Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muhammad Sahimi

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The result was keep, withdrawn. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:09, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Muhammad Sahimi

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The author of all the substantive content on this page is apparently Muhammad Sahimi, based on the username (Sahimi54) and the fact that this user hasn't edited any other pages. I note that whilst Dr. Sahimi does meet one of the notability criteria for academics (he holds a named chair at a university), nevertheless on account of the self-promotional nature of this article (note the unnecessary and comprehensive list of his academic papers and newspaper articles) and also because of the absence of contributions from third parties, I think this article should be deleted on account of the autobiographical conflict of interest. Literatim (talk) 17:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The subject obviously passes WP:PROF and there are other ways to deal with the abundance of inline citations if consensus is that there are too many. If the subject did create this article about himself, I think he did a good job portraying himself in an objective and neutral manner. (The SPA claim is quite ironic in that the nom is also an SPA: all seven of his edits were made over a 13 minute period regarding this article.) Location (talk) 20:29, 18 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:17, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep has a GS h index of around 33 so easily passes WP:Prof#C1. All the references to papers should be removed from the BLP as unneeded. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:21, 19 October 2010 (UTC).[reply]
Comment. The two comments so far miss the point: I was not disputing that Dr. Sahimi passes notability as an academic, the problem is that he is a controversial political figure whose articles have been used in speeches by Ayatollah Rafsanjani and who divides the Iranian diaspora community, some regarding him in a negative light as a propagandist on nuclear issues who has close links to the regime and some regarding him in a positive light as telling important truths about Western imperialism, etc. No controversial political commentator should be writing their own article, and Location's belief that the article is neutral simply takes no account of this aspect of Dr. Sahimi's life. And by the way, in response to Location's "ironic" rebuke, the account I created for discussing Iranian issues hasn't had any other edits yet and is a wiki-legal second account in order to protect my identity because I am known to Dr. Sahimi, but it doesn't change my criticism of this self-promotion by Dr. Sahimi. To repeat: it is not about notability, it is about conflict of interest and I would sincerely urge commenters on this deletion topic to respect the extreme sensitivity of the subject-matter and find out something about the person in question and secondly about Iranian politics before responding. Literatim (talk) 14:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: On the contrary, the alleged sensitivity of the subject matter, intimate knowledge of the subject and a background in Iranian politics are what we should not be taking into consideration in an AfD. WP:COI is not a standalone deletion criterion - and probably just as well, because it sounds like you have a conflict of interest yourself in this issue - and none of this miscellany has anything to do with relevant policies or guidelines. That you may have a content dispute is properly handled on the article's talk page, not by attempting to delete the article. We can only judge whether the subject passes the verifiability and notability bars of WP:V, WP:PROF and the GNG. He does. Done deal. Ravenswing 16:27, 19 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: OK, I may as well go along with that (apart from the suggestion of COI). The article does, however, need some serious editing for relevance and neutrality at some stage. Literatim (talk) 18:41, 19 October 2010 (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.