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Cultural impact of Michael Jackson (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Closing note as well as the subsequent discussion failed to find a rationale behind the close as "no consensus". The correct result of the AfD had to be delete because of the following reasons:

1. The article is a WP:POVFORK because all content already exists on Michael Jackson. Article violates WP:OR because of gross misrepresentation of sources and it reads like a total WP:FANPAGE.
2. Not a single !vote rejected the fact that the article is a WP:POVFORK, WP:OR and WP:FANPAGE.
3. "Keep" !votes only depended on WP:PLENTY, WP:SOURCESMAYEXIST and WP:Clearly notable.
4. Off-wiki canvassing and meatpuppetry is a established concern regarding this subject and this has view has been successfully established per this WP:AN thread.
5. At least 8/18 Keep !votes were made by off-wiki WP:CANVASSED editors who were not editing for weeks or months before the creation of the AfD. One "Keep" admitted that he was recruited off-wiki.
6. On-wiki canvassing was also carried out by Keep supporters.
7. One editor who voted for "keep", was calling every "delete" supporter a troll and accusing them of malice. He was topic banned.
8. Many "keep" !votes were only spewing their obsession about Michael Jackson, personally attacking editors, bludgeoning, and falsely accusing participants of racism.
9. Not a single admin supported keeping the article but multiple admins like Neutrality, Drmies, supported deletion of the article.

Given all of the misconduct and clear-cut deceptive tricks performed by the "keep" votes, one can be easily convinced that not only the "keep" votes lacked any basis to debunk the nomination but demonstrated a lack of WP:AGF. With the formation of such a toxic environment, it must have either falsely convinced many of the editors to either suggest "keep" or just leave the AfD. Nevertheless, there appears to be enough support for the deletion. Excelse (talk) 10:38, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

@JG66:, what do you have to say about all that? For some obvious reason, Excelse has completely omitted the fact IP address 173.79.47.227, a brand-new user, only appeared on Misplaced Pages for that vote and did indulge in vote-canvassing . They've never ever posted anything ever since. (Their very first edit is a vote regarding the 'List of postal codes in Portugal'; that vote appears to only have been cast to avoid an accusation of WP:NOTHERE.)

Excelse is not assuming good faith, accusing many "Keep" editors of being SPAs or what not. The "Keep" voters made a very strong point as to why the article must remain, and serious, constant efforts have been made to improve the article—the article was greatly improved, all POV/puffery was removed, and the article is constantly being enriched and improved in tone, content and quality (and Michael Jackson has undisputedly had a tremendous cultural impact). There is therefore no reason whatsoever to delete it. Any call for deletion at this point, in my observation, is purely partisan. I have nothing more to add on this issue. Israell (talk) 12:18, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

• Endorse I, therefore, endorse the "no consensus" closure for the reasons I've listed above. Israell (talk) 16:41, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

• Endorse the "no consensus", easily defendable. There may be some useful advice at WP:RENOM. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:24, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse the no-consensus closure. I can't be bothered to follow a single one of the links Excelse provides above. I've seen enough of their so-called contributions here to know they'e very selective with the truth. Going back years, they seem to disappear and then reappear doing very little to article main space and, quite frankly, goose stepping around the place. And talk about a disingenuous report on the goings-on at the AfD ...
• An enormous amount of work has gone into improving the article – I did plenty – and plenty more can and should be done. Someone in the AfD said that they could see this article becoming an FA; I've helped get articles to FA (though I've never nominated myself) and I agree with that idea, and it was in my mind the more I helped expand the content. There are sources I didn't get around to investigating such as the Popular Music & Society articles we currently cite. I don't believe we're exploiting them anywhere near to their full potential with regard to this subject; and (no disrespect to others who tried to expand the article in the past) I think these opportunities have been wasted as keep editors may have been either too inexperienced or too fixated on establishing that Michael Jackson had a significant cultural impact, rather than building an article that discusses and explores this phenomenon. I found such missed opportunities in some of the more mainstream sources we use (a Rolling Stone article comes to mind) – it was astonishing how little we'd exploited these resources, given the statements they contain. Which is why with articles titles such as "Black or White? Michael Jackson and the Idea of Crossover", "Synesthesia, 'Crossover,' and Blacks in Popular Music", "Michael Jackson in/as U.S. Popular Culture" – all from Popular Music & Society or other journals currently in the Bibliography (but under-utilised in the text) – I'm confident that the article's got huge potential. I can't speak policy-ese and I don't wikilawyer, but it seemed to me then, as it does now in this review, that policy-ese and wikilawyering is all some people were capable of, and they haven't got a clue about writing an article or what actually constitutes a good (/Good/Featured) article on Misplaced Pages. JG66 (talk) 15:22, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse - I count 22 Keep !votes and 16 Delete !votes plus the closer. If this were a vote, it would be either Keep or No Consensus. It is hard to make the case that the closer had an obligation to Supervote to Delete. Perhaps a closer could have reasonably discounted the Keep statements and found Delete, but this appeal requires a stronger finding that No Consensus was an error. I think it was the right close, but what is more important is that it was a plausible close. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:40, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse Good close. No coherent rational for overturn has been given - instead there is an assumption of bad faith on the part of the nominator. The XfD closure was a proper reading. Lightburst (talk) 22:55, 18 April 2020 (UTC)
• Endorse, as someone who voted to Delete the article. Yes, a few Keep votes where probably canvassed and there were some truly awful arguments put forward, but there were also reasoned Keep opinions backed up by policy, and these were not refuted to the degree that a Delete close would have been appropriate. There were also several Delete votes that were pretty bad and did not cite relevant policy, so a No Consensus close was definitely the right choice here. Devonian Wombat (talk) 00:18, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• Relist: (edit conflict) Well I see an issue in the AfD is canvassing. Well if we relist it, we'll get more discussion because well, they've exhausted meatpuppets. In this deletion review and the closure statement, the closing statement was that further discussion will lead no where. In addition, the deletion review nominator is having civility issues and not WP:AGFing, and the keep !votes and the no consensus endorsements are about further improving the article, which is a fair alternative to deletion. On the other hand, the deleters and this deletion review nominator has all these policy related arguments, in which sure, if you believe policies are stronger than anythign else, then we must follow it. In this case, we have a neutral situation. A no consensus closure is a neutral close, but I think that a relist is the most neutral in this situation. {{replyto}} Can I Log In's (talk) page 01:10, 19 April 2020 (UTC); edited 01:12, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• We've now had two very messy AfDs centered on POVFORK grounds in the past couple weeks. In this case, you at least had a couple of !voters who argued against the POVFORK, and other !voters who said the topic would be notable. I'm not necessarily convinced the keep !voters had the stronger argument, but I also don't think this AfD could have been closed as anything but no consensus, so I'll go ahead and endorse the closure. The article looks to be a mess, so give it six months, see if it gets cleaned up, and if it doesn't try again per WP:RENOM. From a very high-level view - I haven't looked at the article, just read the AfD - I would assume the topic would be notable enough for an article if properly spun out from the main article, the very issue presented here. I'm also starting to believe that it doesn't matter if the deletion rationale is 100% correct, if it's a very technical deletion rationale such as POVFORK, it's going to be difficult to get an article deleted (I am NOT saying the deletion rationale here was 100% correct, I have no opinion on the matter - I'm just yelling into the wind based on a couple recent DRVs.) SportingFlyer T·C 01:49, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• ENDORSE Toughpigs found evidence that it passes the general notability guidelines. There were some valid KEEP articles, so no way this should've been deleted. NO CONSENSUS is an acceptable outcome. Dream Focus 18:04, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
• I have a problem with this outcome, and it's the canvassing. Canvassing is not OK. It irretrievably taints our processes and I dislike it that the canvassing worked and won't have any negative consequences. What we normally do in these cases is to relist with a semi-protected AfD, and I commend this approach to you all as hugely better than turning a blind eye to the canvassing.—S Marshall T/C 20:46, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not a fan of the canvassing either but I think it's still a no consensus even if you remove the canvassed votes - that being said, I have no problem with a protected relist. SportingFlyer T·C 21:37, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

• question- is there a way of condemning the off-site canvassing and mendacious accusations of racism by many of the keep voters without necessarily overturning the AfD? I don't really care if this article stays or not. But I 100% guarantee that if I tried to secure a delete outcome on some AfD by recruiting friends off-wiki to come and vote, and started calling people racists, I'd get blocked for it and rightly so. Yet keep voters are apparently allowed to do what they like and say what they like about other people just because they're keep voters. That's bullshit and it needs to stop. Reyk _YO! 07:15, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

• I suppose the closer could consider saying something like that in the closing statement, if we feel a bit of handwringing about it is really sufficient to satisfy DRVPURPOSE, point 5.—S Marshall T/C 12:54, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

• Overturn to Keep - Keep arguments are based on policy and grounded in the actual articles, the "delete" position seems to be based on invoking policy pages they haven't read. The main Michael Jackson page has 77kb of readable prose, sub-pages are appropriate. If there's a POV being suggested here, I can't discern it, nor seemingly can anyone voting for deletion. If there's any OR/synthesis, I can't find it, not has anyone else identified what it is. There could be a few bits and pieces that could be, of course, but by and large it's a summary of what other sources are saying - i.e., it's an encyclopaeida article. WilyD 10:12, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Comment: The page was dramatically improved in terms of neutrality and sourcing during the course of the nom, so that might be why some of the delete votes don't seem to correlate with the article now. Though personally I'd still vote to delete, for reasons that no one needs to hear right now, credit is due to those who improved it. If nothing else, nominating the article for deletion did cause it to rapidly improve! Popcornfud (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

• Endorse No consensus is a reasonable call given the division in opinion. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:57, 23 April 2020 (UTC)