Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Victor I. Petrik


 * 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. NW ( Talk ) 04:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Victor I. Petrik

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

An article about a self-proclaimed genius with significant WP:BLP and WP:V problems. There does not seem to be any record of his scientific publications or of citations of him that I could find by doing GoogleScholar and GoogleBooks searches, so the subject does not seem to be a traditional WP:ACADEMIC case. Russian Wikipedia does not have an article about him. There do seem to be some Russian newsmedia sources but they are very confused and contradictory and mostly local rather than national. A GoogleNews search in Russian returns two hits. The first of these hits is an article by a Russian academician Kruglyakov about the dangers of pseudo-science. The article lists Petrik as an example. Here is another article, in an almanach "Lebed'" (Swan):. This article says that Petrik's claim to be a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences did not check out upon verification; it also says that the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (for which Wikipedia does not have an entry) is a kind of a vanity club and not a legitimate academy like the Russian Academy of Sciences. The article provides a lot of other critical info about Petrik such as a claim that he spent several years in prison for some sort of swingling; compares him to Trofim Lysenko, etc. On the other hand, this article in a local St. Petersburg newspaper presents him as the next Einstein. I don't quite know what to make of all this, but, in view of the dearth of solid and reliable information and in view of very significant WP:BLP problems here, I think this entry should be deleted. Kinoq (talk) 00:58, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, the article was created by User:T.petrik, suggesting possible WP:AUTO/WP:COI problems. Kinoq (talk) 13:42, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —Kinoq (talk) 13:25, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions.  —Kinoq (talk) 13:28, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment -- a difficult article to evaluate, given the apparent lack of sources in English. On the other hand, if the claims about various awards are true, then he likely meets WP:PROF.  I think it's also worth noting that the nomination of this article for deletion was Kinoq's very first edit.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't agree with you: even if the claims about awards were true, none of them could substantiate the alleged notability of Petrik. He is unlikely to be a member of RAEN, but anyway RAEN is not a recognized scientific organization in Russia or anywhere else. It is doubtful that he is a doctor of engineering, but even if he were, it is of no importance: there are dozens of thousands of such doctors (кандидат технических наук) in Russia. He has not graduated from the Leningrad university in physics, but even if he had, there are several hundreds such alumni every year only in this university, not the biggest one in Russia. If he really made his inventions, why didn't he publish his result in scientific journals?Pasteurizer (talk) 10:44, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It's true that this AfD nom was the first edit from this account but it is not my first Wikipedia edit. I had a WP account which I had not used for about a year, and I lost a password to it. So I created this new one. Yes, the absence of English sources is a problem, which, in my view, is a (secondary) reason in favor of deletion of this article from en.wiki since it makes it much more difficult to verify any info provided here. Regarding awards and credentials, etc. A number of published sources (in Russian) explicitly claim that the various awards/homors/degrees listed by the subject do not check out. The "Lebed" article cited in my nom explicitly says that when the journalist tried to verify the fact that Petrik is a member of RAEN ("Russian Academy of Natural Sciences"), Petrik's name was not in fact listed there. Similarly, the author of this article (again in Russian) tried to verify the fact that Petrik holds the degree of doctor of technical sciences with the official Russian governmental agency that registeres all such degrees and says that Petrik's name is not listed there. If the Russian journalists who tried to verify Petrik's awards and credentials explicitly state that they were unable to do so, I think we have to conclude that there is a major WP:V problem here. Kinoq (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak Keep the sources tend to point towards coverage that would indicate notability although the current sources are not of sufficient quality to indicate such notability. My gut feeling is that with some work this article could make it...   RP459 (talk) 15:42, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the issue of notability is somewhat secondary here to WP:BLP and WP:V considerations. A number of Russian news-sources (citing bona fide Russian academics) explicitly characterize Petrik as a fraud and a scientific imposter. Some others praise him as a self-made genius. There are, as far as I can tell, no sources covering him or his work in traditional academic sources, such as scholarly journals. Clearly, this creates a major WP:BLP problem. In case of a highly notable subject the notability considerations would outweigh BLP and WP:V concerns. But in this case the opposite is true. The subject is not particularly notable, the available information about him is very contradictory and highly flammable, and the amount of information that could be characterized as genuinely reliable and verifiable is rather small. In such a situation, also in view of WP:AUTO concerns, I think it is better not to have an article about the subject, at least for the time being. Kinoq (talk) 16:01, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * If there are reliable sources referring to him as a fraudster, then perhaps he is notable as a fraudster (and those claims would then be included in the article). Obviously going down this path requires caution.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 16:08, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Basically, that is a part of my point. A number of sources characterize him as a fraudster and a con artist while other say he is a genius. We here are not in a very good position to judge either way. In my view there is not enough reliable source coverage to justify notability as either a genuine academic or as a faudster. In such cases WP:BLP considerations should prevail and they imply that it is better to be on the safe side and to wait until, so to speak, the smoke clears and better and more reliable coverage is available, before having an article about him here. This is particularly true since there is so much highly negative and information about a living person that would have to be included if the article is kept. Also, WP:ACADEMIC does say that the standards of inclusion for things related to pseudo-science are supposed to be pretty strict. Kinoq (talk) 16:20, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure these sources are reliable. One mentions him in passing, and the other looks to probably be a blog. In addition, in what seems to be a BLP, we have to take a lot of care that negative information is well-sourced. --  At am a  頭 23:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete - There are no sources available to either satisfy WP:N or WP:BLP (the latter is especially concerning). --  At am a  頭 18:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete in absence of reliable sources to indicate notability for WP:Prof or anything else. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC).


 * Comment There are no reliable sources at this point, & the material in the article is either false or nonverifiable--and to a considerable extent is a copyvio of reference 3. But I agree with User:Nomoskedasticity that if there were material showing a verifiable NPOV of him, he might be notable.    DGG ( talk ) 05:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete in the absence of verifiable sources for his accomplishments. Given the existence of sources such as this I think we need to be very careful what we assert as factual about this person. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:32, 10 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete Move to User:T.petrik/Victor I. Petrik. Could become salvageable.--98.248.113.11 (talk) 21:02, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - Since I'm not an administrator, I can't check an editor's deleted contributions, but it appears that the author has only edited for one day (to create this article) and hasn't been back to Wikipedia since (over a year and a half). I don't think userfying the article for the author will be useful. If T.petrik does return to Wikipedia and wants a copy of the article added their user space, they can request it at any time. If this article does get deleted, you might want to leave a message on their talk page suggesting that they make such a request, just in case. --  At am a  頭 22:41, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Such use isn't permitted by CC-BY-SA, because of the BY. If the article isn't salvageable, then it should be deleted.  Took a closer look; changing my vote.--98.248.113.11 (talk) 02:18, 12 November 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.