Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kent Holtorf

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. 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.

The result was keep. Sandstein 08:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Kent Holtorf

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Wikipedia is not a means of promotion. One large puff piece based on primary sources, original research and synthesis. Has a long list of reference but looking at them reveals fundamental problems. First is the lack of urls when many are internet sources? Why? There is also a lot of sources by the subject not about him (not a fatal flaw by itself). Next looking at the references, what they claim to support do not often match what is in the refs.
Some examples of the problems. Starting from the start: ref 1 [1] - bio from someone he wrote for, not independent; ref2 [2] - an advertisement; ref 3 - [3] supports the first half of the sentance, not the rest which is WP:OR; refs 4 and 5 - [4] [5] support the 17 year delay but have nothing to do with Holtorf (WP:SYNTH); ref 6 - by him; ref 7 - [6] calls quack but doesn't mention Holtorf (synth); ref 8 - by him; ref 9 [7] - no mention of Holtorf's position (synth); ref 10 [8] 11 [9] 12 (insufficient to identify source, probably [10]) - no mention of Holtorf's position (synth).
This article fails to show how Holtorf is notable and lacks significant independent coverage of him. A search failed to find sufficient independent coverage about him. duffbeerforme (talk) 05:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 08:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 08:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep The article is a disaster and needs major work, with removal of the puffery and addition of links for the references. (Presumably the article creator did not know how to do that.) He does not pass WP:SCHOLAR since citations of his articles are minimal. But a look at Google News suggests that he may be notable due to a lot of exposure in the popular press. He seems to be used as a go-to source on medical questions by media sources ranging from CNN International[11] to the Chicago Tribune.[12] The Oakland Tribune calls him a "world renowned expert" [13]; so does the Los Angeles Daily News.[14] With rewriting I think this article is a keeper. BTW I see from the history that the article was speedy-deleted, reverted, and userfied before coming to us in its present form. --MelanieN (talk) 15:33, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm the writer of the article. I am more than willing to revise. I thought it was fine because I revised it already with the help of three different editors, one of which gave me a barnstar. They put it live again when they felt it was sufficient, not me. I didn't know I needed to provide urls in the refs. If more revisions need to be made, I'm happy to do them. Just please point me in the right direction as I thought I'd done all I needed. Thank you. 76.164.84.41 (talk) 15:59, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Urls aren't REQUIRED in the references - some references are not even accessible online - but they make it a lot easier for people to see what the reference actually says, possibly to evaluate the article or possibly to find out more about the subject. You can find a lot of information about how to do this at Wikipedia:Citing sources. Example:

Journal article: If the article is available online, use external link syntax to link the article title to the relevant Web page, for example:

Carr A, Ory D (2006). [http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030496 Does HIV cause cardiovascular disease?] ''PLoS Medicine'', 3(11):e496.

Note that it goes: open-bracket, then the url, then a space, then the title of the article, then a close-bracket, then all the rest of the bibliographical information. The single brackets tell wikipedia it is an external link; the information AFTER the space is what will appear in the footnote.

There are citation formats that can be used, but you've already got all the information in the footnotes; you just might want to add urls. --MelanieN (talk) 17:06, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Holtorf is definitely notable - plenty opf references in third party sources, and he's also a senior medical figure, member of an examining board, etc. Comment: refs certainly don't have to have urls in them. There's nothing stopping refs being improved over time, and certainly no reason to delete this article. I think it's a bit harsh to describe it as "puff", really. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 17:18, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

About being a "member of an examining board", I wouldn't be so sure of that. For one thing, I can't find any board called the "American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine." [15]. They probably mean the American Board of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, offered by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine - a certification which is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. For another thing, he does not claim to be a member of the board of directors of that organization - just an "examiner", which any practitioner can do. Here is a list of the officers of that Academy; he is not on the list. --MelanieN (talk) 00:55, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The references are now all fixed. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 20:00, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that was a big job! Based on seeing the full references I am still in the "weak" keep category. The references I linked to above actually may help to establish notability. The ones in the article are mostly either not about him or not from Reliable Sources. --MelanieN (talk) 00:41, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Having read through them all as I found and put them in, the ones which don;t appear to be specifically about him are mainly covering the controversy and opposing views on bio-identical hormones, vaccines, etc. so they do cover the controversy about his work, views and areas of interest. I think that as far as the "existence" of various bodies is concerned, to a certain extent we have to assume good faith about not being able to find them on the net - I know that here in the UK we have medical-peripheral bodies which don't seem to get a mention on the net. I'm not sure that there's a better way to cover controversy than to show Holtorf's own views on something, and then show the views from "the opposing side" as it were - which does seem to have been done pretty well, on the whole. Where opposing views don't actually mention Holtorf by name, it can be hard to do this any other way. Also, I did notice that some of the own-work and / or press material (articles etc.) has also been accepted by other RS for publication (I found the Lyme disease one by the Town Times writer in a number of other places. It was obviously originally published in the Town Times, which would count as RS, but the Town Times itself doesn't have an online archive, which is a bummer!) Just a note - I was the editor who CSD-tagged the first draft of this article as spammy, so I'm not inherently an inclusionist, or anything! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:29, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep WP:GNG, WP:BIO, WP:HEY Chzz ► 02:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- WP:JUSTAPOLICY. re GNG, which do you think provide sugnificant independent coverage about Holtorf? re BIO, which part of BIO do you think is satisfied here. re HEY, what improvement do you see fixing up problems of promotion (the reason this article was created), OR and SYNTH (article unchanged in this respect). Only improvement has been the improvement in the formating of refs (good work) and one and a half new sentences, neither demonstrating notability. duffbeerforme (talk) 01:45, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep (do I get a vote as the author?) -For notability: Current AOL health expert in Endocrinology, founding member of the Bioidentical Hormone Initiative, founder and director of the National Academy of Hypothyroidism, guest editor, peer reviewer, and contributor to several medical journals, has made a number of television appearances on Fox News as a guest health expert...what qualifies as "notable" if this doesn't? Zoeyeve (talk) 15:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is still a lack of coverage about Holtorf and all the keep reasons above are not policy based, just he seems important. duffbeerforme (talk) 01:49, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure there's enough mention is RS to establish notability. Sorry, but I think you're wrong on the notability front - and looking for improvement in an article, per your other concerns, isn't a good reason for taking it to AfD. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 09:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.