WP:Articles for deletion/Greenland ice cores

:{{la|Greenland ice cores}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Greenland ice cores}})

Nonsense article, possibly with OR. Individual sentences can be parsed as English, but taken together, the article is gibberish - it barely addresses the page's topic! References are only here for padding, it looks like. Editor who created this page, User:Marshallsumter is currently banned for disruptive editing. Hundreds of other articles from this editor are being canvassed. Please help! AstroCog (talk) 22:52, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

::Are you sure that the author was banned?  His user page only says that he/she is currently indefinitely blocked.  See WP:Banning policy.  There is a difference.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

:::*That's my mistake. But banned or blocked, the point is that User:Marshallsumter has caused a disruption by creating over 200 articles which contain his original research and WP:SYNTH. He's also created numerous WP:Coatrack articles, which on the surface appear legitimate, and may even be salvageable, but they seem to exist mainly to link to his other questionable articles. My intent was not to place an ad hom on the editor, but to provide awareness of the issue.AstroCog (talk) 19:48, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

• delete part of the same WP:SYNTH farm of the author.--Cerejota (talk) 00:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

::What is a "WP:SYNTH farm"?  Unscintillating (talk) 03:11, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

:Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

• Keep  After skimming the article, it seems to mostly be about a mapping of places in Greenland where ice cores have been drilled.  Without getting more involved, this seems like a plausible topic.  I have returned to the nomination to examine the charges being made to justify deletion, and find some generalized objections to the content and an ad hominem against the author.  If the editor is banned, this article can be speedy deleted, but the user page does not mention banning.  The content objections are not stated as objections that rise to the level indicated at WP:Deletion policy, nor does my initial skimming of the article verify article-wide OR or nonsense.  Nor in the nomination is there evidence of an attempt to assess the notability of the topic or consider WP:ATD, for example, there is no documentation of Google searches.  Seeing no need for more detailed analysis, I !vote Keep.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

:::To answer your question, User:Marshallsumter has created hundreds of articles with significant WP:SYNTH issues, and often WP:COPYVIO issues and WP:CWW issues, please see the thread at ANI. There is a wikiwide effort to fix these issues, and there is a significant amount of support for wiping the slate clean. I agree this particular topic could be fixed and is notable, but the content is a semi-random collection of SYNTH and possible copy-vio. I share the opinion that due to the generalized consensus that this user has abused editing privileges and that the best way to fix these issue is to delete and begin anew. A few of his creations are actually topics in need of coverage, but in the background of the conduct, there is reason to believe that in this case no content is preferable to bad content.--Cerejota (talk) 03:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

• Delete - as largely unsourced synth-y OR. That being said, an actual article could probably be written on the topic, so no prejudice against any recreation. Yaksar (let's chat) 19:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
• Comment  I have added a comment [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=449899082&oldid=449899070 here].  The main point for this discussion is that the editor remains unbanned.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:50, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
• Delete. Copyvio problems with the images, on which this article strongly depends. -- 202.124.73.164 (talk) 23:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. My chief concern is that there is a lot of copying within Wikipedia in this article, and it is very likely that the remaining text is copied verbatim (or nearly so) from other sources. The article contains the sentence

::Low δ18O values are associated with low temperatures and vice versa, and the shift of δ18O values at 11-1200 m / 11,000 years is the shift from the glacial to the current interglacial.

:That was lifted verbatim from the [http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/www/geo/research/first_climate_curve/ Niels Bohr institute]. Likewise, the sentence

::Probably the most important outcome from the analysis of the Camp Century ice core is the demonstration that ice core drilling and the oxygen isotope analysis are viable ways of reconstructing past climate.

:is very similar to

::…the most important outcome from the analysis of the Camp Century ice core probably was the demonstration of the fact that ice core drilling and the oxygen isotope method were indeed viable ways of reconstructing past climate.

:This is more than a close paraphrase: phrases have been copied wholesale with possibly just enough modification to trick automated filters. The remaining text (that isn't CWW) is largely sourced to the Frozen Annals book, which I don't have electronic access to. I see it, the well is already poisoned and there is no overriding reason to give the remaining content the benefit of the doubt. With this editor, if you don't see copyright violations, you simply aren't looking hard enough. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

• Speedy delete G12. Along with the copyvios identified by Sławomir Biały, much of the "Ice core site" is either copied or very closely paraphrased from section 8 of [http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/publications/FrozenAnnals.pdf/ this source], cited but without a link as footnote [4]. This is part of a much bigger pattern of problematic contributions from this editor, and I think the only way to be sure we're clean is to nuke it all. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

: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.