Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tim Bass


 * 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. JERRY talk contribs 04:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Tim Bass

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Obviously an autobiography and lacks verification of any notability from sources other than his own website TheHammockDistrict (talk) 02:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Anti-spam expert status - The only references that could be found are in documentation written by the subject about defenses against a particular attack, utilizing anti-spam featuresets that were already present in the MTA and built specifically for this purpose. The claim on the talk page as this work being a basis for all future anti-spam development as quoted on the talk page cannot be verified and is likely exaggerated.
 * Delete - fails WP:NOTABLE in academia

Blackhole strategy - No reference to this 'technique' can be found apart from within the subjects own documentation. If this strategy was the basis for other anti-spam developments, would this not be referenced multiple times by multiple sources other than the subject?

Intrusion detection expert status - There are no references that can be found demonstrating the subjects claim of expertise in the field. Whilst the papers written describe multisensor fusion, no evidence can be seen that shows any formalization of this into anything tangible in the field of intrusion detection. Possibly his skills should be listed as in the much narrower field of multi sensor fusion and complex event processing.

Talk page references to programming skill - Cannot find evidence to substantiate this claim, apart from within his own documentation on e-mail bombs. The war.com pdf is written by a technology editor who does not have the credentials to be able to comment on the subjects programming ability nor his security experience.

Claims regarding other 'inventions' such as egress filtering were also deleted in earlier edits as these were demonstrably not inventions of the subject.

Ultimately it seems that the only potentially notable behavior is development of a multi sensor fusion paper. Whilst this is an interesting paper and has certainly been referenced by other graduate level papers, there are no visible references that are using the paper as a form of any other significant deriviative work and the publication itself is in no way significant or well known. Additionally Bass has not been visibly referenced by anyone else notable in the field of information security, or can independently be verified as an expert through reliable sources. As such the subject is novel, but barely notable and certainly not encyclopedic.

Spatulacity (talk) 07:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep - he does have some notability within the IT security circles, and you see his name pop up fairly often when you search around the 'net for IDS. He's also had publications about the topic for at least 8 years (e.g. ). Your demands on notability are obviously much higher than mine, but as I see it there's no damage in leaving this in and it's potentially useful to someone interested in IDS technology. --Arcanios (talk) 09:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

The searches on the 'net do return some references to him, but almost all of them were written by Tim Bass. The notability guidelines suggest 'published peer recognition' not published self recognition. The usenix article as well as the ACM publication represent commentaries on the technology, and the state and direction of its developement by others; this does not constitue developement or design by the author (Bass). No software written by Bass or evidence of programming ability is anywhere to be seen, so I fail to see how the suggestion he is one of the best programmers in the country is useful to anyone but Tim Bass. This will probably be labeled a 'personnal attack' as well as other edits, but viewing the actual Computer security experts category quite clearly shows the level of notability required to occupy this page. In Tim Bass's defence, his is not the only page in that category that should be deleted out of respect for the people that actually deserve the title. The external links to silkroad basically take you to an ad-words site, and the reference - if you can find it - to his pioneering work in anti-spam techniques doesn't link to anything making that yet another unsubstantiated claim. The site simply doesn't apear to be the work of an expert in the field.
 * Delete

TheHammockDistrict (talk) 12:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Every substantial edit of Tims page can be related to directly to Tim, a one time created account or a company directly related to Tim. The following accounts are most likely to be Tim editing his own page - 63.100.100.5 (Tim at Tibco), AFNETWORKING, EditorPerson99, FullMoonFallin, 70.174.144.171 (Tim), 68.93.134.193, 68.100.99.160
 * Additional evidence regarding sock puppetting

This has been identified on at least one other occasion by another editor : User_talk:68.100.99.160 If Tim or the page itself were to be noteworthy, would it not be possible for at least one other individual to independently create and maintain this page? Spatulacity (talk) 09:26, 28 January 2008 (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.