Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2006 July 20

Full reviews may be found in this page history. For a precis, see Wikipedia:Deletion review/Recently concluded (2006 July)

20 July 2006

Question mark glitches in Pokémon

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Question mark glitches in Pokémon

These articles probably should be deleted, but... How is voting delete and merge "illegal"? "I am discounting the delete and merge votes, which are illegal." --Kunzite 02:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse - strange closure message from our mad russian friend but clearly the general opinion was that it was cruft. Interested editors can expand the articles that this was thought to be merged to - Peripitus (Talk) 03:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse myself. I don't think the closure is being challenged per se (correct me if I'm wrong). I think Kunzite is using the wrong forum to learn why merge and delete votes violate GFDL. As such, I suggest this DRV be speedily adjourned - CrazyRussian talk/email 03:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• No speedy. I have more to add, but I am pressed for time at this moment. --Kunzite 18:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• A delete and merge in not "illegal" it's just not simple. GFDL does not protect facts, so if someone goes and verifies things independantly, they are free to add material into an article that existed in a deleted article. An argument could be made that, for more complicated material, a list of the contributors copy/pasted onto the talk of the target would satisfy GFDL. - brenneman ^{L} 01:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Template:Title

This was deleted a while ago as a flawed hackish way of changing the title. I created a redirect there yesterday to Template:Wrongtitle (I also created one from Template:Badtitle), as it can be hard to remember the right name for the template - and Template:Title is a reasonable name. Now it is protected blank, despite the lack of any comments on the appropriateness of a redirect. It seems obviously useful to me. --SPUI (T - C) 22:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Template:Title (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

• Endorse -- Has been speedied twice as a G4 recreation of the same redirect that SPUI created. Has been repeatedly deleted since 2004, having various contents. And the one thing that "title" most certainly is not would be "wrongtitle" -- they imply exactly opposite things. --William Allen Simpson 00:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  • BTW, Wikipedia:bad title (edit | [[Talk:Wikipedia:bad title|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is used by the Mediawiki software, so I'm not sure that it's a good idea to have an undocumented Template:Badtitle (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) that isn't a redirect to it.... Too confusing. See also Bad title (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). --William Allen Simpson 00:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Uh, the TFD was on a hackish CSS way of putting the "real" title in the title spot. This is a redirect. Not a re-creation.--SPUI (T - C) 00:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
• Relist List on RFD. The issue of whether it's a good redirect to {{wrongtitle}} was never addressed; it's not a G4, because the content is different (the name of a page is irrelevant to G4, unless a page was deleted solely for having the name in question). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:37, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  • (Small addendum: I came here because SPUI brought this discussion to the attention of the IRC channel.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
    • You can't "relist" something that was never listed in the first place. Bringing this to RFD for procedural reasons is just silly; if someone really thinks it is a harmful redirect, then they may nominate it, but encouraging such foolishness is not a good thing at all.--SB | T 18:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
      • Procedures exist for a reason. If there's some unusually good reason to circumvent them, or the outcome is obvious from the beginning, then you can ignore them, but in this case neither of those is applicable. Therefore, this should be discussed at the appropriate forum, where people are probably going to be more familiar with discussing the deletion of redirects. There's a reason we have deletion discussions segregated into different places, and there's a reason that the community as a whole decided that deletion without discussion should not apply solely because the page in question happens to share a name with a page that was once deleted. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:36, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Category:Limited-access roads to Category:Freeways or Category:Freeways and motorways

discussion here

The closer seems to have simply counted votes rather than looking at the arguments. Very few people wanted it kept as-is, while most supported Category:Freeways and motorways. --SPUI (T - C) 19:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I did read the discussion. After doing so, I determined there was no consensus. In fact, only by counting votes can one determine that there was a consensus. --Kbdank71 19:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Please read m:voting is evil. --SPUI (T - C) 19:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

So how many times will we re-re-relist this discussion then? Syrthiss 19:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

There was consensus to do away with Category:Limited-access roads and consensus to rename to Category:Freeways and motorways. Trying to get that recognized is not "forum shopping". --SPUI (T - C) 19:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll pass. I've given my reasoning. If you really think I need to read about voting and why it's evil, you haven't understood what I wrote. --Kbdank71 19:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I understand fully what you wrote - you counted votes. Therefore you did not close the discussion properly. --SPUI (T - C) 19:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

He reasonably clearly stated that he read the views, and established that there was no consensus. You claim that "most supported", which is voting, which as you say...is evil. Syrthiss 19:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

He said that "only by counting votes can one determine that there was a consensus". This is not the way to determine consensus. --SPUI (T - C) 19:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Syrthiss. That is exactly what I meant. I didn't think it was that difficult to understand. SPUI, yes, I said that. I was referring to you, and that if you determined there was a consensus in this case, YOU counted votes. As I said, I read the discussion. This is all I have to say on this issue. --Kbdank71 19:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I have never counted the votes; I have looked at the comments and seen that there is a clear consensus. --SPUI (T - C) 20:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure -- same argument by same disputant as Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2006 July 10. This has already been reviewed, and relisted, with the same outcome. Wiki-lawyering ad infinitum. The category is for "Autobahn, Autoroute, Expressway, Freeway, Highway, Motorway, Parkway, Superhighway, Thruway, or Turnpike. Its main article is currently Limited-access road. --William Allen Simpson 20:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Note to others: William has been edit warring to keep original research and uncited material in limited-access road, which is an ambiguous term. --SPUI (T - C) 20:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Note to others: SPUI has been removing cited material and edit warring at limited-access road. All I've been doing is reverting to my carefully annotated version. That is on the way to mediation. --William Allen Simpson 21:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
    • Your citations do not support the statements they cite. --SPUI (T - C) 21:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure - If the above defence needed an explicit statement, I just re-read the discussion and would have closed it myself as no consensus. Not only do some of the particpants say "freeways or freeways and motorways" without argument (which is fine, I assume they are saying they agree with SPUI's nom), but there are objections and other options that do not allow for a clear consensus. Syrthiss 20:46, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I gave counterarguments for each of the objections. --SPUI (T - C) 20:51, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Note to others: SPUI has removed the category main article (limited-access road) and consensus definitions for the category developed at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 March 30 where this category was defined. He has replaced it with the bizarre "This category is for highways with full control of access and no cross traffic. It is not for limited access roads, as that is an ambiguous term.". I've asked for Arbitration enforcement for his edit warring. --William Allen Simpson 21:26, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Followup: apparently, Highways with full control of access and no cross traffic (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is just a redirect to Freeway (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), where by the history, SPUI has been move and edit warring all month! --William Allen Simpson 21:32, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Endorese closure, no consensus developed and it was closed accordingly. JohnnyBGood t c VIVA! 22:25, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• WP:POINT creation. --William Allen Simpson 18:52, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Pirate Party of the United States

AFD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pirate Party of the United States

Was initially deleted because the party didn't exist back then. It *does* exist now -- http://www.pirate-party.us/ -- and since it's been getting a fair amount of international attention, I'd wager it's notable enough for an article...? —Nightstallion (?) 13:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse and keep deleted. The website existed then. Anybody with a couple bucks can create a website. Doesn't constitute notability. Running candidates and getting press coverage would constitute notability. The Pirate Party of Sweden has attracted significant attention, but this article is not about the Swedish party. Can you provide any citations of significant attention to the American offshoot? Fan-1967 13:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

  I'm not too strong in my belief that this article should be restored, I was mainly wondering whether it was notable enough now; significant attraction (in the form of press coverage) I've found would be: Wired, out-law, The Inquirer, DVD-Recordable.org, p2pnet.net, slashdot. —Nightstallion (?) 14:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• For the most part, not exactly "non-trivial" reports (they amount to "the Pirate Party is trying to form an American spinoff"), and most of those really don't qualify as reliable sources (p2pnet is not exactly the New York Times). The out-law article is about the French spinoff, not US. Fan-1967 14:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, Wired--Slashdot--Inquirer should suffice, no? And see the last line in the outlaw article, it mentions the US one. ;) —Nightstallion (?) 19:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

As for the last line in the outlaw article, I cannot see how anyone could describe that as "non-trivial." Can you find any source anywhere that says this party is actually doing anything? Gathering signatures, fielding candidates, gaining followers, organizing? Any activity other than creating a website? Anything besides trying to start up? (And no, I don't think much of either Inquirer or slashdot as sources.) Fan-1967 19:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Given that those were the same sources used to prop up the claim of notability the FIRST time this article was put up for deletion, I'm having a hard time understanding the claim that it's gotten MORE "international attention" -- if so, it ought to be easy to do more than recycle the same ones over and over each time some re-creates this article. --Calton | Talk 06:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

As I've stated, I was just wondering and didn't have any strong feelings about this either way. I didn't read the whole AFD discussion, but to me it appeared that it was considered non-notable because it didn't get any google hits and had not been mentioned anywhere; if the references I've found have already been discussed in the AFD, feel free to close this. —Nightstallion (?) 08:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• Relist - This has made the news, and it would be good to get a wider consensus on if it's presently notable as a minor party in the United States. --Improv 15:44, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• It's pretty much the same "news" as a month ago when this first came up, and it's still not a party, it's a NFST with a logo and a website. --Calton | Talk 06:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• Relist - Wikipedia is a resource for those seeking information. Placement in wikipedia isn't an affirmation of importance, and we shouldn't let our own ego go to our head - information. Factual, unbiased. But information.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Sahrin (talk • contribs)
• Keep deleted for now, expand Pirate party article to mention to extent appropriate. Little evidence that it is notable in its own right, potentially only as an offshoot of the Swedish one, so mention it there. Martinp 22:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted. I've seen nothing but handwaving to back up the claim that this is any more noteworthy today than it was a month ago. --Calton | Talk 06:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deleted, come back when they are on the cover of Time. And I mean Time - it's very tedious when things are brought back to DRV every time a new mention appears on someone's blog. Just zis Guy you know? 13:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
• Keep deletedwe're drowning in extra process here. Nothing reversible took place, and per JzG. - CrazyRussian talk/email 13:52, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Ampfea

This page was marked for speedy deletion, basically because the first version of the article was a bit vague, and because the community's web site is currently unavailable due to bandwidth and cost considerations.

After I polished the article (I didn't do the initial version) up a bit, it was deleted nevertheless. I have grave doubts whether anyone actually bothered to read the discussion on the talk page, and I would like to have this page undeleted, so we can actually have a chance to work on it. Creation and deletion happened in a 24-hour period, which is rather short. --SeverityOne 06:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion. SeverityOne, it doesn't look "vague"; it looks like vanispamcruftisment for a site which as you note can't even afford to be in business. Sorry. Herostratus 08:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse deletion per above. WP:WEB would apply were this re-created and brought to AfD; I submit that it would not stand a chance. Just zis Guy you know? 08:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Endorse my own deletion strongly As the deleting admin, allow me to make a point with the article's first sentence: "As a general concept, AMPFEA is a place. It is somewhere, anywhere, you can meet someone with a mutual interest, anyone, who is alive." I don't think I have ever seen a clearer case of an article lacking a clear context than that. The article was quite long, but no text I can imagine could redeem a supposed "encyclopedic" article that started with the above as its opening premise. Xoloz 17:16, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough about the first paragraph; perhaps I should have deleted it as I originally intended to, but I didn't want to delete too much work of the original submitter. But is there at least a way I can retrieve the edits I made yesterday, so I can bring the article up to standards?

And Herostratus, it's a free community site, so what 'business' are you talking about? It's just as commercial as Wikipedia is, meaning that sometimes there is a request for donations, but usually the bill is paid by one or two people. Who are having a spot of trouble doing that at the moment. --SeverityOne 18:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion: The problem is that Wikipedia won't help spread the word for any cause, whether virtuous or vicious, because that amounts to advertising. The thing has to pass the "notability" bar: it has to be referred to by sources outside of its own context (e.g. a web site would need to be referred to by print or television, a television program would need print or web or radio, a radio show would need print or TV or web, etc.) and be mentioned enough that an explanation is required for the average, educated reader. This fails that bar at present. Geogre 01:28, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

TMNT Engine

Relist on AfD. This was deleted out of process. I agree with the deletion. I was about to put it up myself, but I don't see how this meets speedy criteria. It seems to have been deleted for lack of content, but it was a stub that had only been created a few minutes earlier and while it probably should be deleted on various other grounds (WP:SOFTWARE, for instance), that requires discussion. Ace of Sevens 03:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment The first version I saw was a one-liner that included the words "in development". IMO that may well have pushed it over into the speedy category. Recreated version doesn't have that term, and it appears there is a version available for download now. (It's still a homemade game nobody's ever heard of, but an AFD wouldn't hurt.) Fan-1967 04:18, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• It has been recreated and listed on AFD, I think this request is moot. Stifle (talk) 08:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy close per Stifle. And I'm off to vote Delete, since it is vanispamcruftisement created by the game's author. Just zis Guy you know? 08:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe

The article was in a state of edit war for the whole course of this contentious, 93 KB AfD. It was edited over 140 times during the discussion, with huge blocks of text being inserted, deleted, and reverted on less than a moment's notice. The version of the article which was finally deleted bears nearly no resemblance to the one which was originally nominated for deletion. Depending on when users viewed it, they could have seen an article anywhere from 9 KB to 27 KB in size, with anywhere from 7 to 12 sections, 5 to 12 references, and 0 to 42 footnotes.

The particular transitory version viewed makes a crucial difference to many of the justifications. A user calling the subject non-notable with 5 references might have approved it with 12; a user calling the article unverifiable with 0 footnotes might have accepted 42; a user calling the 27 KB version gibberish might have found the 9 KB version to be more intelligible. In such a situation, consensus would have to be very solid to justify deletion, and that's not what I see in the debate. Tim Smith 04:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Update: It has now come to light that in addition to the irregularities listed above and to the utter chaos in which the deletion debate was conducted, the AfD participants were summoned from a narrow, unrepresentative segment of the Wikipedia community. As background, the CTMU is a not a theory of physics, but of metaphysics (and was listed in Category:Metaphysics from the article's creation in September 2005), and is not empirical science, but philosophy (and that's how Langan has always portrayed it). Yet a link to the AfD was posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics#Yet_another_AfD, calling upon members of that project to view it, and just hours before the AfD, the nominator linked the article at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pseudoscience and placed it on List of pseudoscientific theories. As a result, the AfD was swarmed with members of a narrow segment of the Wikipedia community whose areas of interest are not directly relevant to the CTMU. Consequently, the proportion of views expressed at the AfD is skewed, and the participants are not a representative cross-section of the community as a whole. Tim Smith 14:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Tim, you wrote "the AfD was swarmed with members of a narrow segment of the Wikipedia community whose areas of interest are not directly relevant to the CTMU". I beg to differ. It seems to me that members of that WikiProject know more about "their interests" than you do, but that is not the point. The ultimate question in this discussion, as with all such discussions is this: of the various options available to the community in this dispute, which one best serves the interests of the reader? ---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The problem is that the linkings misled members of WikiProject Physics and WikiProject Pseudoscience into thinking that the CTMU purports to belong to, or can be accurately classified under, those subjects, with the result that they condemned it in the AfD as "pseudophysics" and "pseudoscience", and voted it down on subject-specific notability grounds, asking for references in Physical Review, for instance (when the CTMU is not physics, but metaphysics, and not science, but philosophy).

In addition to this confusion, the deletion arguments erroneously equated "notability" with "academic recognition." A theory really has two routes to notability: academic recognition, and popular exposure. Per WP:N, every topic which is either famous or important is notable, and though academic recognition might measure importance, popular exposure measures fame. Since the CTMU's popular exposure has been considerable, with appearances in mainstream media sources like Popular Science, 20/20, The Times, Newsday, and Esquire, it qualifies as notable by that route.

The option which best serves the reader in this dispute is for Wikipedia to have a neutral, informative article about the CTMU. The deleted article, though apparently less readable than desired, was highly accurate with respect to the theory, well-referenced, and carefully qualified for neutrality. It needed to be fixed, not scrapped. Tim Smith 05:45, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I am rather certain that the members of such projects, especially WikiProject Pseudoscience, understand the situation with such distinctions: we have a history of dealing with them, on pages such as Astrology and Reiki. Regardless of what supporters call it, if a set of ideas makes scientific claims, which CTMU does with things like conspansion, then it can be called pseudophysics and pseudoscience. One cannot relabel something in order to escape criticism. If you are making claims like conspansion and a new interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, then asking Phys Rev citatation is certainly appropriate.

I am also rather certain that the members understood the difference between academic notability and notability. Our argument concerning appearances in mainstream media sources was that the articles only mentioned it because of Langan's situation, and cannot be seen as an assertion of notability by the sources. --Philosophus ^T 07:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Update: This very deletion review has now been posted to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics#Yet_another_AfD by the original AfD nominator. Tim Smith 14:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I linked to the AfD on various project pages of interest, which is quite in line with the way things are done here; and no-one was asked to "vote" in any particular way. At least I didn't go soliciting votes on other peoples' talk pages, which is somewhat frowned upon, but nonetheless done by Tim Smith. I don't see what the relevance of any of this is: an AfD is not a vote, but a discussion, so it doesn't matter how many people there were saying things (be it delete or keep), it depends on the merits of the argument. And the merits of the argument in the AfD lay on the side of those opting for deleting the article as barely intelligible ramblings about a non-notable topic. Byrgenwulf 15:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Since the CTMU is philosophy, the project of interest would have been WikiProject Philosophy; neither the article nor the AfD was ever linked there. Instead, they were linked at WikiProject Physics—when the theory is not physics, but metaphysics, and had long belonged to Category:Metaphysics—and WikiProject Pseudoscience—when the CTMU is not empirical science, but philosophy, and has always been portrayed that way by its author. Additionally, Byrgenwulf added the article to List of pseudoscientific theories, where it does not belong, and only hours later nominated it for deletion. It is evident that many AfD participants were misled by these linkings, as deletion arguments frequently condemned the theory as "pseudophysics" or "pseudoscience". It is reasonable to expect that users with interests in the topics of which the subject actually consists—philosophy and metaphysics—might offer informed judgements about subject-specific notability, but it is not those Wikipedians that Byrgenwulf notified. Instead, a disproportionately large number of users with interests in physics and pseudoscience were summoned to the AfD and misled into thinking that the theory purported to belong to, or could be accurately classified under, those topics. (Incidentally, I haven't called AfD a "vote", or solicited anyone to "vote" in any particular way.) Tim Smith 17:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Additionally, the topic is notable per Wikipedia:Notability, which states that "A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency." The CTMU was described to a circulation of 1.45 million subscribers and a readership of more than 7 million in Popular Science, which focused on it here, saying "You can think of it as the answer to the question of how and why science is able to describe reality". Its scope and claims were announced to millions of viewers on 20/20. In The Times, which sells hundreds of thousands of copies daily, it was introduced as the latest in a series of achievements by great thinkers like Plato, Descartes, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking. It was introduced to a circulation of hundreds of thousands of people in Newsday, which called it "revolutionary stuff". It was described to a circulation of more than half a million readers of Esquire, which told them that "Simply put, the CTMU explains the meaning and substance of reality." The CTMU is clearly "known outside a narrow interest group or constituency", and deserves an article here: not to assert it as truth, but to describe it, factually and neutrally. The existing article, though apparently less readable than desired, was highly accurate with respect to the theory, and needed to be fixed, not scrapped. In short, the theory is notable, the AfD was subject to numerous irregularities, and the article should be restored. Tim Smith 09:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

As someone with considerable knowledge of cosmology (and a fair knowledge of the philosophy of space and time), I feel that CTMU is of interest only in that it is a bizzare construction proposed by a quirky person. Kind of like "News of the Weird". No great advance in philosophy or science, but makes a kinda interesting story if you happen to be in the mood. But I feel this story belongs in Christopher Michael Langan; there is no need to have a separate article on CTMU. This silly notion just isn't that notable, in my view. As for Esquire: Tim, I just read that article earlier today. Did you really not pick up on the gentle mockery of that piece? I thought it was quite entertaining in how it gently poked fun at Langan and LoSasso (also at the incomprehensible mysteries of modern cosmology, I guess, but fair enough; you have to go to school to understand this stuff, as they say).

You wrote: "the AfD was subject to numerous irregularities". This is an entirely separate issue. Can you be more specific?---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn as initiator. Tim Smith 12:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I fully agree An AfD is allegedly not a vote. Instead, it is supposed to consist of well-reasoned recommendations on the parts of conscientious Wikipedia editors who have carefully reviewed the disputed article and its content and are trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, that's not how it has turned out in this particular case. While a few participants have seemingly made an effort to base their recommendations on sound reasoning, considerably more of them have (1) insistently miscategorized the CTMU as "pseudoscience" even after being repeatedly corrected on that score (it was never held forth as "science" in the first place, but was always identified as philosophy); and/or (2) misapplied an inappropriate notability criterion to the CTMU (since its author is not an academic, and academia is a closed shop, it cannot be held to academic standards of notability); and/or (3) blindly ignored or denied the existence of irrefutable evidence of notability from the popular media (ABC, the BBC, Esquire, Popular Science, et cetera); and/or (4) appended irrelevant editing data and uncivil "sock puppet" insinuations to the relatively few comments favorable to the article (not to mention the spurious but shrill accusations of forged archives which marred the AfD itself, with the accusers shouting their lies at the reader in big red letters), and so on and so forth. When the majority of editorial recommendations are accompanied not by relevant insight, but by prejudice, misconception and disinformation, what we have is indeed just a vote...and worse, a rigged one in which the prime instigator shamelessly went fishing for votes in such places, and touting such misleading information, as would assure him of the outcome he desired. On every possible count, this procedure stands as a black mark against its manipulators and a profound embarrassment to Wikipedia. Accordingly, despite the fact that the situation seems more hopeless than ever, I strongly support Tim Smith's request that the decision be overturned (not to be confused with my own recommendation to undelete - please see below).Asmodeus 05:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Asmodeus, you wrote that the AfD proposers "insistently miscategorized the CTMU as "pseudoscience" even after being repeatedly corrected on that score". Tim just mentioned the 1999 Esquire piece. Recall how Langan was described there? He was described as a "cosmologist/bouncer" :-/

You wrote that the AfD "misapplied an inappropriate notability criterion to the CTMU (since its author is not an academic, and academia is a closed shop, it cannot be held to academic standards of notability)". But how can any author hope to make a contribution to philosophy (or science) unless he publishes material which attracts serious comment from philosophers (or scientists)? ---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure ... I looked at this version in Google cache [1]. The whole reason for the WP:NOR policy is so that we don't have everyone publishing their random physics theory on Wikipedia [2]. Though, presumably, Langan was not himself an author of the WP article, this kind of thing is what the policy was hoping to avoid. We don't need novel theories from every physics guy with a website. At any rate, the consensus to delete was nearly unanimous among non-redlinked users. So I endorse the closure. BigDT 04:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. That's an old version from before the AfD. Notice that it has 4 references (as opposed to 12) and 0 footnotes (as opposed to 42). The CTMU is philosophy, not physics. Langan is not just a guy with a website; he and the CTMU were profiled in numerous mainstream media sources including Popular Science, The Times, 20/20, Newsday and Esquire (all sourced in the 12-reference version). Those aren't peer-reviewed philosophy journals, of course, but they don't need to be: the goal of the article is not to assert the theory as truth, but to describe it, factually and neutrally. The proposed notability criterion for non-mainstream theories requires reference in only one mainstream publication, explicitly allowing "large-circulation newspapers or magazines" like the ones in which the CTMU appeared. WP:NOR is inapplicable here: we're not introducing our own research, but describing the existing work of a notable public figure. In the 42-footnote version, that work was carefully cited (down to the page number) to ensure verifiability. Finally, among users who had edited before the start of the AfD, I count 12 keeps and 19 deletes, a 61% delete ratio. Tim Smith 05:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Tim, you wrote "the goal of the article is not to assert the theory as truth, but to describe it, factually and neutrally." That is not in question, at least in so far as you wrote the original stub which has since been heavily edited by others. But there seems to be a problem with describing very seriously a very silly "theory" in a general encyclopedia. I think it is amusing to mention this, but only briefly, and only in Christopher Michael Langan. ---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. As explained below, I did not write a stub. I wrote the whole article, and carefully qualified it for neutrality. It proceeded peacefully and largely unchanged from its creation in September 2005 until Byrgenwulf's appearance two weeks ago. The effect of the recent heavy editing by others was simply to erase nearly all of the content and replace it with statements attributing to Langan positions the opposite of those he actually holds. I'm aware of no mainstream sources—popular or academic—that call the theory "very silly"—in fact, the mainstream media has typically portrayed it as an exciting, potentially revolutionary development. I'm not using that coverage to argue for credibility, though, but for notability. Per WP:N, "A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency", and in view of the numerous high-profile sources in which it has appeared—Popular Science, 20/20, The Times, Newsday, Esquire, etc.—the CTMU clearly meets that condition. We need not call the theory "serious", or "silly", or make any value judgement about it all; we need simply describe it. A mere mention in Langan's article would deprive readers of a valuable resource for understanding what they saw so tantalizingly outlined in the mainstream media. In fact, more than one AfD participant said they had found the article useful in that respect. Tim Smith 20:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I've temporarily patched up that proposed guideline so that it can deal with cases such as these. It still doesn't mesh well with policy like RS. I might work on this later - it should be much more restrictive, and also consider what different types of references mean for notability - disparaging articles, or articles in questionable popular sources, for example, should not establish notability for an article that covers a theory as serious theory. Time Cube is a great example. It isn't notable as a real theory. It's notable as an internet meme and source of humour.--Philosophus ^T 19:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, CTMU is really quite analogous to Time Cube, which has also been extensively described in the popular media, usually gently mocking the proponent.---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The CTMU is not at all analogous to the ridiculous Time Cube, whose creator claims, among other things, that π equals 3.2 and that the Earth consists of two opposite hemispheres rotating in opposite directions. The CTMU does not seek to overturn basic mathematical and scientific facts, but to interpret them in a self-consistent philosophical framework. I detect no trace of mockery in the CTMU's media coverage; it is typically portrayed as an underlooked but potentially revolutionary development. Judging by our article, the Time Cube, which is primarily an Internet meme, has received less mainstream coverage than the CTMU. If the Time Cube merits an article, the CTMU merits one a fortiori. Tim Smith 22:16, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. And the CTMU is notable as a popular theory which was excitedly outlined by numerous sources in the mainstream media, including Popular Science, 20/20, The Times, Esquire, Newsday, and more. I agree that these sources do not establish the theory as "serious," which is why the article didn't call it that, or indeed make any value judgement about it at all, following WP:NPOV. Again, the role of the popular sources here is not to establish the theory as correct, but to establish it as notable. Per Wikipedia:Notability, "A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency," and in view of the many high-profile sources in which it appeared, the CTMU clearly meets that condition. In short, the theory is notable, the AfD was subject to numerous irregularities, the deletion decision contradicted WP:N, and the article should be restored. Tim Smith 07:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure I looked at the Popular Science article and it was a biographical blurb about Langan but didn't say much of anything about the CTMU theory. As such, Langan himself might be notable (and a suitable subject for a Wikipedia biography) because of the Popsci piece, but CTMU is still not notable per the WP:RS criteria which require peer review. Phr (talk) 05:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Popular Science focuses specifically on the theory here—not extensively, but prominently enough to pass the proposed notability criterion for non-mainstream theories, which requires only that they be "referenced in at least one major mainstream publication", explicitly allowing "large-circulation newspapers or magazines" like Popular Science. Other coverage (linked in the 12-reference version) focuses on both Langan and the theory, each of which is notable and deserves its own article. The peer-reviewed sources required by WP:RS would be needed to assert the theory. But to describe it, the popular media is sufficient for notability, and Langan's own work is sufficient for verifiability (because we're just reporting what he's saying). Tim Smith 06:19, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not too impressed by that proposed guideline, which proposes to include WP:OR in Wikipedia more or less indiscriminately. PopSci is not much above the National Enquirer in terms of reliability--it's best to stick with actual, peer-reviewed science publications if an article is supposed to be about the "scientific" content of a theory. And the PopSci article really says almost nothing about what CTMU is; it just mentions it by name and vaguely describes what problems CTMU addresses. I looked at the deleted CTMU article (not sure what version) in the Google cache and it's pretty obvious that CTMU is gibberish. Not that Langan is stupid or anything, but another smart guy named St. Thomas Aquinas tried something similar in the 13th(?) century and I don't see evidence of any big advances within CTMU over that. I'd say to put a CTMU summary into Langan's biographical article. Phr (talk) 06:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Again, WP:OR is inapplicable here: we're not introducing our own research, but describing the existing work of a notable public figure. And again, the CTMU is philosophy, not science. The reliability of PopSci would matter if we were asserting the theory. But to describe it, we need to know only that PopSci belongs to the high-profile mainstream media—which it does, with a circulation of 1.45 million subscribers and a readership of more than 7 million. We don't need PopSci to exhaustively cover the theory; Langan's own work can do that. A mere summary in Langan's article would deprive readers who saw the theory in the mainstream media of a valuable resource for understanding it. Finally, please don't be so quick to dismiss the CTMU. It takes a bit of work to understand, but it's not just gibberish or recycled scholasticism. Tim Smith 07:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Wikipedia doesn't assert the correctness of any theories (WP:NPOV)--it only reports on them. The reporting criterion is WP:RS. If CTMU is a philosophical theory instead of a scientific one, then fine, RS calls for cites to to peer-reviewed philosophy literature instead of scientific literature, but PopSci is neither. Give it a rest. Phr (talk) 09:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Wikipedia asserts the correctness of numerous theories. For example, the first sentence of Sun ("The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system") is an assertion of the theory of heliocentrism. The introduction to evolution ("Evolution is ultimately the source of the vast diversity of life") asserts the correctness of evolutionary theory. When theories are sufficiently mainstream, we assert them; when they are not, we report them. To report the claims of a notable theory, we need only establish that the theory actually makes those claims; for that purpose, primary sources suffice. Again, PopSci and the rest of the mainstream media coverage establish the CTMU's notability, while Langan's own works establish verifiability for the fact that it makes the claims we attribute to it. Tim Smith 15:14, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

As far as that last sentence goes, I think I agree (based on my recollection of the deleted article), but I feel that this subject is not sufficiently notable for its very own article. Put a brief paragraph in Christopher Michael Langan and let interested readers follow the link to his website. ---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion The AfD was entirely in process. And this deletion review is about process, not content...as can be seen from some of the comments above, the major reason for proposed undeletion seems to be content-based, not process based. I would not oppose a small section on the CTMU (suitable neutrally written in plain English) being included in the bio of its inventor, but I think it is well established by the in-process AfD that the consensus of the Wikipedia community (among those who edit articles not related to the CTMU, anyway) doesn't want it as a separate article. Byrgenwulf 07:30, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The major reason for undeletion is process-based: the AfD was conducted during an edit war of such magnitude that the article amassed more than 140 edits during the discussion, many of them inserting or deleting entire sections at a time. The version of the article which was finally deleted bears nearly no resemblance to the one which was originally nominated for deletion, and the article's content fluctuated so rapidly that many of the justifications for deletion are valid only in the context of particular transitory versions. The AfD discussion itself was utterly chaotic, filled with one-edit users and IPs, loud accusations of forgery, a large anonymously-added table, personal attacks, irrelevant debates about the validity of the theory, an anonymous user having a conversation with himself, and so on. A mere summary in Langan's article would deprive readers who saw the theory in the mainstream media of a valuable resource for understanding it. Finally, among users who had edited before the start of the AfD, I count a 61% delete ratio of 12 keeps and 19 deletes, a weak consensus in any case and insufficient to justify deletion in view of the exceptional irregularities that bedeviled the process. Tim Smith 07:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Neutral: I think that the request to undelete has some merit due to the changes in the article during the AFD and the difficulty of judging consensus with so many WP:SPAs in attendance. On the other hand I think the article is complete bunk. Those cancel each other out so I won't endorse deletion or request undeletion. Stifle (talk) 08:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. If you mean the Google version linked above, the version that was actually deleted—and which would presumably be restored—bears virtually no resemblance to it. Tim Smith 08:37, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion. Closure was in-process,and I also agree with the decision. We have Aetherometry as a precedent. There is no obvious adoption of this theory outside of its proponents - there is clearly insufficient coverage in reliable secondary sources on which to base a properly neutral article. Come back when it's been published in Nature. Just zis Guy you know? 08:49, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Nature is a scientific journal; again, the CTMU is philosophy, not science. A neutral article can be written simply by qualifying the theory's claims to the theorist: describing the theory rather than asserting it. If the theory has not been widely adopted, the article can say so. We would need secondary sources to assert or deny the theory's claims, but not to report them; for that purpose Langan's own papers suffice. These are not barriers to neutrality. Tim Smith 09:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

"the CTMU is philosophy, not science." You keep saying that, but I don't agree that you have made the case about either point. Re not science, the POP sci and Lagnan stuff I have seen does seem to describe this as "cosmology". Re philosophy: any philosophers in the house? Re proof: that concept is the hallmark of mathematics, yet you do not try to argue that CTMU is mathematics. Of course, it is not mathematics either and Lagnan's notion of "proof" is not the one likely to be recognized by mathematicians.---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Physical cosmology is science, but metaphysical cosmology is philosophy, and "addresses questions about the Universe which are beyond the scope of science," according to our article. The CTMU, being metaphysical cosmology, is therefore philosophy, not science. On mathematics in the CTMU, Langan has said that "Actually, it’s all mathematics, mainly advanced logic including a lot of model theory and algebra," and that he "can reduce that entire 56 page paper to variables and functional, operational and relational symbols." His public work is meant to be accessible, but that doesn't mean he can't formalize it, or that his proofs wouldn't fly with mathematicians. Tim Smith 04:13, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

You are missing the point rather. This is a purportedly scientific theory that has not been published in any scientific journal ("proof" is a scientific concept and the statement of the "proof" uses pseudoscientific language). The claim of philosophy appears to be, in the main, a smokescreen to obscure this. Nor has it apparently garnered any significant followers in the philosophical sphere - it appears that its main publisher and proponent is its author. Unlike, say, young-earth creationism, there does not appear to be any significant movement associated with this concept. Just zis Guy you know? 12:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The CTMU does not purport to be a scientific theory; indeed, Langan argues that "no general theory of reality can ever be reliably constructed by the standard empirical methods of science." (Langan 2002, p. 12). Proof is a logico-mathematical concept, not a scientific concept, and the CTMU cannot be pseudoscience when it does not present itself as science; again, it's philosophy. Again, notability is established by the theory's numerous high-profile, attention-getting appearances in mainstream media sources like Popular Science, 20/20, The Times, Newsday, and Esquire, with circulations and readerships in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Tim Smith 14:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Undelete. The article is pseudoscience, IMO, but it is notable in the sense that it appears in the media and has a respectable google hit count. There are plenty of other pseudoscience articles (such as astrology or modern Galilean relativity). These articles should all exist with a mainstream critique available and/or a POV tag permanently attached -- this option was not sufficiently covered in the AfD discussion. Sweeping the problem under the rug with a deletion is not a long-term solution to a systemic failure; Wikipedia needs to be a little more inclusive and a little less bigotted. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Not comparable. There are a bazillion published works about astrology that thoroughly document its teachings with mind-numbing specificity, from an enormous number of publishers and authors. A Wikipedia article about astrology that follows those works cannot possibly be considered WP:OR. There are apparently no such publications about CTMU except those self-published by the inventor or his organization (there are mentions of CTMU like the PopSci article, but they don't document CTMU). As such, any WP article about CTMU has to draw heavily on Langon's own writings, which are primary source material, something of a no-no in Wikipedia. (Per WP:RS, Wikipedia is supposed to be a tertiary source which means it in principle only reports on stuff published by secondary sources, and excludes primary source material as being original research). Not sure about Galilean Relativity but there's at least a supposed journal about it and multiple authors working on it over a long period (centuries) of time, and the WP article more or less lumps them together, which isn't so bad. Phr (talk) 10:12, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The distinction here is between the claims made by a primary source, and the fact that the primary source made those claims. WP:RS explains the difference as follows:

An opinion is a view that someone holds, the content of which may or may not be verifiable. However, that a certain person or group expressed a certain opinion is a fact (that is, it is true that the person expressed the opinion) and it may be included in Wikipedia if it can be verified; that is, if you can cite a good source showing that the person or group expressed the opinion.

In other words, if Langan makes a claim in a published paper, we cannot use that paper to verify the claim. But we can use the paper to verify that Langan made the claim. In the 42-footnote version, Langan's claims were carefully cited to his published papers, right down to the page number. Tim Smith 15:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's certainly verifiable that Langan has this fringe theory (CTMU) and it's fine, per the paragraph you cite, for Wikipedia to report that Langan has this theory, and give a brief description of the theory. The place to do that is in Langan's biographical article, whose presence nobody is contesting. You're pressing for something completely different, which is a large separate article about CTMU. The individual assertions in such an article would have to be documented from secondary sources other than Langan, or else the article documents nothing except "Langan's idiosyncratic explanation of life, the universe, and everything is: ...". That is the epitomy of WP:OR. Phr (talk) 15:41, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The essence of WP:OR is:

Articles may not contain any previously unpublished theories, data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas; or any new analysis or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts, arguments, or ideas that serves to advance a position.

A CTMU article would transgress neither of these requirements: we're citing Langan's previously published works, and we're not doing any new analysis or synthesis of his claims to advance a position—just summarizing and reporting them directly. WP:OR is about stopping editors from inserting their own theories or interpretations into articles; that's not an issue here, and primary sources suffice to relay the material. The mainstream media coverage has given prominent, attention-getting placement to the theory, and a mere summary in Langan's article would deprive readers of a valuable resource for understanding what they saw there. Tim Smith 16:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

No, you're wrong, you're not citing any of Langan's previously published works that have passed scholarly peer review since those don't exist. And Langan's biographical article has a link to Langan's website. You can put all the CTMU stuff you want on that site, and in fact it's there already. Wikipedia readers capable of clicking a mouse who actually want to see that stuff will be deprived of nothing. What you really want is for Wikipedia to lend undeserved credibility to CTMU by devoting an article to CTMU, and that's precisely what WP:OR is intended to prevent. Anyway I don't have more to say about this DRV so I'm going to attempt to stop replying. Phr (talk) 16:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Any article on Wikipedia could be moved to an external site. To do so would be to deprive Wikipedia of the encyclopedic content in which its value resides, and to deprive readers of the infrastructure through which that content is written, maintained, and reviewed for factuality and neutrality. Again, peer-reviewed references would be needed to assert the theory, not to describe it. To assert Langan's claims, the publications in which his papers appeared are not reliable sources. But to assert the fact that he made those claims, they are. Wikipedia editors are not doing original research by reporting previously published claims. Finally, please assume good faith. Tim Smith 18:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion. Not notable enough for our tastes. --Improv 13:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The proposed notability criterion for non-mainstream theories requires reference in only one mainstream publication, explicitly allowing "large-circulation newspapers or magazines". The CTMU easily passes, having appeared in Popular Science (circulation of 1.45 million subscribers; readership of more than 7 million), Newsday (circulation in the hundreds of thousands), The Times (hundreds of thousands of copies sold daily), on 20/20 (averages millions of viewers per week), and elsewhere (sources in the 12-reference version). It is this level of high-profile exposure which makes the CTMU notable, and which makes an encyclopedia article of use to the many readers introduced to the theory through these sources. Tim Smith 14:40, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Those are (proposed) guidelines to help us make our judgement call. It is fundamentally a judgement call though. --Improv 15:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Since I didn't thoroughly set out my rationale for closing as "delete" I will reproduce the message I posted on Tim Smith's talk page when he asked me to expand: Thanks for your comment. I don't think the version of the article affected most of the delete arguments, at least those that I parsed as the most important. I was compelled by a couple of points made by delete voters: (1) the theory is probably not notable outside its connection to a really smart guy, and can be covered completely at the article on him; and (2) this is confirmed by the fact that none of the cites for the article mentioned any other people working on this theory. I agree that it was a difficult decision to make, and I did read the arguments closely and try to watch out for sockpuppets and other very new users. I'm going to stick by my closure, but if you feel that there is more discussion to be had, you might open a discussion at Deletion Review. I can also temporarily undelete the article if you feel that one version contains useful information for a merger into Christopher Michael Langan. There was a lot of sockpuppetry and skullduggery to dig through in the discussion, and I would not be opposed to a relist, but I fear that it would fall victim to the same problems as this one did. (ESkog)^(Talk) 15:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. That the mainstream media coverage which establishes the theory's notability also establishes the notability of its author does not mean they cannot have individual articles. Wikipedia:Notability says that "A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency," and there is no question, in view of the numerous high-profile sources—Popular Science, The Times, 20/20, Newsday, Esquire, and more—in which it appeared, that the theory meets that condition. The CTMU certainly cannot be "covered completely" at the article on Langan as you state, perhaps drawing that conclusion from the version of the article protected at the time, instead of from the comprehensive version which preceded it but which had been so thoroughly eviscerated over the prior few days by users who not only did not understand it, but who reworded it to attribute to Langan positions the opposite of those he actually holds, that what remained was utterly useless as an aid to understanding the theory. The deletion voters were summoned (see my update above) from a narrow, unrepresentative segment of the Wikipedia community, had been misled into thinking that the theory purported to belong to, or could be classified under, their fields of interest, and applied irrelevant, field-specific notability criteria accordingly. In short, the theory is notable, the AfD was subject to numerous irregularities, the deletion decision contradicted Wikipedia:Notability, and the article should be restored. Tim Smith 03:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse Deletion. Media coverage establishes notability of the man, but none of the "mainstream publications" discussed the pseudophilosophy in sufficient depth to let it stand on its own. I counted three paragraphs actually focusing upon the CTMU in the Popular Science article ostensibly devoted to it, for example. (This, combined with the total indifference mainstream science and philosophy have shown to the CTMU suggest to me that nobody else can get any content out of it, either, but that's a different debate.) A single paragraph in the Christopher Langan article would give all the coverage of the CTMU the Wikipedia needs. Anville 15:24, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The mainstream media coverage is about both the person and the theory, and features the theory prominently. The Times, for example, begins its article with:

Every age has its great thinkers: Plato looked at metaphysics, ethics, and politics; Descartes tried to rebuild human knowledge; Bertrand Russell gave us mathematical logic; from Stephen Hawking came A Brief History of Time. Now there's Chris Langan, the brainy bouncer, with his Cognition-Theoretic Model of the Universe.

20/20 uses the theory as a framing device:

I found arguably the smartest person in America in eastern Long Island. [...] His name is Christopher Langan and he’s working on his masterpiece: a mathematical, philosophical manuscript, with a radical view of the universe.

The Popular Science header says:

He's a working class guy with an IQ that's off the charts. What does he have to say about science? Everything -- a theory of everything, that is.

The caption of the article's photo reads:

Christopher Langan spends his downtime coming up with a solution to a problem that philosophers and scientists have pondered for thousands of years.

So the CTMU has not just been "referenced in at least one major mainstream publication" as the proposed notability guideline for non-mainstream theories requires, explicitly allowing "large-circulation newspapers or magazines", but has received prominent, attention-getting placement in many such publications, with circulations in the hundreds of thousands or millions. A mere summary in Langan's article would deprive readers who saw the theory in the mainstream media of a valuable resource for understanding it. It deserves its own article. Tim Smith 15:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Oddly enought, I detect a certain ironic undercurrent in each of these quotes. As I read it, the writers are gently mocking the pretensions of Langnan (and quite possibly of the academics too). Oh well, perhaps irony is in the eye of the beholder, if that isn't mixing metaphors... ---CH 12:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

All of these mention the theory, because it's what the guy has done. Other than giving some indication of its grandiose scope, what do they say about the content of the CTMU? And why would a section entitled "The Cognitive Theoretic ..." in the Langan article be any harder to find via a Google search than a separate article? Anville 16:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The mainstream media have described the scope and purpose of the theory, noted its more dramatic claims, outlined the structure of its arguments, and proclaimed its potential significance. Of course, that's not an exhaustive treament, but we don't need it to be; it's sufficient that the theory appeared prominently in high-profile sources with circulations, readerships, and viewerships in the hundreds of thousands or millions. The issue is not that a section in the Langan article would be hard to find, but that it would be inadequate as a description, and of no benefit to curious readers seeking to understand the theory they saw so excitedly outlined in the mainstream media. To explain the theory and satisfy those readers, we need not a section, but an article. Tim Smith 16:52, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Those media stories are all from several years ago. It is unlikely that someone is going to be exposed to the story now and suddenly miss the Wikipedia article about it. The articles, moreover, have titles like "Wise Guy", "Smart Guy", etc., and are about Langan, not his theory. I think your argument is specious, Tim Smith. Why don't you give this a rest, now? You've made your point about the media. Any literate person will be able to see what you're on about, and at the moment you're not introducing any new points. Byrgenwulf 17:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Again, the articles are about both Langan and his theory, and give the theory prominent placement, easily meeting the proposed notability criterion for non-mainstream theories. Popular Science focuses here specifically on the theory. 20/20 uses the theory as a framing device. The Times introduces Langan and the theory together. Langan and the CTMU are both notable, and both deserve articles.

That readers exposed to the theory several years ago still want an article can be seen by User:Tox's comment in the AfD. Though not a CTMU proponent, he writes:

...I have been aware of it for years (because it is well-known enough that people looking into ToEs, who don't limit themselves merely to academia, eventually encounter it). [...] It is only my steadfast commitment to open-mindedness that does not allow me to reject it until I get around to serious analysis of it. Which is precisely why I'd like to see a Wikipedia article (not written by Langan) on the CTMU: so I have a decent overview of the theory to look at. Anyone else wanting to know about it would find such an article useful, too. So, if the article is flawed, then fix it, don't delete it. This debate is about the philosophy of Wikipedia, not the philosophy of the CTMU.

Tim Smith 18:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

They eventually see Aetherometry, Time Cube, and all manner of other complete nonsense as well. If you look into something for long enough, and don't limit yourself to reputable and reliable sources, you will eventually (even rather quickly) find many things which are not notable. --Philosophus ^T 19:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. And, I am aware of a large number of garbage theories, both scientific and philosophical. Most of which are easily seen through, and many of which are hoaxes or scams. Pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy blatantly violate the basis of science and philosophy, typically because either the creator is insane, extremely illogical, or deluding themself or because the creator is a scam artist, like Sai Baba or Ramtha, creating a system designed to lure in those who are easily misguided and most likely to give them money.

The CTMU is clearly not pseudoscience. 1) It does not represent itself as empirical science. 2) From what I know, it handles problems which science cannot, most notably consciousness. I do not expect you to agree with me that consciousness is outside the realms of science, but at least understand that I say this due to fundamental properties of consciousness based on a rigourous analysis of what it actually is, found in The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers, a serious and well-respected philosopher. It also seeks to define both existence and nonexistence: fundamentally metaphysical concepts outside the realms of science. So, labeling it pseudoscience and marching in a large number of skeptics and deletionists is going to cause an undeserved bias in the AfD.

But, is the CTMU pseudophilosophy? Maybe. I've spent years analyzing scam philosophies, and this one doesn't fit the profile. Scams usually involve terminology that people have an emotional conection to (with the true denotation stripped out) that either cause you to feel good about the way you are or offer some means of being "better", typically by paying more money to the founder. The terminology is derived in such a way here that you can't easily figure out what the hell Langan is saying at all (especially because it's hard to focus on sentences with numerous terms you don't know). I find it more likely that the theory is either seriously flawed or an esoteric way of saying things others have said, or that if it is more-or-less on the right track that Langan is either too arogant or lacks the skill to construct the theory in a manner that is easily understood. Even other geniuses have to learn new terms when they encounter them, and the more new terms you have, and the higher their concentration in the theory's explanation, the higher the cost in mental effort and time to understand the theory.

Because of that, I have a decidedly negative opinion of the CTMU at the moment. However, it is not a theory that can be seen through in five minutes. Furthermore, the language and structure of the Wikipedia article is not the same as the language and structure of the theory. The article can seem like total pseudophilosophical bunk, even if the theory turns out not to be. Because the article was in a total state of disarray due to an edit war, I think that was the case. Skeptics and deletionists not familiar with the CTMU, hearing something is pseudoscience, and coming into an AfD lasting only a few days, are highly likely to make a quick decision based on flawed evidence.

The CTMU is clearly notable, as demonstrated by its being taken notice of numerous times — and my own reading of the popular press articles indicates to me the theory is prominent in them (and possibly one of the reasons that its creator is getting press). A description of the theory itself, especially if it could evolve into a more intuitive overview than Langan's description, would be useful to anyone, including myself, who wants to know what it's about. Eventually, it will become apparent whether it is garbage or genius, or something inbetween. —Tox 11:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure: the decision to delete was not based upon the article itself, but upon the lack of notability of the subject. Changes to the article do not affect the notability of the subject - most people in the discussion were looking for sources elsewhere anyway. If a few references had been found to serious, well known, journals, it might have made a difference, but that didn't happen, because there are no such references, and everyone knew so during the AfD. Note that I do not accept the proposed guideline for fringe science notability - the AfD for this article has illustrated serious flaws in its formulation. Even then, it would be a guideline, not policy. --Philosophus ^T 19:08, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Here's how Wikipedia:Notability defines notability:

A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency, or should be because of its particular importance or impact.

Take a look at that first condition: is the CTMU "known outside a narrow interest group or constituency"? Well, let's see.

• It was described to a circulation of 1.45 million subscribers and a readership of more than 7 million in Popular Science, which focused on it here, saying "You can think of it as the answer to the question of how and why science is able to describe reality".
• Its scope and claims were announced to millions of viewers on 20/20, which called Langan's book about it "his masterpiece: a mathematical, philosophical manuscript, with a radical view of the universe."
• In The Times, which sells hundreds of thousands of copies daily and is regarded as Britain's newspaper of record, it was introduced as the latest in a series of achievements by great thinkers like Plato, Descartes, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking.
• It was introduced to a circulation of hundreds of thousands of people in Newsday, which called it "revolutionary stuff".
• It was described to a circulation of more than half a million readers of Esquire, which told them that "Simply put, the CTMU explains the meaning and substance of reality."
• It was discussed in an online chat moderated by ABCNews.com, one of the most-visited sites on the Web.
• It was described to a circulation of hundreds of thousands of readers in Muscle & Fitness.

Is the CTMU "known outside a narrow interest group or constituency"? The answer — unquestionably — undeniably — beyond any shadow of a doubt — is Yes. That these sources also featured Langan is evidence only that their readers and viewers know about both Langan and the CTMU, and that consequently both Langan and the CTMU are notable, and that both merit articles. The CTMU certainly cannot be "covered completely" at the article on Langan, as the closing admin believed, perhaps drawing that conclusion from the version of the article protected at the time, instead of from the comprehensive version which preceded it but which had been so thoroughly eviscerated over the prior few days by users who not only did not understand it, but who reworded it to attribute to Langan positions the opposite of those he actually holds, that what remained was utterly useless as an aid to understanding the theory. In short, the theory is notable, the deletion decision contradicted Wikipedia:Notability, and the article should be restored. Tim Smith 02:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure. The AfD showed a clear consensus for deletion - that's all that really matters, IMO. Tevildo 20:29, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Among users who had edited before the start of the AfD, I count a delete ratio of barely above 60%—not at all a clear consensus, especially in view of the exceptional irregularities that bedeviled the process. A huge edit war waged for the whole course of the AfD, the article's content fluctuated so rapidly that entire multi-section blocks were being added and removed in single edits, the version of the article which was actually deleted bears nearly no resemblance to the one which was originally nominated for deletion, and the AfD discussion itself was utterly chaotic and filled with one-edit users and IPs. Under these circumstances, consensus would have to be very solid to justify deletion, and that's not what I see in the debate. Tim Smith 12:48, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure per Philosophus. Also agree with option for a biographic article on Langer which outlines the key points of the theory. Martinp 22:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

• Undelete - This is a fascinating article on a mesmerizing topic in which many people are quite interested. Langan's theory is definitely out there, embedded in the zeitgeist, and Wikipedia should present it right along with everything else that is a notable part of modern collective culture. In fact, I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. I see no valid reason for deletion. The article was accurate and well-written, and if the truth be told, should never have been nominated for deletion in the first place. DrL 04:54, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• Undelete There is an obvious problem with making "reputable" academic publication the sole notability criterion for ideas which have (probably) not been submitted to a mainstream academic journal because their originators are not academics and are therefore excluded from academia's closed system of credits and rewards (as seems to be the case here). Because the author of the CTMU lacks academic credentials, there was nothing in it for him to publish it in an academic journal; in all likelihood, that would have been nothing but a thankless waste of his time. By what skewed logic do ideas which originate outside of academia, and whose authors were never enfranchised or supported by academia or welcomed into academic circles, require academic recognition or approval? Using this catch-22 as a standard of notability for the CTMU is perverse and Kafkaesque. Nobody who believes in free intellectual commerce could possibly endorse the dangerous, herd-minded absurdity of granting a single bureaucratic establishment, academia, the sole power to determine the degree of merit of any theory or idea, particularly by merely ignoring it. Surely our powers of reasoning are not so weak that we can't see this. Asmodeus 05:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Asmodeus, you wrote that CTMU has apparently "not been submitted to a mainstream academic journal because [Langan is not an academic] and [is] therefore excluded from academia's closed system of credits and rewards". If you are claiming that philsophers would not credit Langan with making a substantial contribution (if he really has done so) simply because he is not employed in a university, I think that is unfair. It is no doubt true that academics in field X are more reluctant to expend much effort reading a paper on X by a non-academic (or indeed, to some extent, from anyone not known to them as someone from prior experience whose work is worth reading), but this is just common sense and not a conspiracy to keep a closed club. (To an academic, the idea of the academy as clubby kind of place might in fact seem rather hilarious!) Are you not confusing the notions of academics and scholars? It seems to me that one can be a scholar without being an academic. Not very easy, perhaps, but there are plenty who seem to pull this off. ---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Comment - this user has 44 edits, of which 33 have been devoted to discussing this deletion on the AFD and DRV pages. (ESkog)^(Talk) 15:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• • • Response Either my arguments stand on their own, or they do not. If they do not appear to stand alone, then I suggest that the reader ignore my signature and suppose, just for the sake of neutrality, that they are anonymous. If, on the other hand, the above comment is meant to establish pecking order in the Wikipedia hierarchy, then it seems natural to ask the following question: what does pecking order in the Wikipedia hierarchy have to do with the thrust of arguments for/against deletion? If it wouldn't be too much to ask, please address the arguments themselves. Asmodeus 16:09, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

What is this pecking order? As I read ESkog's comment, he is noting that your user account is virtually devoted to this very narrow subject--- which does tend to raise the question I asked you on your user talk page. ---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• • • • I mean no ill will, but often edit patterns such as these indicate a sock puppet set up to inflate "vote" tallies. Although you are correct that this should be about the substance of the arguments, many admins (especially here in DRV) close discussions based on solely a tally... (ESkog)^(Talk) 20:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• • • • • No offense taken. For what it's worth, I hereby duly inform you that I'm not a "sock puppet". There is another person on a separate computer at this node, and possibly more given that it's a crowded node. As I understand it, that's not a crime. After all, my opinion is worth no less simply because I occupy a shared node. Basically, the "sock puppet" rule simply says that at any given time, there should be no more handles involved in a discussion than there are actual participants, and that is definitely true on this end. On the other hand, you may be making an accusation, in which case it would be rather disingenuous of you to deny any ill will (given that you would have no proof of your accusation). In any case, this discussion is about substantive issues pertaining to the AfD. Please feel free to address those issues at any time. Asmodeus

Asmodeus: you clearly stated this much at least: you are not a sock puppet. Good! Thank you. I will take this to mean that you do not use any other registered user accounts at WP.

But the essential question is: do you have a close personal connection with Christopher Michael Langan, author of CTMU, or Gina LoSasso, his wife and confouder of Mega? This is a natural question given the pattern of your edits and those of DrL (talk · contribs). And it is relevant here because the ultimate question is: of the options available to the WP community in this discussion, which one best serves the best interest of our readers? I and others am very concerned that our readers not be fed slanted information, and if you are Langan, it would seem to be very difficult for you to write about your own theory in a fair and unbiased manner. It is worth saying that as far as I can tell, CTMU has very few supporters other than Langan himself.---CH 12:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure'. Specific comment to DrL and [User:Asmodeus|Asmodeus]]. If this is to be considered a revote, rather than a question of whether the AfD was properly closed: If a scientific (or metascientific) theory is notable, it will be commented on by academics, even to the extent of saying "this is nonsense". But that's not the primary argument for deletion. IMHO, the primary argument for deletion is that — disregarding the Popular Science article as an adjunct to the article on the author — there are no non-self-published sources. (Disclaimer: I "voted" Delete and urged the closing admin to find Delete in the AfD.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 14:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment Academics cannot comment on that of which they are totally ignorant, and in this case, the reason for their ignorance is that as a matter of policy, the academic community reserves attention for only its own work, published in its own "reputable" academic journals. In other words, academia is a closed shop and thus does not qualify as an arbiter of notability for works by non-academics. Langan is not an academic; therefore, questions of merit aside, his work has naturally not come to the attention of academia. Regarding self-publication, I'm afraid I don't quite understand your comment. Esquire, Popular Science, ABC, the BBC...the CTMU was mentioned or described by all of them, and they are all at the very top of the media food chain. Only a tiny handful of theories, academic and otherwise, has ever been deemed sufficiently notable for this sort of coverage, and in no way are these eminent sources "self-published" by Langan. So if self-publication was indeed the primary argument for deletion as you suggest, then it's really very simple after all: the article should be undeleted. Asmodeus 15:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Reply Ever hear Carl Sagan speak about astrology? And what about the countless biologists who have gone out of their way to debunk creationism? The claim that academics only pay attention to the insides of academia is a naïve caricature, nothing more. Anville 17:12, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment Occasionally, academia finds an external, politically salient cause celebre which it perceives as socially detrimental and therefore opposes in unison, as it is currently arrayed against Creationism. Historically, these are rare occurrences (despite more frequent exceptions confined to the social and political sciences). The CTMU, which is neither political in thrust nor perceived as socially destructive, is clearly not one of these rare instances. Therefore, your example fails to apply. If one cannot understand this, the most likely reason is that one has somehow managed to confuse the CTMU with Creationism. However, one person's confusion is not grounds for deletion.

As I seem to recall, the late Carl Sagan's comments on astrology were confined to the popular media, and astrologers were neither welcome nor permitted to reply to them in academic journals. That is, like astrology itself, these comments were not regarded as notable by academic standards. Since neither the criticism nor the rebuttal (such as it may have been) appeared in academic journals, academia has remained a "closed shop" with respect to them. Exiting the ivory tower to make off-the-clock remarks is one thing; entering and permitting the rebuttal of those remarks in academic journals is quite another. Asmodeus 18:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn. Most of the voting, and yes I said voting, was biased by issues that have nothing to do with Wikipedia (see my last post). AfD is de facto a vote (though one with an ambiguous measurement rather than an obvious tally). It is not at all a consensus of the Wikipedia community at large (as that would require well-designed random statistical sampling). In this case the sampling was decidedly biased towards deletionism.

Until the day AfD itself is deleted and replaced by a Pure wiki deletion system, at the very least we must recognize it can't be considered a consensus of the Wikipedia community at large, and is in essence an ambiguous, subjective tally of the noise made by one particular faction over the other on the AfD page, we can at least recognize when that AfD tally was based on an extremely biased sampling of the Wikipedia population. Indeed, Byrgenwulf, the initiator of the AfD, seemed to be on a crusade against anything related to the CTMU, as is evident by his comment on my talk page. I do not fault people for going on crusades on Wikipedia, so long as they honestly believe the purpose of the crusade is for the betterment of Wikipedia. And, in this case, I have no reason to believe Byrgenwulf's motives where anything other than that. But, his crusade did bias the AfD and resulted in 2 articles (CTMU and Mega Society) being involved in bizarrly contentious AfDs and being subsequently deleted.

To reiterate, an AfD is only a consensus of the people who know about and participate in that particular AfD. As such, it should not be thought of as some grand consensus of Wikipedia. When it is clearly biased towards one group, and that bias is compounded by edit wars and mislabeling, a deletion (as a permanent change to Wikipedia) should not stand. —Tox 11:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Tox, please do not misrepresent me. I didn't even nominate the Mega Society for deletion, I simply expressed an opinion in the AfD. What happened was, stumbling onto the walled garden around the CTMU, which still represents gross abuse of Wikipedia for self-promotion (or idol-promotion, or whatever), links have led to a whole "genre" of these articles which are apparently not encyclopaedic topics, and a number of people, who do not represent a "clique" or "faction" or anything of the sort, have been nominating them for deletion.

Moreover, I understand that you are an advocate of that PURE alternative policy (did you read my ideas on it on my talk page btw?). I do not think, though, that using arguments against the entire deletion policy as it stands can work, because this deletion review is being conducted under the current policy, not the new alternative one.

Also, much has been made of the fact that there was an edit war going on during the AfD. What happened there was that, because contrary to how some of us have been portrayed here, some people did not want the CTMU to be necessarily expunged from Wikipedia altogether, we were trying to edit the article to turn it into something salveageable, which both described the theory neutrally and tersely (i.e. didn't eulogise it or its creator), while simultaneously raising some equally neutral and terse concerns about it. However, these efforts were continuously thwarted by the proponents of the theory constantly reverting any changes, and opposing the stripping of the article of its excessive jargon and trying to make it intelligible: it seems that they insisted that they had the sole prerogative to decide what should and should not be included, and how.

Consider this, Tox. The earth has not been salted where the article was. It was deleted once before because that version was absolutely terrible. This last version was also not at all understandable or neutral, and nor did it give comment on the article appropriate to the level at which it has received press coverage. There is nothing stopping someone, one day, creating an entirely new article, which meets usual norms and standards for Wikipedia, and treats the theory as the tertiary sources have: a curiosity emanating from an unusually intelligent strongman. No-one, I don't think, could reasonably oppose that. But resurrecting the previous article will just give rise to the same issues again, if it is not fixed; and fixing it has proven impossible to do, which is why the AfD pressed on as it did: the deleted version was being used as a pedestal, if not a soapbox, and Wikipedia is not here for that. Byrgenwulf 11:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Readers may appreciate some background. The CTMU article was created in September 2005 and proceeded peacefully and largely unchanged until two weeks ago, when Byrgenwulf posted a criticism section which, without citing sources, tarred the CTMU as pseudoscience and its author as a crank. It was rightly removed, and he now admits that this initial effort was heavy-handed. He then added a large "Disputed Science" infobox, ignoring the fact that the CTMU is not science, but philosophy; this too was rightly reverted. Well-meaning CTMU supporters were initially hasty in removing dispute tags, but after Byrgenwulf requested mediation and DrL acceded, there was every reason to believe that his concerns could be addressed through that process.

Byrgenwulf originally did not favor deletion, believing that the theory deserved to make its case, and had even contributed a constructive beginning to a section clarifying the CTMU's relationship with intelligent design (Langan embraces biological evolution). I had considered writing such a section myself, and although it was removed with the infobox, it could have been restored. But at this point, I hadn't even had time to participate. I had wanted criticism in the article from the start, and had noted as much on the talk page; had Byrgenwulf waited, we likely could have worked together, and the escalation would have ended there. Unfortunately, he changed his mind, withdrew from mediation (which had barely begun), added the CTMU to List of pseudoscientific theories, linked it at WikiProject Pseudoscience, and nominated it for deletion, just four days after his first edits.

The article was then swarmed by editors from WikiProject Pseudoscience and WikiProject Physics whose goal was not to make the existing content intelligible, but simply to erase as much of it as possible. These editors refused to gain talk-page consensus for their sweeping changes, instead leaving comments which amounted to little more than notifications that the bulk of the article was gibberish and had been deleted. They displayed no understanding of the theory at all, even rewording the material to attribute to Langan positions the opposite of those he actually holds. Byrgenwulf, though exhibiting some of the same behavior, was actually above average in terms of knowledge of the theory and willingness to engage in discussion, which is why I think we could have cooperated had the article not been swamped with editors lacking these virtues.

Creating an entirely new article would waste the huge amount of effort that went into writing the existing one, which was highly accurate with respect to its subject matter, very careful to qualify the claims of the theory to the theorist, sourced right down to the page number, and of considerable use to readers seeking to understand the theory they saw so excitedly outlined in the mainstream media. Though lacking criticism and apparently less readable than desired, it needed to be fixed, not scrapped. I am still willing to work with Byrgenwulf to improve it, and under the auspices of a mediator it is likely we would be able to do so. Tim Smith 14:32, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Byrgenwulf: "Fixing (the article) has proven impossible to do." If this is true, it is for one reason only: the incredible tenacity and underhandedness of the AfD instigator himself, a brand spanking "newbie" who registered here at Wikipedia just before initiating his attack on the CTMU article and all other Christopher Langan-related articles. It is painfully obvious that this person, in all likelihood just another insignificant anti-Langan gadfly, formulated a plan of attack, joined Wikipedia, made a couple of innocuous edits on other articles just for the sake of pretense, hurled himself at the CTMU article with a full-bore editing attack, inaugurated an AfD when the editing attack failed, knowingly mischaracterized the theory as "pseudoscience" while ridiculously claiming that he completely understood it, compounded these lies with others just as transparent, went fishing for support by misrepresenting the theory in inappropriate places, obstinately refused mediation, and now, as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, is sanctimoniously holding forth on the very policy guidelines that he has abusively manipulated and of which he has been making an utter mockery with total impunity, possibly with misguided administrative protection (as inferred on the basis of one-sided "incivility" warnings). If there is anyone at home upstairs here at Wikipedia, this travesty will not be allowed to stand. It's as simple as that. Asmodeus 15:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - Please review Byrgenwulf's contribution history and note that Byrgenwulf's first edit to Wikipedia was on July 2, 2006. He made a few innocuous edits before beginning his onslaught against the CTMU article. In light of this and the other deceptive tactics outlined by Tim Smith on this page, the AfD should be overturned and this user should be banned. DrL 14:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Attention - User Byrgenwulf, who initiated the AfD, has been shown to have abused the Deletion process. Appropriately, Wikipedia has a policy which covers any such situation. It is entitled "Abuse of deletion process". According to this policy guideline, "XfD processes are not a way to complain or remove material that is personally disliked, whose perspective is against ones beliefs, or which is not yet presented neutrally. Using XfD as a 'protest strategy' in an editorial or NPOV debate is generally an abuse of process." A review of the article's Talk page (and related) will show beyond doubt that by this criterion, the AfD herein appealed involved an abuse of the deletion process. Moreover, it has now been shown that this particular deletion process has been marred by many other abuses as well (see above comments by myself, Tim Smith, and Asmodeus). Thus, Wikipedia policy clearly mandates the immediate overturning of the AfD and the undeletion of the article. I hereby request that the presiding administrator(s) now review these facts and implement this guideline, as per Wikipedia policy. Thank you. DrL 17:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• My Final Comment DrL, that isn't the issue here, I don't think, although it is up to whatever admins or whoever reviews this to decide, of course. The consensus of that discussion was that the article should go because it is not notable in its own right. No amount of editing can ever rectify that. I resent the insinuation that the purpose of my account here was merely to "attack" Langan, because that is obviously untrue, as anyone reviewing my editing history (my actual history, here, not the out of date one DrL insists on linking to), and seeing the wide range of articles I have edited, can see for themselves. There's also an article in my sandbox, here, which I am planning to add to Wikipedia once it is complete. So the accusation that I am here merely to attack Langan is complete nonsense. However, while Tim Smith has a good "pedigree" here, it should be noted that DrL's and [Asmodeus's editing histories are focused solely on articles pertaining to Langan, his theory, and his organisations, which makes it seem that WP:VANITY, WP:SOAP and various other policies seem to apply here: these accounts seem to exist only to glorify one person, his achievements, and his associations. Moreover, before any of this latest "wave" of commentry was posted, I actually apologised to DrL, here, in case this procedure has upset her, and made my motives clear: a comment to Tim Smith on her talk page (here) seems to indicate that she knows Langan personally, and so I wanted to make it clear that this is not an attack on her or Langan. In fact, Tim Smith mentioned above that he thought that I was one of the easier editors to work with, so I don't know why there is a campaign afoot to completely discredit me in this manner: DrL is of the opinion that I should be banned. I think she is far too personally involved in this whole affair, and this is why Wikipedia discourages people from creating articles pertaining directly to themselves, their organisations, or people to whom they are close. I think this is one of the reasons that this whole affair has spiralled out of control like it has. If I have acted incorrectly here, I would like to ask the closing admin to ban and delete my account as well, and I shall refrain from contributing to Wikipedia in future, if it is to be nothing but a platform for people to advertise and glorify things having directly to do with themselves. I thought I was acting to make Wikipedia a better encyclopaedia, but it seems that some people see Wikipedia not as an encyclopaedia at all, but a mirror, a link repository, a funnel for web traffic, and an affirmation of their own self-worth, and get very irate when these functions are challenged. If I did wrong in disputing that, then I am sorry for misunderstanding the purpose of this website. Byrgenwulf 18:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Request to Overturn due to clear abuse of deletion process. User Byrgenwulf writes of the "consensus" regarding the article. We now know that this consensus was rigged, since the AfD initiator (Byrgenwulf) visited areas not directly related to the article's content, knowingly misrepresented it and its subject matter after repeatedly being corrected, and transparently recruited support. That he managed to do so is now a matter of record; however, it is also a matter of record that this was done under false pretenses, and that the supporters thereby recruited do not understand the article, its content, or the proper standards for notability thereof. I did not create the CTMU article, and I do not know Tim Smith. If Mr. Smith is queried on this matter, he will doubtless confirm our non-acquaintance prior to this controversy. As nearly as I can determine, the article was not an "advertisement", and in any case, it is entirely unclear what Tim Smith would have been gaining through his "advertizing" endeavors. Byrgenwulf's revised editing history still reveals that he registered at Wikipedia on July 2, 2006, a mere week before his attack on every single article relating to Christopher Langan and the CTMU. The CTMU (Article) Talk page clearly reveals that Byrgenwulf began his editorial onslaught by attacking CTMU content and voicing his extreme dislike of it. And so on. I therefore reiterate my request that the AfD be overturned and the article immediately undeleted on grounds of abuse of the deletion process. Thank you. DrL 18:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. Lest my previous remarks be taken as sanctioning Byrgenwulf's actions, I should clarify that his knowledge of the CTMU and willingness to engage in discussion were only "above average" with respect to the swarm of editors from WikiProject Pseudoscience and WikiProject Physics, who ranked at rock bottom in these respects. Byrgenwulf in fact repeatedly called the theory "pseudoscience" when, being philosophy, it is ineligible for that label, and he overlooked the distinction between comprehensiveness (which the CTMU claims) and completeness (which it does not) in his "proof" that Gödel's incompleteness theorem "rips [the CTMU] to shreds."

His talk-page engagement was punctuated by bursts of rapid-fire editing and frequent reverts, sometimes deleting entire multi-section blocks at a time. He broke Wikipedia policies like WP:3RR and WP:NPA, and his heavy-handed behavior at the outset was what started this whole fiasco; had he entered with a polite talk-page comment instead of editing the article to tar the CTMU and its author with pejorative labels, tensions might never have escalated. By adding the article to List of pseudoscientific theories and linking it at WikiProject Pseudoscience just hours before nominating it for deletion, he skewed the AfD and misled many participants into thinking that the CTMU purported to be empirical science, so that they then condemned it as "pseudoscience" and "pseudophysics" in their deletion arguments. He has now compounded that impropriety by adding this very deletion review to WikiProject Physics.

That said, I do commend his work on RQM, and the limited constructive work he did on CTMU. I regret that his other contributions were not similarly positive.

To reiterate, the CTMU is notable per Wikipedia:Notability, which says that "A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency." There is no question, in view of the numerous high-profile sources—Popular Science, The Times, 20/20, Newsday, Esquire, and more—in which it appeared, that the theory meets that condition. In short, the theory is notable, the AfD was subject to numerous irregularities, the deletion decision contradicted Wikipedia:Notability, the deletion review has already been compromised, and the article should be restored. Tim Smith 21:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse deletion.

I am concerned about an apparent undisclosed conflict of interest in the original articles

1. Mega Society (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
2. Mega Foundation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (created 10:55, 15 December 2005 by DrL (talk · contribs)); currently listed in AfD
3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mega Society (deleted 21 July 2006 following AfD)
4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (deleted 20 July 2006 following AfD)
5. The Ultranet (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (I believe this was originally created by DrL, but several page moves seem to have messed up the edit history)

To wit: from internal evidence it appears likely to me that DrL is IRL one "Dr. Gina Lynne LoSasso", who has registered the megafoundation.org domain in Northern Missouri. She has curtly denied this, but I request a checkuser because I frankly to not find her denial at all convincing. But in any case, DrL hasn't clarified the crucial issue of her possible financial connection with Mega and Ultranet. Note that the websites of Mega Foundation and UltraNet are in the megafoundation.org domain. I trust it is self-evident why I believe she should have disclosed her identity or refrained from editing articles on organizations which she founded. Various pages at the megafoundation.org website appear to be essays attributed to Christopher Michael Langan, another article which DrL has extensively edited and which has frequently been mentioned in these AfDs.---CH 00:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Oh, please. I have no financial interest in the Mega Foundation or The Ultranet. Please note that you are way off base here ... this is the CTMU review and you are just trying diversionary tactics. Try to focus on the content of what is going on. Thank you. DrL 03:05, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

DrL, if I really am wrong about this, I would like to know so that I can correct the record. But the internal evidence is so strong, and your denial so weak, that I don't find this convincing. All I know at this point is that you have denied having any financial interest in the Mega Foundation or The Ultranet, and you have said, in response to my question whether you are Dr Gina Lynne LoSasso IRL, simply that I am "misinformed" (about what?). Please provide some verifiable information proving or at least strongly suggesting that you are not connected with the subjects of the articles you have edited at WP. TIA ---CH 03:17, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I sympathize with any frustration that you may be experiencing as a result of your unconvinced state of mind. (If it helps, the Mega Foundation page clearly states that it is a nonprofit entity, and under the laws which govern such entities, there is no profit incentive attached to it. So a financial conflict of interest is out of the question regardless of anyone's personal identity.) However, I must also tell you that I consider your state of mind to be irrelevant to the topic at hand. This page is about the unwarranted deletion of the CTMU article, not about the Ultranet or the Mega Foundation, whose associated articles happen to have been attacked by the same person who started the CTMU AfD (apparently because they too are associated with somebody he hates). Once again, I did not write the CTMU article and do not know the person who did. If you find this response inadequate, you again have my sympathies. I can only advise you to try to focus on substance rather than irrelevant circumstantial conjecture. DrL 05:52, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

DrL, you are once again evading the issue: whether or not you have, as I suspect, an undisclosed conflict of interest which might reasonably lead you to slant information presented the articles on Christopher Michael Langan, Mega Foundation, The Ultranet and some others now deleted to present a favorable picture of the subjects. No-one accused you of "writing" (what, all by yourself?) the article on Langan's so-called Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. But if you are, as I suspect, Langan or his girlfriend, you should have disclosed that in a talk page note when you edited that article. Likewise when you edited various articles on Mega Society, Mega Foundation, UltraNet, if you are indeed Gina LoSasso or Chris Langan,the cofounders of those organizations. Likewise when you participated in AfDs on those articles, or in this undeletion review. That is common courtesy, as I see it.---CH 06:28, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Please! Ronald Hoeflin is the sole founder of the Mega Society, not Chris Langan nor anyone else (no, not even as a cofounder). --Michael C. Price ^talk 11:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems that I may have been quite right to suspect that DrL (talk · contribs) has been parsing my questions about her identity in order to avoid giving an honest answer. I have just been informed that her legal name is now "Gina Langan" because she has married Chris Langan. This would explain her strangely worded answer to one of my questions: "That is not my name and I would very much appreciate it if you take your baseless accusations elsewhere." ---CH 10:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

User Hillman's genteel notions of "common courtesy" are one thing; abuse of the deletion process is quite another. The issue here is the deletion of the CTMU article, and the well-documented abuses through which this was accomplished. Clearly, the article was not deleted because of "undisclosed conflicts of interest" on the parts of those trying to save it; if anything, the deletion would have occurred in spite of any such conflict. Therefore, conflict of interest is not the issue here, and by relentlessly dangling this red herring in everyone's face, Hillman is merely abusing the deletion review process.

Incidentally, my personal identity is none of Hillman's business. If I'd wanted to register at Wikipedia under my street name, I'd have done so without any help from Hillman. All that matters is that I made very sure that my own editing of the CTMU article was not influenced in any way by my personal identity, beliefs, or preferences, but only by my knowledge of the topic. That alone discharges my obligation to Wikipedia and its readers. I daresay that neither I nor anyone else has any good reason to think that DrL handled the situation any differently, and in fact, everyone was equally obligated to do exactly the same. If some did not, then this will be apparent in their edits; instead of being truthful, neutral and well-verified, their edits will be spurious, biased, and suppositional. All of the edits that were performed on the CTMU article are now a matter of record, and I'm willing to stand on my part of that record. If Hillman nevertheless suspects a conflict of interest, then the burden of proof is entirely on him; he would need to present evidence in the form of spurious, biased, or suppositional edits by me and whomever else he is accusing. But this is neither the time nor the place for such a (doomed) attempt, for it would have no bearing on the deletion process. Accordingly, I suggest that if User Hillman insists on worrying this particular bone, he take it elsewhere. Asmodeus 08:22, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Asmodeus, you wrote "User Hillman's genteel notions of "common courtesy" are one thing; abuse of the deletion process is quite another. The issue here is the deletion of the CTMU article, and the well-documented abuses through which this was accomplished. Clearly, the article was not deleted because of "undisclosed conflicts of interest" on the parts of those trying to save it; if anything, the deletion would have occurred in spite of any such conflict. Therefore, conflict of interest is not the issue here..." Aren't you trying to have your cake and eat it too? It seems that you claim that the original AfD was flawed because of alleged "abuses through which this was accomplished". Even if that were true, it seems to me that this apparent undisclosed conflict of interest on the part of the most prominent editor of the CTMU article (who is also the most prominent participant in the various related AfDs and this discussion) is highly relevant to deciding whether or not these articles belong in the Wikipedia.

You wrote "my personal identity is none of Hillman's business". All other things being equal, I'd agree. But it would be inappropriate for Langan to slant the WP article on Langan in his own favor, and unfortunately I feel that your edit history does raise the question of your possible personal connection to Langan. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't feel it were highly relevant to this discussion.

Let's get back to the original point: WP articles should avoid Vanispamcruft and should respect WP:NPOV. The only reason the question of anyone's identity arose in the first place is because the edits of yourself and DrL appear to be highly slanted, and moreoever, you and she seem to have adopted in the AfD discussion (and this one) a tone which I can only describe as personally aggrieved.

Under the circumstances, I wish you would not stand upon principle and that you and Dr L would simply provide some convincing evidence that you do not have any personal connection with the subjects of the articles you have edited, particularly CTMU. If you don't wish to divulge your identities to me, is there perhaps some third party whom you would trust to verify your IRL identity, but to not tell me what it is, just that it is not Chris Langan or Lynne LoSasso Langan? Someone whom I would trust to verify your IRL id? Barring this, would you and Dr L at least be willing to state outright that you are not the person known to me as Dr. Lynne LoSasso or the person known to me as Michael Langan, the confounders of Mega and (Langan) the author of CTMU?

Please, not again! Ronald Hoeflin is the sole founder of the Mega Society, not Chris Langan or anyone else (no, not even as a cofounder). --Michael C. Price ^talk 11:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll take your word for that. If I had the energy I'd strike any reference I might made to this. Can we stipulate the Christopher Langan and Gina LoSasso/Langan are cofounders of Mega Foundation and UltraNet? I am informed that Mega International is the holding company for MegaPress and Mega Foundation, BTW. --CH 12:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Part of the problem may be that it seems that you and DrL may not have enough experience at WP to know what a problem we have with WP:VSCA and with shilling. Combating this is my interest here, not the alleged campaign against HiQ-related articles which Michael Price has mentioned in some talk pages (I could find nothing suggesting any such campaign, but even if it does exist, I am not part of it!).

Does this help you to understand where I am coming from? ---CH 10:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. It looks like you've missed some background here, CH. Let me fill you in.

The most prominent editor of the CTMU article, and the most prominent participant in this deletion review, is me. I wrote the entire article from scratch, on my own initiative, with no help from anyone else, and no conflict of interest. From its creation in September 2005 until Byrgenwulf's appearance two weeks ago, the article's text, excepting minor tweaks, was entirely mine. Just before Byrgenwulf nominated it for deletion, he added it to List of pseudoscientific theories and linked it at WikiProject Pseudoscience (when the CTMU is philosophy, not empirical science), and within an hour a link to the AfD was posted at WikiProject Physics (when the CTMU is metaphysics, not physics), calling upon members of that project to view it.

At that point, the article and AfD were besieged by editors from WikiProject Physics and WikiProject Pseudoscience who had been misled into thinking that the theory purported to belong to, or could be accurately classified under, their fields of interest. As a result, they mischaracterized the theory as "pseudoscience" and "pseudophysics" in the AfD, voting it down on irrelevant field-specific notability criteria, and began a campaign to erase the bulk of the article. DrL's and Asmodeus's contributions were limited to adding references and futilely trying to reverse or mitigate these peremptory, uninformed edits, made with no attempt to gain talk-page consensus, and in open defiance of my calls for discussion. Not only did this swarm of editors lack any understanding of the material, but they reworded it to attribute to Langan positions the opposite of those he actually holds! We could barely get a word in edgewise, and the version of the article which was finally deleted bore nearly no resemblace to the highly accurate one which had preceded it, and was utterly useless as an explanation of the theory.

The notability of the topic is evident from Wikipedia:Notability, which states that "A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency." The CTMU was described to a circulation of 1.45 million subscribers and a readership of more than 7 million in Popular Science, which told them that "You can think of it as the answer to the question of how and why science is able to describe reality". Its scope and claims were announced to millions of viewers on 20/20. In The Times, which sells hundreds of thousands of copies daily, it was introduced as the latest in a series of achievements by great thinkers like Plato, Descartes, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking. It was introduced to a circulation of hundreds of thousands of people in Newsday, which called it "revolutionary stuff". It was described to a circulation of more than half a million readers of Esquire, which told them that "Simply put, the CTMU explains the meaning and substance of reality." The CTMU is clearly "known outside a narrow interest group or constituency," and therefore deserves an article here: not to assert it as truth, but to describe it, factually and neutrally. The existing article, though apparently less readable than desired, was highly accurate with respect to the theory, and needed to be fixed, not scrapped. In short, the theory is notable, the AfD was subject to numerous irregularities, and the article should be restored. Tim Smith 12:32, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Tim, I am becoming rather exhausted (as is probably all too evident!) but I appreciate this information. FWIW, I never thought you were a sock or closely involved with the Langans. And I am not unsympathetic to your frustration, which you have just depicted very well. I don't think I agree with your take on what happened during the original AfD, but I can see from what you wrote that this must have been very unpleasant. If the process or outcome really was unfair to you personally, I'll do what I can do help you save your work.

You wrote "they mischaracterized the theory as "pseudoscience" and "pseudophysics" in the AfD". Based upon what I have seen, that point is not clear to me. My memory of the original article is now rather vague, but I think you have pretty broad latitude in your own user space, so if you create User:Tim Smith/CTMU presenting what you think is a fair description, I'll take a look. This could be a draft for a new section in Christopher Michael Langan; if this discussion goes the way you hope, you could expand the draft into a fully fledged article on CTMU. I hope you realize that I was not at all being sarcastic above when I expressed astonishment that we hae read the tone of the Esquire piece and the other news items you mention so differently! I really did read these initially (and still read them) as having a certain ironic undertone, which I take to be mocking pretensions of all kinds, probably including those of mainstream philosphers and cosmologists, not from a scholarly standpoint of course, but more from the viewpoint that common sense suggests that most humans probably don't know nearly as much as they think they do :-/ ---CH 13:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Comment. The CTMU does not purport to be a scientific theory; indeed, Langan argues that "no general theory of reality can ever be reliably constructed by the standard empirical methods of science" (Langan 2002, p. 12), and that regarding questions about universal laws like "where in reality the laws might reside, how they might be expressed and implemented, why and how they came to be, and how their consistency and universality are maintained", "science alone is logically inadequate to answer them" (Langan 2002, p. 3). Because the theory claims to be not science, but philosophy, and not physics, but metaphysics, it is ineligible to be pseudoscience or pseudophysics.

The basic flaw in the deletion arguments was that they equated "notability" with "academic recognition." There are really two routes to notability: academic recognition, and popular exposure. Per WP:N, every topic which is either famous or important is notable, and though academic recognition might measure importance, popular exposure measures fame. Since the CTMU's popular exposure has been considerable, with appearances in mainstream media sources like Popular Science, 20/20, The Times, Newsday, Esquire, it qualifies as notable by that route.

A mere section in Langan's article would be inadequate as a description and would deprive readers of a valuable resource for understanding what they saw so tantalizingly outlined in the mainstream media. In fact, more than one AfD participant said they had found the article useful in that respect, and other readers would too. To explain the theory and satisfy those readers, we need not a section, but an article.

By the way, if you want to help me save my work as you suggested above, the main thing would be—well, to change that "endorse" to an "overturn". :) Tim Smith 01:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn delete I have no interest on the CTMU, but neither do I think my lack of interest is a reason for its deletion. There was clearly no consensus, in which case the default procedure is keep: see my comments on a related DRV here The whole AfD process is being abused in an inexcusable fashion. --Michael C. Price ^talk 05:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Michael, you wrote: "I have no interest on the CTMU, but neither do I think my lack of interest is a reason for its deletion." In my contribs to this discussion, I have been trying to clarify an apparent undisclosed conflict of interest. For you, the basic issue seems to be whether or not the result of the AfD was delete (as some admin called it) or no consensus (as you think it should have been called). Please don't try to confuse these two issues. ---CH 06:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

With all respect, Chris, my comment/vote had nothing to do with your preceeding comment, as the indent level should have indicated. I have no problem with you exposing a conflict of interest (I find that aspect quite informative). --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:50, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, sorry if I misunderstood. Thanks for "I find that aspect quite informative". I hope User:Harald88 sees that, heh! ---CH 10:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn, and address through mediation. I'm not in a position to comment whether or not the process of deletion was itself properly handled, but the concept of discussion certianly was not. That the AfD was stricken with sockarchy and edit warring is a matter of record. That the topic was misrepresented to certain communities, for whatever purpose, is also a matter of record. As a result, the discussion was primarily a debate on the veracity of the topic, rather than the verifiability of the account. Near the end of the AfD, I urged the discussion to turn to the dispute process for assistance, but I did not have the stake in the editting (having never editted the article myself) to do so personally. Compromise via mediation would be more beneficial than simple deletion. No matter what our personal opinions are about the theory and how well it would survive peer-review or whatnot, it has seen mention in multiple, wide-circulation print sources and on at least one very much mainstream broadcast program. Thus, awareness of the topic is widely held, making it a far more likely topic for search by a "typical user" (rather than by dedicated Wikipedians). That fact should weight heavily toward having some content here (because even if we kill this version, its presence in wider awareness means it will recur); that the topic meets the proposed inclusion criteria is also not without value in consideration. This is going to require more attention than just the AfD format can provide, but, as many topics' debates note, if Wikipedia can produce balanced articles on abortion and God, there is no reason that the community cannot help the various camps of editors produce a viable article here. Serpent's Choice 06:53, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

SC, you wrote "That the AfD was stricken with sockarchy and edit warring is a matter of record." I am not sure I understand. Are you saying that you think the original AfD outcome on CTMU was somehow rigged? That would be quite a serious allegation, so I wish you would summarize the gist of the case clearly and concisely!

You wrote "the discussion was primarily a debate on the veracity of the topic, rather than the verifiability of the account". It seems to me that the discussion involved establishing that CTMU is very obscure and apparently not taken seriously by any of those few physicists, philosophers, cosmologists, or mathematicians who happen to know about it. Indeed, I would say that this is not a theory as mathematicians or physicists or even philosophers use that term, much less a model as cosmologists use that term. In fact, I'd say CTMU is obscure because it is basically nonsense.

You wrote "No matter what our personal opinions are about the theory and how well it would survive peer-review or whatnot, it has seen mention in multiple, wide-circulation print sources and on at least one very much mainstream broadcast program." But the damning judgement that CTMU is nonsense seems to have been reached by every mathematcian, physicist, or philosopher I know who has looked at it, so this would appear to be, not a personal judgement, but one which is apparently virtually universally held by persons knowledgeable about these subjects. I actually agree, I think, that CTMU is sufficiently notable as a bizzare creation of an interestingly quirky fellow, but it seems to me that the wikibiography of Langan is the place to mention it.

One problem WP has experienced in dealing with "theories" proposed by living cranks is that cranks tend to game the system by appeal to a convenient misreading of WP:NPOV, in such a way that an article on a very silly topic grows without bound and becomes more and more unreadable, with he said/she said sections inserted randomly by various editors (sometimes writing in haste because they have been banned). Jack Sarfatti is a good example. After 14 months of experience dealing with this on a daily basis at WP, I came to the conclusion that a minimal description in the smallest possible number of articles servers our readers best, with judiciously chosen links to external websites, e.g. in this case, one link to the main Langan website would suffice (readers can navigate themselves to find what they want from there). ---CH 11:19, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of this page is to effect a review of the deletion of the CTMU article. Therefore, unkind or prosecutorial remarks which do not help us understand why that article was deleted have no place here.

But so as not to seem overly dismissive of Hillman's strong opinions, I hereby congratulate him. Through what appears to be sheer doggedness and tunnel vision, he has now singlehandedly managed to wrestle the discussion, at least in his own mind, back to a subterranean level on which he can use hot-button epithets like "nonsense" and "crank" against the topic of Tim Smith's fine article, righteously invoking the combined knowledge of "every mathematcian [sic], physicist, or philosopher he knows who has looked at it". How interesting, and how nice for Hillman.

However, even where a given Wikipedia user has anointed himself Grand Inquisitor In Charge of Science, Truth and His Own Personal Opinions, opinion alone does not suffice. We'd need something that would establish, by Wikipedia's exacting standards, that such a person is not merely guilty of another bigoted personal attack on the author of something he doesn't understand.

In order to help us all negotiate this speed bump, I have a suggestion to offer. Why doesn't some self-styled Wikipedia expert on metaphysical cosmology (that's philosophy, by the way) try to get a CTMU critique into an academic journal and dispose of all of this CTMU nonsense for good? After all, that would enable the kind of verifiable sourcing that Wikipedia requires for claims like the ones Hillman is currently making...claims about the content or integrity of the theory forming the topic of the article about which he is so tirelessly complaining.

Sadly, the answers are all too clear (and I hope that nobody takes them too personally). (1) As metaphysical cosmology, the CTMU is probably well over the heads of most self-styled experts on that topic. (2) If such an expert were to succeed in getting academic attention for his CTMU critiques, he would have merely succeeded in adding to its academic notability (on which it does not currently need to rely, as has already been thoroughly established). (3) If such an expert were to succeed in getting his CTMU critiques into an academic journal, that journal might have to let the author of that theory publish a detailed rebuttal, thus adding even further to its academic notability. (4) Despite said expert's fondest expectations, the author of the CTMU might make him look bad, and very bad indeed if said expert has previously expressed a dismissive, openly derisive, and ultimately irrational attitude towards the object of his criticism.

User Hillman is seemingly bent on creating the impression that the CTMU is too insignificant, too pathetically "wrong", to merit serious attention, let alone the attention of Hillman himself. This page has evidently become his own personal soapbox for that purpose, complete with sweeping and vaguely authoritative statements regarding various problems faced by Wikipedia. But in the final analysis, mere snide, unsubstantiated remarks are insufficient to discredit the subject matter of any Wikipedia article, and have no place in a deletion review, AfD, or any other editorial procedure.

I mean no disrespect to Hillman, of course. He's entitled to his opinions regardless of their harshness, provided that he expresses them only where they belong and substantiates them to the appropriate extent. But that is not the case here. Once again, this page is a review of the CTMU AfD, and opinionative remarks which do not help us understand why that article was deleted are irrelevant. Thank you. Asmodeus 17:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, Asmodeus, I don't think there is any truly polite way for me to say that I don't believe that you or DrL (talk · contribs) have been editing in good faith, because of an apparent attempt to disguise your real life identity, since I regard this as an attempt to disguise a hidden personal agenda in slanting WP articles in favor of the subjects of the articles you have edited, including the deleted CTMU article. I have however tried to avoid sarcasm and other violations of WP:CIV, and I urge to do likewise in your future comments here.

To repeat: I feel that editing the WP is not a right but a service to the readers of the Wikipedia, a service which we perform as volunteers. In my view, all matters of policy and procedure at WP should ultimately reduce to answering the question: of the available options, which one best serves the interests of our readers?

Since we can't even agree on what I feel are the basic ground rules (which would prohibit shilling with extreme prejudice), I don't know where this leaves us, particularly since you and DrL have issued what I regard as "nondenial denials" of my suspicions, and since I have said that at this point, based upon your "non-responsive responses" to my challenges, I frankly don't believe either of you. I want to stress that I have dealt with dozens of cases of suspected shilling over the past few months, and this is the only one I can recall where the suspected shills reacted the way which you and DrL have in this affair.

Let me reiterate to everyone here that if I am wrong about the real life identity of DrL and/or Asmodeus, I urgently want to be corrected, and I have tried to offer Asmodeus some compromise procedures which would respect his privacy while allaying my suspicions, such as finding a third party we both trust to whom A and DrL can prove their IRL identity. They would trust Third not to tell me their IRL identity (only that Third has confirmed that my guess is quite wrong) and I would trust Third to do a careful job of checking. (I'd be happy to consider alternative procedures, BTW; my only requirement, I think, is that I'd have to trust it not to give a false negative in the matter of suspected shilling.)

OK, I'll just add a general remark: in my view one of the saddest aspects of the growing phenomenon of guerilla marketing and shilling and other manipulation of information presented in Wikipedia articles to serve some hidden agenda on the part of particular editors is that legitimate attempts to combat such misbehavior can easily poison the atmosphere for everyone else. I would truly hate to falsely accuse anyone, and if that ever happened, I would want a chance to correct the record, both to clear the air and to prevent future "false positives". This poisoning of the atmosphere here is one of the most reasons why I feel that improved policies, guidelines, procedures, and software tools (for sysops and some trusted admins) are urgently needed to check out suspected shilling in the WP in a way which minimizes offense to innocent parties while throwing up nontrivial obstacles to genuine would-be shills and guerilla marketeers.

Given the extent to which things have deteriorated here, I don't think I can add anything more to this particular discussion. In any case, I hope and believe that I have established the points I wanted to make: in my view

1. shilling in the Wikipedia cannot possibly constitute editing in good faith,
2. such behavior would be so egregious (if I have established to the satisfaction of the WP community that this is what has been going on in this case) that it renders moot requests from DrL and Asmodeus to undelete articles which they edited (as I strongly suspect) under false pretenses, or other requests which would be deserving of consideration under the (false?) assumption that they were editing in good faith when they worked on the articles in question.

---CH 00:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy to address the concerns that were raised about my response. My interest is bettering the quality of Wikipedia, regardless of whether that leaves me right or wrong at the end. My claim is not that the process was "rigged", but rather than the outcome (deletion) reflected problems during the process (an amazing number of both sockpuppets and accusations of sockpupptery as well as a staggering number of edits during the AfD, many of which were PoV pushes and revert warring) and not an inherent ineligibility of the topic for inclusion. Many, perhaps most, of those advocating deletion have used Hillman's argument: "...[T]he damning judgement that CTMU is nonsense seems to have been reached by ... [various professionals]...". But that is not a reason for deletion under any Wikipolicy. There is a critical difference between having an article that is subtantively wrong and having one about an idea that is substantively wrong. CTMU has seen wide exposure to a segment of the populace who does not read physics journals and has never had a formal introduction to metaphysical cosmology: the layman readers of Popular Mechanics, The Times, Esquire, and Newsday and viewers of 20/20. It is true that there is little substantive content about the theory in those sources, but equally true that they have a vast combined readership. That means CTMU is a far more likely search topic than would otherwise be expected given its fringe nature. We should not be concerned with whether people have "shilled" for or against this article; that is the reason our articles are tasked to be written in a neutral point of view. Our greatest goal is -- simply put -- to be able to organize encyclopediac, verified information about things people might actually want more information on. Arguments about the identity and bias of Asmodeus or Hillman or DrL (or me) or any of the other people here are irrelevant to whether or not an article that meets the five pillars is possible. It is, thus my call to overturn. Serpent's Choice 02:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment including a more detaled response to Hillman's latest accusations, which bring our conversation to a point at which it can be reduced to roughly this:

Hillman: "I demand to know your identity..." Asmodeus: "Excuse me, but that's none of your business." Hillman: "...due to possible conflict of interest..." Asmodeus: "If you want to establish conflict of interest, that's easy - just look at the edits and identify those in which the conflict is exemplified." Hillman: "...and shilling, and guerilla marketeering!" Asmodeus: "If you want to establish shilling, that's easy too - just look at the edits and identify those in which goods or services are marketed for profit." Hillman: "No! In this case, merely being who I say you are constitutes a conflict of interest, and furthermore, a shillfest!" Asmodeus: "Is that something you've proven mathematically, or is that the outcome of empirical induction?" Hillman: "I feel it in the marrow of my bones! And I don't believe you!" Asmodeus: "You don't believe ...what, exactly?" Hillman: "That what I said about you is wrong!" Asmodeus: "What you said about me? Are you by any chance having a conversation with yourself?" Hillman: "We must burn away the cruft, kill the Body of Wikipedia to save its Soul!" Asmodeus: "Er...OK, Hillman. Whatever."

I've checked Hillman's User page. (Since this is all common knowledge here at Wikipedia, I trust that I'm not violating civility or confidentiality by commenting on it.) I find it to be a queer mixture of rationality and something else that is not easy to put one's finger on. He is torn regarding the entire Wikipedia project. He wants to stay, yet he wants to leave; he wants to write Wikipedia articles about math and physics, yet deems Wikipedia unworthy of his invaluable efforts; he calls the head of the Wikimedia Foundation "our God-King", but asserts that Wikipedia belongs in other hands. It seems that he is dissatisfied with the project's infuriating organizational laxity...the fact that many articles, like forbidden books of yore, need burning, that the Soul of Wikipedia may be cleansed and reborn in smoke and flames of fire. Purge the Holy Temple of sinners who wallow unrepentant in Vanispamcruftisement! Let the scholarly drive out the populist! Purify Wikipedia, protect it from the unwashed masses, the semiliterate scum, the academically unanointed! A careful, discerning reader of Hillman's User page is more than a little likely to find Hillman's ascetic vision for Wikipedia disquieting or even chilling in a burn-the-heretic, Salem-witch-hunt sort of way.

It has become clear to me that there are some things on which Hillman and I simply don't see eye to eye. Here are a few examples: Hillman seems to think that people who author theories shouldn't be able to edit articles about them; I say that for the most part, the original authors are among the very best editors such articles could possibly have (particularly if those articles deal with complex, hard-to-understand material and the authors confine their edits to corrective or protective changes). Hillman says that once a person and his ideas become the subjects of Wikipedia articles, they become fair game and can be mangled, defaced and ruined by random Wikipedia editors without right of defense due to "conflict of interest"; I say that this is unfair and impractical to the point of absurdity. Hillman says that board members of public-service nonprofit entities and their projects are "shilling" for them by writing brief but informative articles about them; I say that this violates the very definition of the term and ignores the commercial orientation of the associated Wikipedia guideline. Hillman says that famous people guarding their own reputations should be required to use their street names in Wikipedia, even if it means that they have to be accosted, mocked and insulted by gadflies and stalkers; I say that if Hillman wants to become moderately famous and open season on himself, he should leave others out of it. It's a real clash, a total failure to connect.

Suffice it to say that despite all the righteous bluster, Hillman's opinions on these matters simply don't make sense to me. Granted, Wikipedia is a revolutionary idea that could end up transforming the face of the Internet and the future of education. But it does not possess, and to my knowledge has never claimed, the right to appropriate ideas and then let the ignorant and/or malicious deface and degrade them without informed opposition until they are unrecognizable, discrediting them or destroying them in the process. I know of no coherent ethical calculus which entitles any organization to such a prerogative. As we have seen in this very instance, disaster can strike in the space of an instant; one angry, confused little individual can crawl out of the woodwork, press hot buttons and release philosophical phermones, and call up a chaotic swarm that will pick apart and clumsily rearrange a complex idea with all the finesse of a dust devil in a paper factory, rendering it unrecognizable and festooning it with snide remarks and bizarre critiques which give the appearance of having originated in some sort of extradimensional cul de sac. My considered position on that is very simple: I'm not obliged to let it happen to any idea I care about, "conflict of interest" or no, shilling accusations or no, "guerilla marketing" or no. It simply wouldn't be fair to Wikipedia's readership.

I have a hunch that countless people whose ideas have become topics in this encyclopedia, many of them controversial but quite notable, feel exactly the same way that I do. I humbly suggest that it might be wise for Wikipedia to make some allowance for them rather than leaving them at the utter mercy of their enemies, especially where their enemies are plainly motivated by some combination of bias, malice, and ignorance, as is unmistakably the case here. (And no, my street name is still none of Hillman's business.) Asmodeus 19:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

While this is probably obvious to most readers, just for the record: I did not in fact say any of the things attributed to "Hillman" in the purely imaginary conversation which Asmodeus posted just above. I feel that Asmodeus also misrepresents what I wrote on my (recently revised) user page, but I welcome feedback on this page, so I would very happy indeed if any interested Wikipedian would drop by, take a look, and leave a polite comment pro or con on my user talk page! But Asmodeus is correct on two points:

1. I have not yet organized my thoughts regarding the quality control problems facing WP (but see User:Hillman/Wikipedia quality control for a currently disorganized collection of some old material and a few new thoughts), nor have I had time to complete my unfinished essay on the difficult issue of digging. But I do have a fairly up-to-date survey of media criticism which I hope will be of interest at User:Hillman/Media_commentary_on_Wikipedia.
2. I have been in the process of "leaving WP" for about half of my 14 months or so as a Wikipedian, which I admit is a rather amusing indication of how addictive Wikipedia can be :-/

I feel that shilling is unacceptable behavior utterly inconsistent with editing in good faith, and constitutes a serious problem at WP. I and some others have been interested for some time in formulating, proposing, and establishing an official WP policy prohibiting "wikishilling". (A rough working definition off the top of my head: an anon or registered WP user who misrepresents his IRL identity so as to misleadingly imply that he is a disinterested third party, while editing WP articles on persons or subjects to whom he has a close personal connection, especially while making edits which slant an article in a manner when tends to mislead readers and which suggests an attempt to pursue a personal agenda such as personal financial gain or other clear personal benefits, is said to be wikishilling.) There is of course no danger than any such policy would fail to provide X with a convenient method for correcting factual misinformation about himself or his company/organization/whatever. The intent is to establish the common sense principle that in such cases X should register an account under his real name, or identify himself unambiguously in his user page, and leave a talk page message noting his personal connection with the topic at hand. In general, a working model would be the various well-established prohibitions against conflicts of interest in the legal and journalistic professions.

I see that Asmodeus now apparently admits that he is IRL Christopher Michael Langan, author of the twice deleted articles on CTMU under discussion here, and cofounder with his wife Gina Lynne Langan nee LoSasso of Meta Foundation and The Ultranet) posted above, incidently. If so, I think this tends to establish the point I was trying to establish regarding the issue which I raised, the apparent shilling by Asmodeus and DrL, so (to repeat what I said before Asmodeus posted the above "nonquotation quotations") I hope and believe this will be my final comment in this discussion. ---CH 20:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Excuse me please, Hillman. Christopher Langan did not write either of the CTMU articles which have appeared on Wikipedia. Both were written by neutral third parties. Prior to the article being attacked by vandals two weeks ago, I had never edited the CTMU article (this is probably true of Asmodeus as well, whom you have also targeted with false "shilling" accusations). It would be appreciated if you could be just a bit more responsible and minimally educate yourself about the facts before jumping in with the false and harmful allegations you've been indiscriminately spreading around. Thanks. DrL 22:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Overturn deletion, the very fact that it generates so much attention, is enough to endorse its notability. That it was writen up in PopSci all by itself it enough. That the theory is pseudoscience, or a crank theory rather than making it non-notable, makes it rather even more notable. Overturn. Wjhonson 05:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn deletion, many of these reason have been mentioned before, but the original AfD submitter clearly has a thing going against CTMU and its inventor, given he only registed 2/3 weeks ago and one of his first edits was: [3] (notice the crank addition). The article was judged based on being a physical theory and pseudoscience, but the theory is claimed by the author itself to be philosophical and should be judged as such. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 07:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I am trying to curtail my responses in this discussion, in order not to add to the already tiresome job that whoever makes a decision on all this nonsense is going to face. However, I am very concerned that other users are being taken in by the campaign of mischaracterisation which is being waged against me. I have said it once, I will say it again: I do not have a "thing" going against the CTMU; indeed, I informed DrL on her talk page (since she knows Langan) that my actions here are nothing personal, but rather part of my attempt to rid Wikipedia of the endemic vanity and proliferation of nonsense articles from which it currently suffers. I realise I am not in a sole position to make decisions on what counts as unacceptable, but that is why community consensus is important, something which I think indicates that Wikipedia does not want to play host to "vanispamcruftisement" for every random person with a theory, howeverso "philosophical" it may be, and however many articles they have had about them (not about their theory) in Muscle Man magazine. Once again, people should look at DrL and Asmodeus, and the extent of their contributions to this encyclopaedia: focused solely on Langan and his achievements, associations etc.; while my own contributions, which definitely have included quite a bit of attention to this little walled garden of vanity and so forth, have also extended elsewhere: not in any attempt to "cover up my hidden agenda", because my agenda is not hidden. My agenda here at Wikipedia is to help combat cranky theories, vanity, spam, and so on: as it says on my user profile. I feel it pertinent to add here, while on the topic of personal conduct and agendas, that DrL was caught posting links to Langan's NPO's website, which ask for money to view (proof: here is her edit; this is the link she posted). If Wikipedia wishes to play host to that sort of thing, and be a "blog", fundraiser, and sycophant to anyone and everyone, then I suppose I have no right to complain about that, but I do not think that that is the idea behind what calls itself an encyclopaedia. I ask anyone who wishes to see the reality behind this to survey my editing history, as well as that of DrL and Asmodeus, as well as look at the nature of our various contributions to this encyclopaedia, and exercise a bit of common sense in making their decisions for themselves. Byrgenwulf 09:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

1. I resent the accusation that I am taken in by the campaign of mischaracterisation. I can perfectly judged someones contributions by myself.
2. I see no other reason for the addition of a link to Crank in the article on Christopher Michael Langan than a personal disliking of him from your side. An addition like that is highly unencyclopedic (which you correctly regard as an important criteria).
3. Wikipedia uses books, movies, etc.. as sources, all of which you would have to pay for to read or watch them.
4. I have also looked at the contributions of the other editors you mentioned. Like you, they display an editing behaviour strongly directed against a very specific set of articles, which can, but doesn't have to be, worrying.
5. You seem to assume that I am in favor of an article on CTMU on Wikipedia. That is not true and not what I claimed. I just want every article to be judged on the correct merits and feel that that has not happened here. I think this article should be looked at again. That is the reason I am in favor of a overturning, so it can be judged again, in the right perspective.

Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:51, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I apologise if my previous comment seemed to insinuate that you cannot think for yourself: that was not the intention here. As far as the "crank" link goes, I have long admitted that was inappropriate, but as it happens I am not the first person to apply that epithet to Langan - and I have a written, published source to back that claim up. And I actually apologised to DrL for any upset I may have caused, because that was not my intention. Although as I see it this has little to do with the issue at hand here (although no doubt some see it differently).

I am not assuming anything about what opinions you, Cpt. Morgan Reinoutr, might have of what should be on Wikipedia or not, because my previous remark was not addressed to you in particular. It was a general remark on the nature of what is happening here. Byrgenwulf

Thanks for the explanation and apology accepted :). As you can imagine, I have not read each and every discussion on this topic prior to giving my opinion. Taking everything together, I still feel that this article has become the fighting ground for 2 groups of people with opposing (perhaps slightly personal) opinions on the matter and that this has prohibited the article from being judged correctly by independent editors. Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

My concern about the link to the book is that there is good reason to believe that there are undisclosed personal interests here on the part of DrL and Asmodeus (it's already clear that DrL knows Langan personally), and in my opinion posting a link soliciting funds for one's own (or a friend's, or whatever) concern is not an appropriate use of Wikipedia, no matter who's doing it (AIDS charities shouldn't be posting links for donations on AIDS articles, either).

My comment above was also not specifically intended as a "rebuttal" to Cpt. Morgan's request to overturn (I've been trying to refrain from that), but merely a reassertion of some of the facts as they stand, because there are many things going on here which cannot be underemphasised, and an attempt to set the record straight on my position with regards to this whole affair. Byrgenwulf 10:24, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Byrgenwulf, I already explained that I linked that page as a citation source to prove the existence of the book and verify the source of the article that is in the linked table of contents. That you could also purchase the book from that page is rather beside the point. My intentions in posting the link were not commercial in nature. WP:AGF, please. DrL 14:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Comment I note that a couple of users, one the abusive instigator of this AfD, are leveling accusations of "shilling" or "asking for money". This is a diversionary tactic and more than a little annoying. The Wikipedia page describing a "shill" pertains to the use of Wikipedia for commercial purposes; there is clearly none of that going on here. It appears that the accusations are based on a couple of articles written by DrL and a couple of pages containing written material linked for purposes of verification (as requested by critics of the disputed articles). The articles, both of which have been attacked by both of the accusers, are about a nonprofit entity and one of its projects respectively; the pages offer an ebook for sale and may ultimately link to other donation inputs for the nonprofit entity in question. Again, the ebook was clearly cited by way of verification, just as many other books and articles which cost money are cited for verification in many thousands of Wikipedia articles. Regarding the nonprofit entity that is the subject of one of the articles, many nonprofit entities which solicit donations have articles here on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is itself a nonprofit entity that solicits and accepts donations. Nonprofit entities need to do this to survive, and by law, there is no profit motive attached. These allegations are merely another underhanded attempt to sway the issue, and transparently betray the abusive tactics and despicable motives of those who are making them. The accusers are hereby asked to desist. Asmodeus 14:58, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Nota Bene Er hrm. I see Asmodeus (or should I say Mr. Langan?) made a mistake, but we'll get to that shortly. First, I must say that posting a commercial link to a book is against Wikipedia guidelines, which stipulate that an ISBN number must be provided instead. Of course, Langan's book is self-published, but self-published books are not regarded as reliable sources, anyway, according to WP:RS. So, the claim that the purpose of that link was to provide a verifiable source is not really accurate, and part of the ongoing deception and manipulation of the Wikipedia community in which Asmodeus has been indulging. Moreover, while I am perfectly well aware that money made by a non-profit organisation cannot be used by its members for personal financial gain and self-aggrandisement, I would nonetheless say that if one of the founders or board members of said organisation uses a public forum such as Wikipedia to act in such a manner as to bring gain to that organisation in the form of soliciting donations, then there is a conflict of interest, something which both DrL and Asmodeus have denied having. But, things do not look that way.

If one looks at this edit "diff", one can see that Asmodeus forgot to log in (perhaps after DrL logged off?): he replaced the signature of IP User:216.139.113.98 with his own signature. This IP address is registered to a service provider in Princeton, MO. The Langan couple (Mr Chris Langan and Dr Gina Langan nee LoSasso) have registered their websites in Cainsville, MO, which is just across the county border from Princeton -these two individuals are also co-founders of the Mega Foundation and its subsidiaries. So, in combination with other evidence, such as the comment DrL made to Tim Smith of which I have spoken above, it seems that "shilling" is indeed what is happening here. It seems that DrL and Asmodeus (assuming they are even two separate people, and not just sockpuppets, but I think they are two people) are far more personally involved than they are letting on, that there is something very foul afoot here, and that they have turned what would otherwise have been an innocuous AfD into a circus because of the vanity, soapboxing and other undesirable side-effects of a person who is personally involved in the subject of an article getting involved in its editing. This reminds me awfully of the Bogdanov brothers (as does Langan's "theory", incidentally).

I know Tim Smith wrote the initial article, and is seemingly unrelated to the Langans, but I think that the involvement of DrL and Asmodeus has been intrusive and disruptive enough to let the deletion decision stand. Moreover, I have been accused of being obsessed with Langan and CTMU. That is rubbish: I am, however, determined not to let what many people (misguidedly or otherwise) regard as a premium source of online information become a soapbox for misleading the gullible, glorifying the egomaniacal, and playing sycophant and toadie to every person who has been featured in a press article. I have smelt a rat with DrL and Asmodeus' involvement in this fiasco all along, and it seems now that my suspicions are concerned. And now that they are probably soon to be exposed for who and what they really are, I don't think I need to bother with this anymore.

I ask that any admin who reviews this discussion take very careful heed of what I wrote above here, and that they make whatever decision they do with this behaviour in mind. They will be deciding whether Wikipedia is to become a blog from which self-published self-proclaimed geniuses can tout their wares, or whether to limit the content of this encyclopaedia to neutral, third-party subjects. That's all I have to say at the moment. Byrgenwulf 16:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Attention When one is attacked and defends oneself, the attacker cannot call the defense a "conflict of interest". Similarly, when an idea or belief that one happens to hold is attacked, and one defends that idea or belief, the attacker is again prohibited from labeling the defense a "conflict of interest", particularly if the defense clearly makes no positive statements about the idea or belief but merely removes irrelevancies or baseless and ill-motivated criticisms and adds verification to existing statements. Does Byrgenwulf understand this? Wait...don't bother to answer. Of course Byrgenwulf understands this - he is, after all, the primary attacker, and is merely guilty of using another flimsy pretext to prosecute his abusive case against the article herein disputed. Byrgenwulf also understands, of course, that the question of who has what IP address, and who may share that address, is absolutely irrelevant, as are any and all diversionary conjectures regarding the identities of other participants on this page and others. This is a Deletion Review, and at the focus of that review are a host of abusive tactics employed for the purpose of abusing the review process by none other than Byrgenwulf himself (one Stephen O'Grady, a highly opinionated college student from South Africa with a lot of free time on his hands, who has falsely claimed to be a professional "philosopher of physics" in order to misleadingly gain support for his attacks in off-topic areas of the Wikipedia site). If we could all try to remain somewhere near this focus, it would no doubt be appreciated. Asmodeus 16:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Haha, Asmodeus, so I am right. And no, Asmodeus, once again I feel it pertinent to point out that you are lying: I did not falsely claim to be a "professional philosopher of physics", I said that I "work in the field of philosophy of physics, professionally", which is true. I do - as you know - tutoring undergrads and doing a professional job of it, if I say so myself. I'm also a member of the American Physical Society, etc. etc. So I still don't know why you lie about me like this and deliberately twist my words to make me look bad; further manipulation and deceit. And Asmodeus, it is an offence to post someone's real name on Wikipedia, and if you take careful note of what I wrote above, you will see I did not do this with regards to you. Not that I really care, and I knew you would do it, but I would like note to be taken of that offence. I am actually very much against online anonymity (that's why I use my real name on message boards) precisely because it leads to the kind of shenanigans we have witnessed here with vanity, conflicts of interest, and so forth. Byrgenwulf 16:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Response I hate to have to belabor my point. But once again, the focus of this Deletion Review involves transparent attempts to mislead others regarding the topic of the disputed article, and then lure them into the deletion process itself under false pretenses, on the part of the AfD instigator Byrgenwulf. Again, if Byrgenwulf's diversionary ramblings can maintain at least some proximity to this critical issue, it will no doubt be appreciated by all concerned (except Byrgenwulf himself, who evidently remains bent on abusing the deletion process). Asmodeus 16:58, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Endorse closure valid AFD and closure per policy. This is not the place to reargue the AFD. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Response What better place? This page is called a Deletion Review for exactly that reason...although we must now consider deceptive and malicious activities (on the part of AfD initiator Byrgenwulf) which clearly constitute abuse of the deletion process, but were not revealed in the original AfD itself. Asmodeus 18:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

No, this place is for debating whether the procedures were followed correctly, not for rearguing the merits of the AfD itself. According to AfD guidelines the closing admin has to produce a clear statement of the reasoning which lead to judgement. Ask hir for it and the check whether procedures as defined by the AfD guidelines were followed .... --Michael C. Price ^talk 18:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I have produced that rationale a ways up the discussion. (ESkog)^(Talk) 19:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn Delete The AfD was fraught with petty bickering, straying off topic, false claims of forgery (upon which many Wikipedians based their votes), and many other issues which Tim Smith has already talked about on this page. The original article by Tim Smith was a decent starting point for internet users looking for a neutral introduction to and summary of the CTMU. I was one such user. Properly qualified, a Wikipedia article about the CTMU doesn't hurt anyone. The process by which that article was deleted was a disgrace. --Wechselstrom 19:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

• Overturn Delete per arguments already made, by Tim Smith and others, above. --Tom1907 22:12, 24 July 2006 (UTC)