Wikiquote:Votes for deletion archive/Ben Payton


 * 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. — Jeffq 04:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Ben Payton
This page is a nearly-identical copy of User:Ben Payton in the article space (so probably vanity) and includes no assertion of notability. &mdash;LrdChaos 22:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Vote closed. Result: delete (4 proper Deletes, 1 discounted late Delete; 3 counted Keeps [Forrest Hump, Great Warrior, Changetheworld] since 88.107.104.96 not only attempted 2 deceptions but also is a suspected sockpuppet of Forrest Hump/Ben Payton; most importantly, no attempt was made to change the article either to source the notability of the putative quotee (a British "orator") or to replace the material with quotes from the identified notable Benjamin Payton). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:00, 28 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete. &mdash;LrdChaos 22:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Do not delete Actually this article is not remotely similar to the User: Ben Payton page and it does include an assertion of notability. Oh, and by the way, why not read the page before you vote to delete it?
 * Comment. At the time of the nomination, this was the "Ben Payton" page and this was the "User:Ben Payton" page. At the time, they were nearly identical. Many of the changes since then have been from an anon user, not User:Ben Payton (which, had I noticed, would have been reverted, as edits to User pages (not User talk pages) should only be from that user). As to notability, while the article does now include an assertion of notability, I'm unable to find evidence to support it. The top results for a Google search on the name are a Wikipedia user page, a comic book character, a musician, etc. For all that, there are only 164 results, and only two (both pages on the same site, www.school-portal.co.uk) appear to be this person. &mdash;LrdChaos 16:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't delete for those fairly obvious reasons Forrest Hump
 * Don't delete there's some memorable quotes here by a noted public speaker UDScott
 * I have blocked this IP address for 3 days for impersonating another user. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:48, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Ben Payton is an extremely well known figure up here in Alaska and if you've read the article about him you'll see that he's an highly impressive orator. Incidentally a google search reveals some 1,4100,000 results Great Warrior of the North
 * The first sentence above is not evidence, but a mere claim. For all we know, the author might not be "up here in Alaska", but halfway around the world instead. That's why personal attestations are not considered evidence. It also includes the standard attempt to ignore notability and verifiability requirements by selling the qualities of the quotes and quotee. As for the supposed Google search, here is mine for "Ben Payton", which yields 377 hits, remarkably low for a presumably common name, even if no Ben Payton is notable. I invite GWotN to provide us with a link to his Google search as evidence. Otherwise, given his current edit history (1 edit each to "Ben Payton", his own user page, and this page), I would have to suspect him of being a sockpuppet of User:Ben Payton himself. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 21:07, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Note. It is possible that User:Ben Payton, User:Forrest Hump, and the IP 88.107.104.96 are all the same user, given the contribution history of the users, and the fact that 88.107.104.96 has made edits to the user pages for both users. &mdash;LrdChaos 17:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment. The current article claims that Ben Payton is "President of Tuskegee University in Alaska". Since Tuskegee University (at least the only one I know of) is in Alabama, this reinforces, along with the impersonation, apparent sockpuppetry, and the complete lack of actual evidence (not just unsupported claims), the idea that these users are all the the person, who is a prankster. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, concur with Jeffq and LrdChaos. ~ UDScott 13:21, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: There seems to be quite a bit of confusion promulgated over this article. User:Ben Payton, who created this article, states that this person is a "well known British orator". User:Great Warrior of the North added a claim that the quotee was "President of Tuskegee University in Alaska and shared a podium with President George W. Bush when he visited the university in April 2006", and added the above comment that the quotee "is an extremely well known figure up here in Alaska". An anonymous user in the same network as our impersonator here, 88.107.104.96, quickly reverted GWotN's edit. My own research turned up a "President Benjamin F. Payton" of Tuskegee University in Alabama, who did indeed give a speech before Bush. (See Payton bio, White House press release, Tuskegee version, Payton quotes.) This person has no Wikipedia article at this time, under "Benjamin Payton" (the canonical representation) or any reasonable variation. I draw the following conclusions from this and the above information:
 * User:Ben Payton, who uses British spelling on his user page, created a vanity article about himself.
 * ,, (all of whom operate from within UK ISP Tiscali's DSL network of likely dynamic IP addresses), and User:Forrest Hump are likely sockpuppets of User:Ben Payton. Even if they aren't, their combined contributions to Wikiquote to-date have been solely to support the British Ben Payton (with only minor exceptions for user pages and a single VfD vote supporting Hannah Richardson while admitting this person is not notable).
 * User:Great Warrior of the North, who supports the article, seems to think it's about the Tuskegee president, and despite apparently being from Alaska, claims familiarity with this Payton while thinking he works in Alaska rather than Alabama (a rather significant error).
 * Dr. Benjamin F. Payton seems to be notable enough for quoting, but no one participating in this VfD seems to really know this person or wish to correctly quote him.
 * My conclusion is that nobody here is willing to make this article even a stub about a notable person. I would recommend that if Tuskegee fans wish to have an article on their President, they should start one from scratch at Benjamin Payton (and don't forget the sources that I took the trouble to dig up). This article is a hopeless mess. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. InvisibleSun 05:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep i've read through all the articles nominated for deletion, and this is one of the very few that is any good. How can it be a 'hopeless mess' when its actually got outstanding pieces of rhetoric? Wikiquote is supposed to be about good quotations, so lets keep the few that we have. Changetheworld 19:12 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I wasn't very clear when I said the article was a hopeless mess. I really meant that trying to figure out what this article should be is a hopeless mess, per my above research on the subject(s) and the editors' postings and edit histories. Pithiness of quotes is irrelevant to Wikiquote if the quotee is not notable. Wikiquote is indeed about "good quotations", but only from "notable people and creative works" (from the first sentence on Main Page), and these should be sourced whenever possible. (Wikiquote mentions quotes that have "achieved fame" by themselves, but this means truly well-known quotes of anonymous origin, not an excuse for people to post their own sayings, which is what makes our current Anonymous article a near-total waste of computer storage.) That's not my policy or the policy of one regular editor or sysop; it is Wikimedia Foundation policy about the purposes and contents of its projects. There are many, many other quote websites that will accept quotes from anyone without establishing notability. This just isn't one of them. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:37, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per it being a pure vanity page as is made clearer by the sockpuppets which are currently going on. SorryGuy 23:58, 27 May 2006 (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.