Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/James Hansen


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

The result was: Delete.  Cbrown1023   talk   01:33, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

James Hansen
From history, it seemed to be transwikied from WP article. So the notability may be met. But I am hesitant to call this article "quotes" ...--Aphaia 19:17, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Vote closes: 20:00, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete unless notability evidence (not just his curriculum vitae) cited here and pithy quotes (not huge tracts from a speech) independently sourced (not merely taken from the quotee's university user-account webpages, which is a form of self-publishing). Wikiquote occasionally is used to collect concise, specific quotes to support Wikipedia material, but this is quite excessive. Nor should we have data-intensive charts for our quote articles. We aren't here to push any causes, however noble they may be. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and Jeffq. ~ UDScott 20:49, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Unlike a quote.--Jusjih 03:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. - InvisibleSun 05:29, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and Jeffq -- Herby talk thyme 09:39, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep From the responses on voting on deletion of the ‘James Hansen’ page, it appears that not only do the voters object to speeches and charts from being quoted on this page but the voters object to there being a ‘James Hansen’ page in WikiQuotes. Have the voters decided that James Hansen body of work contains no interesting quotes?

"Why would the voters reach such a conclusion? Is it because they object to climate science or just controversial climate scientist? Perhaps all controversial climate scientists should be deleted from all WikiQuote pages or perhaps only those ones that offer opinions that voters disagree with?  Should the ‘Peter Agre’, ‘Paul Knappenberger’, ‘Christopher Monckton’, ‘David Douglass’, ‘Global warming’, ‘David Suzuki’ and ‘James Lovelock’ as well as numerous other pages be deleted? Is intolerance for opposing viewpoints more powerful than the desire for understanding and dialog?  I look forward to your comments and questions." Id447 19:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Id447, I can appreciate your concern about the possibility of ideological bias here. Such things are rather common on Wikipedia and do come up occasionally here as well. But it is a standard practice here to nominate articles, even from notable subjects, based on their failure to follow basic expectations for a quote article: a minimal set of succinct, memorable quotes, preferably with cited sources. We have on a number of occasions come across long tracts from speeches. If someone is interested enough in the subject, they may winnow the material down to a pithy set of quotes. If not, it's quite common for the article to be nominated for deletion specifically to drum up community interest in getting this task done. (We have only a dozen or so frequent editors, so they can't be expected to trim every such article they find on their own. That's why wikis exist — to get community participation in editing.) The best way to get folks to switch from "delete" to "keep" is to address the cited issues in the votes. Since I made the most specific list of issues, I'll even tell you specifically what you can do to save the article:
 * Find one or more quotes from Hansen (on the very same subject, if you like) that have been reported in reliable sources, like news articles, a NASA website, or Congressional Quarterly, and add them (with the sources cited) to a section titled "Sourced".
 * Replace the unnecessary C.V. with a proper lead section, which for Wikiquote usually means 1-3 sentences from the WP article's lead section, just for basic subject identification.
 * Remove the huge speech excerpt.
 * Replace the unnecessary graph (Wikiquote is not an encyclopedia) with the Commons image of Hansen, just as in the WP article.
 * I could have done all these things myself (and maybe someone else will do this eventually), but I'd rather encourage a new Wikiquotian to learn this process for him/herself. I believe I'm doing more good when I teach someone to fish instead of giving them a fish, especially when it's Wikiquote which gets fed for a lifetime by all the new fisherfolk. &#9786; ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:42, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I know of no justification for the strict enforcement of such standards. Id447 18:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep
 * Struck second vote by user. You can make as many posts as you wish, but you many only have one active vote recorded. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Id447, I resent the implication that Wikiquote should have sloppy enforcement of standards. I will repeat what I've said often on both Wikiquote and Wikipedia, and which no one has ever come up with a compelling counter to: just because other articles exist that don't meet basic standards, doesn't justify the sub-standard existence of any particular article. We need all our articles to rise to these standards, but the community can only be expected to work on those that are brought to its attention, either here, at Village pump, or other places. (The rest must wait for random editors to come across them or to go looking for them.) WQ:VFD and WQ:VP are the two most prominent means to focus community attention on a problem article, and VFD is specifically designed to get the problems addressed quickly — within a week if possible. Many articles that make it here, like this one, have clear potential and can be expected to be fixed in short order. Unfortunately, some of these articles' editors insist on pushing unsupportable arguments rather than taking a few minutes to meet these basic standards. I am glad to see that you are working on addressing the cited problems. You support my hope that we will have a solid article shortly. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:18, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete or Transwiki While notability claim is filled, I think it is not our mission to host almost a whole work, even they are separated (see talk). It should go to Wikisource instead if the license of this publishing allows that . --Aphaia 01:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure Wikisource would want it. If I understand their inclusion guidelines correctly, they want entire works (not just a page), and they tend not to favor ordinary PD works that are readily available on the web. But I could be wrong. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah I didn't intend to move only one page to there. Rather I'd have liked to suggest to post the whole work. --Aphaia 03:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom.--H*bad 19:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.