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An Open Letter About Tenebrae

By a Frustrated Wikipedia Editor

Dear Arbcom:

It’s been a couple of weeks since Wikipediocracy published what seemed to be a very convincing indictment of Wikipedia editor Tenebrae. Obviously, you are in a tricky position: Tenebrae is an editor who has been around for a very long time, and does a lot of work on BLPs. He has also spent 15 years promoting himself, his wife, his books, his employers, and, worst of all, businesses in which he has a financial interest. So, in hopes that it helps you to come to a decision, this is an open letter urging you to take action against Tenebrae — or clear the way for the community to do so.

The case may appear to hinge on Tenebrae being Newsday writer Frank Lovece. Thanks to the Daily Dot (with whom the primary author of the Wikipediocracy piece collaborated), we know that Lovece denies the identification. The connection between Lovece and Tenebrae is not quite an open secret, but it has been known and discussed on Wikipedia for at least a decade. Admins who are members of the oversight team are well aware of it, since just about every mention of Tenebrae and Lovece in the same discussion has been oversighted.

It’s really a moot point, though. For the sake of argument, let’s take Frank Lovece at his word when he states “I do not know anything about that.” This leaves us with an editor who isn’t Frank Lovece but, for unknown reasons, has been promoting Frank Lovece’s interests for years and is still doing it, as recently as a few days ago. In normal circumstances, this could be addressed on the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard, but again, it appears impossible to discuss the situation without being accused of “outing” and

…continue reading An Open Letter About Tenebrae

What’s in a Name?

Peppermint, uploaded by Tenebrae to Wikimedia Commons

Peppermint abandoned her original name, became famous under a new name, and politely asked everyone to refer to her by her new, legal name. No problem, right? Well, some Wikipedians do have a problem. For some, it is a totally unacceptable imposition.

…continue reading What’s in a Name?

The Nicholas Alahverdian Story, Part Two

A case study in Wikipedia failure

by Dahlia Raven (see also: Part One; Part Three; Epilogue)

Why does Nicholas Alahverdian have a Wikipedia entry at all?

The simple answer is that an editor named Tkfy7cf created it. Not as “Nicholas Alahverdian,” but as “Nicholas Alahverdian I” (note the “I”). It was started on 14 November 2019, fully formed and including a photograph. On Wikipedia, that in itself is usually considered suspicious, so it was only a matter of minutes before it was moved to the correct title, and then immediately nominated for deletion.

The deletion discussion was closed with a very lukewarm keep:

The result was keep. I see that there are concerns about sockpuppetry in this discussion, but on the substance it seems like the various GNG-based claims of notability have been only weakly contested even if the “Harvard University alumnus” notability claim has not gained much acceptance. The BLP1E point is somewhat less clear but it hasn’t received enough support to make a deletion consensus.

There will very likely be another deletion discussion and another chance to debate the merits of Alahverdian’s article, but let’s examine one of the non-sockpuppet comments, if only because it’s so terribly misguided:

Keep. He was also an author who attended Harvard University He wrote: Dreading and Hoping All He was also published in the Providence Journal. Seems to have non-trivial coverage. Quebec Tribune, and again Quebec News Tribune. My opinion is non-trivial SIGCOV exists. It is concentrated on the East coast, New England, but that is not a concern for our guidelines. Lightburst (talk) 21:42, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Alahverdian is an author; a self-published author.He did attend Harvard, and was “administratively withdrawn,” as covered in Part One of this series.He was published in the Providence Journal. It was

…continue reading The Nicholas Alahverdian Story, Part Two