Hongyuan Zha – Deletion is endorsed; no consensus to salt – Stifle (talk) 12:59, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Hongyuan Zha (talk`\|`edit`\|`history`\|`logs`\|`links`\|`watch) (XfD`\|`restore) User:Ziyatexie was discovered to be a paid editor. Given the fact that this user was violating Wikipedia policies, there is reason to believe the move to create the AfD of Hongyuan Zha was motivated by the personal vendetta, rather than a valid reason for deletion and an honest desire to improve Wikipedia. Reasons why it should be undeleted. The subject is very clearly notable mentioned on Nonlinear dimensionality reduction, Local tangent space alignment, Entity linking, Isometry and several others. Co-authored 365 articles in peer-reviewed journals (Google scholar) A previous faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University Current Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology Scientist who has been named in several patents (https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~zha/patents.html) NSF CAREER Award Recipient Speaker at the IEEE Computer Society Recieved grants from DARPA, NASA and others. Here is a quote from Wikipedia's Valid Reasons to delete page: "An article about a notable topic that is written like an advertisement, with a promotional tone and style, but which does qualify for an article (under WP:N, the Notability policy) should not be deleted, but should be marked {ad}, notifying others to change the writing style to give it a neutral tone." Hongyuan Zha entry is not perfect but it is a notable topic about a prominent figure in search queries and query execution that is likely of interest to many readers. The existence of the Hongyuan Zha entry surely improves the Wikipedia project. 200.82.132.120 (talk) 04:15, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Endorse Articles written by undeclared paid editors are nowadays almost always deleted, unless some experienced responsible wikipedian is willing to rewrite them--which is nowadays very rare, because almost all responsible WPedians recognize that the only effective tool we have against paid editing is to delete the article: not only does the UPE have to refund the money (unless they're being really dishonest), but potential customers will learn that it is not practical to try to get a WP article in that manner. Writing an article as a UPE is explicitly a violation of the Terms of Use, and no website should permit such deliberate and blatant defiance of the TOU. It's not a personal vendetta, it's a very public effort by the volunteer editors here to remove the contamination of undeclared paid editing (UPE), editing which is practice is almost always highly promotional--for why else would someone pay for an article about themselves. (Sometime the UPE is hired by the place the person works for, but it comes to exactly the same motive and the same result.) When I listed he article for AfD, I said "He is notable, so someone without a coi might want to eventually write an article. " The point of "eventually", rather than immediately, is to balance the need to discourage UPE with the need to have a WP article on notable people. This is apparently your first edit on Wikipedia. If you have connection with the subject, you ought to declare it. If the connection is paid, you must declare it. And I do want to point out that none of the factors you mentioned by itself shows notability. The citations, however, show him an authority in his subject. There is also a problem with "In January 1999, Zha was selected by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to direct the NERSC as visiting research scientist" -- Director of NERSC is a very major position, and would shown notability, but he was only 6 years past his PhD at the time. There are similarly unsourced claims. The article would need to be rewritten, not restored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 05:45, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Endorse This was an interesting AFD which showed a clear consensus to delete, even disregarding the donkey vote. If the edits creating the article were Wikimedia:Terms of Use violations then to delete these edits seems reasonable to me (providing deletion is not disruptive). Considerations of notability may well be thought secondary, likewise whether promotional style might be editorially improved. So there was a good policy basis for the voting. Thincat (talk) 08:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Endorse, a clear consensus to delete at the AFD. I don't see that there would be a problem if a non-UPE were to want to come up with a new article from scratch. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC).[reply] Endorse and salt. The problem with just deleting is that it's not enough. Whoever paid for the article can just find another person to create it for them. Maybe even a sock of the first UPE. Repeat as many times as necessary for the article to stick. Salting the title will put a stop to that. If any legitimate user later wants to write a high-quality article about the subject, they shouldn't have any problem doing it in draft space and getting the title unsalted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 17:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] It is not our usual practice to salt until the article is recreated at least once without improvements, and in most cases we wt for the third try. We usually assume good faith even here--we assume the subject has probably learned the hopeless of hiring an unethical paid editor. Most of the time, that is what happens. If it does get re-created, then we know something--WP:BEANS about the details. `` WP:AGF only goes so far. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Reluctantly endorse I domn't see any policy or RfC indicating consensus to deleted any edit by an UPE, and I would have !voted keep on this AfD, but the consensus was clear and could not have been closed in any other way. Do not salt, and there should be no prejudice against recreation by a non-COI editor. Salting a notable topic is almost always a mistake. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 02:16, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Something seems off here. Guy doesn't even have a reasonable webpage and he is paying someone for a Wikipedia article? Something seems off here. Nearly any academic with an interest in PR creates a personal website. His exists, but is really limited. I'd rather not see this salted. Hobit (talk) 04:32, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] fwiw, his most cited articles, have GS cites of 1747, 891, 684, 645 . Some are major journals/conferences, some not but on fashionable topics. DGG ( talk ) 06:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Some are pretty obscure. Others (AAAI for example) are not. Hobit (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Endorse ArbCom has made clear that the TOU i.r.t. paid editing must be followed locally. If this is the case, we must also have an effective enforcement mechanism. We delete articles that are created by editors who are not allowed to post here (see G5) and I think this in analogous. We can determine by consensus the correct way to deal with this, and in that AfD, the consensus was clear. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:14, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply] Endorse there was clear support for deletion, so the only way this could be closed as anything other than Delete is if the argument for deletion (undisclosed paid editing) is considered to be very weak, and I don't think it is. In any case I don't think we're going to restore it at the request of an IP who may well be another paid editor. Hut 8.5 18:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.

Hongyuan Zha – Deletion is endorsed; no consensus to salt – Stifle (talk) 12:59, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.

User:Ziyatexie was discovered to be a paid editor. Given the fact that this user was violating Wikipedia policies, there is reason to believe the move to create the AfD of Hongyuan Zha was motivated by the personal vendetta, rather than a valid reason for deletion and an honest desire to improve Wikipedia. Reasons why it should be undeleted.

The subject is very clearly notable mentioned on Nonlinear dimensionality reduction, Local tangent space alignment, Entity linking, Isometry and several others.
Co-authored 365 articles in peer-reviewed journals (Google scholar)
A previous faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at Pennsylvania State University
Current Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology
Scientist who has been named in several patents (https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~zha/patents.html)
NSF CAREER Award Recipient
Speaker at the IEEE Computer Society
Recieved grants from DARPA, NASA and others.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia's Valid Reasons to delete page: "An article about a notable topic that is written like an advertisement, with a promotional tone and style, but which does qualify for an article (under WP:N, the Notability policy) should not be deleted, but should be marked {ad}, notifying others to change the writing style to give it a neutral tone." Hongyuan Zha entry is not perfect but it is a notable topic about a prominent figure in search queries and query execution that is likely of interest to many readers. The existence of the Hongyuan Zha entry surely improves the Wikipedia project. 200.82.132.120 (talk) 04:15, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse Articles written by undeclared paid editors are nowadays almost always deleted, unless some experienced responsible wikipedian is willing to rewrite them--which is nowadays very rare, because almost all responsible WPedians recognize that the only effective tool we have against paid editing is to delete the article: not only does the UPE have to refund the money (unless they're being really dishonest), but potential customers will learn that it is not practical to try to get a WP article in that manner. Writing an article as a UPE is explicitly a violation of the Terms of Use, and no website should permit such deliberate and blatant defiance of the TOU.

It's not a personal vendetta, it's a very public effort by the volunteer editors here to remove the contamination of undeclared paid editing (UPE), editing which is practice is almost always highly promotional--for why else would someone pay for an article about themselves. (Sometime the UPE is hired by the place the person works for, but it comes to exactly the same motive and the same result.) When I listed he article for AfD, I said "He is notable, so someone without a coi might want to eventually write an article. " The point of "eventually", rather than immediately, is to balance the need to discourage UPE with the need to have a WP article on notable people.

This is apparently your first edit on Wikipedia. If you have connection with the subject, you ought to declare it. If the connection is paid, you must declare it.

And I do want to point out that none of the factors you mentioned by itself shows notability. The citations, however, show him an authority in his subject. There is also a problem with "In January 1999, Zha was selected by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to direct the NERSC as visiting research scientist" -- Director of NERSC is a very major position, and would shown notability, but he was only 6 years past his PhD at the time. There are similarly unsourced claims. The article would need to be rewritten, not restored. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DGG (talk • contribs) 05:45, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse This was an interesting AFD which showed a clear consensus to delete, even disregarding the donkey vote. If the edits creating the article were Wikimedia:Terms of Use violations then to delete these edits seems reasonable to me (providing deletion is not disruptive). Considerations of notability may well be thought secondary, likewise whether promotional style might be editorially improved. So there was a good policy basis for the voting. Thincat (talk) 08:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse, a clear consensus to delete at the AFD. I don't see that there would be a problem if a non-UPE were to want to come up with a new article from scratch. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:28, 10 April 2018 (UTC).[reply]
Endorse and salt. The problem with just deleting is that it's not enough. Whoever paid for the article can just find another person to create it for them. Maybe even a sock of the first UPE. Repeat as many times as necessary for the article to stick. Salting the title will put a stop to that. If any legitimate user later wants to write a high-quality article about the subject, they shouldn't have any problem doing it in draft space and getting the title unsalted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 17:19, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is not our usual practice to salt until the article is recreated at least once without improvements, and in most cases we wt for the third try. We usually assume good faith even here--we assume the subject has probably learned the hopeless of hiring an unethical paid editor. Most of the time, that is what happens. If it does get re-created, then we know something--WP:BEANS about the details. ``

WP:AGF only goes so far. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:04, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Reluctantly endorse I domn't see any policy or RfC indicating consensus to deleted any edit by an UPE, and I would have !voted keep on this AfD, but the consensus was clear and could not have been closed in any other way. Do not salt, and there should be no prejudice against recreation by a non-COI editor. Salting a notable topic is almost always a mistake. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 02:16, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Something seems off here. Guy doesn't even have a reasonable webpage and he is paying someone for a Wikipedia article? Something seems off here. Nearly any academic with an interest in PR creates a personal website. His exists, but is really limited. I'd rather not see this salted. Hobit (talk) 04:32, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

fwiw, his most cited articles, have GS cites of 1747, 891, 684, 645 . Some are major journals/conferences, some not but on fashionable topics. DGG ( talk ) 06:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

- Some are pretty obscure. Others (AAAI for example) are not. Hobit (talk) 16:35, 11 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse ArbCom has made clear that the TOU i.r.t. paid editing must be followed locally. If this is the case, we must also have an effective enforcement mechanism. We delete articles that are created by editors who are not allowed to post here (see G5) and I think this in analogous. We can determine by consensus the correct way to deal with this, and in that AfD, the consensus was clear. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:14, 14 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse there was clear support for deletion, so the only way this could be closed as anything other than Delete is if the argument for deletion (undisclosed paid editing) is considered to be very weak, and I don't think it is. In any case I don't think we're going to restore it at the request of an IP who may well be another paid editor. Hut 8.5 18:09, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.