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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benito Martínez

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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. Michig (talk) 07:55, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Benito Martínez

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Benito Martínez (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Another longevity claimant about whom there is nothing remarkable. He lived, ate a certain diet, claimed to be a highly implausible age, and died. Once stripped of the irrelevant cruft about unrelated old people and his medical history, all of the useful information is best maintained in a list and table on the Longevity claims article. There's WP:NOPAGE here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Kpgjhpjm 01:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Cuba-related deletion discussions. Kpgjhpjm 01:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete This article fails WP:BIO1E, WP:NOTINHERITED, and WP:NOPAGE. The article is packed with longevity fancruft like his old nickname, age at first doctors visit, and his secret to longevity. He claimed to live 10 years longer then the oldest verified man ever and was an obvious fraudster. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, coverage, and content for a standalone article, and this doesn't measure up in any respect. Newshunter12 (talk) 01:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This topic passes WP:GNG as it stands, with no less than 4 pieces of substantive coverage in reliable sources. The nominator makes no claim to have done any of the required WP:BEFORE research to see if there is more coverage.
The invocation by @Newshunter12 of WP:BIO1E and WP:NOTINHERITED is also misplaced. This topic is notable because of a single attribute, whereas WP:BIO1E is about a single event ... and an topic which meets GNG is not claiming inherited notability. So those arguments should be discounted.
Similarly, the assertion by Newshunter12 that Martinez was an obvious fraudster is not supported by any sources cited here or in the article, and as such is blatant WP:OR. It may be indeed be true that he was a fraudster, but even if the sources support that assertion, it does not remove his notability; it merely changes the ways in which the article is written and categorised. Per WP:EXTRAORDINARY, "any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources", so the article correctly notes the lack thereof in this case.
That leaves us solely with WP:NOPAGE. Nothing in that guideline recommends deleting an article which satisfies GNG. There is no predent in any other topic area for the systematic merger of articles on notable people to a list.
I am concerned that this is another in a series of XFD nominations prepared at WT:LONGEVITY#AfDs_of_individual_biographies and pursued as a tag-team by members of that project on the basis of what I can most kindly describe as severe misunderstandings of most of the policies and guidelines which they cite. The members of that project appear to have agreed among themselves that articles on people notable for longevity are inherently and axiomatically "cruft", and that GNG is insufficient. They have no policy basis for doing so, and appear to have decided that their own overt hostility to the topic should override the editorial judgement of respected major news sources. That is blatant POV-pushing, and it is just as incompatible with Wikipedia's core policy of WP:NPOV as the inverse view pushed by of the fans of the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) that the mere fact of longevity create a bypass around WP:GNG.
I have supported the deletion or merger of articles on non-notable supercentenarians, and I will continue to do so .. but this is different. This is part of a systematic campaign to eliminate articles on demonstrably notable supercentenarians, which extends even to WP:Articles for deletion/Charlotte Hughes (supercentenarian). WP:LONGEVITY's cleanup campaign has taken a wrong turn into organised disruption.. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, there is no organized campaign of disruption. Secondly, this man does not inherit per WP:NOTINHERITED Fidel Castro's notability just because he worked for him. Thirdly, reaching a great age and getting some coverage for that is a single event, so WP:BIO1E applies. Fourthly, my assertion that the man was an obvious fraudster is based on a clear understanding of basic facts about human longevity - just because the media wouldn't call the man what he was, a pathological liar, and instead did their, oh well, everything's 50/50 rubbish doesn't mean editors need to be idiots and ignore the reality about this man. He was an un-notable lying fraud who scammed some media coverage and other attention. What about that merits a stand-alone article on Wikipedia? Newshunter12 (talk) 05:24, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Newshunter12: Firstly, I'm sorry to have had to say it, but WP:LONGEVITY's campaign is disruptive. I cannot know whether that is by intent or misunderstanding, so I AGF that it is happening because of lack of understanding. That AGF will be easier to sustain if WP:LONGEVITY members desist from the tag-teaming, and start implementing policy by, for example, challenging the lack of WP:BEFORE in these nominations and retracting the misapplication of other policies such as WP:BIO1E, WP:NOTINHERITED, and WP:NOPAGE.
Meanwhile, the tag-teaming in manifestly deficient nominations stands a good chance of succeeding in the deletion of articles of notable people. That is disruptive, and if it continues now that it has been called out it will become tendentious per WP:IDHT.
Secondly, the Fidel Castro thing is a complete straw man. Obviously, NOTINHERITED would apply if such a claim was made, but nobody in this discussion has claimed notability on that basis.
Thirdly, reaching a great age is not an "event"; it a process stretched out over many years. Nobody suddenly becomes very very old one morning; it is a process which happens over decades.
Fourthly, this is an NPOV encyclopedia. So assertions that someone was a fraud and a liar are absolutely no barrier to coverage, even if reliable sources accepted accepted the fraud as proven beyond any doubt. If you disagree, feel free to do a mass AFD of the >11,000 articles in Category:Fraudsters and its subcats, plus the 118 articles on perjurers. (You could add in a few highly notable fraudsters and perjurers from countries all around the world, plus a few impostors).
Martínez may indeed have scammed some media coverage, as you claim without citing any reliable source. But AFAIK there is nothing in any policy which allows us (let alone requires us) to discount reliable sources because we have ethical concerns about how those sources came to write about the topics. On the contrary, our standard is verifiability, i.e. we follow the sources. You believe that the balance of existing coverage of this man is all wrong, so the remedy open to you is go write a better article or book in support of your claim, and then suggest to other editors that they rewrite the article giving due weight to your published works.
Meanwhile, your claims are pure WP:OR: your own unsourced, personal opinion. It doesn't matter how many others in WP:LONGEVITY share your view of Martínez, because no en.wp editor is a reliable source. This campaign to delete articles because y'all reckon you know better than the reliable sources and the RSs therefore do not count towards notability is a classic case of WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It's time for y'all to go read WP:THETRUTH ... and to remember that Wikipedia is a tertiary publication, i.e. we follow the balance of existing reliable secondary sources regardless of whether we personally believe those sources to be wrong.
I like you, @Newshunter12, but the cumulative weight of the WP:OR, WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS and WP:THETRUTH which you and several others have presented at successive AFDs suggests to me that the editors involved WP:LONGEVITY are on a fast track to an Arbcom case or to application of the discretionary snactions which are already in force. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl Feel free to report me to whatever governing body you like for punishment. I stand by my editing, and if happening to have overlapping interests with other editors and in a few cases believing reality ≠ WP:OR gets me banned, so be it. Newshunter12 (talk) 12:42, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Newshunter12, policy at WP:V is v clear, and always has been. In writing Wikipedia, reality is determined by reliable sources. The rest is flaky sources or WP:OR. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:47, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl Well, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said she would rather bungle the response to the Libyan uprising through action then inaction, so if that is good enough to decide the fate of nations then it is good enough to decide how I edit Wikipedia. If you don't like it, then please report me. Newshunter12 (talk) 13:01, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Newshunter12: That response sounds very much like WP:THETRUTH. And I'm not going to get into unpicking the analogy because that would bring us into political POV territory, but I'll remind you of the politician's fallacy.
So it looks like I may indeed have to take this further. Pity :( --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:10, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I could maybe see this in a table or list item on Longevity claims, but 4 news articles, in my estimation, is not sustained coverage. The guy worked the fields for Fidel Castro, made this claim, and died. This is different from the Charlotte Hughes situation in a lot of ways. I, certainly, don't want this to get out of control, and the only other similar article I have any intention of nominating for deletion is Samuel Sadela; besides just nominating articles I've tried to clear some pages miscategorized in Longevity claims and Longevity myths, so it isn't just about deleting stuff. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:05, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.
    1. Marx, Gary (2005-06-06). "Timeworn but not time-tested". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 939-word profile of Benito Martínez.

    2. Gibbs, Stephen (2005-06-22). "Cuba's living embodiment of history". BBC. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 586-word profile of Benito Martínez.

    3. Gumbel, Andrew (2005-02-14). "119-year-old man 'proves' Cuba's health". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 147-word profile of Benito Martínez.

    4. "Benito Martínez Abrogán". The Economist. 2006-10-19. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 904-word obituary about Benito Martínez.

    5. "Cuba's oldest man dies at age 126". The Denver Post. 2006-10-12. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 271-word obituary about Benito Martínez.

    6. "Oldest Cuban, said to be 126, dies. Man made famous by government efforts to promote healthy lives". NBC News. Reuters. 2006-10-12. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 275-word obituary about Benito Martínez.

    7. Hemlock, Doreen (2006-10-13). "Benito Martinez, Said to Be Oldest Man in Cuba at 126". Sun-Sentinel. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11. Retrieved 2018-12-11.

      This is a 293-word obituary about Benito Martínez.

    There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Benito Martínez to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".

    Cunard (talk) 09:41, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete some news wires picked up a story about a non notable fraudster. Not worth an article. Living 4 years longer than the accepted oldest person is pretty clearly not true. Legacypac (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Legacypac: I have checked the 4 sources cited in the current version of the article, but as far as I can see not one of them derives from a news agency. Maybe I have missed something, so please can you explain whether you are claiming that news wires were involved in any of those stories? And if so, why?
This is important, because those if those sources are not from news wires, then the topic clearly meets the WP:GNG test of "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" event before we evaluate the wire stories which were included the in long list of sources helpfully listed above by @Cunard.
I see nothing in any policy to support the notion that a false claim undermines notability. It just means that the article should be written differently, with the veracity of his claim covered in accordance with WP:WEIGHT. If, for example, the sources all agreed that Martinez was clearly lying about his aged, then we should open the article with a clear statement that Martinez is notable for a false claim of longevity. If the sources are less definitive, then the article should note that the claim is disputed or unverified, or whatever the sources say.
It would be helpful if you could clarify whether any reliable sources assert that Martinez was a fraudster, or whether that assertion is your own original research. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:59, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - Agree with User:BrownHairedGirl. The campaign against pages regarding old people has gone too far. No you most definitely cannot just get around WP:GNG by saying "famous for being old so delete" if the subject of the page is the subject of sustained WP:SIGCOV in reliable sources. This is symptomatic of a larger problem with is WP:CREEP mostly directed at deleting references and articles because, ultimately, there are groups of editors who do not like those articles/the sources that they are based on. FOARP (talk) 20:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It is hardly WP:OR to say an unverified undocumented claim to living years beyond the longest lived man known is unlikely to be true. The story got picked up by some international media but that does not make this fraudster notable. Legacypac (talk) 23:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Legacypac: no sources = WP:OR. Or maybe WP:POV.
WP:GNG is based on coverage. No part of that policy makes a GNG-notable person become non-notable just because they have been proven to be a fraudster. (And in this case the claim of fraud appears to be unsourced). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:16, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
BrownHairedGirl that makes no logical sense. You have no sources to say I am not 20 feet tall or 200 years old or the King of the United States but if I claimed these things Wikipedia would rightly reject the claim as fabricated. The rest of your point is attacking a strawman. Legacypac (talk) 01:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Legacypac: you are entirely missing the point. Wikiedia's policy is WP:Verifiability, not truth. We follow the reliable sources. WP:V says "Even if you're sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it".
If I were to make some outlandish claim about you or anyone eslse, then it would be assessed by the sources, not by anything which you or I said about it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:11, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
To expand on what User:BrownHairedGirl just said, if you claimed to be 20 feet tall or 200 years old or the King of the United States, and reliable sources gave significant coverage to you based on that, that would pass WP:GNG. If you were later exposed as a fraud and that was also reported in a reliable source, this would not make you non-notable, if anything it would make you more notable. FOARP (talk) 09:02, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly so, @FOARP. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:12, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OTTO. It's a good argument up to a point, but not a reason to push demonstrable falsehoods as fact here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:02, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@The Blade of the Northern Lights: Sorry, but but there's no up to a point about it. WP:OTTO is as an essay, not policy. The policy is that we follow reliable sources. If you want to change the policy, you know where WP:RFC is. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing in policy saying that articles uncritically spew bullshit because normally reliable sources do. Editorial judgment matters, and that is what I'm arguing here. The claim in question is bullshit no matter how many purportedly reliable sources say it, and it's well within editorial discretion to excise provable bullshit (this doesn't mean that the editors adding to this article endorse said claim, to be sure, I do not think anyone is acting in bad faith or pushing some POV here). No RfC needed. (Lest my view sound strange, the whole WP:VNT RfC years who was basically about rewording the lead sentence to avoid exactly the interpretation I'm arguing against, one of the key arguments was that verifiable bullshit is still bullshit, and policy should discourage bullshit in a serious reference work). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:48, 14 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@The Blade of the Northern Lights: Here is the current version of the lede:
Benito Martínez Abrogán (June 19, 1880? – October 11, 2006) was a Haitian Cuban who claimed to be the world's oldest living person. He claimed to have been born on June 19, 1880, near Cavaellon, Haiti; however, he had no documents to verify this and was thus never an officially eligible candidate for this record. The Cuban government :sent officials to Haiti to investigate, but found nothing to either prove or disprove the claim. Cuban government medical experts attested that he was at least 119 years old at the time of his death, but the reasons for this determination were never presented.
That looks like a near-perfect example of how to apply WP:V and WP:RS. It notes his claims, but does endorse it. Instead it notes the absence of evidence to uphold his claim, and the fact that Cuban officials offered no rationale for their endorsement. Beyond that, it leaves readers to make up their own minds. That seems to me to be entirely in accordance with both WP:WEIGHT and WP:EXCEPTIONAL.
This is not, as you assert, bullshit. It is an encyclopedic summary of the reliable sources: that a claim was made, but has not been substantiated. You or any other reader is quite entitled to conclude from that lede that claim is bullshit, but however well-reasoned that conclusion, it is is WP:OR or WP:SYN.
Your stance looks ever more like the mix of policy-defiant WP:OR and blatant WP:POV-pushing which is satirised in WP:THETRUTH.
It is long past time that you and the rest of the WP:LONGEVITY tag-team desisted from using en.Wikipedia as a vehicle for your WP:THETRUTH campaign. Y'all are of course free to go and do your original research research in a scholarly way and get it published in a way which meets the editorial oversight criteria of WP:RS. That published material can of course could then be cited on en.wp as an evaluation of such claims. But an unsourced assertion by you or me or any other editor that reliable sources are "bullshit" is pure original research.
I remind you again that Discetionary sanctions apply in this area, and that WP:ACDS#Expectations explicitly says that editors are expected to "comply with all applicable policies and guidelines". This OR and POV-pushing is blatantly policy-defiant, and if it continues then I will assemble to evidence to ask uninvolved admins to apply sanctions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:17, 15 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I can't speak for anyone else, I operate on my own. OR doesn't mean uncritically accepting anything a normally reliable source says even if it's obviously wrong (looking over the Sam Blacketer AfD from many years ago shows just where that can lead), and that is all I'm arguing. This is a facially absurd claim, and a serious reference work will either filter out such noise or, if it's notable enough, explain as much; I happened to think this falls into the former category, so I nominated it. If this discussion results in a keep, I'll keep an eye on this article make sure it continues to say as much (as the sources themselves do). In this specific instance I was wrong about this article's content (while I disagree that the lead is near-perfect, I think it veers into making longevity sound like a sporting competition, that's surmountable), the larger issue of how much weight to give these claims in general is best worked out elsewhere. And also, in my view this really isn't worth getting worked up over; I was around for the party during the arbitration case, we're nowhere near that level of heat, and there's nothing here that can't be fleshed out. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 06:02, 16 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 13:27, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The subject meets WP:BASIC, with significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject, as referenced in the article and with additional sources noted above. He received international coverage in sources independent of each other while he was alive, as well as after he died. There is no policy that meeting WP:BASIC because of the subject's old age excludes them from notability. Discussion here seems to have veered into the quality of the article, which is not the purpose of AfD. However, Wikipedia does have policy on citing uncertain dates MOS:APPROXDATE, as I have had cause to note in another AfD this week. Instead of a ? after the date of birth, the policy recommends placing (unattested) after the date. (I am not sure why this AfD was extended, as it appears to be a clear Keep, not just on votes but on policy-based arguments.) RebeccaGreen (talk) 18:37, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The basic question is does the article meet WP:Basic and it does, with three reliable sources listed in the article, more listed above, not is the claim of the article's subject fraudulent. Aurornisxui (talk) 20:54, 17 December 2018 (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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