Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Phillip Greaves

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

The result was as follows: The nomination calls on Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Subjects notable only for one event, which further references Wikipedia:Notability (people)#People notable for only one event. For the uninitiated, "Biographies of living persons" (BLPs) are something of a fetish item, and merely saying the words invokes the shadow of arbitration.

  • The first point of call here is to look at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Deletion. Sadly (or, if you're more of the "hard cases make bad law type," happily) there is little proscriptive guidance there. This section appears to exist only to emphasise (and legitimise) that deletion is the end result of unsourced material on living people.
  • Having reviewed the policy goundwork, and turning to the dabate itself, very few of those commenting appeared to adress the issue raised in the nomination. Naming names here:
    • Shaliya waya/Tokyogirl79/Stonemason89 - Do not discuss Greaves at all, instead conflate him (the person) with the "case" (this event.)
    • Hinata/BabbaQ - Does not contribute meaningfuly to the debate. Does not explain at all why the nomination reasons do not apply.
    • Bigtimepeace - These comments appear well-informed and congruent with both the letter and spirit of policy.
    • 98.254.220.120/Wnt - While these somewhat-prolix comments are clearly in good faith, they still fail to adress the nomination.

Given that the article's content (when the material related to the "one event" is removed) consists of "Greaves is a former nurse's aide," the only reasonable outcome to this debate is delete.

Aaron Brenneman (talk) 02:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply
]

Phillip Greaves
Phillip Greaves (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log
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I would think that this fails

Amazon.com controversies#Pedophile guide. NW (Talk) 22:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply
]

  • Comment - Been there; done that. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure. The arrest of the author has not made the book any more notable. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 00:29, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is a very important event in US History. Greaves arrest constitutes the very first time since the Bill of Right was ratified that any American citizen has ever been arrested for written words alone, merely for expressing an unpopular political view or for describing way for people to commit crimes. The author of "Hitman--A Guide to being a successful hitman and assasian" was never charged with a crime even though someone used his book to commit murder. Niether was the author of the Turner Diaries ever arrested. In it, he tells its readers how to build bombs and attack the US. This book inspired Timothy McVeigh. Still the author of this book was never charged with a crime. The author of the Anarchist's Cookbook was never charged with a crime. It describes how to make high explosives, and how to be a successful terrorist. The person who published a book on how to build an atom bomb was never arresed. Nor were any of those people arrested who wrote books on how to build illegal silencers. So, it looks like we are going to carve out an exception to the first Amendment for people who claim pedophillia ought not be a crime. If the book had promoted Hitler, the return of the Third Reich and the extermination of all blacks and Jews, no one would be saying the author of such a book should be charged with a crime. Nor would the author of a book that advocated rape, murder, Satanism, cannablism, and sexual torture of adult females be charged with a crime. So, yes, this guy's arrest is a historic event. So is the amazing fact that his actions took place in Colorado, but he is being charged in a county in Florida where he never stepped foot. All around this is case filled with all kinds of legal precident. I doubt this case will make to the US Supreme Court. Very few cases do. Most likely there will be a plea-bargain with a time-served sentence allowing the guy to go free. And the question will remain an open question for a long time to come whether or not this guy really violated any law. Anyone who assumes this guy must be guilty of child abuse obviously can't separate fantasy from reality. Many people have all kinds of taboo fantasies, but do not act on them. This case is an example of hysterical witch-hunting in our time. CHILD ABUSE IS A HORRIBLE CRIME, but those guilty of horrific crimes like child abuse do not generally seek national attention. If we start locking up people for what they think and for things that turn them on which they don't act upon, where will it end?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.254.220.120 (talk) 06:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
All essays. And very generic reply. Still, this is a good article so I vote Keep --Hinata talk 21:46, 28 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
talk) 03:02, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply
]
Yeah, right - and Barack Obama is a BLP1E because everything notable that he did resulted from a decision to go into politics! I feel that, in general, articles seem more likely to be AfD'd because someone doesn't like what they are about, than for being bad articles. Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of unsourced articles that will never end up here, even unsourced BLPs, but instead this tribunal seems dead-set on removing objects of multiple major widespread news coverage. Wnt (talk) 15:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wnt, I like what you said about Barack Obama. Most people who are famous are famous (or infamous) for just one reason, though fame can be spread out over a period of time. Actors who have acted in one film are notable. One-hit wonders are notable. So why shouldn't an author who has published one book (in this case controversial) not be notable? I can see the BLP1E guideline of not being notable getting applied to a case where a man molests a child, and there is widespread coverage for 1-2 days that afterwards ceases for good. There is even a guideline (
nationwide
coverage on two separate occasions when separate events surrounding the book occurred. While there are many articles on people famous for more routine stuff, like simply acting in a film or singing a song, and they are eligible, nothing like this has ever happened before.
I also like what you said about what pages end up here and what pages don't. Come to think of it, Wikipedia has millions of articles now. With just 86,400 seconds in a day, no single person knows or can possibly know what most of them are. Most of them are on obscure topics most people do not know about. They may or may not meet inclusion guidelines. That is a different matter. But the existence of this particular article is known to many more people because Mr. Greaves has been in the national media lately. All it takes for an article to end up here is one person, probably one
looking for a witchhunt. In an ironic twist, it is the more popular articles like these that tend to be challenged. Shaliya waya (talk) 00:04, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Comment - The arrest is still not tied to Amazon in any way. It occurred after the Polk Co. Sheriff ordered a paper copy of the book directly from Greaves, and after the fact arranged for his arrest and extradition. Amazon had no involvement whatsoever. Therefore, this will not belong in any Amazon article.
I believe that most agree this article's content does belong in Wikipedia somewhere. One of three things has to occur.
  1. The title is kept the same
  2. This article gets renamed
  3. This article's content gets merged somewhere else. Once again, the arrest was not an Amazon controversy.

Shaliya waya (talk) 19:20, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree with your point, but it isn't really an argument for retaining this article with the current title since it doesn't go against the basic BLP1E argument raised by the nominator. If anything it's an argument for redirecting Greaves to a re-created article at
The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:15, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply
]
When you have a situation in which you have an author and a book, and there can be an article on one but not the other, does it make more sense to have an article on the author with the book title redirecting, or the book with the author's name redirecting? Shaliya waya (talk) 18:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Per BLP1E, the answer will usually be the latter, at least in my interpretation. I would argue that the "event" (because we should usually keep articles about the event, not the person, when we are talking about relatively minor events like this) is the publication of the book and all of the ensuing controversy. In a way, at this point, Greaves himself is not really important per say. The book he wrote is what matters, at least for now. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, or Merge and redirect per the AfD for the book. If the consensus regarding the book was that it was not notable enough for an article, then the same goes for the author (seeing as the author is only known because of the controversy surrounding the book)! When and if it does become notable (e.g. if it ends up in the Supreme Court) it can have an article, but until then there's no compelling reason to overturn the previously established consensus. --67.85.190.217 (talk) 21:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still say that it should be kept as a seperate article from the amazon controversies page. If we were going to go by the BLP1E argument then a good chunk of articles would be deleted and again, I bring up the Yale abortion art controversey. That was only one event and one person, yet it still merited an article. There are others that are similar. I do think that perhaps it would be better for this to be renamed, but this does merit an article. Anything happening now is not really related to amazon and Greaves' potential for arrest brings up a lot of controversey as far as freedom of speech goes. I say that at the very least, we should leave the article for now. This is all still in the early stages. Once Greaves goes to court- and he WILL go to court, there's no crystal balling about that- this is going to get an obscene (no pun intended) amount of publicity. Greaves' book brings up a lot of questions as to what should and shouldn't be considered FoS. It's more than just a maybe-pedophile writing a creepy book that amazon was pressured to yank.
    talk) 04:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)tokyogirl79[reply
    ]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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