Talk:Steven Libutti/Archive 1

Notability tag

First of all, I would like to establish that I have no personal agenda against Steven Libutti. I haven't even met him (though his mother was a third grade teacher at my elementary school). The reason I have tagged the article for a notability check is because the article history indicates that the article was written by him, which is against Wikipedia policy. Also, multiple new users have edited this article and other articles related to it, and their usernames are traceable to facts about Steven Libutti present in this article. As such, I was merely searching for a neutral third party to analyze the notability of the subject. At the time that I made the revert of User:MFC8290's edit, he fell under that qualification. It was only after that he added information to his user page that would indicate that his name was actually "Mike", and that he may not be affiliated with Steven Libutti. However, I still do not feel that the analysis of Steven Libutti's notability has been neutral, as "Mike" is still a new user whose credibility has not been established. Unfortunately, I am forbidden by Wikipedia policy from adding back the notability tag for further analysis, as that would be in violation of the three-revert rule. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 22:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I find nothing on this page or in the edit history to indicate that the subject wrote this page. In fact, if you go back far enough in the history log, it appears that the original format of the page was a cut and paste from the subject's official government website. Furthermore, with respect to notability, a Google search of the subject reveals close to 10,000 hits and a PubMed search reveals over 170 peer reviewed published articles. I believe both those facts put any issues of notability to rest. GPHemsley, by his own admission, attended a school where the subject's mother was a teacher. Perhaps she yelled at him once in the hall for running. Who knows. But the fact that he has repeatedly questioned the notability of this subject, despite several editors concluding that it met a notability standard, and the fact that he has accused me of being the subject (which I am not) and accused the subject of authoring the page, calls in to question his assertion of neutrality. I am not in any way affiliated with the subject. I came across this web page in a search of oncologists for a family member. I took the time to research this subject and came to my own independent unbiased conclusion that he was a renowned surgeon and scientist as detailed in this well written page. The fact that I have not edited other pages should not in any way call in to question my honesty or neutrality. Perhaps it is because I have other things I do besides edit Wikipedia pages. I guess, in retrospect, I should not have bothered editing the page as it lead to my own credibility being questioned by a 19 year old student with an obvious axe to grind against the subject. I do not know what that is all about and I don't care to know. I find it ironic though, that the subject is a leader in the science field and GPHemsley states on his page that he is pursuing a career in science. Not a good career move in my opinion. These series of events has certainly led me to question other edits this person has made, and I hope it leads others who read this to question his motives and credibility as well.

Mike (no quotes necessary) Cavelano MFC8290 (talk) 00:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I'm the admin who stepped in here and started this discussion. I did it because a tag/untag edit war was developing on the article with the notability and cleanup tags on the article. My compliments to the two parties for stepping into the talk room and discussing the issue.

• I will concede that GPHemsley has a point about the accounts active on the article. I counted five users that made substantive additions to the article. Four of them are Wikipedia:Single-purpose accounts, and the fifth is anonymous (registered to Comcast). I don't see the connections between the usernames and the article, so I'm going to assume good faith and not suggest that there is a conflict of interest or sockpuppetry occurring. (I'm giving MFC8290 the benefit of the doubt because the account is so young, but its edit history would meet the single-purpose criteria also.) GPH, if you feel that the links between the account names and the article are solid enough, please add another section to the talk page about it, and you may tag the article with {{COI}}.
• As a matter of neutrality, I will not opine on whether or not the article demonstrates notability. However, I have seen no cleanup that has occurred since GPH tagged the article, so I will restore the {{Cleanup}} tag to the article.
• MFC made a potentially damning statement: "the original format of the page was a cut and paste from the subject's official government website". In almost any other subject, if the text were copied along with the forting, that could get the page speedily deleted. However, because the text is at a federal website, it is likely not a copyright violation to copy the text here. However, that may imply that the article needs a complete rewrite to put it into original, encyclopedic prose. I have not tracked down the official bio to compare text.
• Google hits do not demonstrate notability, either in general or for biographies. Peer-reviewed published articles can establish notability as an author. Substantial coverage in the New York Times can also demonstrate it.
• To expand on my first point, I have seen nothing in MFC's edit history that causes me to suspect his motives as an editor. Likewise, I have reviewed GPH's edit history and see nothing that causes me to suspect his motives.

In conclusion, I am going to restore the Cleanup tag to the article, because I have not seen cleanup since GPH tagged the article. I am going to remain neutral on the issue of notability and neither restore the tag nor assert that it should stay removed. I would request that GPH not restore the Notability tag to the article, but he is free to discuss why the article fails notability on the talk page. He is also free to improve the article as he sees fit. I will also leave talk messages for both users with further comments. Finally, I will continue to monitor the article. —C.Fred (talk) 02:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

C.Fred,

Thanks again for your fair arbitration of this page. I went to the original government website and while (as one may expect) many of the facts are the same, there is significant additional information on the Wikipedia subject page and there has been significant editing and rewritting. I therefore do not think that it is currently a cut and paste job. I brought that issue up before merely to show that the subject matter for the page had been freely available. The government website that was used as a source is in the public domain and cannot be copyrighted. It has been referenced and linked on the page. There is also information in the subject page that is from additional articles that are referenced at the bottom of the page. I have also found references to the subject in the New York Times, The LA Times, Newsday, The Washington Post and several other newspapers and magazines (all supporting notability). This is quickly becoming a second career for me!!! I am new to Wikipedia, but stumbling onto this subject's page has really launched me into a better understanding of how to edit in Wikipedia format. To that end, I would like to give a shot at "cleaning up" the page as you have flagged it above. The page is currently formatted and referenced. What exactly needs to be done to "clean it up" so it better conforms to Wikipedia standards? That is to say, what are the current short comings of the page. Any guidance would be helpful.

Thanks again for all of your help.

-Mike MFC8290 (talk) 02:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, C.Fred, for adding some reason to this discussion. I do not appreciate Mike's repeated assumption that I have something against Steven Libutti, or his mother, especially despite my assertions to the contrary. Nor do I appreciate his comments about how this revert war is a "bad career move" for me if I'm going into the field of science. And, as you confirm, there are a number of one-use accounts that have edited this article. When I made that final revert, I assumed that Mike was just another one of them, as you have noted the similarity. Here is my rationale behind the other ones:

• Kenneth364: Steven Libutti's middle initial is K. Does it stand for Kenneth? He has 3 kids, and he was born in 1964. This was the username that created the article and edited it until I originally added the notability and cleanup tags. (Incidentally, all of a sudden this user has a brief statement on his username page.)
• John1864: I don't know where the John comes from (maybe one of his 3 kids?), but he was born on the 18th of April, 1964.
• MissyK94: I don't have anything for this one, other than the fact that the K comes up again. Maybe Missy is his dog (K9)?

Sure, maybe these are a stretch, but I think it's far too much of a coincidence to just brush off. After all, it does seem that all three of these users were created simply to remove the notability and cleanup tags that I put on there. Now, as always, I am simply trying to ensure that this article conforms to the same policies as every other Wikipedia article. It just so happens that I am familiar with the family of the subject of this particular article. That doesn't mean I care one way or another about the existence of the article. I would appreciate it if these personal attacks would stop. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 07:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

The "evidence" presented above is pure speculation and not supported (as was stated earlier) by information in the page itself. I find no reference to any John or Missy, or any of the other user names that have edited this page. There are others that GPH conveniently leaves out of his argument. Even is the subject's middle name is Kenneth, that does not prove that he wrote the page. Perhaps the person who wrote it knew that and chose it as their username. Perhaps the person who wrote it is named Kenneth. Furthermore I did not make any personal attacks. I merely responded when attacked. I do not appreciate Hemsley insinuating that I am the subject nor do I appreciate his accusations in the edit history that the subject created the accounts (see his edit for replacing the notability tag and asking Dr. Libutti to stop creating accounts to remove it). You can't make personal attacks and then cry foul when the chickens come home to roost. That said, I have no interest in continuing this exchange with a kid anyway. My only purpose here is to see that the attacks on this article by a single individual stop. I could easily string together circumstantial evidence to support my claim the GPH has some past vendetta. But I am willing, in the spirit of fair play to drop it. As long as GPH stops editing this page I will forget I ever had any interactions with him. There are hundreds of editors. Let someone else take up the improvement of this page. If he truly doesn't "care one way or the other" then drop it and leave the page alone. I found the subject's email address on his government website. I took the liberty of emailing him to ask him straight up if he wrote the page and if he has a kid named John and if his dog's name is Missy and finally if he or his mother know Hemsley and have any reason to suspect that he would harbor any ill will. I will report back if he responds to my email.

MFC8290 (talk) 11:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

There may be coincidences with the usernames, but it looks like that's all it is—coincidences. Since the multiple accounts aren't being used currently to circumvent any policies, I don't see any problems with them. —C.Fred (talk) 03:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I received an email reply from the subject. He did not author the page. In the spirit of "benefit of the doubt" I think we should consider this case closed. I also see no evidence of a COI with respect to the editors. Thank you C.Fred for your help in resolving this issue. Any advice you can give me on helping to clean-up this subject's page would be most appreciated. -MFC8290 (talk) 12:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Edits by an IP affiliated with NIH

I just reverted two incidents on this talk page of an anonymous editing another user's comments, committed by 128.231.88.4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). I find it curious that the IP resolves to the National Institutes of Health and that the article's subject works for the an institute of NIH. I'm not trying to link this to any particular editor; I am noting that somebody at NIH is aware of the article enough to be active on the talk page. —C.Fred (talk) 01:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for following this C. Fred. I appreciate you reverting my comments back to my original statements. I hope this ends the back and forth on this. I don't want this to be personal with the other editor, but he felt it necessary, again, to question my identity and intent above and to cast aspersions on the subject of this page (by implying that the subject wrote the page himself). I, like you, have a day job that I need to get back to tomorrow. Have a good night and good luck with tax season!!!

-Mike MFC8290 (talk) 01:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I was the one who edited the comments above. I apologize for editing someone else's comments. I work with the subject of the page and I found the discussion amusing as I am sure he would as well. I doubt he even knows there is a page about him and I am sure that he did not write this page. I will certainly tell him about the page tomorrow though.

128.231.88.5 (talk) 01:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Advise him that he is free to join in the discussion here on the talk page. Additionally, there is a section of the Wikipedia:Autobiography guidelines that addresses how to deal with articles about onerself. One of the pointers in the article is to be careful when editing an article about oneself. —C.Fred (talk) 02:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Steven Libutti/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

This is a strong article about a well cited and important figure in American Medicine. A search of this individual on Google reveals significant supporting references and evidence of substantive and important contributions.

Last edited at 20:26, 17 February 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 15:52, 1 May 2016 (UTC)