UPDATE: Thanks to reader CoffeeTime in the first comment, we learn that the Wikipedia page was trashed in 2016 because its subject wasn’t “notable”: his books weren’t given any attention and made little impact. So I was wrong in my speculation below. However, it must be nearly as bad to be deleted because you’re “not important” than because you were a plagiarist.
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I can’t say the guy’s full name because I’ll owe readers money if I do, so just fill in the asterisks with two “e”s and then an “a”, successively. Or see this link. The man in question was once a writer for Alternet and Salon, an atheist (which he remains, I believe), and a critic of Islamic doctrine. Then he went off the rails, going after New Atheists in an unhinged book and being accused, with justification, of serial plagiarism (see here, here, here, and here). Alternet removed his pieces, though Salon (to its discredit) left them up, and the man was thoroughly trounced and disgraced. He didn’t even apologize, but fobbed off a lot of his plagiarism on “bad editing”, mistaken failure to use quotation marks, and even by making false counter-accusations that Sam Harris plagiarized too!
But the man found a new career, writing for The Middle East Eye*, begging for support on Patreon, and engaging in a protracted campaign of defending Islam, demonizing Israel, and blaming all the trouble in the Middle East on America. Only Glenn Greenwald comes close to W*rl*em*n’s vehement Islamic apologetics issued by a non-Muslim.
Let me finish briefly; W*rl*em*n once had a Wikipedia page, which was here. It is now gone. Why? The only two reasons I can think of is that he’s no longer important, which doesn’t ring true, or that somehow it was removed because it called public attention to his plagiarism. But other journalists who have been disgraced for plagiarism, like New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer, still have their Wikipedia bios online, along with sections on their literary thefts. Perhaps a reader can find out why this dude’s Wikipedia page somehow disappeared. I’m quite curious.
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*He cannot be forgiven for writing this piece.
Just click through the link to the removed page you gave to here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/CJ_Werleman
And here are the policies around deleting a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy
It seems his page was deleted due to him not being “notable”, or worthy, enough to warrant his own page:
“I don’t see that Werleman meets our standards of notability. The independent sources cited in the article are of very low quality, partly blogs, and even the best sound more like opinion pieces than news articles.”
Notability is defined here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)
On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article. For people, the person who is the topic of a biographical article should be “worthy of notice” or “note” – that is, “remarkable” or “significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded”…
PCC(E), you could write a Wikipedia page for him if its absence bothers you. Anyone can.
At least our esteemed (and notable) host still has his own Wikipedia page 🙂
Not notable enough, if the discussion tells us anything.
But could there be legal reasons, like an impending libel suit? I suppose that would depend on what the entry said about him.
Glen Davidson
The scandal itself, IMO, makes an entry worthy. And hence a bio entry for the principles should be worthy.
In the Related section is his name fully spelt. Do I win a book?
Nope. 🙂
Wikipedia’ number one criterion for inclusion is notablity. It makes not difference at ALL if you are a plagiarist if you are a notable plagiarist.
He recently called Harris the ‘prodigy’ of Nazism. He’s not very bright.
test
I would have thought his Wikipedia profile was deleted because he is a nasty, malicious, lying fraud.
But, of course, history is teeming with them, and they all have profiles on Wikipedia.
Hahaha, I love that someone as self-righteous and egotistical and B.S. Madman isn’t considered important enough to have a Wikipedia page. The only reason anyone would ever consider him “important” is because he says so many stupid and bigoted things that he gets attention for them.
Many people whose only accomplishment is having a successful podcast get Wikipedia pages, but B.S. Poohand does not.
I have a strange sense of Schadenfreude as well. I think it’s because someone was intellectually dishonest & got caught & that is so rare as so many charlatans are out there. I feel a little bad about the Schadenfreude but probably because I have a fear of hybris & not because I’m actually nice.
That last line made me chuckle 🙂
Bahahaha, I just checked his Pateon page. For all his whining, crying, and attention-seeking for years and years, he has a grand total of 120 patrons. Hilarious.
B.S. Hurlman must have the world’s greatest ego to importance ratio.
Ego = 1,000,000,000,000
Importance = .001
I know minor YouTubers with more Patrons than him.
This is the first I’ve heard or read of CJW in over a year, maybe two years, so maybe the Wiki editors responsible for that page decided to remove it in the hope that he would just fade into the dustbin of history. If he raises his head above the parapet again, it will be time to revive that page so his perfidy will not be forgotten.
I’m not at all sure that there is a mechanism for that. I’m not sure that there could be. Is plagiarism actually a crime, in any jurisdiction, anywhere (NB – that’s plagiarism as distinct from copyright violations)? Even if it were, while it’s offensive and annoying, if the author or work is of sufficient notability to deserve a Wikipedia page, then someone will write one. And if the subject (or their agents) delete the page though embarrassment, or even under court orders … well, Wikipedia has mechanisms for handling “edit wars”. How compliant they are with court orders from outside their jurisdiction (Florida, isn’t it?), I’m not at all sure.
yikes- that must be depressing. My band who hasn’t recorded new music nor played a show in 10 years still has a Wiki page up.
If you have a twitter account, you should go tweet *.*. and tell him that 🙂
I googled using vowels at random. And Google did its job.
Seems that in America atheists are treated with about the same regard as anthropophagists.
Well at least Ámericans don’t murder atheists, which is more than we can say about the nationals of certain other countries.