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Alan Cabal

Alan Cabal (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Delete. Was deleted as a prod but then hostilely contested a while after deletion. Notability not established per WP:CREATIVE. There are thousands of journalists, not all of them are notable - He's hardly a Sy Hersh. There is no indication that this one is particularly more notable than any other. Ave Caesar (talk) 02:03, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Keep Such childishness. It is good knowledge and Alan Cabal is someone I would like to know more about. Can we know more about him? This is an Article for Expansion.-Manhattan Samurai (talk) 02:55, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Your personal attack aside, please note that WP:ILIKEIT is not a valid reason for keeping an article. --Ave Caesar (talk) 04:36, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Keep and expand— He seems "pretty fucking notable." And I'm not even Alan Cabal! In all seriousness now, he seems notable, and with some more citations and refs, the article will be a pretty decent stub. Leonard^Bloom (talk) 03:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Keep the brutal deletionist policy that has aflicted certain articles such as Alan Cabal or Murder of Joseph Didier must be brought to a stop NOW. Smith Jones (talk) 03:16, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Delete unless notability may be established via independent and reliable sources. Just being a widely published freelance writer isn't enough (see the back-and-forth about Cyrus Farivar), until we have some standards saying how journalists are notable for their writing alone, we should have some sources that are actually about them. --Dhartung | Talk 04:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
• Delete per Dhartung - notability is not established in the current single reference (indeed there are no valid citations or references as third party) and the "bibliography" (hardly well headed!) does nothing to assist. --VS 04:24, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

If only we could delete deletionists. If references aren't used, add them, but don't use their absence as proof against notability. His position on freedom of speech is the interesting thing to note here. You do realize without this article on Alan Cabal there isn't any real information about him on the internet. This article is a real asset. Someone needs to find some interesting sources about him so that this article can be shored up. Under no circumstances should we be removing this article. I love these idiotic arguments.-Manhattan Samurai (talk) 05:31, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, I would like to rat out Ave Caesar and point out that he removed this line from the gonzo journalism article on June 1, 2008: "Other writers who have worked in "gonzo" mode include Jordan Kobos, Tom Luffman, and Alan Cabal." Annihilate Cabal's existence! Basically, Alan Cabal is well-known as a gonzo journalist and there is a systematic effort to remove his name from Misplaced Pages, even though his name has been non-systematically added to this site. Systematic effort by one Ave Caesar. Look Ave, maybe you have a gripe against Alan Cabal for something he has done, someone he has supported outside of Misplaced Pages, and yes, it is a brilliant idea to remove his entry from Misplaced Pages then, because you'll diminish his notability over time (notability does come somewhat with having a Misplaced Pages entry), but just stop. You've been found out and the game is up.-Manhattan Samurai (talk) 06:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Comment to Manhattan Samurai You have your argument about face and wrong side up and your diatribe is further flawed because rather than spend the time "walking the talk" and putting in the time to save the article which you have so much regard for, by finding these elusive references - you feel the need to resort to personal attacks here (and it appears at many places where you do not agree with the alternative message). There really is no need for that sort of behaviour - please just try and understand - third party references are the staple of this wikipedia and their presence is proof of notability.--VS 06:13, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I have contacted the author about such issues (his most recent email address is al_cabal@yahoo.com) and you should too as an interesting experiment. I tried to find some references and it wasn't easy, but there is a lot of "talk" about him, and so the references are out there. Maybe they are in the archives of several newspapers. The internet is a turd for research, so this will take time. Hopefully solutions are forthcoming.-Manhattan Samurai (talk) 06:20, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Reluctant Delete. Alan Cabal is one of those interesting cases in that he is quoted by blogs and forums, and appears to have a modest but well established internet presence. I have argued previously that we should allow articles on topics or people in which there is considerable coverage in non-formal sources such as blogs and forums, but there is no consensus for that. Under current guidelines this article fails WP:CREATIVE. If people wish to know who Alan Cabal is (and I can see that people would, given the amount of times his articles are mentioned) they'll just have to Google and pick up the remains of this article on a Misplaced Pages mirror. Seems totally daft to me, but that is the current consensus. SilkTork * 07:39, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. What am I doing! Consensus develops from discussions on AfD - the guidelines reflect what happens here. If enough people show that they want articles on people like Alan Cabal and are prepared to accept multiple internet mentions, then that will get written into the guidelines. Keep for gawds sake. Let's be sensible about it, and not get bogged down into perpetuating some guidelines that are not working! SilkTork * 07:43, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines are affected by consensus, yes. However, they are constrained by policy. For instance, blogs are not reliable sources and cannot be used to establish notability. The notability standards, which have resisted far greater challenges than this in the past, consistently maintain that someone is not notable simply because they are prolific but because something they produce had a profound impact. Quality over quantity. --Ave Caesar (talk) 11:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

• Delete - continue the brutal deletionist policy of removing anything without reliable sources. This one is referenced to what looks like a Misplaced Pages mirror?! Huon (talk) 13:38, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
  • What do you mean by mirror??? The word mirror does not appear even once on the article or tis atlk page. your reasoning appear spurious. Smith Jones (talk) 16:54, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment - by "mirror" I mean that this site, the article's main reference, seems to take its content from Misplaced Pages itself, probably from an older version of the same article. See the "" line. Huon (talk) 17:09, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
  • isnt it possible that that other article devleoped its own article on Alan Cabal independently of wikipedia? Are we all so arrogant that we cannot bleive that other wikis can come up with their own researchw ithout stealing wholesale from our hard work? Smith Jones (talk) 17:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't assume anything, I read the source. The "" line is pretty explicit, isn't it? Actually that source seems not to be a true mirror (or a Wiki), but some sort of search engine - under "Results summary" it gives several headings, with "Misplaced Pages" the only one where anything was found. Huon (talk) 18:22, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. Not much of a claim to notability. Zero reliable sources cited in article. Search for any significant coverage of him didn't find any.--Michig (talk) 18:17, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
• From the author after I sent him an email saying "We don't know too much about you, and frankly we're not up to doing the research to find the maybe half a dozen newspaper articles (are there any books?) that discuss you, so we're hoping you can maybe point us in the right direction.":

Whoa! Who the Hell am I? I hope this isn't getting too vicious.

I've got several dozen articles in the "archives" of www.nypress.com, starting HERE:

Christ, that's a long URL. I hope it works. If it doesn't, just go to www.nypress.com. Under "archive" you'll see a search box. Enter "Alan Cabal" (in quotes), go for "oldest first."

I'm still doing book reviews for High Times, but they don't post those on the web. Calling a spade a spade has its cost vis-a-vis subjects like Israel and Ernst Zundel, and I've paid it, happily. I never set out to be any kind of "journalist", it happened by accident. Given a voice, I will state the truth as I see it, and I did.

Anyway, I'm not a journalist, I'm a polemicist. Fucking Cassandra is what I am, heh. I prefer setting up and tearing down live spectacles, like rock shows and circuses. That line of work staves off my well-deserved heart attack.

Thanks to you, and all best wishes to my allies and friends. May my enemies' poo come to life and kiss them on the lips.

Best,

Alan Cabal

The thing to do is find the article Mr. Cabal wrote about Ernst Zundel and use that as a reference. If possible, even find some "talk" resulting from the article.-Manhattan Samurai (talk) 19:53, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

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