Wikipedia talk:Notability (academics)

This miscellaneous page was nominated for deletion on 7 February 2006. The result of the discussion was keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

This discussion was begun at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper, where the early history of the discussion can be found.

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See Wikipedia:Notability (academics)/Precedents for a collection of related AfD debates and related information.

Merge to Wikipedia:Notability WP:BIO

A merge tag has been added to this article, removed and added again. It was first raised above and the debate has been taking place at Wikipedia talk:Notability, not here as the merge tag directs. I tend to agree with the editor who removed the tag that there is no consensus for such a merge. --Bduke 05:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

agreed. There are enough problems in this area all by its own without losing it in the more general discussion. DGG (talk) 06:07, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

• It is matter of custom that the merge tag directs here (default of the tag), though the discussion is at the proposed target page for the merger. I think that it is a moot point since this will not likely happen (not practical), though I do think that it is important that visitors to this page be informed that a merger has been proposed and is being discussed. Without the tag, only the people who watch the Pump or N-page will be informed. I do not believe that the tag prejudices this page. --Kevin Murray 06:20, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I just had a look at Wikipedia:Notability (people) into which it is proposed to merge this guideline. It seems to me that the Wikipedia:Notability (people) criteria are MUCH more stringent than what we usually are handling here. For instance, they state that a person should have been the subject of (non-trivial) secondary sources. Mere citations to one's work would appear to fall under "trivial" here, given the explanation under the notes. The latter would seem to be covered by "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field", buit again the notes explain that such a person then "will have been written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books on that field, by historians." So Einstein qualifies, but many other academics that currently have Wiki pages would not. As I feel that most academics having Wiki pages at this moment are actually rather obscure, even though they currently survive AfD debates. Creating pages for everybody on a similar level of obscurity would be a humongous task (see DGG's figure of 50,000 full professors in the US alone) and having the bar higher would be much better. Having said all this, I do think that the requirement that a person should "have been written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books on that field, by historians" is probably too stringent, as we would not like to limit ourselves to the few academics to whom this applies.... --Crusio 08:49, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

This "stringency" is in what seems to me a rather trivial sense, if defined by secondary sources. There are secondary sources on every flash-in-the-pan entertainer. The end result of not making distinctions based on the inherent importance of the reasons for a person's notability is that the corpus of WP bios comes out far too populist. It is already extremely far out in that direction compared to any print encyclopedia; we definitely should not want to push it further that way.

I really have not seen bios of academics survive AfD that I don't think should have survived. I think the current practice at AfD is about right. Ideally I'd like to see that practice codified in some intelligent way, without shifting the bar much in either direction. --Trovatore 15:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Trovatore's statement: "There are secondary sources on every flash-in-the-pan entertainer":

I think it contains the confusion between independent sources and secondary sources. A secondary source uses primary sources and adds commentary, analysis, opinion or something like that. The mere repetition of facts is never secondary. Reports are usually not secondary. Reviews are usually secondary. All of these things may be independent or non-independent. Finally, there is the additional requirement of source reliability, or as I think should be substituted for secondary sources, source “reputability”. I do not think that you can often find reputable secondary source coverage of flash-in-the-pan entertainers. --SmokeyJoe 21:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

at the extreme, of course the most unimportant entertainers don't get mentioned, as can be seen from the frequent Speedys and afds. it is much easier, after all, to pretend to be able to sing than to pretend to do mathematics, and video camera are in greater distribution than physics laboratories. But there is a difference in the nature of the sources. Compare any newspaper's coverage of humanities scholarship--or even of science-- with that of popular music. DGG (talk) 04:49, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I find your point to be unclear. Plenty of people pretend to do mathematics or physics. --SmokeyJoe 12:44, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what SmokeyJoe is talking about in terms of people pretending to do math or physics. Howsomeever, back to the subject: This standard was created because the existing notability for people was inadequate, and leading to inappropriate deletions of academics. Popular news coverage is given a premium in notability/people, which is fine for assessing celebrity; but notability encompasses more than celebrity. Academics who have made notable contributions within their own field, or even started whole new fields, developed influential theories, and so on, are all notable to scholarship, science, history, etc.; but are not celebrities. For that matter, why not merge "notability/people" into "notability / academics"? Well, because Tom Cruise could never meet the academic notability standard ... He's notable, just not an academic. Similarly, most leading scientists and scholars will not be notable in the same sense & to the same people as Tom Cruise. Thus we have separate notability policies for different kinds of notability. (Personally I would feel inclined to develop a "notability (entertainment celebrities)" policy ... something akin to the porn stars notability criteria.) --lquilter 19:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

To be more precise, this standard was created because of the woeful inadequacy of the so-called "professor test" - that a professor more notable than average is appropriate for coverage. But every topic must be coverable by secondary reliable sources. Nonetheless, in deletion discussions it is often helpful to have this sort of presumptive notability guideline, in case no one is making the effort to dig up sources. Mangojuice^talk 14:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see how you can meet the standards the verifiability policy wihtout "digging up" sources. WP articles should not be off-the-cuff opinion pieces. --Kevin Murray 17:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Easy. Suppose no one had yet written Carbon and I started the article based on stuff I remember from my college Chem courses, like that Carbon's atomic number is 6 and its abbreviation is C. I didn't dig up any sources, but this stuff is not only true, it's also verifiable. I would know those sources exist even if I don't bother to locate them... and a close parallel to this actually does happen in lots of new articles, especially where new contributors are involved. Of course, they also sometimes add information that can't be verified anywhere and it's hard to tell the difference. If an article is merely inadequately sourced, it is normally not best to delete it, but rather to keep it and hope that it will be improved... but if we have good evidence that an article contains nothing verifiable, that's different, and we should delete it. Mangojuice^talk 18:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The time has passed when it was good for wikipedia to add obvious stuff just to help build content. Stuff that you think you remember from college is no longer good enough. You’ll be hard pressed to find a missing article for something like Carbon. “Verifiable” is now too low a goal. We are moving to “all content must be sourced”. --SmokeyJoe 03:15, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

actually, that is simply not the case. All attempts to force the deletion of articles because they contain unsourced material have been soundly defeated by the community. The rule remains verifiable. That said, it is also essential that all articles be referenced, and this should be encouraged. We want higher quality in references and in content. But that's a goal. As for the example, if you write an article on an element, there should at least be a general source to a standard textbook at an appropriate level. It is not expected that it refer to the classic experiments proving the atomic number. This is a general encyclopedia. (But i do not see what this has directly to do with Notability (academics)--this is an area where we do have major gaps--most of the members of the US national academies do not yet have articles, and quite a few of even the smaller Royal Society. General articles are indeed still needed. DGG (talk) 06:49, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

You are right. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that we are moving to “please source all content”. What does this have to do with Notability (academics)? I am concerned that the guideline encourages articles based on content without sufficient reference to sources for that content. Members of scientific academies tend to be notable, even in the sense that they pass WP:N. What this should mean is that one should go looking for suitable sources on which to base an interesting article on the member. What it shouldn’t mean is that it is OK to go and write a bare facts article and then stop, or to review primary sources yourself and create an original biography. Probably, it is a good thing to write the bare facts articles (stubs), but it should be clear that this is not a sufficient goal. Secondary sources are surely out there for these people. For example, coinciding with major meetings, journals, in their news sections, preview the meeting and include reviews of many of the speakers. We should make more effort to collect these things. … I think that merging would not be helpful. --SmokeyJoe 14:12, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

such notes are rarely more reliable than the CV, as can usually be seen by comparing them. Unfortunately, the only times when a real substantial bio article of even a very distinguished academic can be expected is when he dies or retires. Or write a popular book. DGG (talk) 12:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

After almost three monthes of first placing the tag, and without any discussion generated, I removed it, as there seemed to be no great interest, nor much chances it really happens.--Aldux (talk) 22:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

There is still active interest and it is being discussed as part of a restructuring of notability in general. Please leave the tag for now. --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Where is this discussion occurring? --Lquilter (talk) 00:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:policies and guidelines, Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), wp:n, WP:bio, Wikipedia talk:Notability (media), and Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction) are amog the most active discussions right now. There are compelling points being made for various courses of action. Come join the fun! --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:45, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Time to make the merge

Absent strong objections above, I think that it is time to merge this page into BIO. The better parts of this process have been incorporated into BIO for some time and this is now just a redundant page. Perhaps further ideas in clarification of BIO could be included in an essay. --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

You don't see strong objections above? Look again. This page is very frequently used and very frequently useful in resolving the AfDs listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators; I don't see how a merge would improve that process. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:52, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

That it is used does not mean that it is not redundant. That there are objections of a few people doesn't mean that having a redundant instruction set is preferable to streamlining the processes. Weigh the good and the bad in what is better for the WP project. I see a proliferation of subject specific repetition as counterproductive to clarity. What is lacking in BIO that is provided here? --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Strongly object. The presumptive notability here for certain classes of academics is important and would be lost if we switched to just relying on BIO. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:01, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I also strongly object, for reasons mentioned by JoshuaZ. Nsk92 (talk) 01:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm for it. I mean, yeah, there are objections above, but the whole guideline here is basically already at WP:BIO as it is. It's redundant. The guideline is useful; having a link to it is useful, but I don't know that having it on a separate page is necessary. Mangojuice^talk 01:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to object also. This article definitely adds some helpful and specific notability criteria, so I disagree that it's superfluous and redundant. The WP:BIO#Creative professionals section is written very generally, and references this article; this promotes a certain specificity I find useful. So I guess that's what I find lacking in WP:BIO: a certain specificity as applied to academics. -FrankTobia (talk) 02:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me expand on the reasons for my objections to the merge proposal. For my money, even the current WP:PROF is probably not specific and not tough enough; and WP:BIO is really too amorphous and too general to be of substantial use in relation to determining the notability of academics.

For the moment, only a small fraction of currently active academics have their bio entries in Wikipedia. The main reason is that academics do not, yet, associate Wikipedia presense with professional success. But that will probably change soon and there are signs of such a change happening already. It is necessary for Wikipedia to be ready for this change and to have a workable guideline in place now, before things start going haywire.

Notability for academics is a tricky issue since, in particular, the work in question is often very technical and it is hard for outsiders to understand what is going on, who came up with what idea, what is important, and what is not, etc. (Heck, even we, academics, more often than not disagree about such things). Yet editing Wikipedia is open to everyone, including non-experts, and it is important to have specific guidelines in place that will allow such non-experts to make intelligent decisions. WP:BIO says: "The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by their peers or successors. The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique." This is really far too amorphous to be of much help. Things like "regarded as an important figure" and "widely cited" are, as stated, highly subjective, and, moreover, highly discipline-specific. Something much more concrete is needed already and will certainly be needed when the academic community at large decides to make a move on Wikipedia.

As I said, in my view, even WP:PROF is not yet specific enough. For example, I myself am a mathematician and a recently tenured associate professor at a large U.S. university. Looking at WP:PROF, not to mention WP:BIO, I have no idea if I qualify as "notable" according to these guidelines. Moreover, looking at my entire department, the same is true: I can make a reasonable argument, based on the current reading of WP:PROF, that all of my colleagues are "notable"; I can also make a reasonable argument that none of them are "notable".

In view of all of this, and keeping in mind the need for participation by non-experts, I think that we need to keep WP:PROF in place and work on elaborating it (rather than merge it with a general WP:BIO guideline).

Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 02:57, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Mangojuice says "whole guideline here is basically already at WP:BIO as it is. It's redundant", I've looked and just don't see it there... If this page were to be cut and pasted into a new section of WP:BIO, that would be one thing, but that doesn't seem to be what Kevin Murray is pushing for. None of the many strong arguments against merging made above have been addressed? Why is it now time to ignore them and make the merge? Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Please look at the creative professionals section, which is based on this page; however, where the advice of this page was more generally applicable to all people it was included in the main section. The excellent work in developing this page was infulential in rewriting BIO. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:24, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

• Strong objection to merge. WP:BIO does not clearly explain the criteria that actually are useful in determining notability in academia, which is why this guideline was created and continues to be used. "Absent strong objection", I think we should remove the annoying merge notice that has not generated consensus despite being placed on the article for how long now? --Lquilter (talk) 14:28, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That was true a year ago, but everything that is the essense of this page is now included at BIO. However, if BIO needs to be improved to overcome your objection, I'd be happy to address your concerns. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:24, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Lquilter: the above discussion clearly shows that there is not anything close to a consensus in favor of a merge. Therefore the merge notice tag needs to be removed. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 22:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not true. While there is an active proposal to merge, the tag advertises the proposal. While there is some opposition, the current trend is to merge the sub-criteria in to the more prominent notability guidelines. Hiding the tag will not stop the process. --Kevin Murray (talk) 22:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The proposal to merge can only succeed if there is substantial consensus to merge. At the moment there are two users (you and Mangojuice) who expressed support for the proposal and four users (myself, David Eppstein, JoshuaZ and Pete Hurd) who expressed strong opposition. While consensus does not have to be unanimous, it has to reflect the overwhelming opinion of those participating in the discussion. To me this means that the vote has to be at least 4:1 for the merge, if not stronger. Given the above numbers, what is the point of keeping the discussion open right now? Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 23:03, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

You are making up rules on the fly. (A) there is no requirement for 4:1. (B) it is not the consensus of those who are in the discussion at any one time, (C) the consensus of the WP community is the binding concern, (D) we don't vote at WP to determine consensus, and (E) there is no requirement for consensus to post or perpetuate a tag. --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

You are right that there is no formal 4:1 requirement. But consensus has to mean that the sentiment for merge is fairly overwhelming. I would disagree with your points C) and D). There are plenty of places where actual votes in various discussions are taken on WP. I would also argue that consensus means "expressed consensus" that is specific to the particular proposal. The way for the wider WP community members to express their preferences is to come and comment here on the talk page on this specific proposal. We are not mind-readers and it would not be approptiate to speculate what others might or might not think. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 23:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

Just a note that the listing of a third opinion request was removed.

The WP:3O project is designed to address disputes between two editors.

There are seven or more involved in this one. — Athaenara ✉ 00:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

when Kevin Murray says "(B) it is not the consensus of those who are in the discussion at any one time," does that mean it would be appropriate to ask DGG, Crusio, Trovatore, etc. whether their concerns expressed above have been met (by discussion on some other page one would assume) ? Pete.Hurd (talk) 00:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Nsk92 posted (diff) on my user talk page:

"Hello,
"I noticed that you removed the third opinion request for Wikipedia talk: Notability (academics)#Time to make the merge since more than two editors are involved in the dispute.
"While you are correct that more than two editors are involved in the discussion regarding whether or not to make the merge, only two editors are involved in the dispute about what constitutes consensus and how to access if consensus has been achieved. The request for 3-d opinion was on this narrow issue only. Thanks, 00:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)" [—Preceding unsigned comment added by Nsk92 (talk • contribs) ]

I am forwarding it here with my response.
At least three of the several editors discussing this here have addressed the issue of the Wikipedia consensus policy. The consensus in practice section particularly applies here:

Consensus does not mean that everyone agrees with the outcome; instead, it means that everyone agrees to abide by the outcome.

For what it's worth, my own view is that notability (academics) should not be merged into notability (people): it is helpful that academic notability specifics, which as noted in some of the posts above are often cited, are detailed on a separate page. — Athaenara ✉ 01:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Another object vote

Just wanted to register another strong objection to the merger. I will agree that there is an overlap between the six bullet points on WP:PROF and some of the bullets on WP:BIO for Creative Professionals. However, the general "more notable than average" professor test is nowhere, nor are any of the examples and caveats. Further, one point for profs is in direct contradiction to notability of creative artists: generally speaking, the LESS notable the libraries that possess a prof's books are, the MORE notable she is. As long as there are still wild misunderstandings on AfD of professors' notability--which there constantly are--the advantages of having this standard far outweigh the (real) issues of rulecruft. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 02:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I see this as a strong argument for improving BIO to address your concerns. From this and other comments above, there is a dissatisfaction with the status quo; however, a resistance to improvement. I'm seeking fewer but clearer guidelines. Individually the subguidelines serve limited purposes, but collectively these create a morass of rule creep. It's analogous to the tragedy of the commons, where what is good for one group individually is collectively bad for us all. There is an average of about one new notability page proposed each month, each with the mantra "if PROF why not Politicians, Atheletes, etc, etc." Last year it was if PORNBIO why not PROF, well PORNBIO is gone now, why not PROF. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:WAX. WP:PROF is used and useful in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators (where, by the way, I rarely see you). —David Eppstein (talk) 20:49, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

David, I'm not seeing where PROF is helping much at the AfD's listed at the above link. Personally I think that we are better off hanging our hats on WP:N than either BIO or PROF. The examples at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators only seem to illustrate that the further "guidance" is just twisted or misapplied. Simplifying will make the closers' jobs easier. I'll not likeley win this point as this appears to be entrenched by its own inertia, but I really think that you should think about a simpler and more successful solution. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 21:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

PORNBIO was a special instance of entertainers, which the current WP:BIO is well-suited and was frankly designed in large part to handle. It was the repeated problems caused by applying standards that were more appropriate for entertainers and celebrities, to academics, that led to this standard. Since PORNBIO was not defensible as an exception to BIO (which easily accommodates entertainers even pornographic ones) it went away. PROF continues to include specific criteria that are applicable to academics, that are not applicable to non-academics, and are not included in BIO. If you want to look at the two, get BIO to incorporate the relevant PROF criteria, and then come back here with the merge proposal, great. But they are substantively distinct at this point, so I fail to see how a merger is appropriate. As for your very reasonable desire to avoid rulecraft, I'm sure we all agree on that. However, eliminating unnecessary rules is not the same thing as eliminating useful and necessary rules. --Lquilter (talk) 19:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

As I tried to explain above, notability for academics is likely going to become a more controversial issue in the near future, when more academics will get involved in editing Wikipedia. We will soon need more detailed, rather than more general, versions of WP:PROF then and it is possible that WP:PROF may even need to be subdivided further into subdisciplines. Let me point out some specific issues that certainly will need further clarification in the future: what does it mean that the work is "highly cited". Publication practices and speeds vary significantly over different disciplines. In some more applied and experimental subjects, like experimental chemistry and physics, the publication rates and speeds are quite fast (often a few months or even weeks from the date of submission to the date of publication) and the citation rates are rather high as well. In other, disciplines, such as mathematics, the publication speeds are typically rather slow (often around two years or more from the date of submission to the date of publication) and, in relative terms, fewer papers are written; so the citation rates are typically considerably lower. For humanities things are different in other respects yet, often with a much greater emphasis placed on publishing books rather than research articles. Also, there are widely different practices in different disciplines regarding co-authorship, that also substantially affect citation rates. E.g. in many experimental sciences the lists of co-authors on a paper are often quite long and include a range of people from principal investigators on a project to grad students who helped in conducting the experiments. In more theoretical subjects, like math, only the people directly involved inwriting a paper are listed as authors, so the number of authors on a single paper is usually 1-3. And so on. So the issues regarding what it means to be "highly cited" are very discipline-specific, and in many ways the debates about what "highly cited" means are just beginning. Similarly, there will need to be a more detailed discussion about which honors and awards are significant. The range of what might, in theory, be cited here, is wide: from NSF Career grants, Sloan Fellowships, Invited AMS addresses, invited ICM talks, Humboldt Fellowships, to AMS Centennial Fellowships, to Abel Prizes and Fields Medals, etc, etc. Dividing lines regarding what kinds of awards are significant enough to signify notability will need to be specified more concretely. Again, in many ways this debate is still waiting to happen, and is probably contigent on greater numbers of academics getting involved in WP editing. These types of specialized debates and resulting guidelines do not belong in a general guideline like WP:BIO. These are just two examples of issues that require a specialized guideline, like WP:PROF. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 21:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Please consider WP:N as a simpler alternative to what you propose. The standard there is simply looking for topics where a legitimate writer/medium has "noticed" the topic (person). This takes the burden of determining inclusion criteria off of our plate. Clearly the subjectivity lies in determining legitimate sources, but the risk of including a few extra articles is negligible. Why over complicate it? --Kevin Murray (talk) 21:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The situation with academics is much more complicated than that. Typically, the work of an academic is quite technical, and with the exception of Nobel Prize winners or people of that caliber, it will not be mentioned in general press (and even if it is mentioned, the writer is usually a journalist who is not qualified to offer a scholarly opinion). So one has to look to what academics say about other academics in scholarly publications. Here comes the tricky part. The mere fact that somebody's work is noted and cited by another expert does not signify notability for academics. Citations and referencing happen all the time in the course of scientific research and anyone who has gotten a PhD will most likely have some citations of their work by noted experts. So things like the number of citations and H-index become more important, as does the context in which a citation occurs. There is a certain style and decorum practiced in scholarly papers, and people fairly rarely write "That work was great" or "That result was outstanding" in a scientific article, even if such a statement is well deserved. People usually write "He proved that in ...", "In ... they established that...", "The problem has been considered in ..." or something like that. Evaluative comments like "great", "outstanding", "seminal", etc, are relatively uncommon. Sometimes, when somebody won a big prize, or has an anniversary, some journal, like Notices of AMS, might publish a biographical article praising the contributions of a particular person. But such things are fairly rare. So by and large, except for some completely obvious but rare cases like a Fields Medal, one really has to look at the totality of the person's academic record to determine if that person is notable or not.

These issues frequently come up in AfD discussions and are, for the moment, setteled largely on a case by case basis. I personally think that more detailed guidelines are needed, and more definitive criteria for notability of academics need to be hashed out in discussions that are yet to come. E.g. see the currently ongoing AfD discussion for Martin Greiter, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators#Martin Greiter. That discussion is a good example of why WP:PROF needs to be retained and elaborated. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 03:45, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

If only we could see publically the letters professors' peers write for their hiring and tenure and full-professor promotions (or even better for the promotions one level higher than full that some universities have, such as Professor Step VI in the University of California system, since I think most such people would be notable while even most full professors might not be). They are exactly as detailed and evaluative as one would wish for in this context. As it is, to see something like that made public, one generally has to wait for an obituary. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Martin Greiter seems to be an example of how PROF is complicating the issue. The man does not seem to meet WP:N, yet the debate is shifted to statisitics which are not verifiable by the average wikipedian. Even if he qualifies under special criteria, the text of the article can't be verified beyond the existence of his writings. So in essense the article boils down to what he says at his academic webpage (autobio) and a list of his work product. --Kevin Murray (talk) 04:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends on how you read WP:N. By one reading, there are over 100 separate reliable published sources that discuss just one of his works (a few of which surely must be nontrivial), and yet we are seriously arguing (and I agree) that this is not enough. Some specificity about what a reliable source is, and how WP:N should be interpreted in the context of academics, is exactly why we need this separate guideline. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that I could support a guideline that stuck to clarifying reliable published sources as an aid to applying WP:N, for academics, and others as needed. My problem is getting into special criteria which try to either be more or less restrictive than WP:N. Especially when we create "protected" topics about which we can't develop a meaningful article since we don't have verifiable content. I tried to set up a system for historic military officers a couple of years ago, but realized it was folly. --Kevin Murray (talk) 05:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

You said: "there are over 100 separate reliable published sources that discuss just one of his works (a few of which surely must be nontrivial." If the work is notable, then is the writer notable? I tend to think so, especially if the article on the work becomes cumbersome when including the background of the author. --Kevin Murray (talk) 05:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

My reading of WP:N tells me that Martin Greiter is not a worthy article, and that the sources provided would be suitable for an article called Publications of Martin Greiter. For such an article, the citations of the publications serve to demonstrate notability in the unlikely event that they were secondary sources (meaning that the citing publications say something transformative about the Martin Greiter publications).

I think WP:N covers the situation well. We don’t want an article about Martin Greiter until we have independent sources that say something about Martin Greiter. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

So Joe, do we need PROF or BIO to tell us that, or is WP:N sufficient, and these others superfluous? --Kevin Murray (talk) 05:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (academics)

• Criteria 1 & 2: Redundant. Special cases of WP:N.
• Criteria 3 -5: Contrary to WP:N. Attempts to legitimise transfer of notability from the works to the person
• Criterion 6: Contrary to WP:N. Establishes “notability” by a method not based on sources. He may have won an award, but nobody has ever written about him. This establishes a directory of award winners. This is not the way to write a reliable and reputable encyclopedia.

Wikipedia:Notability (people)

• Begins as a very good alternative version of WP:N (ie.redundant).
• Basic criteria. Actually, it reads better than WP:N, with the same intent.
• Additional criteria:
  • “significant recognized awards or honors.” Contrary to WP:N. Establishes “notability” by a method not based on sources. He may have won an award, but nobody has ever written about him. This establishes a directory of award winners. This is not the way to write a reliable and reputable encyclopedia.
  • Footnote 7 seems helpful.
  • Invalid criteria: Works for me.
  • Various specific examples: There are pros and cons with regard to compatibility with WP:N and insisting on emphasising proper sourcing, but on balance, I approve.

In summary, I think WP:PROF should be merged to WP:BIO. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs)

Joe, that way lies deletion of almost all articles on academics, and relegation of Wikipedia's biography to articles on celebrity gossip. Academics are known for their works; it shouldn't matter whether we are also told in print who they were seen club-hopping with last week. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I see no shortage of independent reviews of researchers in reputable publications. Conferences are often associated with special issues that cover the invited speakers. However, it is true that it can be hard to find these things online.

If it is desirable to loosen standards to encourage biographies of serious people, then I suggest weakening the requirement for independent sources. For example, we might agree that the publication of a biography on a university website demonstrates sufficient notability, even if that publication isn’t entirely independent. Similarly, biographical information of the editors of a peer review journal might be sufficient.

I am not happy with criteria that specify “prizes” or “publications” or “achievements” because these things in themselves don’t provide much in the way of material for our product. Prizes, publications, achievements and other tests that are not based on useful sources might be good indicators of the likelihood of existence of good sources, but I’d rather just ask for what we really want: suitable sources. Sources that provide coverage of the subject of the article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:27, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:N and BIO were revemped in the last year to be more inclusive. Sources do not have to be online or in popular periodicals. If the academic is noticed by an independent third party in a verifiable publication, broadcast, or other acceptable alternative he is in. It is a matter or training our AfD closers to apply the standards, not perpetuate more bandaids to a broken AfD process. --Kevin Murray (talk) 06:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) but Kevin, you can drive a bus through the gaps in the distinction between third party coverage of a scientists work, a scientists area of work, and coverage of a scientist, per se. "If the academic is noticed by an independent third party" is a concept so vague as to be useless in practice. It's not simply matter of training the AfD closers. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Pete, I only see it as useless if we are trying to be hyper-restrictive. Since we are not a paper publication, why not include as much information as practical? There seems to be a very protective elitist instinct among academics involved in this project, where the same is not true elsewhere. I've seen academics deleted who were clearly recognized, but not respected by the AfD participants -- in my mind clearly out of line. --Kevin Murray (talk) 06:36, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Whups Kevin, I think I misunderstood. I thought you were arguing that Academic notability be made far more restrictive, to bring it in line with WP:BIO. Are you arguing that the bar of notability be lowered to include all academics? As for the deltion of clearly notable academics not respected by the AfD voters, I'm keen to use those as testcases. Can you point me to the AfDs? It makes sense to me, if the argument is to be made that an alternative is remarkably better than the current, that it should be demonstrated to work better on past example AfDs Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Pete, I'd be going too far back for my decaying grey matter. I've not been as active in AfD lateley. I keep hearing that BIO is too restrictive, while I thought that it was less restrictive. I guess if you really look at all the loopholes in PROF there are no restictions at all.

The following is an open door: "If an academic/professor meets none of these conditions, they may still be notable, and the merits of an article on the academic/professor will depend largely on the extent to which it is verifiable." That is a non-criterion. I think the rest of the criteria are duplicated at BIO. --Kevin Murray (talk) 06:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I usually read that clause as allowing for articles on academics who are not noted academically but have achieved notability in other ways. E.g., if you're a national-level politician who happens to have been a professor, we won't make you pass WP:PROF in order to keep your article. Obvious, I suppose, but worth stating explicitly. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you, it is worth stating explicitly. The intent might have originally been there and those involved here make your interpretation in the context of how it developed. --Kevin Murray (talk) 07:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Joe, you say "then I suggest weakening the requirement for independent sources. For example, we might agree that the publication of a biography on a university website demonstrates sufficient notability" and "I am not happy with criteria that specify “prizes” or “publications” or “achievements”". Are you really saying that a university webpage bio is sufficient to establish notability, but the redlinked names in Crafoord_Prize#List_of_the_Crafoord_Prize_winners: aren't notable merely on the basis of having won the Crafoord Prize? Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:42, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I would say that a university webpage bio does contribute to a demonstration of notability. I’m not quite sure that it should be considered sufficient, and I’d be concerned about lower end “universities” such as those that teach for profit and do little or no research. On the other side, I would be dubious about an prominent academic who doesn’t have an official, reputably hosted web page.

Yes, I would say that the redlinked names in Crafoord_Prize#List_of_the_Crafoord_Prize_winners: aren't notable merely on the basis of having won the Crafoord Prize? I’d say they are likely to be notable, being in a select group where nearly every member is notable. However, the test is the existence of sources on which an article can be built. You might show that this prize is a very special prize, that it always attracts commentary for its winners, but what about the next prize. I don’t think that editors should be constructing criteria on what sort of prizes automatically confer notability on their winners. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I try to encourage people to develop articles about the sources they cite. I've started quite a few articles while researching a source. The same can be true for awards etc. I think that the project is well served when we can explain who it is we are citing or why an award is meaningful. Why not? --Kevin Murray (talk) 07:57, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

arbitrary page break

Pete, I like to see the university webpage bio as confirmation of affiliation with the university, confirmation of the job-title, and I assume that there is some oversight preventing excessive puffery. Still these are likely directly or indirectly auto bios. If I can see a name on a list of prize winners, where the list is likely outside of the control of the subject, this is strong, and in my mind can establish the notability. One subjective item remaining is determining if the award or prize is notable. --Kevin Murraly (talk) 07:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

A few extra comments on the discussion above. WP:N and WP:BIO are not sufficient when we are talking about reliable sources writing about the person's work. A literal reading of WP:N here produces a standard that is too low for academics. Technically, whenever a person's work and results are explicitly mentioned and used in another scholarly article, that does meet the standard of WP:N. In the case of average academic there will be probably more than a hundred such citations. An alternative reading would say that only those scholarly references that discuss and praise the person's work in detail should count. That produces a standard that is too restrictive. As noted above, scholarly articles by convention and tradition are usually written from a NPOV and explicit praise or criticism are rare and even if they occur in passing, are not sufficiently detailed. The number of biographical articles in scholarly or professional publications about some person's work is rather small and is usually tied to either a very major award, like a Fields Medal, a significant anniversary (e.g. 70 years old) or, most often, an obituary. There are plenty of academics who are definitely notable in their professions for whom no such articles exist. There are many factors that can account for this, such as the personality (some people are more reclusive or more quarrelsome) and, in large part, chance.

The point is, for academics the most relevant standard of notability is the professional standard in that particular field, reflected in the opinions of peers (which, as I said, are usually not expressed publicly). This problem is well understood within academia itself. Academics do not like to express overt opinions about the work of others even when explicitly asked to do so, e.g. when writing reference letters. That is why the process of making decisions about tenure is so difficult and complicated. I could agree with some of the criticism of WP:PROF as it is currently written, but I do believe very strongly that WP:PROF needs to be elaborated and improved rather than eliminated. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 11:55, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

“WP:N here produces a standard that is too low for academics. Technically, whenever a person's work and results are explicitly mentioned and used in another scholarly article, that does meet the standard of WP:N.” I disagree. You need to distinguish between a mention of the work/results and a mention of the person. Scholarly works usually say nothing about the person.

“There are plenty of academics who are definitely notable in their professions for whom no such articles exist”. Well, how are you going to demonstrate this? If it can’t be demonstrated (verified), what is the point? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

A quote by SomkeyJoe from AfD discussion for Martin Greiter: "If the publications are outstanding, write an article about the publications". As I said, this is simply not done, except in rare cases mentioned above. In most disciplines people write scholarly articles containing new research, rather than "articles about other publications". Waiting for an obituary would be far too restrictive a standard for notability of academics. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 12:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I’d have better said “write an article about the content of the outstanding publications”. Note that the context was a person whose demonstration of notability was resting on one or two outstanding publications. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Once again, this sort of thing is very rarely done in academia. We don't usually write articles "about the content of the outstanding publications”. We write articles containing new research that may mention and cite previously done research, including previously done outstanding research (also, there are occasional survey articles on a particular subject where the work of a person may be mentioned). As discussed in my comments below, there are some exceptions to this, such as articles about a person's work in conjunction with a very major award, notes in occasional special birthday issues of some journals dedicated to the anniversary (e.g. 60s or 70s birthday) of a famous academic, and, finally, obituaries. But these exceptions only cover a relatively small fraction of notable living academics (obviously I am not counting obituaries here). Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 00:11, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Joe's suggestion here really ilustrates a poor grasp of the topic & issues, It's my strong sense from the debates over WP:SCIENCE, and related AfDs, that any article written about a single paper would be deleted. Encyclopedia have articles on topics, important papers ought to be discussed in articles on those topics. Past instances of people writing COI puffery articles on the topic of their most recent, most underappeciated, most important etc. publication have demonstrated why we really really want to avoid this. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

“ilustrates a poor grasp of the topic & issues” Is that a tad bitey? If an academic has made an outstanding contribution to a particular subject, the academic should be mentioned in an article on that subject. The example is not a case of COI puffery of an underappreciated recent publication, but a high impact old publication, and a bio that reflected nothing of the content of that publication. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that the WP:N standard is too low of a bar. For one thing the volume of someone's work product is not a guage for qualification under WP:N. The citation of a person's work is not specifically a criteria there either. What WP:N looks for is that the person's notability be confirmed by other publications as demonstration of notability. Most notable academics will have some degree of biography published by institutions with which they affiliate or a review of their work. If they haven't been noticed enough to be written about by others, they just aren't notable by Wikipedia standards. Why are we setting up a wholly different standard for one profession? Is it becuase they are likely to be involved in the project? --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:10, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Academics are notable for their academic work. Just as, for a politician, you'd expect sources that write about their political accomplishments rather than (except in rare newsworthy cases) their family life, the same is true of academics. Those citations that you so blithely dismiss are "other publications as demonstration of notability" that write about an academic's academic accomplishments. But the existence of a biography on their institutional web site is almost completely worthless as a notability criterion, because almost all academics will have one no matter how little impact they have made on the academic world, and because they're usually actually written by the academic him- or herself and not vetted by others. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:31, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

David, I don't blithely or lightly dismiss the citations or the work product, but we don't currently have a valid measure for these at WP for academics, journalists, creative professionals, and others. I would prefer that we did. As it stands, citations are not discussing the work or the author, merely (1) verifying existence, and (2) showing acknowledgement. I see #2 as demonstrating notability but not getting us verifiable content. I've advocated at many AfD discussions that we need to look at building blocks which collectively demonstrate likely notability if not specifically meeting criteria. Some wins some loses, depending on the political interpretation of the closer.

I think that solving the problem will benefit multiple areas of our project. I've assumed that there would be some level of oversight over bios at the sites for major universities -- not good news to hear these are not vetted in some way. This complicates the dilemma since these seem to be the only source of bio-material for academics who qualify for articles through other than WP:N. We are either stuck with writing an article from primary research or from an un-vetted autobio. We seem to be in a logic loop, where when we stray from WP:N we can't satisfy WP:V. And if we satisfy WP:V then the subject qualifies for WP:N and we don't need BIO or PROF. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Many institutions (perhaps most) do not publish biographical sketches for their faculty. Typically, most departments leave it to their faculty members to create their personal web pages, and leave it at that. Sometimes the most significant honors are mentioned somewhere at the departmental web page, but the practices there are very uneven. As I was trying to explain above, in many disciplines publishing a review of somebody else's work is just not done, except on extremely rare occasions (e.g. a Fields Medal). Being a practicing academic myself, I can tell you that, at least in my field, Mathematics, people do not generally write review articles about the work of others. People write papers containing new research, where the work of others is mentioned and sometimes briefly discussed. There are a few exceptions: a) winning a very major award, like the Fields Medal or the Abel Prize; in that case a professional journal, like the Notices of AMS, usually will have an article by some expert summarizing and praising the work of the person who got the award; b) sometimes a conference is organized to honor the work of some-one, usually associated with that person's anniversary (say 70's birthday); in such cases there is sometimes a special anniversary issue of a some journal that is dedicate to the anniversary in question. There will then be either a foreword by the editors or a by a student/collaborator about the work and the contributions of the person in question. c) obituaries, after a person dies (again in something like AMS Notices). More or less that is it. There are also book reviews, but in mathematics books rarely contain new research (but rather are based on existing articles, and not necessarily by the author of the book) and the reviews are usually concerned with the structure of the book and explanation of the topics covered, but not with the significance of the work of a particular person. Birthday conferences and birthday anniversary journal issues usually do signify notability, but they only occur late in life and sometimes posthumously. So notable academics under the age of 60 essentially never get a birthday conference. Even for those over 60 the practices of who gets and does not get a birthday anniversary journal issue are very uneven and there is a large element of chance.

So a great majority of notable, even famous and very significant work, does not get "review articles' of the type you have in mind. That does not mean that the work is not notable, and this fact is well understood in academia. Such work is most typically mentioned in various research articles. Sometimes people do explicitly say something signifying notability, e.g. "X solved an important conjecture in ..." or "Y introduced an important notion of ... in ...". Such explicit evaluative statements certainly exist but are sporadic and have to be hunted for. Moreover, even when they are made in a scholarly article, it is usually in passing, rather than in the context of a detailed review of a person's work. So, apart from the most famous people, evaluating notability for academics is a complex issue. As I said, tenure committees in various universities struggle with this problem all the time, and it is well understood to be a difficult one. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 16:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I just realized that I made an obvious omission in the above post. Namely, in Math there are two comprehensive reference publications, Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH. They publish reviews of most new articles that appeared in mathematical journals and conference proceeding, written by a some-one other than the author of the article. With the exception of very obscure journals, most journals are reviewed cover-to-cover, meaning that every single article gets a review. The reviews are usually half a page to a page long and are written as "mini-introductions" to the paper in question: they discuss the main concepts and definitions, give statements of the main results proved in the paper and discuss the history and the context of the problems being considered, including what was known before. These reviews often do contain some evaluative comments, such as "interesting", "important", "well-written" and so on. It may be possible to use Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt MATH in determining notability of mathematicians, but I am not sure how to do it and this topic itself deserves a separate discussion. There are many caveats. Thus, every single paper, from great and transformative ones, to just good, to mediocre ones, gets exactly one review, by a somewhat random person. (Because the volume of the papers that are reviewed is so great the quality of choices in who gets asked to review what is very haphazard). Also, in many instances, especially with innovative research, the real significance of a paper only becomes clear later, maybe 7-10 years down the road. These reviews themselves are not considered as mathematical publications (in particular, they are not refereed), and are not listed on people's CV's among their publications. Although I highly value Mathematical Reviews as a reference tool, my personal impression is that the level of these reviews is very uneven. I tend to think that for a paper to be highly cited is a much more reliable indicator of its significance than having a few flattering things said about the paper in its review. Still, if a large number of papers of an author get consistently complimentary reviews in Mathematical Reviews, that probably could be counted as indication of notability. Mathematical Reviews also has a special category called "featured reviews", when, on a few occasions, the editors of Mathematical Reviews feel that a particular paper is especially important, and ask someone to write a more in depth and detailed reviews of it. That probably could be used to indicate notability. I don't know if other disciplines have anything analogous, and it would be interesting to find out... Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 12:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that we need to solve the problem for more than academics. Editors writing about journalists and writers face the same issue. I think that it is very important for WP to provide a source so our readers can evaluate the credibility of influential professionals. In some of our more controversial topics, editors frequently site as gospel the works of people who are "published", have degrees, or are affilaited with significant institutions. There are enough varied opinions published to support almost any position including: the world is flat, there was no holocaust, and the Irish race came from Pluto. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"Editors writing about journalists and writers face the same issue" and I'd be very keen to hear how Wikipedians who are professional Journalists suggest we deal with this. Rather than attempting to impose a WP-wide cookie-cutter solution on all professions I'd suggest that we listen to people who have an intuitive grasp pf what makes someone in their discipline notable. I really think discussions on fixing this guidleline ought to be shifted to "how do we come up with a rule that better discriminates notable academics from non-notable ones" rather than the current emphasis, which seems to me to be "we have a global notablility guideline, that ought to me applied more literally and unthinkingly to the topic of academic bios" because people who don't really have any experience with the underlying issues aren't happy. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Pete, if this was a successful project you would probably get my support. But as it stands it is just WP:CREEP that serves no particular purpose --- a failed experiment; a band aid which doesn't stick or cure the wound. It has had over a year to succeed but has not. Why not make this an essay and propose it as a guideline if and when it can be actionable. Looking at example AfD's only demonstrates free-for-all debates and nonsensical references to PROF by uninformed AfD cruisers and nominators. --Kevin Murray (talk) 17:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Kevin, I agree AfD is perhaps the part of WP that best demonstrates that WP is largely a reference work written by people who have never used any other reference work, it looks like a product manufactured by people who have never experienced use of that type of product in the role of a consumer. I think that moving in a manner which is intended to simply broader participation by magnifying the opinions of the uninformed just doesn't bode well. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Notwithstanding the inconveniences Wikipedia is an egalitarian project. There is a old saying that the Navy was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. Clearly this is a bit harsh and said with tongue in cheek, but the point is clear. We need some form of guidance structure to help the layperson make reasonable decisions. If Kevin Murray were designing the system, we would focus more energy on training closers and limit participation at AfD to experienced editors, but nobody has assigned me to the task, and who has the time to be a full time judge or jury member? We have to walk a fine-line between failing like previous strict encyclopedia projects or flourishing into the next You-Tube. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 18:19, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

That is exactly why WP:PROF needs to be improved and elaborated rather than merged. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 18:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like we have the same overall goal, but see different roads to the destination. Personally I'd rather recruit these big-brains to join in to improve WP:N and/or BIO, not to mention some other policy pages. Maybe we can work on this as a test bed, where the results can trickle up to other pages. Cheers! --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I very much hope that more academics will participate in the discussion about improving WP:PROF, as I do feel that its current state leaves much to be desired. In particular, I think that a more detailed discussion of "widely cited" is needed in WP:PROF, and probably some explicit discussion of h-index needs to be added. In fact, I would not mind trying to set some sample and fairly high h-index threshholds that, if achieved, would automatically guarantee notability. E.g. in math, where the publication speeds are fairly slow, I would probably be comfortable stating that anyone in pure mathematics with h-index at least 19 is automatically notable (of course, many people with h-index below 19 are notable as well). In other subjects, the automatic bar would have to be set differently, probably higher for experimental sciences and lower for humanities. But we may have to wait for these kinds of specific discussions to occur until more people, representing a wider range of disciplines, get involved here. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 21:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the use of the h-index was debated in an earlier thread... punchline: nah, can't make a criterion based on it that will work. I think the essence of the idea is right, that it attempts to assess the scholar's impact on their area of research, rather than some other dimension, but... Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I remember. In fact, I raved against h-index myself and I still have big problems with it (not so much with the concept but the search tools available for computing it). But I have since then partially changed my mind. I found that as a "quck and dirty" test, very high or very low values of h-index can be useful in determining notability or lack thereof. If not specific values, than maybe including in WP:PROF some general discussion, with caveats etc, about the use of h-index as a diagnostic tool, might be considered. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 21:58, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I think (I know I've said this before) that the problem of developing explicit criteria for assessing notability of academics is analagous to (and no more possible to solve) the Demarcation problem. I kind of like h-index based thinking because it correlates with what I think is important (note not advocating for use, just demonstrating a point)... as I see it, there are three dimensions people assess along in academic AfDs 1) Impact on other practitioners within the discipline 2) Rank within academia 3) Mentions in popular press or name recognition/impact outside the discipline. I think the intention to merge with WP:N loads on the third dimension, whereas I think the first is the "real" one. Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:08, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I daresay that a merge with WP:N is not about to happen. But it would be nice if WP:PROF could be altered to get away from encouraging research not based on suitable sources. The problem with 1) is that If the “Impact on other practitioners within the discipline” is interesting enough to be covered, then somebody somewhere is expected to have already written about it. Cite that source and you’ve passed WP:N. If nobody have ever written about such an impact, then if you do, you are doing original research. 3) is skewed. For a bio, WP:N asks that the person, the subject of the article, not the product of the person, has received mention in a reliable source. That source need not be popular. Demonstration of mention/name recognition/impact (of the person) within the discipline is a perfectly fine way to satisfy WP:N. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:40, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Most references in subsequent papers by other people indicate specifically an impact, sure, there are some references that just say (1) (2) (3) and ()4) have previously investigated this problem. But in the discussion section, one usually discusses the related work that one is supporting or extending. For examples, see any open access journal, such as PLOS. If the work is trivial, one doesnt mention it. And remember that it isnt one or two references that show notability--its widespread references--extent depending on field, but most people in science have dozens of references to many of their papers. To write a paper that 50 peers take notice of that way, is notability as recognized in reliable sources by third parties.

General Comment As others have said, in general, nobody writes magazine articles on professors, and they dont get a biography until they retire or die. Therefore, since notability in each field is judged by the standard of the field, and notability in this field is established by publications and positions, their publications and positions are always considered sufficient. The instances where there are articles is for work that happens to catch the public eye, for one reason or another, which does not necessarily have much to do with notability within the profession. (though public notice of that sort also demonstrates notability). Notability for academics is typically established by their publications. People become senior academics by writing notable research papers. That the papers are notable rather than just routine is established by peer review for their positions. By the time someone is a full professor at a major research university, they have passed reviews for appointment, for promotion to associate professor , for tenure, for promotion to full professor, they pass stringent reviews by peers, including particularly peers from other institutions. (Other ways the profession establishes this is by appointments to editor in chief of major journals, to important academic or outside policy positions of significance, by award of large research grants.) This establishes notability much more strictly and reliably than we could here. The profession establishes notability; WP just records the fact. Agreed we need to rewrite WP:PROF to be more realistic about what actually happens at AfD. DGG (talk) 09:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

You have a rosy view of how people become professors. Other times, it is done by negotiation, departmental politics, nepotism, back stabbing, a lucky break, being in the right place at the right time, working in a politically favoured field, theft of results of junior colleagues and students. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Both DGG and SmokeyJoe raise some valid points, but I would also disagree with both to some extent. Regarding "negotiation, departmental politics, nepotism, back stabbing", etc, these things certainly do happen, but, in my experience, they are much more likely to lead to a promotion being torpedoed rather than approved. Also, most good research universities in the U.S. have a multi-tiered process (usually at least three stages: department, college, campus) where substantive review of promotion and tenure nominations occurs. Nasty politics etc, if they occur, usually happen at the departmental level and if the case is weak, or there is an indication of something suspicious going on, such cases are very likely to get shot down at these higher levels of review. However, in many major U.S. universities (including mine), it is possible to get promoted to full professor based primarily on teaching and service, rather than research, considerations, e.g. while serving as the Director of Graduate or Undergraduate studies in a particular department, or as the Department Chair. The first real problem, however, is how to draw the demarcation line between what does and does not constitute a "major research university" with promotion practices rigorous enough to justify making a blanket policy that every full professor there is automatically notable. I would probably be willing to accept such a blanket policy for places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, and a few others. But only for a few others. I work at a large U.S. public university that is undoubtedly recognized as a "major research university" in general. And we do have a very rigorous and careful promotion and tenure process. I would say that almost all people who become full professors here are in some very real sense absolutely excellent researchers who are highly regarded in their field and made substantial contributions there. But in my personal view, the bar here is a bit too low to claim that most people who become full professors at my university are "a cut above the rest" in their fields (which is what I would like to see as a criterion for "notability" of academics). To me "notability" for academics has to mean "substantially better than an average tenured professor", and, from this point of view, being a full professor at a university like mine is, in and of itself, not quite enough to indicate notability. There are also questions regarding foreign universities where the standards and procedures for tenure are often quite different and where, in many cases there is no equivalent for the U.S. tenure system at all.

Having said all this, I am not completely opposed to adding something to the guideline along the lines of what DGG suggests, if we can find a good and workable formulation of the "full professor clause". (Which would have to be fairly conditional, have a lots of caveats etc). Perhaps being a full professor at a major university (whatever that means) could be listed as a factor that may be used, in addition to other factors and not just by itself, to determine notability. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 20:00, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

We mustn't have rules subdivided along the lines of “for top US universities”, “for mediocre US universities”, “for universities of respectable nations”, “for third world universities”. I am certainly not completely opposed to DGG’s ideas either, but we shouldn’t assume we are talking about Harvard professors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:20, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

The Harvard professors are not generally the ones in contention at AfDs. And making hard distinctions between types of universities, e.g. saying that Harvard full professors are automatically notably while community college professors at any level are by default non-notable, would probably be a mistake. So in those respects I agree with you. But it is important to recognize that different types of universities have different standards of notability for their faculty, and also that different individual universities have different meanings for their ranks (e.g., a professor at Oxford means rather more than at the typical American university; tenure at Johns Hopkins is typically granted at the full professor level while at most other American universities it's granted at the associate level; some universities have a system of ranks that includes a higher step than full professor; etc.) It would be best to avoid credentialism in judging notability, to the extent possible, I think; that might allow us to sidestep some of these issues. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

another arbitrary page break

It seems that we are in a logic circle here. The consensus is that the WP:N criteria are not pertinent to academics, because these are too restrictive, since Academics are not typically written about. But the general case at WP is to only include those people who are already written about. Since we prohibit original research and require verifiable content aren't we arguing moot points about the inclusion of article topics which can have no meaningful content, since there are no bona fide source materials? --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand the point you are trying to make. My feeling is that in fact the literal reading of WP:N is too liberal rather than too restrictive, in relation to notability of academics, and that is why a specialized guideline like WP:PROF is required. Academics are notable for their research, and, in the literal sense, there are usually tons of secondary reliable sources, namely the scholarly journals and publications, where the research in question is used, referenced and discussed (albeit usually in the context of new research and not just by itself). The situation is further complicated by the fact that unlike for most other uses of WP:N, like art, sports, cinema, politics, etc, specialized knowledge is generally required to understand the significance of academic research. It is much harder for the general public to figure out what is going on, there are relatively few articles in mass media regarding specific academics, and, even when they do occur, they usually are not reliable indicators of notability in the profession. That is exactly why a specialized guideline like WP:PROF is needed in this case: to raise the bar above the literal minimalist reading of WP:N, but not so much that only superstars like Nobel Prize winners would qualify as notable. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 02:02, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"Since we prohibit original research and require verifiable content aren't we arguing moot points about the inclusion of article topics which can have no meaningful content, since there are no bona fide source materials?" - Kevin. I really don't understand the equation between keeping this notability standard and rejection of the policies or WP:OR and WP:V. If we were to have a winner of the Crafoord Prize with an ISI h-index of 57, but no column inches in English Newspapers, or coverage in glossy magazines, the prize and h-index are verifyable, and there is no Original Research involved that I can see... Where's the equation? Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that a prize or an h-index in itself doesn’t provide material for the encyclopedia. The problem is that articles like Peter Carruthers (philosopher) contain content that cannot be sourced to third party publications. The content of that article has been produced by original research using Carruthers writing. I see two problems. The first is that all references are non-independent of the subject, but I’d like to ignore that for now. The second is that there are no references to secondary sources that write about the subject. This second problem means that wikipedians have been doing original research (ignoring the possibility that they have simply failed to list their sources). My reading of WP:NOR and WP:N is that Peter Carruthers (philosopher) is not a worthy article. If that is wrong, then the problem is with WP:NOR and WP:N.

I am seriously thinking that WP:NOR and WP:N both need to be reigned in with regard to what we might consider to be definately worthy subjects. I think Nsk92 is quite wrong about WP:N being too lax. As DGG as others have noted, rarely is something written about a living scientist, or as I believe, these things are nearly inaccessible, in places like conference promotional material (reputable but not permanently recorded). Perhaps it would make for a better encyclopedia (See WP:PPP & WP:IAR) if, according to some reasonable measures, certain people were declared to be notable without respect to WP:N, and that reasonable amounts of OR should be allowed to summarise the work and achievements of people like Carruthers. After all, I understand the rationale of WP:NOR is to keep out kook theorising, and WP:N is to keep out stuff that is of no interest to anyone. The only other threat to exisitng policy is that if we declare all Crafoord Prize winners (for example), we may be accused of violating WP:NOT#DIRECTORY because we have just created a directory of Crafoord Prize winners. I see this idea has in no way being a threat to WP:NPOV or WP:V. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:53, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the question of whether WP:N is too lax or too strict in this case, I think that it depends on the interpretation of what it means to for someone "to be written about". While an outright article specifically about some living researcher is rare in scholarly journals, there are usually plenty of explicit published references to the person's research work. Since academics are notable for their research, these referemces do count, in a literal sense, towards determining notability, and their existence is easily verifiable. That is what I meant when I said that, from a certain (and not unreasonable) point of view, the literal reading of WP:N is too lax in relation to notability of academics. In relation to notability of other (non-academic) living and non-living subjects, we also have to make some judgement calls in evaluating their notability, e.g. in relation to the number of reliable sources that mention that subject. However, I actually do share some of SmokeyJoe's feelings about the need to possibly reign in, to some extent, the applicability of WP:NOR and WP:N in the case of notability of living academics. The problem is that certain things, such as data confirming high h-index, that are verifiable and relevant with respect to establishing notability, are probably not appropriate for inclusion in the main article about the subject. E.g. if someone has 10 research papers, with 200+ citations each, I would not want to have to include references to these 2000 citations in the main article about the subject (for the obvious reasons of this being impractical). Of course, one can actually write in the main article something like: "he/she has 10 research papers, with 200+ citations each, per Google Scholar search". This is currently almost never done and I am not sure about the wisdom of doing it... Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 10:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

As far as using Peter Carruthers (philosopher) as an example: The sections talking about the major themes in his research need third-party sourcing, but most of the rest of the article is factual material that can safely be verified from primary sources. So if we cut out the parts that, unsourced, look like original research, we'd still have an article that, while short, is longer than a stub. It would be helpful if some of the sourced reasoning for why the article should be kept that has been listed in the afd would make it into the actual article, of course... —David Eppstein (talk) 07:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"The problem is that a prize or an h-index in itself doesn’t provide material for the encyclopedia." why ought a criterion for notability provide material for the encyclopedia? The criterion for notability isn't synonymous with article content. Pete.Hurd (talk) 07:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Technically correct, but that is among the moot points. If you qualify them under the h-index only, you can't write an article since you will have no meaningful content which meets V. If you have content which meeets V then you meet N, so why do you need an extra rule set? --Kevin Murray (talk) 11:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

"if we declare all Crafoord Prize winners (for example), we may be accused of violating WP:NOT#DIRECTORY because we have just created a directory of Crafoord Prize winners." trust me, no one is going to freak out and declare that we delete List of Nobel laureates because it violates WP:NOT#DIRECTORY. I think this excessive focusing on the literal interpretation of the rules at the cost of common sense application of what the rules are aiming to achieve is not looking productive. Pete.Hurd (talk) 07:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It is not "excessive focusing on the literal interpretation of the rules" when what some of us are saying is that we don't need more rules. What I'm saying is that reasonable interpretation of WP:N and WP:V achieves the goal, and this extended rule-set provides a contradiction. --Kevin Murray (talk) 11:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I think that I see David and Pete saying that without PROF we are too restrictive, but NK is saying that without PROF we are too permissive. Am I right? --Kevin Murray (talk) 11:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not exactly what I mean. I mean that WP:N is not sufficiently specific in relation to the notability of academics, and it can be understood it several ways, providing (reasonable) interpretations that are either too permissive or too restrictive. That is why a specialized guideline, like WP:PROF, is necessary. There are other reasons, such as those given by Pete Hurd below. As the above discussion ampty demonstrates, people outside of academia do not generally know how to judge the notability of academics, and need more specific guidelines to help them than those given by WP:N and WP:BIO.

I also think that it is important to keep WP:PROF as a kind of a placeholder, for the time (in my opinion in a fairly near future), when more academics will get involved in Wikipedia and start adding articles about themselves and other academics. At that time more detailed rules will be absolutely necessary to avoid tremendous fights and chaos. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 14:40, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

A good case in point is the current AfD discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Per Bylund (2nd nomination)‎. There an experienced user insists that there is a distinction between "academic notabiliy" and "notability as an academic". Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 15:08, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

FWIW I don't read that editor's comments quite so Derrida-like. He seems to be saying the guy may be notable, and an academic, but not be notable *for* his academic activities. He subject is a grad student, with no notable impact in the role of academic that I can see. The claim to notability seems to be via his activism. I see little evidence that the activist roles and academic roles really overlap strongly in the bio, and largely agree that (the the dubious extent that this falls under WP:PROF) he may be a notable "academic" without academic notability (many disclaimers apply). Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:33, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it is possible to be an academic who is not notable academically but is notable for political activism. However, in the Per Bylund discussion people were making explicit references to a Google Scholar search as indicative of notability, and to Bulynd's master thesis being cited in an article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies. These are clearly arguments in favor of academic notability, and had to be rebutted as such. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It's my personal belief that PROF is too liberal, but that's a side issue. My major concern is that without PROF we are attempting to judge the notability (sensu DGG, the actual impact that academic has on academia and the history of the development of ideas, etc) of academics using a dimension that doesn't adquately indicate what we are trying to measure. In general I disagree with DGG, David Eppstein and most other AfD regulars on where the threshold for inclusion ought to be, but by-and-large, they are measuring the correct quantity. By abandoning PROF we are going to have an even worse problem because we won't even be attempting to measure the correct thing, we'll be forcing a procrustean solution that ignores what's important in determining the notability of a scientist in the real world, outside wikipedia. Pete.Hurd (talk) 13:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It still sounds like we have no consensus on what PROF should be, but it exists as an pseudo-actionable guideline which only serves to confuse the issue further. Keeping a broken system as a "place holder" is an effrontery to the project.

The reason this is failing is the same reason why most subject specific guideline proposals fail, there is no objective solution that works beyond WP:N. The beauty of WP:N is that it is really just a minor extension of WP:V, and that the determination of who is notable is left to the writers of the world and taken off of our shoulders.

The procrustean argument sounds great until you examine it; it applies to beds but not notability.

Can you give us five examples where a proper Keep outcome at AfD was obtained though PROF, which wouldn't otherwise have qualified by WP:N? --Kevin Murray (talk) 17:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll leave it for people more actively involved in AfD discussions to provide such examples. But even if one accepts, for the sake of argument, that there is no current consensus regarding what exactly WP:PROF "should be", I claim that the above discussion abundantly demonstrates the need to have WP:PROF, and to have it improved rather than merged. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 17:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

In fact, looking at the above discussion, I think that it does demonstrate a consensus that WP:PROF needs to include clarifying instructions about how the presence of the mention by third party reliable sources of the work of an academic is to be interpreted in determining academic notability. Apart from such clarifying instructions, an explanation needs to be included in WP:PROF as well. This means including some info from the above discussion regarding the norms used in academia in citing the work of others (that one usually does not write papers specifically about the work of others, except for big award events, close-to-retirement anniversary journal issues and obituaries, etc); as well as some discussion about differences between various disciplines. It is clear that without such clarifying instructions and without such clarifying discussion, general public editors will not know how to interpret WP:N in relation to notability of academics, and are much more likely than not to make incorrect decisions. Again, I think that the above discussion demonstrates a consensus for these points. The precise level of how high the bar needs to be raised above the minimalist literal reading of WP:N in relation to academics is another matter, and before consensus is acieved there, further discussions are necessary. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 19:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If you think that WP:N is purely objective, then I think you are sadly deluded. There are arguments all the time about whether a mention in a newspaper story is sufficiently nontrivial, or whether some local newspaper is sufficiently important to satisfy WP:N. And we still haven't agreed here on whether third-party citations to an academic's research (which discuss it in a nontrivial way) satisfy WP:N. For that matter, do third-party reviews that are entirely about the subject's research satisfy WP:N? If they do, then all mathematicians (no matter how obscure) would pass, because essentially all published math papers are reviewed in MathSciNet. And most humanities Ph.D.'s would pass, because most of their theses turn into books that collect at least three or so reviews. But people in other fields might not have such an easy time. The standard set by WP:PROF is higher, and is (intended to be) more forgiving of the variation in publishing practices across different fields. So, no, I am not going to give you five examples where a keep was obtained through PROF that wouldn't have been obtained by WP:N; I think WP:N is a basic standard that most academics already pass and that WP:PROF sets a higher bar for how to interpret notability of academics as sourced by other academic writing. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:53, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

The advatage is that at its core WP:N is a concise instruction. The irony is that while WP:N is objective, the application is subjective. But everything else seems to devolve into subjective wiki lawyering, these just offer more criteria to lawyer over. Since we have no examples of PROF at work, where it has value added, why should we keep it? --Kevin Murray (talk) 19:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It may be concise, but it is quite unhelpful and uninformative in making decisions about notability of academics, especially for people outside academia. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 19:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

For more reasons as to why keep WP:PROF, see, for example, my comments directly above David Eppstein's comments. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 19:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I would also say that there is a good procrustean argument in this particular case for keeping WP:PROF as a placeholder for when more academics will get involved in Wikipedia (which I believe will happen pretty soon). We academics tend to have easily bruised egos when it comes to our professional reputations. We get upset fairly easily when people don't cite our work where we think they should, and we get easily exercised over referee reports for our papers. Academic fights often become very nasty. We need to prevent that from happenning when academics get more heavily involved in Wikipedia, and start paying attention to what is happening here. Here is a personal anecdote regarding this. When I was in France last September during my sabbatical, I met a relatively young up-and-coming talented and active Swiss math professor. He was very interested in Wikipedia and tried to create an article about himself earlier in the year. His article was nominated for AfD and, after a discussion, deleted as not sufficiently notable (I still do not have an opinion as to whether that decision was correct). During the discussion he was compared to another young mathematician, originally from Russia, who already had a WP entry. The Swiss guy told me that, as retaliation, he nominated that other mathematician's entry for deletion and a pretty contentious AfD discussion followed (the entry for the Russian guy was eventually kept). I really would like to limit this type of stuff from happening on large scale, and a place like WP:PROF for hashing out more definitive standards of academic notability is necessary for that reason as well. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 21:48, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

(totally parenthetical) It's my humble opinion that most academics would rather not have a WP Bio. It's just a target for vandalism, smears etc. Policies like WP:OWN, WP:COI etc (quite rightly) make WP bios a lot less attractive to the average academic. I think they'd rather have their home page at their institution be top of the google hits... Just my 2c. Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

You may be right about this, but somehow I have a different feeling about the future. Vanity is a powerful emotion, and if people start viewing having a WP entry as a status symbol, the number of WP articles about academics would explode. Plus, at least in math, I see a clear swing towards applied science and cryptography (many of my colleagues and my advisor are moving in that direction, as is the NSF). In my experience the applied people are much more concious of their image outside of academia, and begin more and more looking for funding from private sources, in addition to the traditional sources like NSF. This may increase the likelihood of academics seeking validation of their status outside of academic arena, e.g. here on Wikipedia. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 23:38, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Autobiographies are discouraged at WP. --Kevin Murray (talk) 23:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Pete’s parenthetical point tells me that WP:N should be upheld as a protection for potential subjects of biographies. WP:N tells me that a subject should not have a biographical article unless it can be demonstrated that independent others have already published biographical content in a reliable source. To go another way, and to allow OR in the creation of novel biographical content would be to allow anonymous interested parties to publish their personal interpretations on wikipedia (where it will score highly on google). If we allow the biography, but not OR, and limit the biography content to readily verifiable information, then we are creating a directory entry. To be a proper, non-directory article, there must be commentary on the subject.

In the cases of prolific researchers who impact their fields, in the absence of independent sources of biographical content, wikipedia should not cover the person, but limit itself to covering the research. This means WP:N suffices, WP:PROF is wayward, and articles like Peter Carruthers (philosopher) and Martin Greiter don’t belong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SmokeyJoe (talk • contribs)

I disagree with this interpretation of WP:N. When some aspect related to the person's life and work is notable, that person is notable and having a WP article about that person is justified. For a notable politician we don't have an article "The politics of Mr X". We have an article "Mr X". Similarly, for a movie actress, we don't have an article "The movies starring Ms Y", we have an article "Ms Y". For a notable athlete we don't have an article "Athletic achievements of Mr Z", we have an article "Mr Z". And so on. The same should apply to academics, under a common sense interpretation of WP:N. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 01:11, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

So you think that, in the frequently-occurring cases where we can find reliable sources discussing academics' research but not their personal lives, we should omit the (verifiable from primary sources) parts of the article where we list where the academic was educated and employed, and rename the articles something like Research of Peter Carruthers? That doesn't seem like an improvement to me. If you mean, we should have an article about the role of language in cognition (to pick one of Carruthers' interests), we do (e.g. Sapir–Whorf hypothesis), and I consider those sorts of technical article more important than the biographical ones we are discussing here. But to keep an article on academics only when we know something non-academic about them seems backwards to me: it's elevating the unimportant features of their lives over the important ones, in terms of what we use as a basis for our decisions. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

There is no need to even consider their personal lives. There are many cases where we can find reliable sources discussing academics' research but not discussing their professional lives. For Carruthers, I cannot see anything independently demonstrating the notability of his career/professional life. I agree that moving everything to Research of Peter Carruthers does not feel like an improvement, however, I also cannot see independent coverage of the “Research of Peter Carruthers” as an independent subject, so it may be simply that any article centred on the person is inappropriate. Our principle of “only writing about what others have already written about” means that there is no basis for having any article centred on Carruthers the person (researcher, professional, family man or otherwise). I definitely agree that the technical articles are more important. Where appropriate, major contributors to the technical subjects can be mentioned in the technical article, or even collectively spun out. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

David, this is not unique to academics and is a problem to be handled for the whole project, not piecemeal. As it stands people who don't get noticed by third party writers aren't consider valid topics for inclusion. Joe is right about the policy and the conflict between WP:N and PROF; I'd like to find a remedy that works in the general case, and it we have to cut off a foot or two so be it. --Kevin Murray (talk) 00:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Can we please get away from the "we have to destroy the village in order to save it" rhetoric? It isn't helping to make your point. What, exactly, do you see as broken about the current system that will be fixed by fitting academic notability into the procrustian bed of WP:N? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's discuss WP not sleeping arrangements (please)! There is nothing added by your village, and you all seem to arguing to keep it just in case it can be improved at a future date. Are you familiar with the tragedy of the commons? What is best for one person (or village) individually, can be disastrous for the whole. If we allow a patchwork of independent notability special cases then we end up with a proliferation of confusion. WP is not meant to have independent fiefdoms, reading between (or on) the lines, I see a bit of academic elitism which is inappropriate for the project. --Kevin Murray (talk) 01:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not a question of academic elitism, but of having a practical guideline that is actually useful and informative in making decisions about notability of academics, especially when such decisions are made by non-acdemics. As was explained above, WP:N simply does not provide a practically helpful and useful guide for making such decisions. I do disagree strongly with Joe's interpretation of WP:N, which I think runs contrary to what an encyclopedia is supposed to be about. Common sense dictates that somebody like Peter Carruthers deserves an encyclopedic entry a lot more that some pornographic actor who had an interview in Playboy. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 01:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

That the world is more interested in boobs than brains is out of our control. I do differ with Joe on how rigorous the standards should be. --Kevin Murray (talk) 02:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean, but it could be that I think guidelines should be written in terms of ideals to be aimed for, not minimum standards. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It may be true that the world is more interested in boobs, but an encyclopedia is supposed to be a catalogue of important knowledge rather than of popular information. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 03:11, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

What’s broken is that guidelines like WP:PROF support articles that are a combination of Original Research, Directory Information and Resume. I think David's point is that there is already a forest of such articles, and cutting them down isn’t an improvement. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, no. I think an academic biography here should say something documentable from third party sources about why other academics, at least, and preferably non-academics as well, should care about the subject's accomplishments. That's not original research (because I want the sources), it's not directory information (because I don't see a need to be comprehensive in our coverage of living academics, nor do I have any interest in slighting the dead ones the way most actual directories would), and it's not a resume (because those are undifferentiated listings of academic accomplishments without any hint at which are the important ones or why they're important). But that's all accomplishable within the current WP:PROF system, by looking at the sources (that is, the citations to the academic's work) and seeing what they actually say. As an example, look at an article I wrote this week, Edward D. Goldberg. Much of it is sourced from obituaries (in the popular press! Joe should be happy) but the part I'm most pleased by myself is the paragraph sourced to an obscure thesis which describes precisely why his idea of using mussels to measure pollution is a good one. The impression I'm getting from the discussion here is that you wouldn't consider that (or, say, an academic journal paper saying the same thing) to be an appropriate source because it contains no biographical detail, and the vision I'm getting from you guys (correct me if I'm wrong) is that you'd rather see articles about academics who have the luck to have been profiled in popular magazines, and no articles about academics who have not, ignoring what other academics might have written about their actual accomplishments. I don't see that as an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:31, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I see myself as playing devils advocate, and regrettably winning. I see it as highly regrettable that more third party coverage can be found about nearly any actor than most top scientists. I guess the problem is that scientists don’t communicate well publicly. But that’s not my fault. What I’d love to see is more citable coverage of scientists. I see many biographies that are original research (not based on independently published biographical material), I don’t see it improving, and I see WP:PROF as stabilising the current trend. Criteria like “The person has published a significant and well-known academic work.” is, unfortunately, similar to “has been watched by 1 million people for 15 minutes at movie theatres”. It supports articles that aren’t supported by reliable source material. If wikipedia is going to improve, it needs to improve in terms of reliability, which means that content needs to be sourced. WP:N encourages good sourcing. WP:PROF (several of it’s criteria) doesn’t encourage appropriate sourcing. Having wikipedians look at academics publications, and then writing biographical material based on the publication is not good. How does the wikipedian know that the academic wasn’t a gratuitous author? Will the reader be impressed by the citation and accept as fact the summary of the wikipedian? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:55, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with much of your reasoning here. The crux of the matter is not that scientists do not communicate well publicly, but rather that advanced scietific work, including outstanding and breakthrough work, is highly technical and is thus unsuitable for detailed discussion in popular press. In fact, an interview in a popular magazine with a scientist is a much less reliable indicator of that scientist's academic notability than a wide use of that scientist's work by other scientists in the field. I think that the interpretation of WP:N that you suggest runs contrary to the spirit of what an encyclopedia is about. It would turn Wikipedia much more in the direction of being just a popular culture almanach (which we already have plenty of here). And yes, having a high citation rate in peer-reviewed journals would be a much better guide for a typical wikipedian in judging the notability of an academic that interviews in popular press. Regarding being "a gratuitious author", it is not that easy to do. Your work still would have to pass peer review to be published in an academic journal. Plus WP:PROF is not suggesting to judge academic notability simply by the number of publications (which, I agree, would be a bad idea). That is why we are taking about things like citation rates, h-index, professional awards and honors, etc. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 02:41, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

yet another arbitrary page break

The failure of the general notability guideline is apparent in the discussions at AfD. N has meaning only within specific areas, and the only way to keep totally unimportant stuff out of wikipedia is to recognize what is important in specific areas. Otherwise it becomes a matter,if its sourced, let's include it, and we get to quarreling over sources. We may need to improve the wording of the guidelines here, but specific subject guidelines ins the only way to avoid idiosyncratic random decisions. and the guidelines for this area as interpreted at AfD do work---we do end up keeping the more important and reject the less important. I wish other areas did as well, rather than relied on random coverage. Perhaps the best way to clarify this will be to start trying to rewrite notability to say "Notability is importance in an area", or to take the present non-definition,This concept is distinct from "fame", "importance", or "popularity", from WP:N, and amend it by adding a not before the word distinct. Then the guidelines in the various fields of human interest will be seen more clearly as interpreting it. I do not agree personally with the special guidelines in all the subjects, but its better to have them. An encyclopedia is about what is important, as long as there are sources, formal or otherwise. The neutrality & applicability of the sources and criteria being used have been discussed adequately above.

The relative importance of the different areas has to be solved by compromise. I think professional wrestlers and porn stars are of no importance whatsoever, and the world and the encyclopedia would be better off without them. Other people seem to disagree, and they have a right to. Therefore i defend articles about video shows i would never watch and games I would never play, and accept that there will be a balance among us all, which after all is what is meant by a comprehensive encyclopedia. I allow the wrestling fans to figure out what makes a wrestler important--as long as they dont come to an absurd conclusion like include every one who has a press release saying he's a wrestler. We should do similarly here--and we do--if we were to start calling every instructor and assistant professor at a college important, then people might well think we needed a dose of reality. But we do discriminate, in the way that the profession does. DGG (talk) 01:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The way I have long seen it is that notability guidelines allow us to make a good educated guess about what topics are appropriate. That's what WP:PROF does, certainly, and a lot of the other heavily-used guidelines also. WP:N is different; if something has been demonstrated to meet WP:N it should be clear that an article on that subject can be appropriate (at least as far as WP:V concerns go). So the conflict between the two rules is not actually a conflict at all. WP:N provides a "sure-thing" criterion, whereas guidelines like WP:PROF and WP:MUSIC let us make good judgements about what is probably notable. I have seen articles that seem to meet one of these guidelines deleted if it remains in an unsourced state for a long time. It's been my experience lately that topics that seem to fail common-sense notability guidelines like this one are articles for which people want to see sources right away to confirm notability... but topics that pass this kind of guideline are ones for which we are willing to wait. Mangojuice^talk 03:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Would you agree with this? “These notability sub-guidelines contain criteria that are really indicators that notability will probably be able to be demonstrated.” --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:02, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe something a tad looser. These notability sub-guidelines contain criteria that are really indicators that notability will likely be able to be demonstrated, or that the topic is close enough that deletion should not be considered urgent. Mangojuice^talk 12:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I could be more comfortable with the subguidelines, if it was made very clear that they are specifically NOT more restrictive that WP:N and that they are not to be confused with reasons to delete articles. --Kevin Murray (talk) 14:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Are they not that way already? I havn't checked, but have always thought that if a Bio meets, WP:N (by which I mean extensive coverage in reliable secondary sources") then it ought to be kept no matter what WP:BIO, or sub guidelines had to say. WP:PROF ought to serve as a guideline for inclusion of Bios otherwise not clear keeps by WP:N or WP:BIO (due to the insensitivity of those guidelines to the factors which indicate notability in the academic community). Pete.Hurd (talk) 15:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

This is my impression also. Meeting any notability (sub)guideline is a defense at AfD, of varying effectiveness. The Carruthers case is a clear example of something that meets WP:PROF but fails WP:N, I and will be happy to accept it as a test case for whether WP:PROF can trump WP:N. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:03, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Aye, I'd put it this way, "he seems a notable academic (in the world outside wikipedia) but fails WP:N". (rest of my comment this point is true) If wikipedia is to reflect the state of the real world, rather than seek to arbitrate what ought to be though about the real world (which would be Original Research) then it ought to present him as being a notable academic. WP:N is broken (or needs tweaking via things like WP:PROF) rather than WP:PROF (or a reasonable facsimile) needs to be abandoned. Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Very strongly object to merging. I believe subject-specific guidelines are critical for thrashing out what precisely constitutes notability across a number of fields, not just for academics. The general statements in WP:BIO are wholly inadequate in practice (ie in AfD) for determining which biographies are sufficiently notable to be included. The only way of proceeding is more detail, not less. Espresso Addict (talk) 14:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

• I actually support the proposed merge. I've tried improving a few articles about academics where they don't have significant coverage from independent, reliable sources, and it's very tough to do, which is probably why so many articles about academics are so awful. Also, I think that the guidance provided by WP:BIO and WP:N is clear and much more objective—there's significant coverage of the subject in independent, reliable sources or there isn't; that's a more objective criterion than "significant," "important," or "well known." — BRMo (talk) 23:45, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

As discussed above at length, the lack of independent reliable sources is not really the problem (rather, there are usually too many of them). There are typically dozens if not hundreds of scholarly articles which cite and use the work of an academic in question (these are presumptively reliable sources per WP:RS). However, these articles usually contain new research of their own, rather that an extended discussion of how great somebody else's research was; and it is in the context of such new research that the work of the academic in question is being mentioned and discussed. There are a few instances, such as winning a very major award (at the level of Nobel Prize or a Fields Medal) or a birthday anniversary issue of some journal dedicated to a particularly prominent academic (usually close to retirement, e.g 60 or 70 years), or an obituary, when there will be a note published dedicated to the work of one person in particular. But, by and large, such things are rare, even for academics whose prominence is widely recognized in their profession. That is why one has to look at things like academic awards and honors, citation rates, h-index, etc. A literal reading of WP:N would make almost all academics notable (exactly because most of them will have dozens of citations of their work). If one uses the overly restrictive reading of WP:N, favored by SmokeyJoe, than almost no living academics would be considered notable. WP:PROF is needed to clarify the meaning of WP:N in this special case and to set the bar somewhere in between these two readings. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 00:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The issue with WP:N and WP:BIO for most living academics is the lack of independent reliable sources that provide significant coverage. Yes, there are dozens or hundreds of sources that cite their work, but the typical coverage is a simple footnote or inline citation citing one of the academic's published works that supports the point made in the previous sentence. Unless you're already an expert in the field, good luck trying to construct a biography from those kind of references. That's the reason that so many biographical articles about living academics look like shortened cv's. My interest is in having high quality, verifiable articles, and to do that well requires sources that provide significant coverage on the subject. It's true that most living academics don't receive that kind of coverage unless they've won a major prize, been the subject of a festschrift, or otherwise been unusually influential or reached the attention of the popular press. I actually don't have a problem if most academics don't get covered until their obituaries have been written. To write a good article requires source material that often doesn't become available until after an academic's death. BRMo (talk) 23:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The typical humanities book review or MathSciNet math paper review is far more comprehensive than you state. And the biographical detail (which sequence of positions the academic held, etc) obtainable from a dead academic's obituary is rarely much more detailed than what one could find from a living academic's cv. What is missing, for living academics, is predigested biographies that cover, in-depth, the whole of the academic's career and allow lazy Wikipedians to write articles by copying down lists of facts without having to go look for them individually. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:55, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with David. Moreover, even WP:BIO does not necessarily demand significant coverage. WP:BIO also allows to establish notability via multitude of reliable sources that mention the subject in a nontrivial way. WP:BIO says: " If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources may not be sufficient to establish notability". As examples of trivial mentions, WP:BIO gives things like directory listings, etc. I would argue that even a footnote in a scholarly article of the type you describe has real substance and rises above "trivial" coverage. Moreover, in very many cases (at least in my subject, math), citations of the work of others are more substantive than what you describe. E.g. if someone has proved some kind of theorem before, I would state this theorem and explain how I am using it in my present article in my proofs of new results. I would also fairly frequently describe the history and the background of some problem in the introduction to motivate the reader and mention significant results known. These types of citations are very common and I assure you that in academia they are regarded as nontrivial. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 00:10, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If one knows the subject (ie the topic, not the person), it's reasonably easy to write a Start class biography for a living scientist based on primary papers and academic reviews. It's much easier to do it with obituaries, yes, but do we really want the encyclopedia to be 50 years out of date? Espresso Addict (talk) 00:47, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

David—I agree that an in-depth book review or a review article that discusses the subject's contributions in depth can provide the source material that's needed to write a quality biography. These types of sources are rarely mentioned in academic AfD discussions however, which usually seem to focus on raw publications and citation counts, which may give you some idea of how "important" the academic is, but don't really indicate whether the information is available for a decent biography. Also, I object to your description of "lazy Wikipedians"—the issue for academics is that most Wikipedian editors don't have sufficient expertise. Although I have a PhD and am a former academic, I've found it difficult to write biographies about academics in my field and have generally restricted my efforts to subjects for whom some expert has already written a biographical article or review of their most important work. I'm simply not knowledgeable enough about some of the subfields and latest research in my discipline to feel I could do an adequate job. And if I have trouble, the Wikipedia editor who is perhaps a university freshman writing about his professor surely doesn't do an adequate job. Also, a point of clarification—when I mentioned obituaries I was thinking of the substantive ones that sometimes appear in journals after the death of an important scholar, not the typical newspaper obituary.

Espresso Addict—I'm certainly not opposed to writing articles about living academics provided they meet the usual verifiability, NPOV and NOR criteria, and if an editor can write a decent article based on reviews and paper summaries, that's great. But I still think the notability criteria ought to focus on availability of sources rather than on nebulous notions of importance or raw citation counts. A citing article that includes an in-depth discussion of the work can be a very useful source, but it gets the same weight in citation counts as the articles that simply mention the work in a footnote. BRMo (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

While it would certainly make our life easier if there were more sources with "in depth" coverage of a particular academic's contributions, the fact is that such sources are almost never available. What is valued in academia is original research, not writing about somebody else's research. In math, for example, we never write research articles "about the work of X" or even "about a particular article of X". We write articles containing new research, where the work of X may be used, mentioned and discussed (usually briefly) in the context of such new research. Even in humanitariant disciplines, where polemic articles and arguments are common and may address the research of another scholar more directly, this is still done in context of a specific argument about something else (and not about the work of these other academic per se). So while there are usually multiple reliable sources that substantively use and cite a particular person's work, they very rarely yield quotes that are suitable for an encyclopedia article about that person. That is true even for reviews in MathSciNet: almost every published math research article is reviewed there individually and in depth, but again, the review is written in context of discussing a particular result rather than the work of the academic in question in general. On the other side of this argument, since almost every published math article is reviewed in MathSciNet by a mathematician other than ther article's author, counting such reviews as evidence of notability would make most of living mathematicians "notable". Clearly, that is not a satisfactory result either. So while we may be unhappy that life does not provide us cleaner and neater resources for determining the notability of academics, we have to live with this fact and try to make the best of the resources available. This means having to deal with more nebulous things like citation rates and h-index. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 02:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

"Notable in their field"

In a discussion on WP:BIO regarding Porn Actors, Epbr123 said: "A pornstar who appears in a notable mainstream film would be more notable in their field than a normal actor who appears in a notable mainstream film." Which got me thinking: "More notable in their field" is at the heart of this issue isn't it? Should there be a unified notability criteria - one that applies to all topics, but with guidelines to assist in assessing separate fields so that we are consistent across the project; or should we have different criteria for different fields?

I take as a starting point that there is a unified notability criteria - the notability criteria for academics, porn stars, artists, the local tramp, etc should not be different. It would seem to be inappropriate to make a shift in criteria for local tramps - that if the local tramp had a walk-on part in a film for example that would be VERY notable for local tramps, but rather less so for established actors. So if an actor isn't notable for having a walk-on part then neither should a porn star, an academic or a local tramp. By having clear unified criteria which can be applied without bias or prejudice across the board we ensure that the project moves forward with appropriate balance and we don't get overloaded with Simpson's characters, porn stars, academics, wrestling stars or whatever. If a topic is notable then it is notable regardless of the topic itself. "Notable in their field" doesn't and should never mean notable enough for an encyclopedia. We are not looking to include every town mayor - even though by definition they are the most notable councilor in their town - we are looking to include the most notable people. The only wrestlers we should have are the wrestlers who are notable OUTSIDE THEIR FIELD. If there are no such wrestlers then we don't have any wrestlers on Wiki. If an academic is notable in an academic field then the academic gets a mention on that topic's article, not neccesarily an article to himself.

MERGE with extreme prejudice. Academics are people - they should be considered under the People guideline. SilkTork *^YES! 11:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree that "notability outside their field" is the correct criterion to use. If some-one won a gold medal in the Olympics, or is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, they are notable whether or not there is an article about that person in the People magazine discussing their Zodiac sign and their favorite color. The main goal of an encyclopedia is to catalogue important knowledge, not popular knowledge. Important knowledge is often (especially these days) technical and does not make it into the popular press. And even when it does, it is often by chance, and in sources with dubious competence to comment on the topics involved. I would say that substantial notability in their field, where "their field" is broadly defined, is the right criterion to use for an encyclopedia. (Otherwise, most significant living and future scholars, architechs, poets, etc, will surely be out of WP, as will such articles as Hedylidae,Algebraic Geometry, Second law of thermodynamics, Radon transform, Von Neumann entropy, etc, which is anthithetical to what an encyclopedia is meant to be). For mayors, the right category of their field is "politicians", not "mayors of small towns" and it is in that context that they should be looked at. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 12:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia, not a children's toy. If the idea were just to include people with a huge Google footprint, there would be no point whatsoever in continuing.

The first line of the five pillars states: "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia incorporating elements of general encyclopedias, specialized encyclopedias, and almanacs." Espresso Addict (talk) 15:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

The role of WP:PROF with respect to WP:N

Espresso Addict, I consider my addition “This test may be considered as exception to a rigid reading of Wikipedia:Notability where the content is uncontroversial, verifiable and neutral.” to be a reasonable statement of fact of current practice and a reflection of consensus here on the talk page, and if you disagree, you should give a better explanation. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Whoa, let's not put the cart before the horse. I'd say that when changing a Wikipedia guideline, we have to be rather careful, and a specific discussion of a concrete proposal is needed before a substantive change is made. The previous thread was still about the merge proposal, and that thread was extremely long, tangled and difficult to navigate. I am happy to move on and to discuss a specific edit proposal for WP:PROF, but IMO it has to be done separately. So, please, let us first see an explicit formulation of the rationale for the change first and at least a brief discussion specifically of that rationale and that change by the interested users, before claiming consensus and editing the guideline itself. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 11:38, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Kevin, I have reverted your good faith edit of the main article for now. Let's have a specific discussion of Joe's change first here, on this talk page, before modifying the actual guideline. Given Espresso Addict's objections, I think it is premature to claim consensus here. Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 16:04, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

• WP:N boils down to: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."

No problem. I was bold and reverted. But I think that Joe is right. --Kevin Murray (talk) 16:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

(1) I don't think that WP:PROF is an exception to that rule.

(2) I don't understand precisely what you mean by a "rigid reading" of WP:N, and don't feel that a long explanation would be useful.

(3) I don't see how adding that sentence to WP:N helps understanding the relation of WP:N to WP:PROF, which seems pretty clear to me in the existing guideline, which states "A subject is presumed to be sufficiently notable if it meets the general notability guideline below, or if it meets an accepted subject specific standard listed in the table to the right." Espresso Addict (talk) 01:46, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Joe (or Kevin, since he supports Joe's modification), could you please state a brief rationale for it here? (The preceding discussion thread is so long that it is hard to fish stuff out of it. I do not yet have an opinion about Joe's modification myself). Regards, Nsk92 (talk) 16:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with EA. This is not an exception, its a specialized interpretation, explaining what is considered to be the appropriate way of applying the standards here. This is true with all the other specialized guidelines. The guidelines on athletes, of local politicians, on al lthe rest of the cases, are examples where something more has to be explained abut what counts and what doesn't, because--in each case--the understanding of how the field works needs some further clarification. I do not agree with all of the special rules here--I think that some are too generous and others too strict. Some I think are merely convenient arbitrary compromises. But we shouldn't word these as a exception--thats downgrading the importance of having these kind of clarifications. I wish we had more in other fields also; it would cut down on some of the repetitive unnecessary work at AfD. We;'re actually doing fairly nicely here in practice--most articles here brought to AfD find a clear resolution, with discussion focusing, asit ought, on the ones that are borderline. DGG (talk) 08:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The rationale was to clarify a bit. I thought it would be uncontroversial, and would not be actually changing anything. I thought I could distill something out of the extensive discussions above. I suppose things are a bit touchy with the merge proposal. There is no urgency. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:06, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Merge tag

I propose that the merge tag be removed. It is clear that there is not concesus for a merge. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:06, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree. --Kevin Murray (talk) 17:32, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Agree. Nsk92 (talk) 17:35, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

This seems like something we can all finally agree on. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Aye... Pete.Hurd (talk) 23:03, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:FLAG-SCL

Hello, fellow editors ... I would appreciate any feedback and comments on my draft WP:FLAG-SCL protocol and other Flag templates ... Happy editing! — 72.75.110.142 (talk · contribs) _{23:06, 18 April 2008 (UTC)}