyright holder. Minima  c  ( talk ) 21:53, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete and Merge As per nom, fails to meet basic requirements of WP:BIO Acostoss (talk) 22:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Peer-Directed Projects Center. I can see a convincing argument that Rob Levin is not independently notable, but "non-notable" doesn't mean "delete".  "Non-notable" means "shouldn't have his own article".  And if we've decided he shouldn't have his own article, then it's very stupid to turn Rob Levin into a redlink that encourages an inexperienced editor to write one; and besides, "Rob Levin" is a plausible search term.  We can be more helpful to our end users than just giving them a redlink.  A redirect would take them to some of the information they seek, and there's no reason why Peer-Directed Projects Center shouldn't contain a sentence or two about Mr Levin.  In terms of our formal procedures, we're supposed to exhaust the alternatives to deletion before we delete this material, and a redirect is a perfectly reasonable alternative.— S Marshall  T/C 00:43, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm dismayed at the level of emotional investment that LiteralKa is showing here by feeling the need to post a retort to every "Keep" vote. Make your own arguments and let them stand on their merits, please. Myself, I'm leaning toward keep: the article has only one RS right now, but I find it very hard to believe that more could not be found. Obituaries, for example, are published, so someone who's willing to do the research would likely find his (which is probably in an ungoogleable 2006 local newspaper), thus sourcing the bottom section. I say that "improve before deleting" applies here -- people have put work into the article, and that work shouldn't be lost simply because some Wikipedians would prefer to delete an article than to find sources that almost certainly exist. rspεεr (talk) 01:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * believe me, I tried LiteralKa (talk) 01:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * LiteralKa, please stop doing that. You already pasted the same link above. Once is sufficient, twice is annoying, especially in the form of a one-liner. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 09:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Obviously the person above did not see it. LiteralKa (talk) 12:44, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * How is a cursory Google News search relevant here? You said above that you couldn't find a reliable citation of his death. I suggested that it might be in a newspaper not indexed by Google. You retorted with the same Google News search you posted before. I am aware that simply dying does not confer notability, but in my view the article isn't lacking notability, it's only lacking verifiability which a newspaper article would easily provide. rspεεr (talk) 17:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I linked to it to show that I did try and find sources. That's not (nearly) the only thing I did, just an example of it. LiteralKa (talk) 19:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * in case you did not page back through the history to see the fairly well cited version of the page  with the non-notable sources that if we look back through who put those non-notable sources there.... in the history of wikipedia, etc.  --Buridan (talk) 11:34, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:RS. LiteralKa (talk) 12:45, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I have, thanks, i just find that things like slashdot are reliable sources, and I know the gentleman who ran the other major source writes for various newswires and is a professional journalist, or at least was at the time. The sources that are there are wp:rs reliable sources, could they be encyclopedia articles... and as such even more reliable.. yes, but they are perfectly reliable as is.  I know you have your perspective, but, i'm not sure you should take it to extremes of enforcing that opinion over top of several prior afd's, but a bit of what we call 'judgment' and consensus-building is sometimes called for in these cases, much more so than your perpetual attack and defense.   --Buridan (talk) 13:27, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure who you're referring to as the other major source, but let's discuss Slashdot, I searched it a bit. Keith Dawson published user submissions about Rob Levin's death . Timothy Lord once published a submission by Rob Levin himself . As for freenode, Rob Malda published one submission about a freenode incident, and Jeffrey Bates published a submission about an OPN upgrade as well as a submission about Debian channels moving out . There were also some other passing mentions of OPN and freenode, and nothing about PDPC. Even if we take all of the above as notable coverage, I'm not sure it really qualifies as significant coverage of Rob Levin. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 13:57, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * i was referring to chatmag and slashdot primarily, which constitute the majority of removed sources, though there are some others that could also be retained without wp:rs concerns. As for notability, I think that has been already established in prior afd and the policy is that notability does not disappear.  the question then is what happens when the documentation or opinion about the notability disappears.  90% of the professors listed here as notable won't be notable 100 years after they die.... then what do we do.  We either delete everyone that was once notable, like we are doing in this debate, or removing them.  I think it is something very interesting to debate, but I don't think this is the forum, and as such I think we should still keep this as a marker of history.  but as a researchers I'm very big on preserving verifiable data.--Buridan (talk) 14:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't believe your assertion that the previous AfDs "established" notability is correct. Each discussion had numerous people indicating in pretty clear terms that they didn't see how the notability was demonstrated, and in fact the one that had happened while he was alive had resulted in the deletion of the article, and not just because Rob had requested it himself. The thing is, we need to apply the same criteria on him as we do on all the old professors. The gist of it is - if people had *ever* written a modicum of secondary sources about him, then that supports a Wikipedia article about him. It doesn't matter if they were written while he was alive, when he died, or 100 years after he died. Right now, there's a single such The Register article listed. That's the whole point. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 11:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * but there was much more a week ago, and they were perfectly fine sources.  There were over 10 sources about his life and work.  Yes, in the past, some people disagreed about notability, but he passed notability 2 times and they were all arguments about notability.  We will in 100 years be able to strip most bio articles of content based on lost sources I'm betting.  That's how history works.   If we put the sources back in, or just revert the article to the last article version that passed afd on notability, it should be fine.  My argument is that 2 fold here, to reiterate.  1.  he is notable and we have had in the past verifiable sources toward that effect and 2.  that he is notable because prior arguments about his notability, while some disagreed, the consensus, several times was that he is notable. Following from the idea that notability does not disappear, just because someone edits the article, or time passes, then a once notable article subject is still notable.    --Buridan (talk) 15:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * They weren't perfectly fine sources. There was a blog about IRC "news" and a slashdot story that referenced IRC logs. That fails WP:RS, hard. LiteralKa (talk) 16:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * chatmag wasn't a blog, we had this discussion above. it was the journalists website.   it was meant to be what was... in the day an electronic magazine, that never found funding.  --Buridan (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * "Welcome to Chatmag.com, the leading Internet Directory and assistance site devoted to Internet Chat." -- Uh, yeah. It's a blog. LiteralKa (talk) 17:45, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * assumptions are awesome aren't they... they make you think you know.--Buridan (talk) 15:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep per Eauhomme and Buridan. Bellagio99 (talk) 03:33, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, as involved with at least one notable organization/project (freenode) and also cited as involved in newsworthy controversy. Per Reg article, he's apparently got some personal independent notability besides just some guy involved with freenode (i.e., it's not just inherited). I'm troubled by deletion of some of the content and blanket claims that certain sites are completely non-reliable, even for simple factual statements. For example, archive.org isn't responding for me right now, but do we really not trust http://lilo.freenode.net to be a viable source for freenode.net's main figurehead's death-date? Baby, bathwater, etc. DMacks (talk) 06:06, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm mainly troubled by the fact that he apparently wasn't notable enough for anyone but bloggers to comment on when he died. LiteralKa (talk) 12:29, 14 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.