Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edward S. May

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 - as has been noted below, currently fails WP:BIO. Almost every source is self-published and where it isn't there is no more than a trivial mention of the article's subject (this may not be the case in references 24 and 25 which are behind pay walls but that would still bring it below the WP:GNG guidelines). Though the trivial mentions allude to the large cultural impact of the subject, there are no sources to verify these claims. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 12:09, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Edward S. May

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Delete. Fails WP:BIO -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:24, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:42, 1 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Article is currently being expanded to included information in keeping with WP:BIO. May is a "central organiser"[1] of the anti-Islam Counterjihad movement. LutherBlissetts (talk) 20:30, 1 May 2012 (GMT)

Additionally, other wiki-articles linked to a non-existent article cross-ref for Gates of Vienna e.g. Fjordman and Eurabia (there may be others). Those links have now been edited to lead to the article on Edward S. May: Edward_S._May#Gates_of_Vienna. I'm not an experienced editor, but is this best resolved with a redirect by creating a Gates of Vienna article, then redirecting to the Edward_S._May#Gates_of_Vienna section? My feelings are that we should keep and refine this article, as other articles also hold May as a notable person. Additionally, May was (and may still be, though we won't know until the 2012 annual report is published) co-director of US company Center for Vigilant Freedom Inc, which is directly involved in gathering together European far-right seperatist and nationalist parties and street-movements under an anti-Islam banner commonly referred to as 'Counterjihad'. History will record May as instrumental in the rise of the European far-right. Current newspaper stories on European politics are replete with the directional change induced by May & his organisation's involvement. His notability and his inclusion in wikipedia seems long overdue. An article about his blog alone, although referenced frequently, would not have sufficed. An article on May himself seems more fitting. -- LutherBlissetts (talk) 09:44, 3 May 2012 (BST)

Question. Is it usual to mark an article for speedy deletion one minute after it's creation? LutherBlissetts (talk) 09:25, 2 May 2012 (GMT)

it is certainly very common, though many of us think it a user-unfriendly practice for an obviously incomplete page where the problem is notability. But Wikipedia is dedicated to open editing, so anyone can nominate anything they please for speedy deletion. Fortunately, any editor except the creator can remove the tag, and admins usually try to use some judgment in actually deleting DGG ( talk ) 18:48, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Fails WP:BIO at this time. -- Jason from nyc (talk) 18:50, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How/Where is it failing the WP:BIO please? -- LutherBlissetts (talk) 08:39, 3 May 2012 (BST)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Counterjihad#Missing_or_Incorrect_Links - where Jason from nyc notes on 18 Jan 2012 that there is no page for May. -- LutherBlissetts (talk) 18:54, 3 May 2012 (BST)

Keep I'm a little puzzled at the deletes; this individual (and his blog) is rather famous, and the citations from good press sources show it. DGG ( talk ) 19:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not only has this individual been widely discussed in the press and in academic journals, his pseudonym "Baron Bodissey" and his blog Gates of Vienna are frequently referred to in wiki-articles, e.g. Fjordman and wiki-talk pages on the Counterjihad: e.g. Talk: Counterjihad -- LutherBlissetts (talk) 09:16, 3 May 2012 (BST)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 01:23, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I'm simply not seeing any significant coverage in sources we consider reliable. There are a lot of passing mentions of him because he's one of the writers that inspired terrorist Breivik, but passing mentions, even in reliable sources, don't attest notability. (Luther Blissetts's comment that the page is linked from other articles is irrelevant; there are things in this world that can be mentioned in articles while not being able to support articles of their own.) It looks like the article's creator has tried really hard to substantiate notability by any means possible, but it just isn't there; self-published material and other primary sources (like court documents) aren't RS for these purposes. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:57, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain how these sources are considered unreliable: Southern Poverty Law Center; Toby Archer, Learning to Love the Jews: The Impact of the War On Terror and the Counterjihad Blogosphere on European Far-Right Nationalist Parties, Finnish Institute of International Affairs, August 2008; Toby Archer, "Countering the 'Counter-jihad", RUSI Monitor, September 2008, Royal United Services Institute; The New York Times; The Guardian; The Sunday Times; Dr. Paul Jackson (lead author), The EDL - Britain's 'New Far Right' Social Movement, The University of Northampton's Radicalism and New Media Research Group, September 2011, and; The Jewish Chronicle.

The academic and counter-terrorism papers from the University of Northamption, Finnish Institute of International Affairs and RUSI (Royal United Security Institute [2]) are reliable and these sources attest to notability of Edward S. May as a principle architect of Counterjihad blogosphere and the Counterjihad Europa project run by the Center for Vigilant Freedom. May, as one of the directors of Center for Vigilant Freedom, which organises the Counterjihad Europa conferences, will continue to retain this notability in any history book written on the Counterjihad phenomenon.

The reliable news sources listed above all attest to May's notability. Additionally, the nature of the Counterjihad (blogosphere) means that the citation of primary (self-published) material is occasionally (and judiciously) necessary. The use of primary (self-published) citations and quotes has already been established (precedent) for other wikipedia articles on the Counterjihad's architects and authors, for example, on Fjordman (who published almost exclusively on May's Gates of Vienna blog from 2007 onwards), Robert Spencer (author), and so forth. Primary sources such as May's Center for Vigilant Freedom published annual report, since they don't break terms of primary source use, were cited as they establish his co-directorship of Center for Vigilant Freedom. A topic on the use of primary sources has been raised on the article's talk page, and it is there that objections ought to be raised. Objections to the inclusion of that source (which was used with caution as per instructions at WP:BLPPRIMARY) don't, in my opinion, warrant the deletion of the entire article.

My comment as to the dead-links in other Counterjihad related articles on wikipedia doesn't establish notability per se, but since the authors of those articles found it important enough to retain a dead link in established articles, then editing those dead-links to link up to the relevant page Edward S. May is part of the expansion of the encyclopaedia's knowledge base (and 'good housekeeping').

-- LutherBlissetts (talk) 12:46, 8 May 2012 (BST)

- You may not vote more than once. With regard to the substance of your comment - as I said, trivial mentions (like "Breivik read Gates of Vienna and five other blogs") do not establish notability. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:05, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - I did not understand the requirement to generate a more thorough discussion. Please accept my apologies. I will remove the second vote and your strikethrough of my comments so as to retain them as part of the thorough discussion which was requested above.

1)Whilst I appreciate that you consider "Breivik read Gates of Vienna and five other blogs" as not establishing notability, one might equally say the same of all the other authors he read, for example, Fjordman. The only problem I can see with your characterisation, is that there is more to May's involvement than a mass murderer/domestic terrorist reading May's Gates of Vienna blog, and May's activities extend beyond the blogosphere. May is one of the principle architects of the Counterjihad Europa project run by the Center for Vigilant Freedom. He has housed/clothed/funded one of the earliest co-founders of the English Defence League, his fellow co-director is also a named co-founder of the English Defence League, and May has been involved with BNP Reformers who formed the British Freedom Party in the style of the European 'Freedom' parties (PVV, Danske Folkeparti, Jorg Hader's Austrian Freedom Party) and street-movements (the Pro-Koeln movement, the European Defence Leagues who are networking with assorted far-right nationalist movements in Europe such as the Bloc Identitaire . May has actively encouraged the English Defence League and the newly British Freedom Party (both of which have drawn criticism from the Anti-Defamation League (US) and the Community Security Trust (UK) for the anti-Islam conspiracies which do nothing to address the real issues of extremism. The aims of May and his co-directors - to actively involve themselves in and promote the European Far-Right - makes them notable. However, they only became widely talked about (famous or infamous) because of Breivik. Even without Breivik, they would have been notable, historically speaking. In Wikipedia one can find articles on the Bloc Identitaire, Alain De Benoist, the European Far Right/Nouvelle Droite, International Third Position, Robert Fiore, Pro-Koeln, Casa Pound, etc. The Counterjihad Europa project and the activities of it's co-directors including May is now entwined in European Far-right politics. My opinion is that this is enough to establish the notability of Edward S. May, aka Baron Bodissey.

2) You said: "I'm simply not seeing any significant coverage in sources we consider reliable", and I gave you a list of the secondary sources used and asked you why "we consider" those scholarly papers and news sources to be unreliable. Could you also explain who the 'we' refers to? Perhaps you missed my question as you struck the entire text through. Please could you provide an answer at your earliest convenience. Thankyou ---- LutherBlissetts (talk) 23:22, 8 May 2012 (BST)

A brief mention doesn't attest notability for Fjordman either. Fjordman presumably (I haven't read the article in a while) has been the subject of more in-depth coverage that attests notability. (It's not that sources that mention him briefly are unreliable - we can certainly cite them in Fjordman's article if they say that Breivik read Fjordman - but brief mentions alone cannot support an article.) I'm sensitive to your claims that May has been influential, but if he's so influential, we should be able to find enough material on him to satisfy our notability guideline, because when someone is influential, reliable secondary sources tend to write about them. Wrt your list of sources - as I said, in many cases the problem is the briefness of the mention rather than the nature of the source. A lot of the material in the article comes only from primary sources; the secondary sources are numerous but contain no in-depth info. Even papers specifically about the "counter-jihad" blogosphere seem only to give him a cursory mention. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:10, 8 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Roscelese said: "Even papers specifically about the "counter-jihad" blogosphere seem only to give him a cursory mention." - and they mention that May is a central organiser in the Counterjihad Europa project. He organised the first few counterjihad conferences and has presided over the merger between EDL and British Freedom and is deeply involved in European far-right politics. I don't know how much more notable you'd like him to be. This isn't about being famous, this is about his role as architect of the transatlantic Counterjihad US and Europa enterprise, run by company he was (and possibly still is) co-director of, whose fellow co-director Christine Brim works for Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy. There are enough mentions in secondary sources to construct this article about him and enough secondary sources to provide good enough notability. He does fulfill notability requirements for this article. Other wikipedia articles on notable people are mere stubs. This article was flagged for deletion 1 minute after it's creation. If the flagger had waited until all secondary sources had been added, deletion probably wouldn't have been an issue and instead we could be focusing on more important things like presenting a balanced, well-informed article which conforms at the very least to the same standards set by other articles on the influence of the counterjihad blogosophere (which also rely heavily on primary blog sources). ---- LutherBlissetts (talk) 11:32, 14 May 2012 (BST)

The information on May in this article appears to be out of date, apart from the notability issue. Unless there is some other organization website, this "Counterjihad Europa" project at http://www.Counterjihadeuropa.wordpress.com [3]has not been updated apparently since 2008 - the about page states it is an archive for a single conference in 2007. And the Vigilant Freedom organization May was associated with that renamed itself to "International Civil Liberties Alliance" seems to have been terminated in February 2012 according to the Virginia corporate website cited by the article's author as his source (see http://www.scc.virginia.gov/clk/bussrch.aspx [4] and search on the name "International Civil Liberties Alliance" or "Center for Vigilant Freedom"). If there is notability, it might need a stronger base than a five-year old conference and a terminated organization.Androidorion (talk) 07:15, 15 May 2012 (UTC)Androidorion[reply]

Thankyou Androidorion for your OR into the current status of ICLA Inc (was CVF Inc). IMO, the information you gave seemed more appropriate to have included in the article's talk page, but no matter. I will cut & paste your information there. Upon checking, the ICLA's status as an incorporated company in Virginia has indeed been terminated 27/02/12. That means they won't be submitting financial accounts (which were due in Jan 2012) and won't now have any visible directors. ::::::: This news doesn't alter May's past co-director status. As an organisation, ICLA continues its counterjihad activism at the website libertiesalliance.org, though May's current involvement is not visible beyond his continuing attendences at Counterjihad Europa conferences. The information in the article does need to be changed to have end dates for its time as an incorporated company, whilst showing it continues as a key Counterjihad organisation.

Nor could it be said that this new information negates May's notability as a key organiser/architect for: the Counterjihad], and; the earlier Counterjihad Europa conferences, the most recent of which he attended and which saw the far-right street-movement English Defence League make an alliance with the newest far-right nationalist party British Freedom Party. EDL leader Tommy Robinson (English Defence League) and deputy leader Kevin Carroll have now been appointed as deputy chairmen for the British Freedom Party. Can I also take this opportunity to remind commentators that article-specific information needs to go on the article's talk page, whilst comments here ought to be about May's notability. Finally, it is hardly inspiring to add more recent data on May, when the article is under discussion for deletion (one minute after it's creation, no less). Until that has been decided, there seems little point in wasting time on improving it. -- LutherBlissetts (talk) 17:00, 17 May 2012 (BST)

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.