Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Kedar Joshi

BD2412 T 20:17, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Kedar Joshi
Notability of this philosopher is disputed at Wikipedia. The cited works are a pair of vanity pages at bepress.com, and the Wikipedia article indicates these comprise the entire body of his work (also self-published via Red Lead Bookstore print-on-demand service as Superultramodern Science and Philosophy, ISBN 978-0-8059-8130-8 ). Notwithstanding a claimed handful of mentions in Indian popular press, he clearly does not meet Wikipedia's criteria for Notability (academics) at this time. (Cf. the suite of articles on this person's ideas at Wikiversity, where there does not appear to be a Notability policy or guideline, and where the policy of citing sources that are considered to be reliable by experts who publish in peer-reviewed sources appears to have been ignored.) — Ningauble 21:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Vote closes: 22:00, 8 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete as nom. ~ Ningauble 21:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. I’ve added some more external links at the talk page of the Wikipedia article on the subject. I reckon the subject is notable. Should be a weak keep perhaps. ~ RogDel 23:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The one claimed citation from a scholarly article is not about his work. It merely quotes the sort of random quip that may be expected to turn up when someone is aggressively spammed all over the internet. Notice that on his paper posted at SSRN he is identified as "affiliation not provided." He is a self-published nobody. The industrious spamming of numerous hosting sites, wikis, quotation pages, &tc. has not received the sort of independent coverage that would place him in Category:Notable eccentrics either, it is just a sad cry for attention. ~ Ningauble 20:00, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I don’t quite agree. The subject’s quotes appearing at places like The Times of India, The Nassau Guardian, and also like larepublica.net (see the way it appears there with praise), Quoteland.com, todayinsci.com, etc., does not give the impression that he is a nobody. Yes, there do seem to be sites where anyone as a registered user may add stuff, but that does not seem sufficient a ground for the conviction that it is spamming (though some of it looks likely to be spam); and there also seem to be numerous quotations’ sites where only site admins can add quotes. (Even a WQ admin seems to have added one of his quotes to the page Superstition, as sourced from Anon.?, Quotations: Superultramodern Science and Philosophy (2005).) There seem to be websites (as sources on Google news) and blogs where main editors and writers seem to have taken interest in publishing works of/about the author, though none of the sites may be notable enough for a WP article. And there also appear to be claims of significant coverage in 4–5 notable, mainstream Indian news sources. Some of the subject’s works also seem to appear at e-prints such as CogPrints and HTP Prints, which seem to have academic editorial oversight; and some, though apparently self-published, seem to be indexed at WorldCat and at the Library of Congress Authorities. Terms and acronyms coined by him also seem to be included in a few, notable online dictionaries such as Acronym Finder. He is identified as affiliation not provided to SSRN, but does one need to be affiliated to some institution to be considered notable, say under WP:Notability? For these reasons, and considering the seeming quotability of the quotes (and notability of some of the quotes), I believe keeping the page makes more sense unless the WP article on the subject is deleted. Also, many WP editors may find the subject notable, and the WP article may remain as a result of a possible AfD. ~ RogDel 21:24, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The quote at Superstition was added by an IP (dif), an administrator (that was me) later merely labeled it as "Anon.?" because the author was not identified (dif). Linking to home pages that contain no mention of him, listing indexes that cover everything published, citing sites that scrape quotes from all over the web, & etc., &etc., are red herrings that show nothing. Self publication shows less than nothing: "It should be especially noted that self-publication and/or publication by a vanity press indicates, but does not establish non-notability." [emphasis in original] Looking at the links you posted this month on the Wikipedia talk page, but disregarding the ones described as merely quotes, and the ones that are obviously user-generated-content or open hosting sites (blogs, newsgroups, wordpress):
 * The "biographical entry" at The Carbon Capture Report is no such thing. This is just an automated web indexer.
 * The Ground Report piece is a single paragraph noting that Joshi called the Bhagavad Gita inherently satanic, posted by a pseudonymous one-time contributor to a user-generated-content site.
 * The Paranominal piece appears under the masthead "All things weird, strange and slightly unimportant. Send us your paranormal story!" Enough said? No? They are an aggregator of oddities, and the content is a link to a post by "Anonymous" at beforeitsnews.com, a user-generated-content site.
 * The Rupee News piece is a "letter to the editors" in which material is merely copied from Joshi's bepress.com page with no analysis or comment other than "Just have a look."
 * In terms of the General notability guideline:
 * Is it fair to disregard random "quotes"? Yes, that is not "significant coverage."
 * Is it fair to disregard user-generated-content? Yes, they are not "reliable sources."
 * (I also disregarded the a non-English post at larepublica.net, sight-unseen, because it crashed my browser when I tried to look, I couldn't read it if it worked, and ".net" is not usually indicative of reliable sources anyway.)
 * In short: it is hard to take a self-published person seriously; and as more non-serious links are added it only gets harder. A notable farce can be a very fine thing. This isn't one.~ Ningauble 02:50, 9 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per Ningauble and Quotability, because the quotes are nearly-incoherent attempts at creating aphorisms. -Sketchmoose 13:55, 8 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete, per nom and further discussion above. ~ UDScott 15:42, 9 July 2010 (UTC)