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. blp1e arguments have not been refuted and this overcomes n Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:13, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Benjamin Joffe-Walt[edit]

Benjamin Joffe-Walt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Despite having 62 citations, I have not found any in the article that are actually acceptable/verify notability. Primary sources, YouTube videos, his LinkedIn profile, brief mentions/quotes in the media, etc. do not impart notability. Promotion of Change.org and of the BLP's awards suggests a poorly-sourced vanity page on a successful, but not historically significant professional. CorporateM (Talk) 14:21, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk to me 14:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk to me 14:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of South Africa-related deletion discussions. Everymorning talk to me 14:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's not unreasonable to say that Joffe-Walt achieved some notability as a result of his false reporting in the UK Guardian newspaper: the UK Independent and Hong Kong SCMP both had articles about him on this subject. In which case, I believe the policy is that there should be a stub article only regarding this subject.I should add that from my experience of this article, the nature and timing of edits would appear consistent with one being use for promotional purposes.Tpaine99 (talk) 14:12, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I propose the article is amended to something along the lines of this: [1] Tpaine99 (talk) 22:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Mostly support/done I reviewed the sources you provided above. They are in fact reliable sources and do cover his false reporting in-depth. I added a couple sentences to your draft on un-related topics and stubbed the article of all the promotion, primary sources and other junk. However, if that really is his only claim to notability, I wonder if the article should be named after this one event, as oppose to having an article that purports to be a complete biography, but is only actually about one aspect of his life. I think more discussion would be worthwhile and I hope this AfD attracts it. CorporateM (Talk) 22:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep – It seems to me that the blanking of his bio was rather indiscriminate. Our criteria for notability of journalists (WP:JOURNALIST) are pretty thin. They don't mention number of byline stories carried or journalistic awards. If the one story about false reporting was notable, then his awards for reporting in Africa seem relevant, and if so then the stories themselves can be linked. Likewise for the environmental reporting. If he reported on rape campaigns in Africa, then his anti-rape activism in college would seem to be relevant. change.org is an important progressive organization and he has an important post there. At least it's relevant to his post-journalism career. We had independent sources for all of that. – Margin1522 (talk) 17:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep the retraction seems to have got quite a bit of coverage. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:42, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. If the subject is really only notable for the false reporting incident then that is a case of WP:ONEEVENT. Besides which the error is as much an error of the paper that carried the story as the individual journalist because they failed to properly verify the facts and/or impose effective editorial oversight. Now that the article has been stubbed down to that and not much else, we are doing the subject a favour by deleting it. SpinningSpark 13:22, 9 January 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.