Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alan MacMasters

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. WP:SNOW Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 04:36, 22 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alan MacMasters[edit]

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Having been pointed to this article, I am having no luck in verifying it. One would think that the invention of the electric toaster would be well-documented enough that searching for this fellow should turn up plenty of hits, but if I search for 20th century book sources, I get nothing, and the first web hit I get is from [1] which Google claims dates from 2000, but which Wayback suggests may have appeared in 2007 or later. Everything else seems to trace back to a 2012 Daily Mirror "fun facts" kind of article, which isn't something I would take as a reliable source. The authenticity of the photo is likewise dubious. I don't think this was written as a hoax here, but I think it's untrue. Mangoe (talk) 23:45, 18 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I was unable to find anything except "Alan MacMasters invented the toaster, and it later became the Eclipse". That alone doesn't make an article as it is not significant enough coverage. None of the article sources provide significant coverage either. This person is not notable and does not pass the WP:GNG. I was also unable to verify the story about how he invented the toaster. —Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 00:48, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Note: I did not attempt to verify that MacMasters invented the toaster because I did not find it necessary to make an argument for deletion. The article may very well be a hoax. —Danre98^{(talk^contribs)} 18:58, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The name was added to the toaster article on 6 February 2012 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=475380799&oldid=474776973&title=Toaster); the Mirror article was published on 1 September 2012. The summary says "revert vandalism" but the text that was there before https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toaster&diff=387113580&oldid=387111783 ("It is unknown who invented the first electric bread toaster") was not restored, instead new text was added mentioning Alan MacMasters, and no source was cited. Peter James (talk) 01:08, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I can't tell about the individual itself, so won't vote on this AfD, but the photo was almost certainly faked, as someone on reddit has admitted to doing so. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 09:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete for lack of reliable sources, this does sound like the kind of thing where a lone sentence in the toaster article might have been enough for Google to give it as an answer to "who invented the toaster" whenever a hasty journalist was looking for a good opening line for an article about toasters, from 2012 onwards. All sources used in the article appear to be that kind of throwaway mention that post-date that, and there are long, detailed additions which don't appear in the cited sources (the 2018 Winn book only includes the words "based on an idea by a Scotsman, Alan MacMasters" in passing while talking about Crompton). I can't find any reliable sources that confirm that Alan MacMasters existed or invented the toaster. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:03, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete We clearly do not have GNG quality sources to show notability. At least some of what is here was faked, and the fact that people faked those parts makes me hard pressed to believe anything else.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:02, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I have always been suspicious of that image. It was uploaded by the creator as part of the original article. There does not appear to be documentation to support GNG. I would be interested in comments from the author/uploader.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 14:44, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Clearly a hoax by the author. I have no idea whether they are the same person as the original February 2012 IP who added the name to the toaster article in the first place (which is older than the Daily Mirror story, which dates to September 2012) but the fact that they continued to add clearly ficitious references to this person to the article over five years later, such as this one to "Ogura toast" from 2018 show that they clearly knew it was a hoax. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:24, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy delete and block creator - almost certainly a blatant hoax. You can tell from the photoshopped image of the person. --MuZemike 18:50, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Reply Out of curiosity, how can you tell that the image is photoshopped? Patachonica (talk) 19:55, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One way you can tell it is just looks...off. The "tear" is a little too perfect. Tears aren't the same width from one side to another. But you can also look at the metadata and see that it was run through Adobe Photoshop CS5 on a Mac, can tell they uploaded it from an image into a photoshop project, tweaked it (literally "saved, converted, derived, saved, saved, converted, derived, saved, saved, saved"), and then imported it back into a photo. Looks like they took a photo, made it look "aged" with a filter, added a "torn image" stock photo layer on top to make it look like an old torn photo. - Aoidh (talk) 20:09, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User has created a number of articles and has uploaded numerous images to commons. A fuller investigation may be appropriate.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 21:00, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I looked at them earlier today, and nearly all of them tend to be good faith pages and images. See Consulate General of the United Kingdom, Osaka, Julia Longbottom, File:UK Global Health Insurance Card.png, UK Global Health Insurance Card, and others. However, that still doesn't cancel out the blatant hoax as created per the blatant deception to the community and the rest of the Internet. --MuZemike 02:29, 20 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete this smelly hoax. Unbelievable this lasted on wikipedia for so many years.--Darwinek (talk) 19:21, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, it's a fake.לילך5 (talk) 19:36, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science and Scotland. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:40, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, the evidence is compelling. Article should be moved to Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/Alan MacMasters, per precedent with hoaxes like this. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 10:48, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.