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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. MBisanz talk 04:23, 22 December 2014 (UTC) reply

Marco Tiggelaar

Marco Tiggelaar (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Non-notable individual. I believe the page to be autobiographical WP:AUTOBIO Periglio ( talk) 16:38, 13 December 2014 (UTC) reply

I retract the autobiographical as it was not quite the right term to use. However, the way the article is written like a CV/Resume, plus an edit by an account that appears to be by the subject, makes me feel that the article is certainly breaks WP:NPOV Periglio ( talk) 16:44, 14 December 2014 (UTC) reply
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Netherlands-related deletion discussions. -Fimatic ( talk | contribs) 16:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC) reply
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. -Fimatic ( talk | contribs) 16:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC) reply
Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. -Fimatic ( talk | contribs) 16:48, 13 December 2014 (UTC) reply
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 02:04, 14 December 2014 (UTC) reply
In defense of the article

The underlying issues of the AfD nomination are: (a) the article's being "autobiographical", and (b) Marco Tiggelaar's not being a notable person.

On being autobiographical

The subject of this article is Marco Tiggelaar; I am the writer of the article, but I am not Marco Tiggelaar. Therefore, the article is not autobiographical.

On being not notable

Let us review Wikipedia's definition of Notability:

For people, the person who is the topic of a biographical article should be "worthy of notice" – that is, "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded" within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life. "Notable" in the sense of being "famous" or "popular" – although not irrelevant – is secondary.

The key phrase used by Wikipedia to define notability is "worthy of notice". "Worthy of notice", in turn is defined by any one of the following adjectival phrases:

  • significant enough to deserve attention or to be recorded
  • interesting enough to deserve attention or to be recorded
  • unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded

Marco Tiggelaar is neither famous nor popular, especially if measured using the standards of the entertainment and music industries or the number of followers/"likes" in the social network industry. However, since fame or popularity are not the primary considerations for notability, the following arguments focus on "worthy of notice".

The arguments presented here in favor of Marco Tiggelaar and the article about him are documented in the websites cited as references in the article.

Case #1 - Zen Load Balancer

December 2011 exchange of public messages in the forum
( http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.zenloadbalancer.user/month=20111201)

First point: The depth of Marco Tiggelaar's technical questions addressed to the original developers of Zen Load Balancer and his confident offer of assistance based on his knowledge of the Linux/Unix operating systems. – Openly and unconditionally offering to assist a major software developer based on his confident knowledge of Linux/Unix in spite of his being "not much into" development makes him significant.

Second point: The way he describes a Microsoft product: "I really want to replace the dumb Microsoft load balancer as you might understand lol :)" – The fact that he has the guts to call the product of the world's most popular software company "dumb" without mincing words makes him at least unusual, if not interesting, although he may not necessarily be considered significant in this particular instance.

Are his being unusual, interesting and significant in this case enough to deserve attention and to be recorded? Perhaps not necessarily, if only this single case is considered. There are three more cases following.

Case #2 - Key4ce osTicket Bridge

WordPress plugin page
( https://wordpress.org/plugins/key4ce-osticket-bridge/developers/)

Point: WordPress is currently the most popular content management system in the world. Part of its popularity is the availability of free themes and plugins from international contributors that help make designing websites painless. Marco Tiggelaar happens to be the author of a plugin called Key4ce osTicket Bridge which helps web developers using WordPress include a help desk system in their website projects. The plugin page of Key4ce osTicket Bridge in WordPress reports a star rating of 4.4 out of 5, and the recorded number of downloads of the plugin is 2,596. – For an individual like Marco Tiggelaar to have his work given prominence within the pages of a renowned site like WordPress, it is tantamount to WordPress unilaterally proclaiming his significance.

The download record may not have made him public sensation but it must have been interesting and significant from the point of view of 2,596 people who downloaded copies of the software into their computers; otherwise, they would simply have ignored it.

Aside from making him significant, his plugin contribution to WordPress also makes him interesting and unusual, especially after considering the fact that WordPress itself as well as the themes and plugins offered in its website are free to use by the world public.

Case #3 - WebsitePanel

Engagement with users in the support forums
( http://www.websitepanel.net/members/m-tiggelaar/)

First Point: WebsitePanel is described as a multi-tenant, Enterprise hosting automation tool with support for private cloud servers. It enables hosting businesses to centralize the management of their hosting infrastructure and share resources across multiple customer accounts. It is a product appreciated only by a few customers (because they are a rare class): those who provide hosting services to ISPs and other networked organizations. – Any person, including Marco Tiggelaar, who chooses to devote one's time for the benefit of this product without direct compensation is unusual enough to deserve attention and is therefore notable.

Second Point: The owner of WebsitePanel considers Marco Tiggelaar's technical credentials significant enough to warrant membership in its web community and responsibility in moderating three support forums, namely: General Discussions, Core Modules, and Enterprise Modules. – To take on these responsibilities, again without pay, certainly gives him points not only as far as being significant is concerned, but also being interesting and unusual.

Third Point: Marco Tiggelaar who casually talks about "IIS management", "FTP service", "NAT address", "firewall", "MySQL", "MSSQL", "auditlog", "eventlog", "Enterprise solution", "Hosting plan", "Mailbox plan", "127.0.0.1:9002", "Scheduler conf", "Global space", and "Autodiscover" in the WebsitePanel support forums. – Only an unusual individual churns out technical jargon like these on a daily basis.

Non-technical people may not perceive Marco Tiggelaar's being significant, but his technically savvy audience in the support forums apparently do because they look up to him for opinions or answers to technical questions.

Case #4 - VirtualPF

Developing and releasing a high-value product for free
( https://virtualpf.com/about/virtualpf/)

Point: VirtualPF is a firewall service or appliance running entirely within a virtualized environment, providing the usual packet filtering and monitoring that a physical firewall provides. It is forked from a predecessor product called pfSense with the intention to make it available for free to users. Marco Tiggelaar himself, with the help of two associates, worked on this product and it is now available to the whole world -- free of charge.

Does this make Marco Tiggelaar significant? Interesting? Unusual enough to deserve attention and to merit or to be recorded?

Network users throughout the whole world, unconditionally and without discrimination, stand to benefit from the added dimension of network security that they get from VirtualPF, courtesy of Marco Tiggelaar. He deserves gratitude, and this makes him significant enough to deserve attention or to be recorded. This alone is sufficient to meet the definition of "worthy of notice".

The 100% virtualization support that VirtualPF provides makes the job of administrators of complex network infrastructures worldwide easier. This makes him interesting enough to deserve attention or to be recorded; and this, too, by itself is sufficient to meet the definition of "worthy of notice".

Virtual PF is a complex piece of software, and Marco Tiggelaar put in much time and effort (a given in the world of software development) to bring it out to its intended beneficiaries without thought of financial gain. Considering that most people do this kind of work only if there's big money in it, this makes him unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded. Standing alone, this argument is also sufficient to meet the definition of "worthy of notice".

Conclusion

Since Marco Tiggelaar is worthy of notice, the article written about him passes Wikipedia's standard of notability. Therefore the AfD nomination under consideration lacks merit and must be withdrawn. Kaguchi ( talk) 11:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC) reply

Comment I randomly came across the article working on Persondata. When I am not editing Wikipedia articles, I am an IT professional with years of experience. This is why the article hit me in the face as not saying much. To use a laymans terms, he does geeky things, but nothing that makes him different from any other IT professional. Everyone moans about Microsoft, lots of people contribute to open source software and contribute to IT forums, there is nothing better than discussing NAT addressing with my colleagues at work. The point is that he needs to have coverage outside his own activities to be notable. Periglio ( talk) 17:04, 14 December 2014 (UTC) reply
Comment "The point is that he needs to have coverage outside his own activities to be notable." – If coverage of a person's activities were a deciding factor for notability, Wikipedia would not have been silent about it. On the contrary, Wikipedia makes this quick reference right after defining "worthy of notice": "Notable" in the sense of being "famous" or "popular" – although not irrelevant – is secondary. This strengthens my belief that an individual can become notable (or prominent, distinguished, remarkable) even if he/she spends a lifetime in a single sphere of activity as long as the said individual has done things that impact the lives of others one way or another while being there, specially when extraordinary self-sacrifice accompanies the deed. To arbitrarily add a qualification like "(he) needs to have coverage outside his own activities to be notable" not only overrides Wikipedia's simple definition of notability but also invites the idea of popularity to creep into the domain of notability, thus subtly promoting the secondary nature of popularity into primary. This action, if adopted as an ad hoc rule, introduces the danger of labeling something or someone "not notable" when the meaning that lies beneath the surface is actually "not popular". The subject of this article, to use the words in the foregoing comment, "does geeky things" indeed, but the one thing that sets him apart from most other IT professionals is his inclination to give — not once, but multiple times— the worldwide computing public the freedom to use high quality software without spending a cent. His peers in the IT profession would probably call it crazy, but notable nonetheless. Kaguchi ( talk) 01:51, 15 December 2014 (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.
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