Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bucharest Film Festival

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 delete. Given the consensus that this is a hoax, the most sensible solution seems to be to delete. If someone wishes to start an article about a legitimate, real, non-hoax film festival in Bucharest, they are free to do so. —Tom Morris (talk) 07:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bucharest Film Festival

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We recently received an email to OTRS stating that this article was a work of fiction. With the permission of the original emailer, who wrote a very detailed rationale, I am publishing the following excerpts of said email for the consideration of the community.

The Bucharest Film Festival never existed. It is a fictitious invention intended to lend credence to the creation of the fictitious Soviet flimmaker Yuri Gadyukin who also has a Wikipedia entry. While I did not feel obliged to edit a fictional character that someone had spent a lot of time creating; I do feel it inappropriate to invent a Festival and award ceremony that trades off the success of other films to establish verisimilitude. Furthermore, this fictitious article has already led to the spreading of misinformation. I feel very strongly that this is a bad thing.

The films cited as winning awards did not receive them. It is not defunct, it is fictitious. I spend a lot of time in Romania and there is no mention of the "Bucharest Film Festival" in the Romanian National archives. You can easily double check this as you will find few mentions of either the Festival or the "Golden Wolf" outside the Wikipedia entries pertaining to films that are alleged to have one it, and websites pertaining to Yuri Gadyukin. You will notice that all these websites have clearly been produced by the same source. Any websites that do refer to the Festival, I found one on Polanski's Knife in the Water, have, I imagine, received this information from the Wikipedia page. If you check any written work on the films of Roman Polanski, you will find no mention of either the Bucharest Film Festival or the Golden Wolf that Wikipedia claims it was awarded. An example of the further spreading of misinformation that I previously mentioned.

Additionally, if you check the "References" on either the Bucharest Film Festival page or the Gadyukin page you will see that all are authentic sources, but that none contain any reference to either a Bucharest Film Festival, a Golden Wolf, or one Yuri Gadyukin.

Ultimately, I'd ask the closer of this debate to courtesy-blank the discussion given some of the content in the original statement relates negatively back on a living person, and so should only be obviously visible for the period it is required (the AfD discussion period).

Regards,
Daniel (talk) 12:14, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as a hoax. Indeed, links which can be check do not exist or do not give any info. For example, a book published in Romania in 1970 just can not have a ISBN.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:31, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:28, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. As ISBN for a pre-1970 book is so obviously false it tilts the burden of proof so strongly against the author that, as there's really nothing else to back it up, we can just call it a hoax and be done with it. -- The Anome (talk) 16:22, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The specified ISBN (973-98439-1-3) seems to belong to a second edition of that book, published in 1998 (see [1] and [2]). However, does not prove the festival existed; I'm just saying the cited books seem to exist, but I do not know if they contain any mention to the festival. A search for Bucharest or Bucuresti using Google Book Search in the other cited books (in English language) does not yield any results. Probably the whole thing is just a hoax. Razvan Socol (talk) 17:34, 5 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment: ~~Keep and Rewrite~~ As the FESTIVALUL INTERNATIONAL DE FILM "BUCURESTI" is itself NOT a hoax as an organization, despite errors in current article's content, The BIEFF Bucharest International Experimetal Film Festival also NOT a hoax. However, neither of these two REAL modern festivals appear to have a traceable relationship to the allegedly historical "Bukareŝto Festivalo de Socialisto-Filmo". And there is also the issue of showing any sort of actual (posthumus) connection between the deceased Yuri Gadyukin and festivals created after his death.[3] We can either correct issues and re-focus based upon available sources, or delete without prejudice toward a proper recreation. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 02:20, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yuri is an obvious hoax, btw, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yuri Gadyukin. Its a film plot.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 06:24, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this one has issues, but are you also asserting that the FESTIVALUL INTERNATIONAL DE FILM "BUCURESTI" and the BIEFF Bucharest International Experimetal Film Festival are also non-existant, or that articles on those entities are not possible? Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 09:46, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Michael, I don't know anything about these other festivals, am not weighing in on them.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 13:53, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See response below to JohnCD. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 19:50, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Since I taken in by the hoax (facepalm) I did some digging. The article was created by GeorgeJLewis (talk · contribs) and was also worked on by Paulsorberg (talk · contribs) - who created the Gadyukin article. Might be one person or two they even went so far as to discuss the award with each other here [4]. There is not much we can do about them since they stopped editing on '09 but lets delete the hoaxes as soon as we can. MarnetteD | Talk 07:00, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And now check George Lewis here, to complete the picture--Ymblanter (talk) 07:08, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorberg is probably also a character in the indie film. He is credited with imdb entries around the hoax, e.g., Where the Tractors Roam (imdb). I have posted a message board thread on imdb about it to alert them.[5]--Milowent • ^hasspoken 14:06, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. No problem with creating articles about the real festivals MQS mentions, but we do not want this fictitious nonsense in the history, so it's a case of WP:Blow it up and start over. JohnCD (talk) 15:57, 6 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- A fine response. We can always delete articles found to be inaccurate, false, or hoaxy... without leaving an negative onus toward recreation of properly sourced articles about notable topics. If someone were to write a proper article about the modern film festivals in Bucharest, THEY should not be speedied as recreations of a deleted hoax article unless they actually are. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 19:50, 6 March 2013 (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.