Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was delete. JohnCD (talk) 19:35, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique


Page violates WP:UPNO, WP:UP, WP:FAKEARTICLE, WP:ATTACK, WP:SOAP Tristan noir (talk) 04:29, 17 November 2012 (UTC) Delete: User Elvenscout’s page belongs on his personal blog, perhaps, or in a literary periodical as a review of the author he critiques. It has no rightful place on Wikipedia due to its violations of the above policies. His "critique" is long on opinion but short on citation. A few easily verifiable distortions of fact employed by Elvenscout on this polemical page follow:


 * 1)He states that the author of the book he critiques is self-published and implies that Lulu, a POD printer, is the “vanity publisher” whereas the Library of Congress online catalogue clearly lists the publisher as Modern English Tanka Press (an independent literary press), not Lulu.


 * 2) He asserts that “the page on Lulu.com where the book could be purchased...as of 2012-10-3” no longer exists and speculates that “the self-publisher who posted the book for sale on Lulu took it down in response to a deletion discussion on Wikipedia.” But the item, despite Elvenscout’s speculation, is still available via a simple title search under The Tanka Prose Anthology at the Lulu.com site (the URL cannot be provided here as the site is blocked by Wiki), where Elvenscout claims he could not find it, and is (and was always) available here via its publisher, MET Press.


 * Note that the publisher of record (per the Lulu and MET Press sites), in accord with the LOC catalogue, is Modern English Tanka Press and not Lulu as Elvenscout represents. You may also wish to read the review on the Lulu page cited above by an Owen Hughes, perhaps a pseudonym, whose specific language and criticisms mirror remarkably those offered by Elvenscout on the page here nominated for deletion. The date of said review is Oct 15, 2012, less than two weeks after the date Elvenscout claims he could no longer find the book on Lulu.


 * 3) Elvenscout directs the reader to the Introduction to the anthology he is deriding and invites the reader to review “Woodward’s assertion...that the Japanese are incapable of studying and classifying their own literature.” The author asserts nothing of the kind, as any reader of the introduction will discover on his own. If the author has said anything “extremely offensive” about Japanese scholarship in this introduction, Elvenscout should point it out specifically. I can locate nothing to justify his tendentious claim.


 * 4) Elvenscout writes, “I could go on further in discrediting Woodward's writings, and probably those of everyone else involved in the so-called ‘tanka prose’ movement, for their ignorance of Japanese literature.” Elvenscout here proceeds from his previous misleading statements and attacks upon one author to an attack upon “the so-called ‘tanka prose’ movement,” to an accusation of “guilt by association,” as it were, against a group of writers who practice a literary form or genre that E. is here pontificating against.


 * 5) He closes his curious critique by noting that he addressed the same “in an email…to Woodward” and that he has “yet to receive a reply.” Both claims are probably unverifiable. But if the former is true (that Elvenscout included this in an email), then perhaps the recipient’s silence or the recipient’s answer disappointed Elvenscout sufficiently to motivate him to self-publish his critique here. I know this is mere speculation on my part but it is speculation consistent with the type that Elvenscout practices in this critique (see point 2 above). Whatever the circumstances may be, any private exchanges between Mr. Elvenscout and Mr. Woodward are of no relevance or interest to the Wikipedia community.-- Tristan noir (talk) 07:13, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

that means User:Elvenscout742/Jeffrey Woodward critique violates WP:COPYVIO and the page should be blanked while the MfD proceeds. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 12:21, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - The page was created 25 September 2012‎ and listed for deletion 17 November 2012‎ (about two months after creation). The reason the page was created was to list "reasons why this author is not a reliable source of information for inclusion in Wikipedia" regarding Japanese literature. User pages allows user space to be used to prepare requests such as at Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Two months is more than enough time to prepare a WP:RSN request. It is time to make the WP:RSN request, if needed, to allow the issue to be resolved. Otherwise, the user page becomes nothing more than a place to hold a grudge, import a personal conflict, carry on ideological a battle, or nurture hatred which are disallowed per WP:NOTBATTLE. As for the statement on the page, ""For the record, I am not being a douche bag and attacking someone on my private Wikipedia page behind his back. These critiques were originally written in the second person and appeared in an e-mail addressed to Woodward.""


 * Comment I don't mind it getting deleted right now, honestly. As long as no one actually cites Woodward (again) as a source on Japanese literature, this page does not actually need to serve its original purpose. But the above COPYVIO point seems to be based on a misunderstanding. The arguments were made by me (the creator of the page) in an e-mail to Woodward, so I technically own the copyright on the e-mail and am free to release it for use on Wikipedia page (of course not in an article, however -- although I am a more reliable source on Japanese literature than Woodward or Tristan noir). elvenscout742 (talk) 13:20, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * For the record, my critiques were never meant to be personal attacks. They are meant to protect the academic integrity of Wikipedia. Therefore, the accusation of applying "guilt by association" is ridiculous -- I don't care who is "guilty" and who is "innocent", I just want to protect Wikipedia from spam and ridiculous/offensive claims. The claim that the Japanese are incapable of properly classifying and studying their own literature and "Jeffrey Woodward", who studied language arts and political science, and admits to not speaking Japanese, knows more than they do, is deeply offensive. The claim that I sent the email is easily verifiable -- I can upload a screenshot of the email with the date/time/To: address shown, and while the claim that he hasn't replied is unverifiable, why should that matter if the page is in my personal userspace? elvenscout742 (talk) 13:28, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Snow Delete Per Uzma Gamal's spot-on analysis and per Elvenscout742's comment above that he does not object to deletion. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:53, 17 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment While I do not intend to argue in this page's defense, I need to specify that it's not because of Tristan noir's above arguments, but rather because the latter's tanka prose article no longer exists. I also need to address the arguments made above, which I had previously skipped in my haste to point out that I will not defend this page.
 * 1) The company that prints the book (if/when anyone actually orders it) is Lulu. The book did not go through an editor independent of Woodward or any entity that had a vested interest in not publishing a low-quality work. Whether Lulu is technically the publisher is therefore irrelevant, since for all intents and purposes Woodward is a self-publisher.
 * 2) The statement on the page that [a]s of 2012-10-3, the page appeared to no longer exist is clearly written in the past tense. I wrote it into the page on that date for the record, since it seemed that someone on Wikipedia noticing the page I created citing Woodward's blurb, and this resulted of the page being temporarily closed. I am perfectly aware that the page is online now. There was absolutely no "speculation" on my part, merely a statement of the facts as they were at the time I was writing. This personal attack is of course completely irrelevant to any deletion discussion. Tristan noir's above speculation as to my real-world identity (as well as speculation that, if I am the same person, "Owen Hughes" is a pseudonym) is also worrisome.
 * 3) Please examine the specific page citation I provide. Woodward says Japanese criticism, ancient and modern, offers no comprehensive term that might encompass the many forms and styles that the wedding of tanka and prose admits. Instead, the terminology employed in the scholarly literature is form-specific, addressing not the genus but the individual species. He then goes on to list a number of unrelated Japanese terms that mostly refer to separate genres of classical literature, but at least two of them (kotobagaki and shū) clearly don't mean what he thinks they do. That someone who is not only not a specialist in Japanese literature, but is clearly ignorant of Japanese language and literature in general, thinks he is entitled to overrule all of Japanese literary theory and criticism over the last 1,000 years is of course offensive.
 * 4) My "attacks" were never in any way "misleading", and this is an irrelevant personal attack. Tristan noir's consistently trying to post links to Woodward publications on several Wikipedia articles is much more misleading, since for reasons I have now painstakingly covered multiple times Woodward is not a reputable source for Wikipedia, and his writings contain numerous errors and offensive statements. (See, for instance, his regularly misnaming waka as tanka and misspelling the names of prominent waka poets Ariwara no Narihira and Izumi Shikibu, as well as his ridiculous claim that the Hyakunin Isshu predates the Kokinshū.)
 * 5) Tristan noir's ad hominem argument against me here is unnecessary and troublesome. Statements included in pages in my userspace do not need to be independently verifiable (almost all Wikipedia user pages contain unverifiable personal statements) -- the fact is that those rules do not apply to user pages the same way they apply to articles.
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, it might to be pointed out that since this MfD opened, Lulu has removed ratings and user reviews from the page on Mr. Woodward's book. I wonder if Tristan noir's constantly trying to post promotional links to Woodward publications on Wikipedia has anything to do with him/her posting this sub-page for deletion, and the Lulu page for the book in question being altered in unison. I wonder... elvenscout742 (talk) 13:07, 22 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - First, this is clearly a pointy nomination of content which seems not to have been discussed on either elvenscout742's talk page or the talk page of the content in question (which doesn't even exist). Second, the suggestion that this is a "fake article" is total rubbish. At no stage anywhere in the content is there a suggestion that it is an article. It is a user sub-page and is clearly defined that way. There are no "article style" redirects which might lead someone to think it is an article. If someone wants to add one of the userspace or useressay tags, they should feel free to do so.
 * I have held my tongue for quite some time, watching Tristan noir go about abusing Wikipedia as if it were his own private yellow pages. I participated in the original AFD which prompted his campaign against elvenscout742 and was (bizarrely) accused by Tristan of being a sock-puppet because I happened to express a similar view to elvenscout742. Once Tristan had been shouted down for that particular personal attack he decided to change tack and (bizarrely) accuse me of having some form of "conflict of interest" because I broadly discussed his deplorable behaviour with elvenscout742 on my talk page. Having experienced his modus operandi first hand, this pointy MFD surprises me not at all.
 * Tristan's is the very definition of a single purpose account - it was created to promo-spam the work and views of a particular niche poet/author across a range of WP articles. Though the subsequent arguments have focussed on whether or not the material in question is reliable (see above for a fine example) that is really all a moot point. The fact of the matter is that Tristan is simply not here to build Wikipedia. If he were, he might have actually... you know... built something. Instead, his contributions are limited to spamming the same "content" into a range of articles, creating (or substantially adding to) bizarre articles about clearly non-notable "ideas" that don't exist outside the minds of half-a-dozen people and aggressively (and often offensively) defending his right to spam. He clearly does not understand what Wikipedia is not.
 * I'm not going to get into any of the content stuff, nor am I going to lodge a "vote" - in my view this MFD should be nixed for the sole fact that it was raised to make a point. The nominator should be sent off to WP:ANI and finally dealt with. I'm horrified that a couple of very good editors (for whom I have a lot of respect) have had their time wasted by having to wade into this rubbish. Stalwart 111  23:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Addendum - User:Bagworm (gråb whåt you cån, below) makes a salient point - the owner has agreed the content can/should be deleted. I would venture to suggest such an agreement could have been achieved with a note suggesting as much on a relevant talk page. Seeking community consensus "against" an editor when such consensus is not at all required is decidedly pointy. Stalwart 111  01:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Comment: Contrary to User Stalwart111’s assertion above, there is nothing pointy in this MFD nomination. The page was originally nominated for Speedy Deletion on Nov. 15 under WP:CSD and WP:CSD, was first deleted by the Administrator on the same date but then reinstated upon the direct request of User Elvenscout742 on Nov. 16. The Administrator, in restoring the subject page, opined that the page “comes fairly close to being an attack page, and it certainly exists to promote a point of view” while affixing a “no index” tag to the restored page. User Elvenscout742, in appealing for the page’s restoration, clearly expressed his wish and intention to maintain the page. The Administrator, in restoring the page, commented: ''Declining speedy deletion. Take it to WP:MfD if you think there are valid reasons for deletion''. I therefore followed the Administrator’s direction. Stalwart111’s supposition that a simple note on the user’s talk page might have resolved the issue seems rather optimistic when measured against User Elvenscout742’s immediate intervention on Nov. 16 to restore the page here in question. The remainder of Stalwart111’s long commentary above does not address the MFD nomination but instead advances an irrelevant but virulent series of ad hominem attacks upon this editor. Tristan noir (talk) 03:36, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Then the discussion should have been attempted before your pointy speedy deletion nomination. The chronology of your assumption of bad faith is irrelevant. My view remains unchanged. Stalwart 111  04:26, 23 November 2012 (UTC)


 * TN, the reason I wanted to maintain the page at the time I posted my remark on the page's speedy deletion was that at the time no one had told me about WP:RSN and I was not familiar with it. It seemed to me that preserving useressay was the most effective way to keep you or anyone else from posting nonsensical Woodwardian claims to Wikipedia. Your speedy deletion request, however, was not rejected because I made a request to an admin, but because it was not valid to begin with. (It would also have set an unsettling precedent if you could request a speedy deletion of a non-article page in my userspace and see it deleted within a couple of hours while I am out and unaware that anything has happened.) I have since changed my stance because Uzma Gamal has directed me to the appropriate place to deal with issues such as this. If you or anyone else had brought that up with me on my talk page or the talk page of my useressay I probably would have reached the same conclusion. However, if this page gets deleted now (and it will) it will be primarily because the page's creator is not opposed to it; not because of your above arguments, which continue to be unfortunately ridden with personal attacks and misinterpretations of Wikipedia policy. Stalwart111's above direction to WP:ANI is another interesting proposal.
 * For the record, I would like to express my thanks to both Uzma Gamal and Stalwart111 for their directions on dealing with this particular problem that has been hindering my activity on Wikipedia for over two months now. :D
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 14:05, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom, per Uzma Gamal, per Guy Macon, and especially per owner stating he's happy to have it deleted. This is the sort of matter that needlessly wastes time and energy, providing a soapbox for certain editors to drag up the same mud again and again (and again). Enough already. --gråb whåt you cån (talk) 00:27, 23 November 2012 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.