Dave Plummer (edit |talk |history |protect |delete |links |watch |logs |views) – (View log |edits since nomination)

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Does not passWP:GNG. All extraordinary claims are from primary sources, and removing that, the only thing of note is the softwareonline lawsuit which is not notable in itself and puts us solidly inWP:PERP territory.^{themoon@talk:~$}08:54, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in thedeletion sorting lists for the following topics:People,Computing, andInternet.^{themoon@talk:~$}08:54, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This discussion has been included in thedeletion sorting lists for the following topics:Canada andWashington.WCQuidditch☎✎10:56, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: Significant coverage at PC Gamer[1], The Register[2], ZDNet[3], Regina Leader Post[4], Vintage Computing Federation[5], Windows Central[6], University of Regina Degrees Magazine[7], NeoWin[8], ClearMeasure[9], and the Lex Fridman Podcast[10]. Plus he has a million subscribers and 77 million views on YouTube. Simply being the Creator of Task Manager for Windows, Space Cadet Pinball for Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows and HyperCache for the Amiga would be enough to make him notable. Also the nomination is misleading.WP:PERP does not apply to someone simply because they settled a lawsuit out of court. --Guy Macon (talk)21:36, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Refs 1 and 2 are rehashes of youtube videos of his. refs 3 and 4 is a rehash of a reddit post of his. ref 5 has dubious independance, 6 is rehash of a video, again. 7 passes, 8 is sourced from his tweets, 9 and 10 are interviews.

  That makes for 1 source, 2 if we count charitably, that establish notability. My rationale for nomination is simply that if you remove things that are only verifiable from primary sources, all that's left is the lawsuit.

  Put it simply, I'm doubting that he did everything he's claiming he did, because he has a financial incentive to tell embellished stories and to flash his old microsoft employee badge on youtube. I'm doubting he actually created task manager and zip support, he verifiably did not create but simply ported space cadet, and Hypercache is not notable itself, let aloneWP:NINI concerns.

  The article (and the subject) in general makes wild claims. "As intern I wrote a bunch of major features" does not pass the smell test. Finally, as someone who works in software, I find it hard to believe microsoft would take someone normally tasked to work on disk-related code and give them the task of porting a pinball game, writing zip file support or anti-piracy code. That's simply not how that works.^{themoon@talk:~$}08:26, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  PC Gamer, The Register and ZDNet don't rehash my YouTube videos or Reddit posts.Merko (talk)14:57, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I have a suspicion (no actual evidence outside ofWP:DUCK) that Themoonisacheese is somehow associated with the Dave Plummer Troll who has been vandalizing the page for years.[11][12][13][14][15][16][17] They both appear to have a strong personal animosity towards Plummer and should be topic banned from editing in that area. Besides the obvious (claiming that PC Gamer, The Register and ZDNet are not RS because reasons, claiming that RSs are lying about Plummer's accomplishments), pretty much nobody on earth other than the Dave Plummer Troll cares about a [already well documented in the article] decades old case where a software company ran by Plummer made some super dubious marketing claims, got busted for it, and settled out of court with a promise never to do anything like that again. The final confirmation will be seeing once again the oft-repeated lie that a press release from a prosecutor is the same as a verdict from a court, while a similar press release from the defense attorney on the other side should be ignored. --Guy Macon (talk)16:46, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  well that's a strong accusation but you can ask for a checkuser if you'd like; I assure you i'm, at worst, a deletionist. I have nothing about the subject personally, I remember seeing a few of his videos and going "huh, neat". I don't really care about the lawsuit stuff and frankly i don't fully understand it. What i understand is this: The subject of the article's claimed notability can't be based on that lawsuit per WP:PERP, so the rest of the claims must hold up to scrutiny for the article not be deleted; yet they don't.

  The PC gamerdoes rehash a youtube video. It's composed of a small intro about space cadet, then 5 paragraphs that paraphrase or quote the youtube video, and a closing paragraph about nostalgia for old windows. this is nowhere near a secondary source.

  The Register articledoes rehash a youtube video. The entire contents paraphrase a youtube video, and frankly it reads like a bad AI summary. It offers no commentary or reporting of any kind besides "here's what Dave Plummer has said in a video". It is not a secondary source.

  The ZDNet articledoes rehash a reddit post, specifically[18]. It also rehashes the university of regina talk available on the subject's channel. it also offetrs no commentary or reporting of any kind besides "here's what dave plummer has said in his talk and on reddit". the same goes for every source linked by you, perhaps except 7 which I have independence concerns about but willing to accept and 5 which is likely a copy written by the subject but sure, whatever.

  This does not sufficiently establish notability. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the claim that the subject meets GNG has currently very few pieces of evidence that aren't directly provided by the subject.^{themoon@talk:~$}17:15, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I retract my suspicions. The Dave Plummer Troll is fixated on the lawsuit. You clearly are not. My apologies. Sorry about that.

  When a mainstream RS source reports information from a non-RS YouTube video, that makes the information in the YouTube video notable, not the other way around. Reliability, as opposed to notability, is more complicated. In many cases the only reliability added is the reliability of the claim that the YouTube video contains the information, not the reliability of the information itself. --Guy Macon (talk)19:09, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  alright, i guess my exact reason for deletion are more nuanced that straight up GNG in the usual sense, but hopefully it is clear that there is still a notability problem due to the reliability of the information:

  If all the info on the subject is from the subject itself, relayed through churnalism because headlines where you say "you wont BELIEVE what went on at microsoft" get clicks, then not only is that information about what went on at microsoft not reliable, but it also can't possibly establish notability for the person making the claim, unless we were discussing a person notable for making unsourced claims about microsoft (which, arguably we are but the article far from reflects that).

  In my view, the article should be deleted because for it to be truthful to our standards of reliability, it would have to be rewritten to pretty much all be "Plummer claims to have[...] and claims the company culture at microsoft[...]", at which point i hope it becomes evident that if the claims cannot be sourced, the subject is not norable enough for inclusion. Perhaps you disagree with this view, but i'd like to see policy-based arguments backing your point in that case.^{themoon@talk:~$}21:28, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would agree with all of the 'less than keep' comments above. There are few people as capable of self promotion as Plummer is. Constantly so. Overall I'd just about go with aKeep, if only for a quieter life. But I'd like to see sourcing thatwasn't just taking him at his word and repeating it. We've got him if we want to hear (again) how he wrote Task Manager.Andy Dingley (talk)21:52, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep MeetsWP:GNG per Guy Macon's comment above.PaulT2022 (talk)01:21, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per significant coverage in multiple independent reliable secondary sources as demonstrated byGuy Macon.Merko (talk)14:58, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. based on presented citations above this person will meetWP:GNG andWP:BIO.Hkkingg (talk)15:59, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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