Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Ruggero Santilli (2nd nomination)

No consensus?
The following comment was directed to  A  Train, the admin who closed the discussion and archived it. A copy is on his Talk page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:A_Train#Ruggero_Santilli_2nd_AfD_Discussion_.22No_consensus.22_closure and I'll post on my talk page after I'm done here.

Ruggero Santilli 2nd AfD Discussion "No consensus" closure
I count eight "Delete" votes (counting my tacit one for having opened the 2nd AfD discussion) and seven "Keep" votes.

I'm assuming good faith in asking if your closure of the discussion is the eighth "Keep" vote required to make this a "no consensus" discussion.

I'd also like, for my own information, to know your bases for the statement "There were some very strong arguments on both sides, as well as some low-effort !votes that I effectively discounted."


 * Whose votes did you discount, and why, please?

I have been following the discussion every day, but didn't have a chance to read, much less respond to Maester Anderson's arguments (in which he accused some of us of not acting in good faith by deleting articles with dead links pointing to them, and restated Karl Popper's praise of the subject in a way which deserved an answer. I'd have appreciated some time to answer his charges, and his contention that a single encomium by one person is proof of notability.

If you check the article's talk page, you'll see one paid editor is already curating the article. While assuming Mr. Buckley's good faith, would it be possible to check IP on Maester Anderson to see if that IP comes from the Tampa-St. Petersburg area? It's a little effort, but Maester Anderson making what could be boilerplate from the subject's own statements in support of his contributions to physics and mathematics deserves a little scrutiny.

I am, of course, assuming your good faith. That's why I'm bothering to send this note at all. We've already had one admin close this discussion as "Keep" when there were more "Delete" votes. It's possible to question the process leading to closure of a discussion without questioning your good faith, but I do have questions about Maester Anderson appearing out of nowhere, supposedly a new editor, with the comments he's made. Maester Anderson questioned my good faith and that of other editors, and this discussion was closed and archived before we could respond to the accusation.

Reposting this on my talk page and creating a talk page on the 2nd AfD discussion for the article. loupgarous (talk) 17:55, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * loupgarous please see WP:CLOSECHALLENGE - you should go to the Talk page of the admin who closed this and ask your questions there. You might be able to persuade that admin to unclose and allow more discussion or even change their close, but it is their discretion, so you need to persuade them.  If they will not unclose or change their close, you can ask the other admins to review the close at WP:AN.  Again this is all explained in WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.   (I hope you caught that I wrote persuade - any hint of assuming bad faith and you are unlikely to persuade; you need to make your arguments based very solidly and simply on WP:CLOSE.  (fwiw the close was thoughtful and I don't think it is over-turnable, but you are definitely free to try)  Jytdog (talk) 18:19, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think no consensus was the only reasonable outcome. I will save my musings about what this says about the general intellectual quality of deletion discussions.   Sławomir Biały  (talk) 19:54, 6 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks, both of you, for your observations. I have gone to that Admin's talk page, and I've made it clear I was assuming his good faith and simply seeking insight into the process in which this discussion was closed. And I think "no consensus" was a reasonable outcome, but not the only one supported by the evidence.  While I'm aware we don't do straw polls here, the reasoning of some of the "Keep" arguments didn't satisfy me.
 * Recapitulating, the subject (a) isn't notable for his contributions to math and physics as evidenced by publication in authoritative scientific journals. One endorsement by anyone (even Karl Popper) without independent corroboration from other workers in the field fails WP:PROF (b) subject's recourse to self-publication, trade journals and pay-to-publish journals and hiring a paid editor to curate this article are evidence of WP:PROMOTION, and (c) there's not even evidence that he's notable in the fringe community. If he's got a significant number of people not on his payroll who believe he's a notable fringe scientist, where's the evidence?  We're not here as a forum for fringe theories in general without that crucial third-party evidence of a significant fringe following.
 * So, (a) not notable as a scientist, (b) published himself, sent press releases to trade journals and paid for his papers to be published, pays an editor here to curate his article and (c) no evidence of significant fringe notability.
 * Like Sławomir Biały, I'm reserving my comments on the process of deletion discussions until I understand it better.
 * I would have liked the chance, before the discussion closed, to have educated Maester Anderson on WP:AGF, because he transgressed our norms of civility with the accusations he made. The only material I'm aware was deleted from the article was a dead link, but Maester Anderson created the impression we'd done worse and done it from bad faith.  If anyone had acted in bad faith, there'd have been more redactions from the article which might have been justified under WP:BLP.  Nobody here did that. loupgarous (talk) 23:01, 6 September 2016 (UTC)