Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew C. Whitaker

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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 keep. There is consensus that the subject meets GNG rather than any one of the special guidelines. Also, most !voters find that the subject has been involved in several controversies, so that BLP1E does not apply. (non-admin closure) Kraxler (talk) 16:12, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Matthew C. Whitaker

Matthew C. Whitaker (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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WP:NOTNEWS, WP:BLP1E. This was a news item regarding a professor who committed plagiarism, and as it stands, is an article about plagiarism masquerading as a BLP. Coverage was confined to local Arizona media and the Inside Higher Ed website. Coverage lasted less than two months, ended a month ago, and there has been nothing further since. There were no long-term effects: the subject was demoted but not fired, the books were not retracted, and university policies were not changed. Therefore, he does not meet GNG. The subject does not meet WP:AUTHOR or WP:PROF either, and I have addressed each criterion below.

  • Does not meet AUTHOR - this guideline generally doesn't apply to academics, but I am including it because it was brought up at the article already.
  1. Subject is not important or cited by peers. A claim made in several sources was that he did not have the necessary research quantity for tenure in the first place.
  2. He did not meet thids criterion because he did not originate anything significant.
  3. For the same reason, he did not create or co-create a significant work or body of work to meet this criterion.
  4. Criterion 4 simply doesn't apply to the subject.
  • Does not meet PROF:
  1. His research is not significant.
  2. No academic awards.
  3. Not a member of any societies.
  4. His work has made no impact in higher ed.
  5. No named chair - ASU Foundation Professors are not named chairs. What they are I don't know, but every department at ASU has at least one (named chairs are unique - the "John Q. Public Professor of History", etc.), and it does not appear on ASU's Faculty Honors and Awards page.
  6. Subject did not hold a highest-level elected or appointed academic post (which appears to be provosts, deans, presidents, etc.).
  7. No substantial impact outside academia as an academician - ASU in fact disavowed his consulting business as having any relation to them.
  8. Not a journal editor.
  9. Does not meet criteria for being in literature or arts, because he's in history.

MSJapan (talk) 02:44, 23 August 2015 (UTC) MSJapan (talk) 02:44, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Just noticed that MSJapan removed a sentence sourced to Digital Journal from page. MSJapan, If you thought phrasing or location in lede inappropriate, you could easily have altered it, or moved it down the page (I just altered it as per your complaint and moved it down the page) but it is inappropriate to remove a source supporting notability, immediately before taking an article to ADF. Just as it is inappropriate to continue WIKIHOUNDING me. (I created this article).E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:14, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, I removed it earlier and it was put back because I didn't edit summarize properly. The link was removed because one article headline was being used to claim in the lede that the subject "brought renewed attention to plagiarism via technology" and the source didn't say that nor was it expanded upon in the article. That's SYNTH. I also moved the source to the talk page earlier. I actually AfDed the article after the second time I took it out, for the same reason. MSJapan (talk) 17:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Because of the extensive coverage, he meets the general notability guidelines, which is sufficient ("People who meet the basic criteria may be considered notable without meeting the additional criteria below."). Extensive discussion of several cases over several years (therefore not BLP1E). — Chris Woodrich (talk) 03:31, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Everymorning (talk) 03:50, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes and No: There is enough coverage of the scandal to justify an article, and because of this both WP:AUTHOR and WP:PROF are inappropriate measures. However I have another concern. The article is full of accusations against him but I can't find any contrary opinion mentioned. Not even his own, except for a single word. As such, it is such a blatant WP:BLP violation that it should be reduced to a stub until someone can rewrite it in conformity with the rules. Zerotalk 04:26, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep -- this person easily meets WP:GNG, something readily apparent from the sources currently in use on the article. The nominator says they're all from a two-month period in 2015, but a glance at the dates in the references shows that's false. Similarly, the nominator says that all coverage was "local" apart from InsideHigherEd -- but again the list of references shows a citation to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Puzzling nomination, containing significant errors. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:48, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    So you're going to allege "significant errors" based on one source to CHE (out of 18 sources) meeting "national coverage" (the rest are Arisona or IHE) and four prior to the last month (also out of 18) meeting the time requirement? That still leaves 12 sources that are only from the last month (minus the book review from 2005), and that is my point - 2/3 of the coverage is significant, and is a month's worth of articles. If the subject was notable for plagiarism, why was this not the case the first time? MSJapan (talk) 17:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as per EveryMorning and Nomoskedasticity, and note not only that Nom previoulsy prodded article and was informed on talk page of the series of scandals, of coverage of first in national publications such as InsideHigherEd, and of this week's news stories about Whitaker, but also that the page itself has sourced sections on the 2011 and 2015 plagiarism scandals. I just added a page on a new, third, news-making (in Arizona) plagiarism allegation.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:55, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Page could use expansion, this could be sourced to reviews of Whitaker's 2005 book "Race Works", which received respectful reviews in several academic journals - one such review already linked on page. And note that until a week ago, there was material in the article on Whitaker's appearances on broadcast news programs and on op-ed ed pages as an expert on race in America, but Nom removed this material asserting that "one is hardly a "public voice" for having one CNN op-ed and one local op-ed in the span of two years" - although the two links were intended as a sample of the multiple such appearances he has made. I did not replace the material since I do not have a secondary source describing him as an expert who makes frequent such appearances.E.M.Gregory (talk) 12:55, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't have sources to back up the claims, you can't make them, so don't accuse me of removing content and then saying that you couldn't prove the content anyway. It is very clear that unsupported content can be removed. Your "third scandal" is an entire paragraph made out of two articles, from which Whitaker Group's response made in the same article you sourced the claims to, was left out - that is clearly biased editing, and part of what is causing the issues in this article, especially when the responses are in the sources you are sourcing the "scandals" from. MSJapan (talk) 17:08, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
When I used multiple sources, MSJapan removed some asserting that there were excessive sources. So I added new info, a brief summary with just 2 sources. And MSJapan dismisses it as, "only two" sources. This provoked me to going back to read and add another new news story, but I ran into the same problem I run into every time MSJapan prods me into revisiting this page, problem is that the more sources I read, the worse Whitaker's behavior looks. I added what KPHO-TV found, and now I suppose that MSJapan will accuse me of bias. But I honestly fail to what I am supposed to do when an academic who is not especially significant as a scholar repeatedly makes headlines for behavior unbecoming a gentleman or a scholar. I did source and add a description of his most widely-reviewed book. I feel as though I ought to apologize to all of the editors who have had to spend time on an AFD that should never have been started.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:42, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
"I honestly fail to what I am supposed to do when an academic who is not especially significant as a scholar repeatedly makes headlines for behavior unbecoming a gentleman or a scholar" I think that's why you wrote the article. Wikipedia is not here for you to make a point, nor is it here for you to have an outlet to pass moral judgment. You clearly don't want to show both views, as when I added Whitaker's two-line response, you buried the response in the middle by adding material discrediting the response. So don't say you're trying to write a neutral balanced article focused on a scandal. You're writing a screed because you're outraged over an issue that didn't have the ramifications you wanted when you found out about it. MSJapan (talk) 19:31, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Editors new to this page should be aware that Whitaker has confessed to using material without attribution, and been found by his university to have committed "serious" plagiarism. The faculty of Arizona State passed "moral judgment"; not me. As to this month's new assertions of plagiarism, editors are free to look at what I wrote, a neutral (brief) report of the allegations as reported in the newspapers. I added in part to refute MSJapan's inaccurate assertion (Nom) that Whitaker was in the news only briefly and that coverage of him had ended. It had, as far as I knew until MSJapan started attacking me last week, when I did a quick google to see if Whitaker was still in the news. MSJapan did not perform WP:BEFORE - or even check the sourcing of this article before starting the AFD. In fact, s/he appeared unfamiliar with Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the geography of Arizona. Now, accusing me of being biased, s/he chose to add Whitaker's denial, but not to add detailed public statements from Arizona State and the Phoenix and Chicago police departments supporting the City Council member's assertions of malfeasance. That's OK. Add material that you think pertinent. No one editor is required to add everything. But, MSJapan, please stop trying to ruin my reputation as an editor by making assertions that I am acting in bad faith, or have an agenda other than writing an article about a widely reported instance of intellectual theft.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:17, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Professors who have fancy titles and direct centers at major universities are often notable, or harmlessly noted. The fact that he was a highly paid consultant and then thrust into non-local news confers notability. --Smokefoot (talk) 14:05, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Schools. AuthorAuthor (talk) 22:09, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep He is notable, if nothing else, for the scandal. I'd say there are sufficient sources here for GNG. I even heard of the scandal and I live nowhere near Arizona. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 22:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. In addition to the arguments above, he's had two scholarly works published by a notable academic press in the last two years, with GScholar already showing dozens of hits for each of them. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As I discussed in the talk page already, I think the standard here should be WP:PERP rather than WP:PROF: this may not be about an actual crime, but it is misconduct, and the same principles should apply. He's documented as a plagiarist, but is he notable as a plagiarist? Specifically we should ask whether there is "sustained coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources which persists beyond contemporaneous news coverage and devotes significant attention to the individual's role", as WP:PERP requests. When I said this in talk, I didn't think this standard was met, but I've since changed my mind. We have coverage in both a major state-wide newspaper (the Arizona Republic) and a major newsmagazine of academia (Inside Higher Ed) among other sources, for multiple separate incidents published from 2012 to 2015. Additionally, the newer articles rehash the earlier incidents, providing coverage of those incidents from a longer-term perspective that is not merely reporting of recent news. Given all this, I don't think we need to determine whether his books or the title he was demoted from are enough to give him academic notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:33, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Arizona-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete This article violates the one event policies. He does not meet notability guidelines for academics.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:41, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Johnpacklambert, I know that you're coming late to a long argument, but this is not one event, it is a series of incidents of misappropriation of the work of other scholars that - separately and collectively - have been the subject of coverage in national and statewide media over the course of years. Also, academics who fail WP:PROFESSOR can and do pass WP:GNG, as a significant number of veteran editors agree that this one has.E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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