Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert David Steele (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 delete. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:30, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Robert David Steele
AfDs for this article: 
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WP:BLPFRINGE article that relies on a lot of questionable sourcing. Note that in order to have an article about a person, the sources in question should attest to the notability of the person rather than just quote them as a WP:SENSATION. I argue that the sources that we include that treat this fellow seriously are so outside the reliability matrix as to be problematic in terms of verifiability (appearing on Alex Jones's show is not something that Wikipedia considers enough to make you notable).

The previous AfD was closed as keep because his advocacy for open source intelligence was an accepted argument for his notability. However, I find that the sources which attest to this are very poor. One is a blog hosted by Wired and the other is a blog hosted by the Guardian by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed which, as far as I can tell, was inspired by Ahmed's fascination with Steele's Amazon book reviews(?!). This does not strike me as a decent foundation for claiming any sort of notability.

In short, I think that this falls just below the WP:BLP threshold when taking into consideration how out-on-a-limb Steele's ideas are and how paltry the sourcing is for considering his notability as a person. jps (talk) 16:18, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. MT TrainDiscuss 16:38, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. MT TrainDiscuss 16:38, 22 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Some editors appeared not to like the article for the fairly extreme views/claims made by Steele. In remaining neutral, I tried to keep the article as it was (only removing unsourced items). Then I did a more thorough search and there appears to be very little reliable information about him. I did a fairly involved search on Google and posted what little there was in the talk page. Nothing out there confirms his military or intelligence background, and the most reputable/large sources seem to take his word for it. I believe it was NASA's response to him that elevated his presence, and may have actually given him a degree of notability. So I'm not sure how that would affect whether there should be an article or not.MartinezMD (talk) 18:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You have certainly done us the service of highlighting the marginality of the subject. It is somewhat surprising that the articles was listed as a keep previously, but that was a different time for Wikipedia. Trying to come up with a reliable biography at this point strikes me as a task that is very difficult. The response that NASA gave might be relevant to a page on the conspiracy theory itself (if that were to become notable, for example), but as it is, I argue that the biography is not something that Wikipedia should be hosting. jps (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete per jps's comments in the nomination and just above. If his conspiracy theory attained greater notoriety, then (per WP:FRINGE) we could potentially have an article on that, but I don't see the case for it now. And in the near-absence of reliable biographical information, deletion is the way to go. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete - unless more reliable information vetting his background turns up. As it currently stands it looks like a lot of smoke and mirrors to me. MartinezMD (talk) 18:18, 23 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. Teased together from insubstantial and often unreliable sources. Guy (Help!) 09:09, 24 February 2018 (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.