Talk:Alexander-Martin Sardina

Sardina's thesis was plagiarized in 2012: That's a notable fact, of course!

My current addition that Sardina's state exam thesis was plagiarized in 2012 at Osnabruck University has immediately (within a minute!) been reverted with the remarks "Trivial note, lacks secondary sources" by Drmies. This is absolutely not understandable since plagiarism is the worst crime one could commit in any academic field. Despite of that, only very good original monographies are being plagiarized. Both aspects make this paradox a notable point, of course! I expect a Wikipedia administrator to know that. Second, I indeed gave a secondary source, namely the catalog entry at the library of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg which has an explicit remark that the title in question is a case of plagiarism of Sardina's monography (in German language though; it reads: Plagiat der Examensarbeit von: Sardina, Alexander-Martin: Die nationalpolitischen Erziehungsanstalten (NAPOLAs) als Beleg für widersprüchliche NS-Erziehungskonzeptionen im Dritten Reich). There can be no doubt that an official entry at a university OPAC is a valid source for us. This is supposed to be a permanent link according to the university's website but it expires after a couple of minutes which is presumably a server bug or such: ''https://www.katalog.fau.de/TouchPoint/search.do;jsessionid=D21139A9D332880D7034305568DCA556?methodToCall=selectLanguage&Language=en'' The woman who plagiarized sardina's work is Anna-Lena Lohmann and the title in question is Elite für die Diktatur : Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten 1939 - 1945: Organisation, Intention und Umsetzung am Beispiel der Napola Naumburg, 2012, ISBN 9783863411435. I would say that the reversion of the revert is obvious once I can provide a stable online link to another source. - P.S. What the heck are you doing right now in this article?! Cheers, --2003:E3:D707:4400:700E:F1C5:7845:E237 (talk) 03:52, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ha, what I'm doing with this article is bringing it in line with Wikipedia policies. No, plagiarism is not the worst crime in academia. Racism, sexual harassment, wage extortion, the disappearance of tenure, the ever-expanding salaries in administration, the insistence on face-to-face classes just to get the tuition in during a pandemic, all those are much worse. Your comment on "only the best get plagiarized" is a bunch of nonsense, and unverified. People plagiarize things that are easy to plagiarize, not things that are so fantastic. If they were so great, they'd be well-known, and everyone would find out immediately that it was plagiarism--so stop patting yourself on the back. Sorry, I mean the subject of the article.
Also, this is a WP:BLP. We will not have such material without proper secondary sourcing. We will also not have COI edits in here. The subject of the article is notable, most likely, as an elected official. That's fine--but we are not going to have an encyclopedic article on a former elected official that is essentially an ad for the person. Drmies (talk) 15:02, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with User:Drmies. Plagiarizing is certainly a major offence in academia. Being plagiarized is trivial and uninteresting and doesn't belong on WP unless this was a big deal with multiple sources showing that it's notable for Sardina (not for the plagiarist). --Macrakis (talk) 15:52, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive deletion last night - Let's have a closer look, please!

The mass deletion of roughly half of this article seems not to be reasonable to me. I cannot see how this is an improvement or a benefit for any reader. Plus, this biography article is about a European person, and readers from Europe would expect some points that are now gone, we'll come to that later on. This is the English language Wikipedia, not the American Wikipedia... In addition to that, admins have no special rights when it comes to article content. In my understanding, the normal procedure for deleting whole paragraphs would have been to discuss it first on the talk page instead of just doing it with POV reasons like ″irrelevant", "spam" or "fluffy." The multiple claim "not verified by secondary sources" is not true either; deleting sources like e. g. newspaper articles and replacing them by a {{cn|date=August 2020}} template is rather strange in this context.—That being said, let's have a closer look at some selected details:

Deleting the part "is a [[Germany|German]] [[historian]] of [[education]], [[consultant|business consultant]], and former [[member of parliament]] for the [[Christian Democratic Union of Germany]] (CDU). Sardina holds [[Multiple citizenship|dual citizenship]] and is also an [[Italy|Italian]] national." from the introduction paragraph is very weird since it's absolutely normal to name the occupation of the person a biography article deals with. The rather unusual fact of dual citizenship is also clearly worth mentioning.
List of monographies: It's good practice to list published monographies in biography articles (regardless of the publisher!) since they reflect the fields the person in question specialized in. According to WorldCat or the National Library of Germany, all publications in this section are part of the collections of several libraries, even American ones if that's a bonus for some folks. The accusation of "self-publication" is elusive for anyone who can click a link or two, btw, or just google "Wolff Verlag".
Amazon author page link: There is a special Wikipedia template to link to the Amazon author's page ({{Amazon author page}}) providing a biography in English and a picture that might not be used here directly for legal reasons. Due to the pure fact that this template exists, it can and should be used in biography articles. Otherwise, the template wouldn't make any sense, would it?
The deletion of the sentence: "Sardina's political estate (15 files) has been deposited at the [[Archive for Christian Democratic Policy]] at [[Sankt Augustin]], Germany. Its contents are partly [[Secrecy|classified]].<ref>[http://www.kas.de/upload/dokumente/acdp/ACDP_Bestandsuebersicht_2013.pdf PDF] entry at the inventory list of the archive (signature 01-870), p. 336; retrieved on 23 November 2018.</ref>" has to be restored since it's important to know where his most important files (especially the officially classified ones) have gone that have to be found worth being archived by an external institution. European readers would expect that piece of information.
The deleted sentence: "In 1999, Sardina worked as a teacher intern at the [[Los Angeles Unified School District|Los Angeles Central High School]], [[Hollywood]].<ref>Arianne MacBean, Greg Christensen (Ed.): ''The Publishing Project "Sweet Fantasy - Writing and Performance" with High School Students. A Venture by the Los Angeles Central High School, Hollywood, in Collaboration with the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).'' Los Angeles 1999, p. 1.</ref>" should be restored as part of his international work experience. A physical book published in the US is to be seen as a reliable source. Why have the interlinks to the countries been removed, one wonders?
The deleted part: "Sardina was the first MP who had an [[electoral district]] office. It was open to the local public and located in a former [[Colonial goods store]] in the [[Horn, Hamburg|Horn]] district. [[List of mayors of Hamburg|First mayor]] [[Ole von Beust]] opened the location with a [[Party#Reception|reception]] on 12 January 2006.<ref>[http://www.mopo.de/cdu-ole-eroeffnet-wahlkreisbuero-22891030 ''Ole eröffnet Wahlkreisbüro''.] In: ''[[Hamburger Morgenpost]]'', 13 January 2006; retrieved on 23 November 2018.</ref>" should be restored since being a pioneer of any kind is notable per se by Wiki rules. A claimed lack of secondary sources is untrue again since an article in a state-wide published newspaper that covers it is certainly an acceptable source.
The deleted "memberships" section: The deletion of that section wasn't reasonable either since according to the European transparency rules and regulations, politicians are encouraged to make public any their memberships and formal ties. European readers would certainly expect that paragraph if there are any memberships. An excerpt of the official German court register (file: 69 VR 5904) as well as a published book with a list of members are clearly realiable sources for Wikipedia; the remark "it certainly isn't verified by secondary source" is simply not true, once again.
The deletion (with an arrogant "more fluff" which expresses a high degree of ignorance with regard to European political systems) of the parliamentary committees Sardina was a member of ("As an MP, he was a member of the [[Committee|committees]] for [[Europe|European affairs]] and for [[petition]]s as well as for the parliamentary investigation committee on the [[prison]] for [[Juvenile delinquency|juvenile delinquents]] located in ''Feuerbachstraße'' in the [[Barmbek]] district. He was a deputy member of the committees for [[budget]] affairs, for [[Culture|cultural]] affairs, and for [[Urban planning|urban development]] and planning.") is elusive since these points stress the political fields he was active in. Memberships in parliamentary investigation committee are of high public interest for European readers of this article.
"OK. this person is not notable as a historian of anything. the books are self-published, there is no secondary literature on the books or the academics, and there's barely any secondary sourcing on his political career." What a rude, false, POV, and arrogant comment! First off, as a former MP, he fulfills our notability rules. So there is no doubt whether to keep this article as such or not. The only question is, how much extra information should it provide? His research of teaching English in East Germany for example is the only of its kind according to this review by Christoph Gutknecht. The book in question wasn't "self-published," as anyone can see who is able to check out the website of the publisher that was also deleted in this act of de facto vandalism. Stanford University, the Library of Congress, and many other libraries hold copies of it and his other publications, just check out the VIAF authority entry or the LCCN in Washington DC or the complete list of publications at the German National Library: I count 36 entries as of today if you search by first name + last name.

To sum it up, I have difficulties to find objective reason for such a excessive deletion which, in the end, did not improve the article but made it a stub with major pieces of information missing now. I therefore welcome some Third Opinion contributions to the points above. That would be highly appriciated, and may some other admins review all this. My wish would be to see at least most deleted paragraphs being restored since they all made perfectly sense to me. Thank you and cheers, --2003:E3:D70D:8900:5CD:7069:8FE5:749C (talk) 16:47, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, the only one I thought might need a closer look is #9, and it doesn't actually look like Gutknecht, who btw is a colleague of the article subject, is all that notable himself. What is Kultura? —valereee (talk) 17:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Valeree, hard to tell what Kultura is. Without wanting to discredit it altogether, it's hard to argue that it is a "proper" peer-reviewed academic publication. What the IP/article subject needs, of course, is proper peer-reviewed academic reviews of the work in order to make any claim to academic notability. And OK, Hello Girls and Boys is published by de:Wolff Verlag--well, lots of books are published, and that fact alone isn't all that special. I am not opposed to "his dissertation was published in 2018 by Wolff Verlag" with the Kultura article footnoting that--but that's all. The other claims--meh, they're barely worth addressing. Dual citizenship isn't special at all, for instance. What is also not special is the obvious conflict of interest here: the IP should, of course, read WP:DECLARE and follow its instructions, and I for one am interested in their connection with Zeitungsente0815 (talk · contribs). Drmies (talk) 22:03, 7 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

IP editor, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Many of its articles, sadly, are not encyclopedic, due to being overstuffed with factual details which happen to be reliably sourced. An encyclopedia is meant to be brief and not discursive. Therefore, it isn't unusual for editors to cut out large swathes from articles, consisting of material which might be appropriate for a published book-length biography. The fact that material can be found and reliably sourced is not the sole basis for inclusion. Proportionality and addressing the typical Wikipedia reader's level of interest are also important article attributes. Wikipedia is past its grow-at-all-costs stage, and is now trying to improve overall quality.--Quisqualis (talk) 03:00, 8 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]