Next Prodigy Problem

[Ming]

Alyssa Carson (T-H-L) is a teen kid who wants to be an astronaut. She (or Dad, Ming guesses) has a website pushing this from whence comes all the pictures you see. The history of the article is, um, opaque. The next Jacob Barnett case? Probably.

[AndyTheGrump]

There seems to be some sort of weird backstory to this article: see User_talk:Risker#Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Alyssa_Carson (T-H-L), and in particular this comment by Kudpung (T-C-L).

We based a new version on the original article by Manc1234 which he created with the sole purpose of extortion. In the beginning, the parents were naturally overjoyed to see a Wikipedia article about their daughter, and you can imagine thier distress at seeing it defaced with disgusting claims shortly afterwards. The next step in Manc's ploy was to 'offer' to remove the vandalism for a fee. The parent's were now extremely distressed.

[Dysklyver]

This looks especially problematic. Personally I would support a much higher bar on articles about kids. BLP is one thing, but the general harm caused by some entrepreneur having an issue with his article is vastly less than all the child protection issues involved when the subject is a minor.

[Poetlister]

The article is up for deletion and the balance so far is clearly in favour of deletion. I'm sure we all hope that it will be deleted.

Among many other pieces of silliness, when the article says that she spoke at various conference, this was confirmed by links to the appropriate official websites. Surely these are reliable sources, yet they are all flagged "[third-party source needed]".

Oh, and RandNetter96 (T-C-L), recently mentioned in the thread about the IP6 editor, has turned up on this article. A busy bee indeed!

[Randy from Boise]

Guh, I got all worked up by this thread, trucked on over to opine delete — and the fuckin’ thing is a GNG pass.

It's a really bad idea to have articles on little girl spacecampers, mind you, but it's a GNG pass. AfD isn't an ethics venue — that would be an RFC for a policy change.

RfB

[Kumioko]

Yeah I agree with you. I don't think she is notable enough as a minor to have her own article.

There is a lot of information in that article that someone could use to steal her identity or for any number of other things. I think that Wikipedia should really be a lot more selective of BLP's and especially those of minor children.

[Midsize Jake]

Guh, I got all worked up by this thread, trucked on over to opine delete — and the fuckin’ thing is a GNG pass.

For the benefit of our more "casual" readers who aren't familiar with the jargon, Mr. Boise is saying that the article sufficiently meets Wikipedia's "General Notability Guideline" and should therefore be kept in spite of the obvious potential moral pitfalls involved.

As for me, I'd just like to take this opportunity to do what I usually do and point out that this is a classic example of why Wikipedia needs an opt-out policy. There's a non-zero chance that this teenage girl might eventually decide that being a famous "space pioneer" is not really what she wants to do with her life after all, and that this article's existence is simply ruining her life, given its apparent popularity with misogynists and semi-professional creeps. And under its current rules, in all likelihood Wikipedia will simply laugh in her face, even though at that point the article will be of no practical use to anyone.

[Dysklyver]

Perhaps someone could push for a new section to the BLP policy.

For Child Protection reasons, articles about minors must not include any unsourced information. Editors should remove information not sourced inline to an independent reliable source. Articles about minors may be speedy deleted if they do not show the nobility of the subject in the article with sufficient inline citations. self-published sources, interviews, and primary sources do not count towards the notability threshold.

[Ming]

Guh, I got all worked up by this thread, trucked on over to opine delete — and the fuckin’ thing is a GNG pass.

It's a really bad idea to have articles on little girl spacecampers, mind you, but it's a GNG pass. AfD isn't an ethics venue — that would be an RFC for a policy change.

RfB

We don't need no steenkin' new policy: BLP is already here. And you gotta follow the online money a little further here. See, here we have the Commons contributions of one "Nasablueberry" which all claim to be "own work", and here we have a human interest story from the Daily Mail which contains one of those pictures-- except it isn't credited to Commons, but to "nasablueberry.com", which turns out to be a slick publicity site. Anyone with a little experience in the matter can see that at least half of those Commons photos were taken by/in a commercial studio; someone who was moved to do so could probably get them all speedied as copyvios, or at least force the uploader to OTRS.

The article is all pure hype anyway, as John Pack Lambert points out. Media outlets are credulous on purpose about this stuff because they need the material. The history of this is likely to be that she goes nowhere, and if she's lucky, everyone will just forget about it; and if she's unlucky, some place with real standards will dig into it and work out who it is that is pushing her (Ming bets a relative) and how they they were using her, and like Jacob Barnett she will become yet another person whose shame for being caught up in such a fraud, however innocently, will be preserved for posterity.

[Poetlister]

Perhaps someone could push for a new section to the BLP policy.

For Child Protection reasons, articles about minors must not include any unsourced information. Editors should remove information not sourced inline to an independent reliable source. Articles about minors may be speedy deleted if they do not show the nobility of the subject in the article with sufficient inline citations. self-published sources, interviews, and primary sources do not count towards the notability threshold.

Apart from "nobility" that's very sensible. But independent of whom? As I noted above, there's a whole section of talks she's given sourced to the organisations that hosted the talks, and they're flagged as needing independent sources.

[Randy from Boise]

Guh, I got all worked up by this thread, trucked on over to opine delete — and the fuckin’ thing is a GNG pass.

It's a really bad idea to have articles on little girl spacecampers, mind you, but it's a GNG pass. AfD isn't an ethics venue — that would be an RFC for a policy change.

RfB

We don't need no steenkin' new policy: BLP is already here. And you gotta follow the online money a little further here. See, here we have the Commons contributions of one "Nasablueberry" which all claim to be "own work", and here we have a human interest story from the Daily Mail which contains one of those pictures-- except it isn't credited to Commons, but to "nasablueberry.com", which turns out to be a slick publicity site. Anyone with a little experience in the matter can see that at least half of those Commons photos were taken by/in a commercial studio; someone who was moved to do so could probably get them all speedied as copyvios, or at least force the uploader to OTRS.

The article is all pure hype anyway, as John Pack Lambert points out. Media outlets are credulous on purpose about this stuff because they need the material. The history of this is likely to be that she goes nowhere, and if she's lucky, everyone will just forget about it; and if she's unlucky, some place with real standards will dig into it and work out who it is that is pushing her (Ming bets a relative) and how they they were using her, and like Jacob Barnett she will become yet another person whose shame for being caught up in such a fraud, however innocently, will be preserved for posterity.

John Pack Lambert points out rationales to delete anything and everything that doesn't involve the Mormon Church, about which he suddenly transforms into an ultra-inclusionist. I can't say that I take any direction from him at all at AfD, other than to take every single syllable he types with six ounces of sodium chloride...

This is perhaps a case for Ignore All Rules. It's a clear GNG keep, but it really should NOT be kept by any rational standard.

RfB

P.S. I sold myself on that line of reasoning anyway...

[orangepi]

My vote was pure IAR. I feel the rules on BLPs of minors are not fully written out. Unless there's a clear claim of importance or significance (such as meeting [[WP:ENT]], appearing in the Olympics, or being in the direct line of succession to the English Throne), BLPs of minors should almost always be deleted. Having a bunch of human interest stories saying "girl wants to be astronaut" doesn't change this, GNG be damned.

[Poetlister]

May I congratulate Randy for moving from his pedantic "seems to pass GNG so keep" position to one based on common sense. I also agree with orangepi.

[Ming]

Things are not looking at all good for this article.

A jerk on another site seems to have figured out who Ming is. We can go into that elsewhere, but this creature also seems to think we have have some obligation to try to chase down the supposed extortion behind the article creation. And they can't read, since they are saying, once again, that Ming claims that this person's promoters were behind the creation of the current version of the article. Well, Ming does reread Ming's own contributions, and unsurprisingly Ming never said any such thing. It is perhaps possible that Kudpung actually edited this to some degree at the direction of the girl's promoters (or KrakatoaKatie), but it's not necessary to posit that. Too many people are are ready to through critical judgement to the winds and take this sort of manufactured "notability" seriously.

It would be interesting to know if there have been real, well-documented instances of the supposed extortion, but it could be simply be the case that someone started an article that told the truth.

[Poetlister]

Is this the same jerk as the one who thinks that this girl, at 17 (so still a minor), is old enough to have drivel spewed out about her on the Internet?

[Kumioko]

Personally I think the article should be deleted but one thing can be said about it, this AFD, more than most others, is actually getting a reasonable discussion about it. Whatever the outcome, it will be hard for anyone to claim it wasn't properly vetted...thanks partly to this site I have no doubt.

[Dysklyver]

Personally I think the article should be deleted but one thing can be said about it, this AFD, more than most others, is actually getting a reasonable discussion about it. Whatever the outcome, it will be hard for anyone to claim it wasn't properly vetted...thanks partly to this site I have no doubt.

No doubt. John Pack Lombard has written a massive monologue, unusual since he normally just spams "Delete fails X" on hundreds of AfD's, other noted Wikipedians are commenting as well, including some also on this site. According to the AfD, the Arabic, Catalonian, Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedias now also have this biography. No doubt if this is deleted there will be pressure to delete it cross-wiki.

[Kumioko]

Personally I think the article should be deleted but one thing can be said about it, this AFD, more than most others, is actually getting a reasonable discussion about it. Whatever the outcome, it will be hard for anyone to claim it wasn't properly vetted...thanks partly to this site I have no doubt.

No doubt. John Pack Lombard has written a massive monologue, unusual since he normally just spams "Delete fails X" on hundreds of AfD's, other noted Wikipedians are commenting as well, including some also on this site. According to the AfD, the Arabic, Catalonian, Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedias now also have this biography. No doubt if this is deleted there will be pressure to delete it cross-wiki.

You're probably right and not meaning to spin this off topic, that brings up a good point. I wonder how many articles are deleted on one project and not on another. I feel like the cultures on the individual projects as well as the rules in that country might play a part in what is notable or allowed to be on one project over another. Simple EnWP for example may allow it to stay while it's deleted on the non Simple EnWP. Might be an interesting thing to watch if someone wants to snapshot Wikidata or something. In fact this situation might make for an interesting blog post.

[Poetlister]

You can expect some articles to be kept on some Wikipedias but not others, because notability standards vary and even if they are allegedly the same, people are more likely to regard things associated with their own country or culture as more notable. In this case however, if the article is deleted on English WP then the same considerations ought to apply worldwide.

[Kumioko]

You can expect some articles to be kept on some Wikipedias but not others, because notability standards vary and even if they are allegedly the same, people are more likely to regard things associated with their own country or culture as more notable. In this case however, if the article is deleted on English WP then the same considerations ought to apply worldwide.

Yeah that's kind of what I was getting at. I doubt all the projects will delete the article and it's likely it will sprout back up again later unless someone salts the page.

[Kingsindian]

Seems to be heading for a delete.

[Ming]

Is this the same jerk as the one who thinks that this girl, at 17 (so still a minor), is old enough to have drivel spewed out about her on the Internet?

Given the jerk's writing style, it is hard to say, but you have to love this conspiracy theory:

So, what we could have here, is a case of Ming of Wikipediocracy, who perhaps ordinarily edits Wikipedia as John Pack Lambert, being so convinced this article is part of a scam, that he created a Wikipedia sock to put it up for deletion (the sock being the only other person to be concerned about her dad, albeit expressed there only as financing/promoting), then advertised the issue on Wikipediocracy, after which two events, he can then safely return to Wikipedia as "John Pack Lambert" to innocently weigh in with no less than six (to date) comments advancing the case for deletion.

It's going to amusing to see how long he sticks to this theory of Ming's identity. Personally, Ming thinks it somewhat likely that the nominating account got compromised, but it wasn't Ming that did it.

[Dysklyver]

Is this the same jerk as the one who thinks that this girl, at 17 (so still a minor), is old enough to have drivel spewed out about her on the Internet?

Given the jerk's writing style, it is hard to say, but you have to love this conspiracy theory:

So, what we could have here, is a case of Ming of Wikipediocracy, who perhaps ordinarily edits Wikipedia as John Pack Lambert, being so convinced this article is part of a scam, that he created a Wikipedia sock to put it up for deletion (the sock being the only other person to be concerned about her dad, albeit expressed there only as financing/promoting), then advertised the issue on Wikipediocracy, after which two events, he can then safely return to Wikipedia as "John Pack Lambert" to innocently weigh in with no less than six (to date) comments advancing the case for deletion.

It's going to amusing to see how long he sticks to this theory of Ming's identity. Personally, Ming thinks it somewhat likely that the nominating account got compromised, but it wasn't Ming that did it.

Well it could be a sleeper account or something. It's a little odd to go three years without editing, make 10 edits, and then pick on this article, proposing it for deletion... One could say this is bloody obviously a sock, but I suppose checkuser is not indicting anyone.

Someone now needs to engage Ming in a debate about Mormons to see if he is really John Pack Lombard.

[Ming]

Ming, as everyone knows, is from Mongo, not Kolob.

[Poetlister]

Ming, as everyone knows, is from Mongo, not Kolob.

Poetlister assumes that Ming is not Mongo~enwiki (T-C-L)!

[Ming]

Ming, as everyone knows, is from Mongo, not Kolob.

Poetlister assumes that Ming is not Mongo~enwiki (T-C-L)!

Ming is doing nothing to dissuade you from that assumption.

[Johnny Au]

Ming, as everyone knows, is from Mongo, not Kolob.

In some language none of us know, oh Merciless One, Kolob could be another name for Mongo.

[Midsize Jake]

Wow, sure enough, the result was BALEET, as they say. As I've stated one or three times in the past, I (for one) should always be willing to admit when I'm wrong, and/or admit when the Wikipedia folks actually manage to do the right thing, and while I technically didn't say they would keep the article, I did imply it, and they did the right thing by deleting it. (Did we ever find out if the subject wanted it kept, by the way?)

As for the folks over on WS!(ASDIC), they're of the opinion that this site simply isn't critical enough of, or perhaps angry enough at, Wikipedia, and in many cases they're right. Even I'm less angry at them than I was, though I will say that in my case this is mostly because of Trump, and the fact that the majority of WP people also seem to dislike him. To some extent, the WS!(ASDIC) folks could conceivably be more upset with us now than they were before because some of them (I suspect) are pro-Trump, or at least not anti-Trump. It's hard to say, and frankly, until Trump is kicked out of office I'm just not going to worry about it, other than to say that I'm going to do my best to ensure that Wikipediocracy doesn't become the "fawning safe-space for Wikipedians" that they claim it has become, Trump or no Trump.

So... long story short, if I say something like "the once vanishingly-small frequency by which Wikipedians have been doing the right thing has increased in the past couple of years," that should be taken with a grain of salt, again because of Trump. But they managed it in this case, and while it's probably impossible to back up this assertion statistically, I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who's been getting this impression.

Last but not least, I'm pretty sure Mr. Ming is not User:John Pack Lambert, but what can we do, really - guessing people's identities is just part of the system at this point.

[Poetlister]

So... long story short, if I say something like "the once vanishingly-small frequency by which Wikipedians have been doing the right thing has increased in the past couple of years," that should be taken with a grain of salt, again because of Trump. But they managed it in this case, and while it's probably impossible to back up this assertion statistically, I'm guessing I'm not the only one here who's been getting this impression.

What we have to do is compile a list of every decision made by Wikipedians over say the last 10 years and decide in each case whether it was the right thing. We can then find the trend.

[Ming]

Well, she's back: Alyssa Carson (T-H-L)

Instead of being cast as a future astronaut, she's now "an American space enthusiast and motivational speaker". And she's now over 18, so the prodigy test is a bit harder to apply. But it's still pretty much a promotional piece, albeit probably unwittingly: we have a six month old user, Samsmachado (T-C-L), who doesn't seem to be an SPA, but had doing a lot of woman bio work. There was deletion attempt which failed, and another which is going to fail because it's just too soon.

[Poetlister]

Someone's managed to dig out 34 references. I haven't checked any of them, but it looks superficially quite impressive. Currently, the AfD has three !votes, all Speedy Keep.

[iii]

Alyssa Carson (T-H-L) has gone through four different AfD ringers and unlike Jacob Barnett has managed to come out the other end with an article intact. The primary claims to notability are:

1. She visited all the Visitor Centers for all the NASA Centers
2. She went to every NASA-sanctioned Space Camp
3. News outlets eat this shit up.

WP:PRODIGY (T-H-L) was meant to address this sort of thing, but WPians seem to be distracted by shiny things like fluff-piece articles which do little in the way of fact checking. Thus, we have a pretty cringey (as the kids say) article for those who are in-the-know about these sorts of things from the lede all the way to the section where the "astronaut in training" is documented. A paragraph full of "yeah buts" is presented to counteract the schmaltzy boosterism that is found elsewhere which is kind regrettable.

I want Ms. Carson to pursue and achieve her dreams, goddamn it. Become the youngest astronaut in the corps! Fly to Mars! Make amazing discoveries! But I think this Wikipedia page and the general uneven attention applied to her is probably not helping matters. See Barnett, J. referenced above.

Sigh.

[ArmasRebane]

"Technically notable due to their own boosterism" seems like it'd be a common-sense exemption to the GNG given that it's a willful attempt to circumvent the threshold for inclusion, but here we are.

Definitely a case of failing the "just read the opening lines and tell me if this person should have an article" test. Whoop-do-doo, someone visited a couple stateside locations.

More broadly, the continuing erosion of decent press outlets means that there's going to be a lot more of these fluff pieces used for notability arguments for a host of biographies.