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 from the early and pre- history of this guideline (2005-2006) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive for a list of all sorted deletions regarding academics since 2007.

Sabine Brunswicker

Does this social scientist with a GS h-index of 12 seem notable? I don't think so but wanted to hear the opinions of other editors before nominating it for deletion. IntoThinAir (formerly Everymorning) talk 22:55, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

I think she might be. Without knowing the field at all (or being much clearer about it having read the article) it seems a rather tiny corner. Johnbod (talk) 23:57, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

GS h-index of 12 is low for a very highly cited field. Going strong, but could be WP:Too soon at present. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:17, 31 August 2018 (UTC).

Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists

While I would not question the notability of a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, I wonder if this younger organization meets the meaning of the ACADEMIC guideline. I was looking at Draft:Laura Loewen where this seems to be the main claim for notability. In searching around, I saw that we have at least one other draft pending Draft:Joanna McGrenere and some accepted, but maybe questionable, articles where this qualification is mentioned, for example the relatively new article on Sean McGrath (philosopher). — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 07:32, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

From our article (with a slight whiff of copyvio?): "The College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the RSC was established in 2014 to represent emerging generation of intellectual leaders in Canada. It elects 80-100 members each year, who showed high level of accomplishments at early stage of their careers. At the time of election, members of the College must have received PhD or equivalent degree within past 15 years. Nomination of candidates for the College follows similar procedures as nomination for the Fellows of RSC." Not strong evidence for notability by itself, I'd say. Johnbod (talk) 13:51, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Expand criterion 5 to cover any tenured professor at a major institution of higher education and research

The recent embarrassing denial of a Wikipedia page for Donna Strickland before she won a Nobel Prize was not an aberration: The Wikipedia admin community as a group isn't very good at judging who is a notable academic. But I wouldn't expect it to be; most of us here are not professors ourselves, and aren't up on what's considered significant in the many, varied fields of academia. The "named or distinguished professor" criterion does admit a number of people, but it's skewed towards late-career researchers (it takes a long time to get to that level), even though a lot of significant discoveries are made early in academics' careers. The population of named and distinguished professors also tends to skew white and male, even in comparison to academic fields in general.

Wikipedia will do a better job including notable academics if it honors the peer review that academics themselves do for notability though the tenure process. Major research institutions do not grant tenure lightly, or to anywhere near all their faculty. Especially in an era of tight budgets, they're not going to give a lifetime, high-salary guaranteed job to an academic unless that person has convinced their fellow experts that they've produced notable work with significant impact. The significance of that work is not always easy for lay people like most Wikipedia editors to find or recognize, but peers in the field know it well. (Strickland passed that peer review when she was promoted to associate professor, the usual initial rank for tenured professors in the US and Canada.) And once an academic has a page on Wikipedia, others knowledgeable about their field, or interested in their work, can fill in more details that can make the notability of the scholar's work more apparent to a general audience.

This proposal is not meant to replace or substitute for the more general overhaul of the Academic Notability criteria that I gather is underway. It doesn't solve all the problems the current criteria have. But it's a tweak that is, in my opinion, long overdue, and can help Wikipedia better represent the diverse and ever-growing world of notable scholarship and academics. 13:03, 3 October 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnMarkOckerbloom (talk • contribs)

• Absolutely not Wikipedia's notability criteria are not meant to praise some and punish others. We have to draw a line because subjects included cannot be covered fairly or comprehensively without the presence of suitable source material. There are far too many tenured academics in the world and there are not enough authors writing about these academics as subjects. Our articles would be insufficient if we allowed inclusion. Further, you mark yourself as an un-informed neophyte by suggesting that "once an academic has a page on Wikipedia, others knowledgeable about their field, or interested in their work, can fill in more details". Per WP:OWN, no one has a page on Wikipedia. Wikipedia has an article about them. We do not invite those with conflicts of interest to advocate for the article's subject. Rather, we trust objective dilettantes to collate the applicable source material. I take specific issue with your premise. You claim this was a "recent embarrassing denial" and I don't see it that way. Wikipedia runs on principle and should not seek to placate a reactionary public ginned-up by certain political elements. If you think the writing of an encyclopedia should hew to the preferences of your feminist friends, then you are as misguided as Jimbo; neither of you should be advocating policy. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:42, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose And I would direct interested editors to a current discussion at WT:N related to this, about the issue of why women and other disadvantaged groups seem to not have articles due to notability. There's a lot of problems being brought up (not necessarily due to NPROF, but this proposed language would definitely make NPROF a problem). But the core point here is that we're unfortunately a volunteer project and editors work on articles that interest them. That creates a bias against academics (who are not "pop stars" in the average editor population). There was no reason Strickland couldn't have had an article before the Nobel (only that the previous version in 2014 was a straight up copyright violation), just that no one bothered to create it. --Masem (t) 13:54, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
• The rejection of this draft was not surprising - it did not make a very strong case for notability for those outside the field. Most Associate Professors at this or any other university are not notable. The idea that those who do get a page then see it improved by others is sadly only true sometimes. Johnbod (talk) 14:03, 3 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose full professors at major research universities will likely meet the other criteria. I just don’t trust the community as a whole to not read this as “any full professor” at AfD. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:03, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• FWIW, This Vox article is probably why there's interest in amending NPROF - but I think it makes an uninformed case. --Masem (t) 14:09, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I try to track the WP coverage of new FRS's at the moment of their election. For the List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2018 exactly 50% of the men elected already had bios, but 83% of the women (a much smaller group). This was the first year this has happened, & no doubt the result of Women in Red etc. In fact the male 50% is well up on earlier figures too. See talk page for calcs. Johnbod (talk) 14:23, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. This would make me notable. 'Nuff said. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Tenure is a pretty low bar, there must be hundreds of thousands of them. Tenure alone as a criterion runs foul of WP:MILL. As a concept, tenure is rather US-centric too. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:16, 9 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm in favour of loosening the notability criteria for academics, but tenure is not a good barometer. It's too variable outside of North America. In fact, I don't think academic rank is a particularly good indicator of notability in general. Publication/citation metrics are more widely applicable and more closely track what we should actually be concerned with (breadth and depth of coverage, not personal achievements). – Joe (talk) 17:38, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Authored vs. Wrote

Only a minor thing, but to me 'authored' is just a pretentious alternative to 'wrote'. There are three instances of the former in this guideline. Any objections to this being changed? It's possible the terms have subtle differences in meaning. Again, thoughts on this? Thanks. 5.81.164.16 (talk) 13:50, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I'd leave it, as is. Anybody can write anything. The writer of a book or journal article is an author; they authored a piece. Others merely write. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:18, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

In medicine at least, many "authors" have not written any of the paper. Johnbod (talk) 14:25, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I would not have a problem with the change, although on the other hand I don't see a strong need for it. One can parse the differences between "authored" and "wrote", but they really do not differ that much for our purposes. In my experience, most senior university people in the US tend to talk about "papers I wrote", more than about "papers I authored". Persons who "merely wrote" something will be distinguishable from more substantive scholars based on the impact of their work (although I can also see that as a good reason to keep it as "authored", in order to cut down on arguments at AfD). On multi-author papers in the biomedical sciences, the author who actually did most of the writing is typically the first author, who may be a graduate student, rather than the senior, last, author, who would be notable here – except when the first author is bad at writing. In any case, all persons listed as authors on a paper are expected, in theory, to have taken some part in the writing (even if it's just a proofread at the end), so we are unlikely to really have an AfD where the decision hinges on whether the subject was an author or a writer. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:28, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

"Wrote" strikes me as better sounding but not required. There are (somewhat) Reliable Sources, even though no definitive answers. American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed. 2011) has a useful “Usage Note” on “Author” (p. 120) which says that “the verb Author has been criticized for its transitive use as an unnecessary or pretentious synonym of write, though note that it typically refers to the writing of material that has been published – and not to unpublished texts such as love letters or diaries. So the words are not exactly synonyms.” The AHD Usage Panel has sympathized with the traditional preference for "write", though by falling percentages over the editions. In the 3rd. edition of the AHD (1992) 74% of the usage panel did not allow the sentence He has authored a dozen books. The verb coauthor fared better as being “well established in reference to scientific and scholarly publications... since the people listed as authors routinely include research collaborators who have played no part in the actual writing of the text but are nonetheless entitled to credit for the published results.”

Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (1989) (pp.147-148), which is often more permissive, gives examples of “author” as a verb going back to Chapman’s Homer in 1596, but notes that it was not common. It opines that “the fuss over this verb has been somewhat overblown” but is “used chiefly in journalism ... and is easily avoided by those who dislike it.” It concludes that “the most useful function of author would seem to be in connection with joint effort in production of a piece, and in connection with things like computer games that are not regularly associated with writing.”

There are surely other references, but you might say "that's all she authored".ch (talk) 04:24, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

"That's all she authoressed"? EEng 19:02, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for you detailed analysis. As I mentioned above, I favour wrote/written, but there's no consensus to change so let's call it a day and leave the text as it is. Thanks for all the contributions. 5.81.164.16 (talk) 11:26, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Proposal for addition to specific WP:PROF notability criteria

As a special sub-issue that came up in the debate about the new Wikipedia page for Nobel laureate Donna Strickland, and the question why she did not have a Wikipedia page before that, I would like to propose the following addition to WP:PROF: At the end of section Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#Specific_criteria_notes, we should add:

For establishing notability via criteria 2,3,5,6 and 8, publications (including websites) by the institution concerned (university, awarding institution, academic journal, scientific society) are considered reliable references. Examples: a news item on the web page of the MacArthur foundation can reliably establish that a person received a MacArthur fellowship. A listing on a university's official website can establish that person holds a Distinguished Chair. A listing on the website of an academic journal can establish that a person is one of the journal's editors.

I think we need this addition because:

• In the Strickland case, this was the reason why the original article draft was rejected declined (cf. the essay User:Bradv/Strickland_incident by the user involved) - not because Strickland was not notable (she had been an OSA fellow, and OSA president), but because that notability was not confirmed by third-party sources.
• This is a general issue with the specific criteria of WP:PROF. There is unlikely to be newspaper coverage about, say, most major fellowships. We are making it unnecessarily hard for academics that do meet the notability criteria to be included.

The addition does not, in practice, amount to a weakening of criteria. Third-party reporting, where it exists, would not rely on more than official statements by the organizations involved. Markus Pössel (talk) 12:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Addition: An alternative would be to add such clarification to each of 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8 separately, with a pertinent example in each case. Markus Pössel (talk) 13:07, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Minor correction of terminology: in the Strickland case, the original article draft was not "rejected", its submission to go into article space was declined and at the same time the originator was invited (in the templated message and on their talk page) to make improvements or seek assistance – they only made two edits back almost two months earlier, and did not return. This doesn't affect the proposed change to criteria. . . dave souza, talk 16:44, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction! Markus Pössel (talk) 17:45, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• If any change is made, it should not be done here, but to the GNG, as the issue is not at all specific to academics. In practice, commonsense nearly always allows this, although the policy strictly does not. In general WP:PRIMARY does not properly recognise cases where a "non-independent" source is much the best or even the only source (museums do not allow outsiders to bring in step-ladders and tapes to measure paintings, for example). But good luck with changing these. In this specific case, I suspect that User:Bradv did not realize (as I did not initially, looking at the draft later) that being President of the OS was a strong claim for notability (which being one of the 22,000 Fellows is NOT!). We might possibly tweak Criterion 3, which talks only of members/fellows of organizations. In this case (the Optical Society, which is little-known to the general public) being a fellow counts for little, but being the President apparently does. Johnbod (talk) 17:47, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

One correction to that: Only very few of the 22,000 members of the OSA are fellows – fellowship is reserved for those "who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics", and only about 0.5% of OSA members are fellows [1]. So I believe User:Bradv was correct in considering this, in principle, as fulfilling the specific notability criterion about fellowships. I'm not aware that this specific issue is sufficiently general, but of course proposing a change here doesn't keep anyone from proposing a more general change. Markus Pössel (talk) 18:30, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Correcting the correction "the number elected each year is limited to approximately 0.5% of the current membership total" - they elected about 100 this year, & I doubt most of them are notable (list at the link you gave). Johnbod (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Just a point of clarification. The bylaws of OSA (restricted content) specify that the number of fellows are limited by no more than 10% of the total membership of the society. The 0.5% limitation is by year but is not actually part of the by laws. The number accepted through the nomination process changes based on the member growth year to year. This is also very similar to other prestigious organizations such as IEEE Fellows (0.1% of membership but of a much larger organization with 400,000 members). The people who are nominated are done so by their peers, past OSA fellows, and obviously their importance isn't going to always meet notability requirements for Wikipedia or even main stream press, but they are notable in their field and the nominations require citation and justification. - Tinynull (talk) 22:01, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that is correct. But I would argue that this procedure by definition meets criterion 3, "a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE)", but since that is an issue separate from the proposal up for discussion here, we should probably not pursue this particular aspect further. Markus Pössel (talk) 06:42, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• A problem with Criterion 3 is that it does not explain/define "highly selective and prestigious scholarly society" - what exactly separates them from "run of the mill" societies. Expecting a random AFC reviewer to just know that the XXXXX Society is such a "highly selective and prestigious scholarly society" is quite unreasonable. It's mostly for this reason that AFC needs a wide variety of subject specialist reviewers (and a way to designate submitted drafts for the relevant subject area - akin to stub sorting or deletion sorting). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:10, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, those criteria do require some judgement on the part of the reviewer, and a more specialized system, if it an be implemented, would be great, I think! Markus Pössel (talk) 18:30, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

In general, the commenters should already be doing the heavy lifting on establishing the prestige, etc., not the closer. If no one made the case that an organization meets the bar, then the criteria isn't fulfilled. The closer should have enough background to understand the subject, but they generally shouldn't be making such judgement calls to such a degree. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:23, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Kingofaces43, I presume by your mentioning "commenters" and "closers" that you have the AFD process in mind. However, the AFC process entails reviews by individuals, it's not a discussion/consensus process, a decline or accept is done by one person, so the guidelines/criteria do need to be fairly specific and comprehensive. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:04, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Looks like I skimmed over the C part then and misread D. Still, a reviewer for AFC then should be expected to have sufficient background to make the call. If they don't, they should be stepping out or else asking someone else. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:49, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Someone who's just starting at AFC is probably more likely to consult the text of WP:PROF explicitly (and then possibly asking more experienced editors if something is unclear). We would be helping such a person (and others consulting WP:PROF) by explicitly stating what a good judgment call regarding references would be, in the specific cases mentioned here. I think in all such situations, the proposed addition is potentially helpful. And so far I do not see any downside to it. Markus Pössel (talk) 07:00, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. But I think we're getting side-tracked here; my proposal doesn't touch upon those issues, as far as I can see. Determination whether or not a prize, or fellowship, or scientific society was major or not would have to proceed as it does now. The proposal just says that once that decision is made, you should be able to use said institution's statement about their own prize/fellowship/membership as a reliable source. Markus Pössel (talk) 20:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• No, we should not be using non-independent sources. Institutions like schools have an interest in promoting their employees, so we'd need non-involved references. If no reliable and independent sources have written about it, the same question as always—then why should we either? The Strickland biography happened correctly. It contained no independent sources, so it was properly rejected. Now, of course, there's a plethora of independent sources about her, so now we have an article. That's exactly how it's supposed to work. No one could have been expected to guess that she'd win a Nobel. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:38, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

This is not a general issue of a school promoting their employees though. It is about a narrowly defined set of statements about simple facts: named chair yes or no, specific prize won yes or no, fellowship yes or no, editorship yes or no. Can you think of any halfway realistic example where a university would not give a person a named chair, but claim they did? A prize-winning institution not give a prize to a specific person, but announce they did? And so on? That is precisely the point: In all the examples we are talking about here, if the institution wanted to promote the person in the specific way we are talking about here (chair, prize, fellowship) it is in their power to do so directly. For the highly restricted set of facts we are talking about here, the institutions in question are reliable sources . Markus Pössel (talk) 19:03, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Seraphimblade's "traditional" WP response is nonsense. Membership of national academies and the like is normally and rightly referenced to the academy's own website, rather than the potentially much less reliable media write-ups of the press release. Johnbod (talk) 21:30, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

It shouldn't be "yes or no questions" as far as "Is the subject a...?". There's no inherent notability. Notability is one "yes or no" question: Is there a substantial quantity of reliable, independent source material from which to write about this subject? Our sources tell us whether something is notable, by whether or not they have, to some reasonable extent, noted it. We should always follow, never second-guess, those sources. Schools often write about all their professors on their websites, so that's not substantial coverage, just directory entries. And while some people say "But then we wouldn't write about most professors!", well...so what? We also don't write about most doctors, lawyers, plumbers, or garbagemen. All those people do work that's valuable for society too, but most of them are not individually notable. If most professors also aren't individually notable, then well, we should not be writing articles about them. But we shouldn't be writing articles about them that are "supported" by involved, non-independent sources. Independence of sources is absolutely critical to neutrality, and is a requirement, not a nicety. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:21, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

There is inherent notability for large numbers of people, including fellows of the main national academies and elected members of national assemblies (let's not worry about sportspeople for now). Numbers of such people only have references to the academy/parliament etc website. And that's just fine (for a stub). Johnbod (talk) 22:35, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

• @Markus Pössel: Excellent proposal! As I have noted in several places over the past few days, this is exactly what's needed. What other reliable source can there be for membership in an academic organization (or most others, for that matter) than the organization itself?--Eponymous-Archon (talk) 20:47, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I think Seraphimblade is widening the discussion much beyond the scope of discussing the proposal. The specific yes-or-no criteria (major fellowship, major prize, named chair) are in the current consensus version of WP:PROF. And my proposal is about one specific way we can make deciding on those listed yes-or-no criteria simpler for the editors making the call, without sacrificing reliability. That people meeting those criteria are notable is set down in WP:PROF. This is about situations where there is no doubt these criteria are met (because again, which prize-giving organization would publish a false announcement about somebody having won their prize?), but some editors are in doubt whether they can formally accept that fact. Markus Pössel (talk) 07:00, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• It seems that there are two separate issues here. First, has the person been distinguished (given an award by a group, been elected to an organization, etc.)? It seems obvious to me that in most cases we can answer this question using materials from the group or organization in question or other sources including the person's current employer if those materials are reliable. Second, is the <award/title/etc.> sufficiently noteworthy to meet our criteria for notability? I think that this is where most of the difficulty occurs because I'm not sure if we can always rely on the same source given their lack of independence. In other words, it should be easy to determine if someone has been given an award by an organization but we may not be able to rely on that organization's own materials to determine if the award is noteworthy.

Is this an accurate summary of this situation? ElKevbo (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I think that is an accurate summary. My proposal addresses only the first aspect, since what you describe as obvious (and I agree) is not clearly stated in the current WP:PROF criteria, and a number of editors apparently interpret the general requirement for reliable third-party sources as meaning that materials from the group or organization should not used in this way. Markus Pössel (talk) 06:48, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• I'm undecided about the proposed addition, but I have these observations:
  • It's fine to use the MacArthur or Nobel websites as sources for saying that a person has won. It's fine to use an institution website for saying that the person's position title is such-and-such, and it's fine to use a journal's website for saying that the person is on the editorial board. Those are simple facts, and source independence is not an issue.
  • But using an institution website to say that a person has done important work involves a value judgment rather than being an objective fact, and that's where having an independent source is necessary.
  • I think it's possible to overreact to the Strickland incident. Wikipedia is not supposed to be perfect at any given moment in time, and can always have further, correcting, edits. I really don't think the AfC process was such a big deal or that it reflected some underlying inadequacy or bias. What was really needed was more editors making better edits to create a good biography page, and there's nothing remarkable about that: it's Wikipedia's steady state.

--Tryptofish (talk) 23:26, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree that using an institution's website for more general statements (and in particular for value judgements) is a no-no. My proposal is restricted to the specific cases you appear to agree with: title using a university web page, prize won or not using the prize-giving institution's website, simple factual information within the institution's direct purview. And I do think the addition would be useful, beyond Strickland. The general rule of requiring independent references is a very good general rule, and probably every editor reviewing AfCs will have that rule at the forefront of their mind. That's why it would make sense that in those few and very restricted cases (like the one covered by this proposition) where institutional are reliable, such editors upon looking up the specific notability criteria are reminded of what's what for those specific criteria. Makes their work easier, leads to more article drafts that do meet notability criteria and thus should be included, to be included. Markus Pössel (talk) 06:39, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Modified proposal to take into account the discussion so far

In the discussion so far, the following objections/issues have been raised, which I will try to address in a re-formulated version of the proposal:

• Several editors have pointed out that, in general, institutions are of course not reliable references, for instance when it comes to value judgements about their own members – institutions have an interest in making their members look good. Thus, the additions should make very clear that this is about simple factual statements (is someone a member or not, has a chair or not, won a prize or not) only.
• Specifically it has been pointed out that institutions should not be considered as references for whether or not a specific prize, or fellowship, is itself sufficiently major so as to imply the receivers' notability. The original wording was not clear enough on this.
• A number of editors have put this in the context of WP:AFD or WP:AFC. I believe that for this context, it is important that the information about references be specifically appended to each of the special notability criteria separately, since reviewers involved in either AFD or AFC might not re-read the whole section, but possibly look for specific criteria only.

Here, then, is the new proposal, which I believe takes all these issues into account:

• to specific criterion 2 (awards), add the sentence: For documenting that a person has won a specific award (but not for a judgement of whether or not that award is prestigious!), publications of the awarding institution are considered a reliable source.
• to specific criterion 3 (fellowships), add the sentence: For documenting that a person has been elected member or fellow (but not for a judgement of whether or not that membership/fellowship is prestigious!), publications of the electing institution are considered a reliable source.
• to specific criterion 5, add the sentence For documenting that a person has held such an appointment (but not for a judgement of whether or not the institution is a major one!), publications of the appointing institution are considered a reliable source.
• to specific criterion 6, add the sentence For documenting that a person has held such a post (but not for a judgement of whether or not the institution is a major one!), publications of the institution where the post is held are considered a reliable source.
• to specific criterion 8, add the sentence * to specific criterion 5, add the sentence For documenting that a person has held such a position (but not for a judgement of whether or not the journal is a major well-established one!), publications of the journal or its publishers are considered a reliable source.

Depending on whether or not they are deemed necessary, we can also leave out the counter-examples in parentheses, since the formulation is already fairly restrictive. Markus Pössel (talk) 08:52, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I welcome the new wording. Thank you, Markus Pössel, for these additions which certainly clarify the criteria.--Ipigott (talk) 09:10, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Nice, but this is simply restating WP:PRIMARY, so it's rather redundant. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 09:25, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• I agree that this is a redundant restatement of existing policy. Unfortunately, we seem to increasingly need redundant restatements of existing policy, because editors involved in NPP/AfC/AfD/etc. tend to zero in on the exact wording of "rules" rather than applying common sense. So support in principle, though for the sake of readability I think the added wording would be better as a single footnote. – Joe (talk) 09:35, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I think that it is not redundant (at least, no more redundant than other guidelines that clarify the more fundamental policies) for the following reasons: the policy WP:PRIMARY notes that use of primary sources is a matter of editorial judgment; the proposed additions would do what guidelines can/should do: clarify a consensus about editorial judgment for that particular instance. Secondly, similar to what [User:Joe Roe|Joe]] wrote, but may be with a more positive spin: the addition would help inexperienced editors in their decision-making. Also, I think that the discussion so far shows that using this kind of primary source in this specific sense is not common sense for all editors even within the narrow subset of editors participating in the discussion here. Markus Pössel (talk) 10:45, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

OK, I think the following shows in a nutshell why the proposed additions are not redundant: One standard wording in the template when AFC is declined is

"This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject (see the guidelines for academics). Before any resubmission, additional references meeting these criteria should be added (see technical help). If no additional references exist, the subject is not suitable for Wikipedia."

That shows very clearly that a common interpretation of WP:PROF as it now reads is that all notability criteria, not excluding the specific criteria like prizes, chairs etc., require secondary sources, and that absence of such secondary sources is a reason for declining an AFC submission. So while I agree that using primary sources in the very restricted context specified in the proposed addition should be common sense, current practice, as embodied in this frequenly used template text, does not currently reflect that common sense. Hence the need for an addition to WP:PROF. Markus Pössel (talk) 10:54, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

• I support the revised proposal, but I would simply remove the exclamation points from the counter-examples. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
• I support also. This was always the ocrrect interpretation of WP:PRIMARY, but making it explicit will help avoid a common error. DGG ( talk ) 15:19, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly support in the wake of the Strickland mess, of which the lack of this language was a direct cause. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:09, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Redundant instruction creep that merely repeats verbosely what is already in WP:Prof. In the Donna Strickland AfC the BLP was improperly declined because if the decliner had taken a look at her profile on Google scholar he would have found that she passed WP:Prof#C1 on citations alone. In my view WP:Before applies as much to AfC as to AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:31, 12 October 2018 (UTC).

I re-read the text right now, and it says nothing about primary sources being sufficient in the specific instances named in this proposals. It does clarify, at length, what sources can be used to satisfy specific criterion 1, but nothing of the sort for 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 – so as it stands, there is a significant imbalance. Could you please point out concretely where the proposal repeats something that is already stated in WP:Prof, in support of your counter-argument? Markus Pössel (talk) 06:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi Xxanthippe, since consensus is about more than counting votes, I have tried to address your concerns in my previous comment. If you still disagree, could you please say a bit more about your reasons? In particular how the specific admissibility of primary sources included in my proposal is already contained in WP:PROF? Markus Pössel (talk) 14:52, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support Although future improvement is always welcome, Xxathippe's oppose is not well grounded in part because of the confused language, I note below, and we actually do need to say these things explicitly because they are not clear. (But, yes, drop the exclamation points)Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:57, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

What is confused? Xxanthippe (talk) 21:40, 13 October 2018 (UTC).

See below in the section "Confusion". Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:34, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

• Just a heads-up: A submission I made to the Signpost, pointing to this discussion is (at the current stage at least) now part of a double Op-Ed. I've closed the piece with a Request for Comments pointing to this discussion here. Markus Pössel (talk) 19:17, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

@Markus Pössel: I have some concerns about the draft of your portion, as it is now. First of all, it is not a Request for Comments, as Wikipedia defines it. It's a request for editors reading there to come here, and it troubles me that it is written in a non-neutral manner. You state that the proposal will reduce the likelihood of the Strickland problem happening again, which is something that not all editors here agree to be true, and you present reasons for supporting the proposal, along with refuting reasons that have been given in opposition. It seems to me to be canvassing. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

I have changed the formal wording Request for Comments to make clear that, as you say, that is a formally different procedure. I initially only commented on the originally Op-Ed, was then asked to possibly submit a write-up of my take to the Signpost, and I initially had the same concern of this being seen as canvassing/campaigning. Several editors were kind enough to lay out the reasons why this was neither canvassing nor campaigning in their replies to my initial Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom#Comment, and encouraged me anew to submit. Only then did I submit my draft, and the editors then went as far as to make it part of a double Op-Ed with the original one. If you disagree with their assessment, feel free to add your voice over on that page. Markus Pössel (talk) 06:52, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, and I know that your intentions were good. And I still support the proposal. I think that it was sufficient to note here that some editors may have come here from a non-neutrally worded notice, but I also think that there will be consensus in favor of the proposal regardless. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

OK! FWIW, I hope for the signpost op-ed, once it is published, to reach people with a variety of views. Markus Pössel (talk) 15:40, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

• Support. I think this is a step in the right direction, and more or less matches my own practice in creating academic biographies here. I doubt it will solve the problem of bad AfC reviews that don't take into account our academic notability criteria, but at least it will give us ammunition when the bad AfC reviewers try to excuse their bad reviews by claiming that, really, they understood all along that the subject met our academic notability criteria but that the claims of notability were inadequately sourced. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:38, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support somewhat reluctantly, as really this should be made clear in the general policy, as the issue is by no means restricted to academic biographies. Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support, per common sense, although it would probably be good to address this in the GNG as well. Kaldari (talk) 19:21, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support This is really just codifying standard and sensible practice in the area of academic biographies, but I think having that codification down in print will help people less familiar with that area to get up to speed. XOR'easter (talk) 20:32, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support Leads to the right conclusions. Academia is an area where high status and prestigious appointments are often not reported by secondary sources, but are reported reliably by primary sources.--Carwil (talk) 18:21, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support sans "!" - Nicely codifies a ready standard to be clearer. The counter-notes are beneficial, but the exclamation points aren't needed. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:35, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support I think this would've helped with Strickland. It's worth noting that, were a reporter writing a news article about an academic for a journalism outlet, they would consider a listing of their position on a website and things like that a reliable source. There's no need to add in the extra step for basic factual info. - Sdkb (talk) 01:37, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Rationale: 1) Some other Wikipedias, like Polish, are already more inclusive of academics b) it's ridiculous how low our notability criteria are for some professions, in particular, sportspeople. Since it is impossible to raise them (any attempt to do so is torpedoed by the few fans of whatever sport is discussed), might as well lower the bar for other clearly encyclopedic professions, and academics are a great choice. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:48, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support. This should be common sense, but as we all know, common sense is not all that common. Sometimes you just have to spell it out in words of one syllable and accept that instruction creep happens. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 17:58, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
• Support but as Kaldari points out, will this proposal have any effect at GNG? AugusteBlanqui (talk) 22:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

As it stands, the proposal is only for WP:PROF. It would probably be a good thing to see how WP:GNG might need to be adapted to include this specific case, but that would be a next step. Markus Pössel (talk) 14:48, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Confusion

Perhaps the lack of clarity is here: "once the facts establishing the passage of one or more of the notability criteria above have been verified through independent sources, non-independent sources, such as official institutional and professional sources, are widely accepted as reliable sourcing for routine, uncontroversial details." The use of "independent sources" is muddled. A person is the subject, and is independent of a society or association. The society or association has recognized (noted) the person, so why would the society source be deprecated? Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:23, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

That is possible. But re-reading WP:IS, e.g. a prize-giving institution would not be an entity with "no vested interest in a given Wikipedia topic and therefore is commonly expected to cover the topic from a disinterested perspective". Prize-giving institutions are presumably very interested in their own prizes. It is just that, when it comes to the bare fact of who was awarded the prize, their interest and Wikipedia's interest in truthful coverage of a subject are aligned. Seems to me that in this case, announcements from the awarding institutions do not constitute an independent source, but are still reliable. (OK, that also means that if the additions to the special criteria should be made, there would need to be a pointer to them in the Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#General_notes section, to avoid internal contradiction.) Markus Pössel (talk) 12:01, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

And a newspaper is interested in its own journalism subjects, and a book is interested in its own subject - in either case and in the case of a society, others, not the person, have taken note of the person. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:59, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Still, a prize-giving institution is much less independent from its specific prize than a newspaper is from the ever-changing parade of subjects it reports on. Although possibly I might missing some nuances due to being a non-native English speaker. In any case, moving forward, I think that this would be a good reason to insert the proposed addition, which clarifies the matter at least for the particular situation addressed. Markus Pössel (talk) 13:29, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

The subject is not the prize, prizes are not academics, the subject is the person. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:37, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

That seems to be handled differently by different editors, though. In the Strickland essay by Bradv, for instance, he judged the information that Strickland was a fellow of the OSA not to be supported by a reliable secondary source. My conclusion is once more that the clarification is helpful/necessary. Markus Pössel (talk) 14:21, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I think that there is also significant confusion about the word "reliable." I suspect that some editors are using in the narrow, technical sense that is described in WP:RS but others are using it in a more familiar sense. I recommend only using it in this discussion and this guideline in the narrow, technical sense used in other similar documents (policies, guidelines, etc.) and other synonyms be used when another sense of the idea is intended. In other words, I think it's incorrect and confusing to focus solely on reliability when discussing whether a university's website is a sufficient source; it may be reliable in the technical sense (e.g., reputation for making corrections) but not a high quality source for this specific information given the unavoidable conflict of interest in promoting faculty accomplishments and institutional reputation. ElKevbo (talk) 15:59, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

There is absolutely no conflict of interest in an institution recording its own membership, awards, or job titles, which is what the wording is clearly restricted to. Johnbod (talk) 17:38, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure what you mean. From what I can see, the proposed additions can be seen as a reference to the statement in WP:RS "specific facts may be taken from primary sources". Do you suggest that "reliable" be changed to "sufficient" in the text of the proposed additions?

Also, can you think of any realistic example where the "conflict of interest in promoting faculty accomplishments and institutional reputation" would affect the very specific simple factual statements that the proposed addition is about? I can think of no circumstance under which a university would deliberately give out false information about the fact that a faculty member holds a named chair at that same institution, for instance, for promotional purposes. Or where the institution awarding a specific prize would be tempted to lie about a specific person receiving that price. That just wouldn't make sense. Markus Pössel (talk) 16:28, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

there are some circumstances where they can cause error, tho it does not affect the actual criteria: I have seen press releases from the least competent PR staff use "Professor" when the title is actually "Associate ..," or "Assistant ...", they often omit earlier positions & they have been known to omit the "co-" in co-author or co-winner. But I have in 12 years only seen one single error on a person's departmental web page (It was a false claim for a PhD; the article was deleted.) I have never encountered an error here in a person's formal CV, which is the best of the primary sources when it can be located. In real life, significant errors or omissions on that are cause for dismissal. DGG ( talk ) 15:31, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you – given your example, the wording for my proposal should probably be changed to "...staff lists or staff pages at the institute, departmental or institution-wide level" to exclude press releases. Markus Pössel (talk) 16:06, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

I would prefer to keep curricula vitae in the allowed category. The reason is that the staff listings usually only give the current position while the cv usually gives the person's history of education and employment, and (as DGG says) is reasonably reliable because fraudulent cvs are grounds for dismissal. (On the other hand, less formal individually controlled sources such as faculty home pages can and sometimes do have problematic content such as joke titles that people not in on the joke might take seriously.) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:41, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

This whole thing seems to confuse "reliable" with "independent". I think we might need a Wikipedia:Reliable does not mean independent page to go right next to Wikipedia:Secondary does not mean independent.

The bold-faced proposal is pointless. Yes, Markus is correct that For documenting that a person has won a specific award (but not for a judgement of whether or not that award is prestigious!), publications of the awarding institution are considered a reliable source. But whether the source is reliable not the real question here, is it? The question isn't whether www.example-society.org/2018-award-winners.html on Example Society's website is reliable for the fact that Example Society gave an award to Alice Expert. The main question for notability is whether "the world at large" paid any attention to Alice Expert. Getting an award from Example Society is evidence of attention from Example Society; it is not evidence of attention from the world at large. Notability requires the attention from the world at large.

On the bigger question, I don't see how it is possible to write a truly neutral article if you have zero independent sources. If the only POVs you can include are the POVs of Alice Expert's employers, boards that she's a member of, etc., then you cannot achieve neutrality. We would never accept this for a business or political leader, and IMO we should not accept it for a living academic leader. (Please do not bother me with any garbage about academia being inhabited by disinterested beings that care only for their research and never for self-promotion; we know that's not true.[2][3][4]) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

The only "garbage" appears to be your over-broad baseless claim: "Getting an award from Example Society is evidence of attention from Example Society; it is not evidence of attention from the world at large." That statement in many ways appears to be just nonsense as a general statement - in what world, are all these societies not part of the world at large? They are not in some other world, they are in the world at large. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:47, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

On the contrary, for this specific proposal, whether or not the sources are reliable is the question. The wider issues you are mentioning are not part of this specific proposal discussion. That e.g. a specific prestigious award establishes notability for academics is set down in the current version of WP:PROF. The specific proposal here is merely about whether the fact of whether or not specific prestigious award X was indeed awarded to person Y can be reliably established by, say, the listing of recipients on the awarding institution's website. You are of course free to disagree with the more general statements in WP:PROF, but that should be a separate discussion, independent from this very specific proposal. Markus Pössel (talk) 14:43, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Implementing the proposal

My proposal, even in its modified form that takes into account the initial suggestions and criticism, has been up for more than a month now. Pointers to the discussion have been on the WikiProject Biography talk page here, the talk page for the essay on the Strickland incident by User:Bradv here and the WikiProject Women in Red talk page here for that time. I've also described it in my portion of the triple Op-ed for the October 28, 2018, Signpost.

From the feedback, mostly for the modified proposal, I gather that there is a general consensus in favor of the modification among almost all of those who have replied. I believe I have addressed the critical comments (in part by going from the original to the modified proposal), and also the one "Oppose" vote – I also note that the "Oppose" vote did not object to the content to the proposal, but rather stated that the content was already (implicitly) part of WP:PROF.

A number of supporting comments have noted that the proposal encodes "common sense" or "standard and sensible practice". My takeaway, re-reading all the responses, is that there appears to be a consensus about the proposal, and also that the proposal is widely seen not to be a big change – that is, not a significant departure from current practices, but instead a codification of what is already there. To the best of my Wikipedia experience and abilities, I believe that the way this has gone meets the WP:CONLEVEL standard of changes to guidelines being "best made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others", and the practice described in WP:PGCHANGE: the modified proposed change appears to reflect the view of those within the community who have commented, and some of the comments have helped to avoid "accidentally introducing new sources of error or confusion".

I will implement the changes now (minus the exclamation marks, to which there was an objection). Thanks to everybody who contributed to the discussion! Markus Pössel (talk) 19:36, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Katrin Meissner (scientist) - query on notability

Hi, I came across this draft while reviewing the WP:AFC queue. I wonder if a member of the project could advise as to notability. --K.e.coffman (talk) 18:39, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Take a look at her citation profile on Google scholar which would give a reasonable pass of WP:Prof#C1. If the editor who declined the Donna Strickland AfD had done the same he would have found an even stronger case for her. Please give me a ping if it goes to AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:27, 28 October 2018 (UTC).

@Xxanthippe: I've accepted it. It's in far better shape than the Strickland draft was when I declined it, but it still needs help. Finding some sources and adding them to the article would be appreciated. Bradv 01:29, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

From her GS profile [5] over 8000 scientists had cited her work before she was awarded a Nobel Prize. There were 8000 sources: no more were needed. The mistaken rejection of the AfC came from a failure to follow the WP:Prof guideline. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:26, 29 October 2018 (UTC).

This is a good place to discuss Meissner. But let's not relitigate who was or was not at fault about Strickland. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:26, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm. Borderline. I don't see any secondary sources discussing her achievements, and her career and awards don't suggest she is notable by virtue of passing some WP:PROF criteria. Her citations are respectable (triple digits for a number of papers), but they are not sole-authored... my personal rule of thumb is 100+ citations of at least one solo-authored paper. I guess is we take her most cited paper (3 authors, 500+ cites) and divide it we get 100+ per author, so, I guess I am ok with calling her notable, if barely. That of course is just my own test, since it's not like our policies define what is a sufficient number of citations, etc. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Lots of highly-successful academics don't write any solo-authored papers, or at least none of any significance. And author ordering is also meaningless in some fields. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:24, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it depends on the field. Solo autorship is much more common in social sciences. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:54, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

It is pretty much the norm in art history, literature studies, but pretty rare in anything lab- or ward-based in medical or genetic research. So not much use as a general yardstick. Johnbod (talk) 16:48, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, the article does have a scholarly book that pretty much says, 'hey world, look at Katrin Meissner's work (and identifies her as a leader), calling her out specifically (and highlight's no one else in that section), so there is that. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:16, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Nira Yuval-Davis

I wonder if any editor here would be interested in taking a stab at this article. The subject appears notable under WP:AUTHOR and WP:PROF, but the draft is clearly written by somebody with a COI. If there are editors interested in "adopting" this draft, that would be great. --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:20, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

BLP was declined correctly because it is abysmally written. There is a clear pass of WP:Prof#C1 on basis of subject's citation profile on GS so there is room for improvement. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:11, 15 November 2018 (UTC).

Hi K.e.coffman – I've gone through the article and tried to remove what NPOV language I could find. Is that sufficient, or is there more that remains to be done? Markus Pössel (talk) 16:25, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Christine Mitchell

I would like some help (at least a review of the draft) with Draft:Christine Mitchell, concerning a Harvard Medical School bioethicist who (arguably) has led in the development of nursing ethics or the ethics of care.

Further, I believe that the growing field of bioethics education is young, and I believe that Christine Mitchell is one leader / person / bioethicist who is shaping bioethics education in North America. She is not unique, but to my observation she seems to be one of a select view. Perhaps both ABPD (the Association of Bioethics Program Directors) and the topic of 'bioethics education' deserve individual articles (though current interest in these specialty articles would at present be limited), but at present I am trying to develop a biographical article. MaynardClark (talk) 04:20, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

List for major institutes where being a distinguished prof is criteria for notability

Can we have a list, or atleast general criteria for recognizing what institutes qualify as major. Daiyusha (talk) 07:09, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

You could start with List of research universities in the United States. I don't know of a similar list for other countries, though — we have for instance Rankings of universities in the United Kingdom but not something that distinguishes major or research-level universities from jumped-up trade schools. The problem is bigger in India and Pakistan where there are (I have heard literally) thousands of small private "universities" that consist of some guy and a web site. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:44, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

The Russell Group for the UK, but of course there aren't any distinguished professors there. – Joe (talk) 07:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Quentin Summerfield

Hi, I wonder if someone could look at this draft to assess notability. I'd like to get this clarified before I tell the submitter to fix the promotionalism. --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:08, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

certainly notable. DGG ( talk ) 06:44, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

From cites on GS clearly passes WP:Prof#1. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:16, 7 January 2019 (UTC).

Probably also WP:PROF#C3. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:42, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

MIT Technology Review TR100

Is this an notable enough award to satisfy The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.?Slatersteven (talk) 10:42, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Michael Zinigrad

There's something that (to me at least) smells fishy here. See discussion on the talk page. Some extra eyes are welcome, perhaps I simply need to ask my shriink to increase my meds to quelch this bout of paranoia... :-) Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 21:19, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

You don't need any (more) meds. An h-index of 14 is unlikely (but perhaps not completely impossible) to pass WP:Prof#C1. Give me a ping if the BLP goes to AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:25, 18 January 2019 (UTC).

According to whom? Your own biased opinion? Chris Troutman (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

An AfD will test the case for paid editors who wish to lower the standards of WP:Prof even further. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:36, 18 January 2019 (UTC).

(ec)Thanks for having a look. Well, that's the problem. I see an unlikely claim of 200 publications that are in rather obscure journals and have hardly been cited (and if the sample I took is representative, many of those are self-citations). But then there are claims of honorary degrees that seem to be real. I'm not sure I can square "mediocre scientist" with honorary degrees... If it weren't for those degrees, I'd take it to AfD. As it is, I'm hesitating. --Randykitty (talk) 23:44, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

The number of papers published or where they are published is irrelevant for WP:Prof. What counts is the impact they have made and that seems to be small by comparison with others. The claims of honorary degrees are in Russian and not available to me, but I am surprises that honorary degrees should be given to a person with such a moderate citation record. There are also some questions about the standing of Ariel University [6] where the subject works. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:37, 19 January 2019 (UTC).

My opinion: I don't think it's fair to call Langmuir an obscure journal (I've heard of it and it's far from my field); maybe some of the others are, but his publications appear to be in legitimate rather than predatory venues. His citation counts are not enough to make a convincing case for WP:PROF#C1, and rector (at a university where this is a lower position than president) is not quite enough for #C6. The honorary doctorates are suggestive but not conclusive. So I'm leaning against notability (and would say so in an AfD) but could perhaps be persuaded in the other direction by additional information. The discussion on the article talk page is not so much about notability, though, but whether the article has been puffed up with inappropriately anecdotal and badly sourced material. If it has, the correct response is to strip down those parts leaving the non-controversial facts of his academic career in their place. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:04, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Langmuir is indeed a fine journal and so are some of the others on his GS profile [7]. However the number of citations given (766, less than 4 cites per paper with the alleged 200 papers) seems below the number that might be expected. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:42, 19 January 2019 (UTC).

I'm more interested in the peaks than the averages. But I agree that they're too low. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:51, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Speaking only about honorary degrees, my experience is that there can be all kinds of reasons for awarding them, not necessarily for scholarly impact. So perhaps those degrees, by themselves, should not be given too much weight in evaluating notability here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

An insightful comment. In the nether regions of the world's academia honorary degrees may be given for political influence rather than scholarly achievement. The latter does not seem to be the case here. This BLP is ripe for an AfD to test these matters. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:43, 19 January 2019 (UTC).

Notability Criterion 3 and the Indian Academy of Sciences

Regarding notability criterion 3, which states: The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society which reserves fellow status as a highly selective honor (e.g., Fellow of the IEEE).

At a current AfD for Anand Ranganathan, a question has arisen about this criterion. Ranganathan was elected as an Associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), a position he held from 2002 to 2006. These positions are elected and restricted to early-career researchers (35 and under for a maximum of 5 years, IIRC) and they are both rare and prestigious. Some useful data: IAS has 1068 current Fellows, 89 women Fellows, 716 deceased Fellows, and 11 deceased women Fellows. The Academy also has 54 Honorary Fellows and 154 deceased Honorary Fellows. Since the Associates program began in 1934, there have been 346 Associates who no longer hold the position. There are presently 66 Associates and 51 women Associates, In 2018, 23 Associates were elected, the same as the number of new Fellows that year. It seems clear that both Associateships and Fellowships are rare.

I believe that a Fellowship in the IAS would indicate notability under criterion 3. I have !voted based on my view that an Associateship is not sufficient to meet this criterion, and been challenged by an IP. I invite comment here in search of consensus on the status of an IAS Associateship in relation to WP:PROF. Any editor contributing here or to the AfD, I ask to evaluate the question and Ranganathan independently and I seek any and all views without regard to their conclusion. I am perfectly comfortable to be told that my view is in error or to be disagreed with, and to abide by the consensus view of these Associateships, whatever that may be. Thanks in advance for all contributions. EdChem (talk) 03:05, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm intentionally looking at and responding to only your question here, and I'm not going to get involved with the AfD or the bio page. It seems to me that if the Associateship is intended only for academics who are at an early career stage, then I would say that it does not satisfy the criterion. It's a too-soon situation. I don't know enough about the Fellowship to offer a definitive opinion, but if it is something for academics at the full stage of their careers and it is selective to a degree that is similar to honors from other countries that we accept as satisfying the criterion (and not simply selective by India's standards), then I'm OK with it satisfying criterion 3. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:44, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

comment. I know nothing about the topic, except from the sentence "Indian Academy of Sciences, not to be confused with Indian National Science Academy or National Academy of Sciences, India"... that I have read somewhere in Wikipedia. More information could help the passer-by to educate her own opinion. Thanks in advance ! Pldx1 (talk) 17:58, 27 January 2019 (UTC)

Criterion 2: Marquis Who's Who

Last point of Criterion 2 states Biographical listings in and awards from vanity press publishers, such as the American Biographical Institute, or from publications incorporating a substantial vanity press element in their business model, such as Marquis Who's Who, do not qualify for satisfying Criterion 2 or for partially satisfying Criterion 1. I find myself a bit confused with this. Does it mean "Marquis Who's Who" listings are not notable, or are they in special cases "for partially satisfying Criterion 1"? I've been here on this project for while, but I don't remember ever working on academic-related articles. I would appreciate a detailed reply, thanks in advance. --KCVelaga (talk) 06:25, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Marquis Who's Who listings are an embarrassment to the subject, or should be. They are a scam to get their subjects to buy their books, and they should serve as a reminder to the subject that they were scammed. When these things are actually publicized by the subject (as on a curriculum vitae) they are a red flag to Wikipedia editors to be much more strict about vetting information from those self-published sources than we might otherwise be. They certainly do not count towards notability in any way. Not for criterion 2, not for anything else. Is that clear enough? —David Eppstein (talk) 06:43, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Thanks for clarifying. I completely get it now. KCVelaga (talk) 11:37, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Confusing structure and vague metrics

Comments are requested on a proposal for a new structure for organizing the notability criteria of academics, without changing any of the actual criteria. Martinogk (talk) 23:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

There are many words of wisdom in these notability criteria, but even as an academic with promotion committee experience at a major university, I find the structural layout strange and many of the metrics vague and/or unhelpful. I cannot imagine how hard it must be for non-academic Wikipedia editors to successfully use these guidelines. In light of the Donna Strickland mishap, I think we can do much better.

The nine notability criteria are really only five (#1,4,6,7,8), while #2,3,5 are evidence metrics to determine if those notability criteria are met. I would like to restructure the section into four notability criteria, with subheadings for the relevant evidence metrics, into something like this:

1. The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline

• Citations
• Notable research awards and honors
• Elected member/fellow of a notable scientific society
• Academic rank, such as named chair
• Invited plenary talks at conferences organized by a notable scientific society

2. The person’s academic work has had a substantial impact on society

• Generated new laws or public policies
• Changed clinical practice
• Generated widely used technical innovations, software, etc
• Wrote/created widely dispersed books, music, art, theater, etc
• Government advisor, scientific advisory committee member or testified to national legislature on scientific matters

3. The person has had significant national or international educational impact

• Author of a text book commonly used in high schools or colleges
• Author of a notable general audience book on a scientific topic
• Contributor to scientific education through popular media

4. The person has made significant contributions to academic organizations

• President/rector of a notable university or scientific research institute
• President of a notable scientific organization
• Editor-in-chief of a notable scientific journal

To be notable, an academic would only have to pass one of A-D. The most common would be A, but there are also academics who pass B, C or D, but not A. The evaluation metrics must obviously be much more specific, using the current page text with some added precision, items and explanations, and keeping existing bullet points for things that do not count.

I am curious to know what other editors think about this. Martinogk (talk) 17:40, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Sympathetic to the intention, but this will take forever to get agreed. A couple of things stick out at once:

"Elected member/fellow of a notable scientific society" is no good at all, as the many societies with members & fellows into 5 figures are all notable. You need something like the present: "highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association". Similar issue with "Editor-in-chief of a notable scientific journal" I think, and the other ones in 4). In many contexts "notable" is far too low a bar.

"Wrote/created widely dispersed books, music, art, theater, etc" - given you have 2 science book criteria, you don't need this here. These should be covered by WP:CREATIVE etc.

You complain that currently you find "many of the metrics vague" - is most of 2) much better? Johnbod (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

You are quite correct. All the lettered items need a much more precise definition than I gave. The existing text can sometimes be used for this, while other bullet points need further enhancements and clarifications. My intention is not to lower the notability criteria, but to clarify and restructure in a more logical fashion. For example, being an elected fellow could be one of several metrics to determine if the research has had significant impact, but it should not be a stand alone criteria, as some elected fellows are not that notable. Martinogk (talk) 19:06, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

To some extent separating the type of contribution from the way the contribution was recognized, rather than the current listing that mixes both kinds of things in one list, makes sense.

However, I have significant concerns with the teaching section. Currently, major national or international level awards for excellence in teaching can be considered through criterion 2; this would eliminate that. (See e.g. a current deletion discussion where this is highly relevant, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hanan Mohamed Abdelrahman.) Authoring a commonly used textbook sounds like the sort of thing that should be relevant, but it is very unusual to have any usable documentation of this sort of claim; even book reviews of textbooks are much less common than reviews of other classes of books. "A general audience book" by itself should not usually be enough; we have a separate criterion, WP:AUTHOR, for book authorship, which usually involves both multiple books and always requires multiple published reviews of the books. Similarly, contributions through popular media cannot be enough for notability by themselves; we need other independent sources that take note of these contributions. And many notable educators were involved in setting national educational policies, also not mentioned in your criteria.

Beyond the teaching section, one current issue with several of our criteria and especially C1 is that it is biased towards fields where publications are journal-based and citation counts are high. For book-based fields, citation counts are usually the wrong way to test impact of publications; instead, you should be looking at published book reviews. And I don't know why you put "organized by a notable scientific society" as a constraint on when an invited talk should count; in my experience this is a separate thing from the significance and prestige of a conference. To pick a random example, NeurIPS, a very major conference in artificial intelligence and machine learning, is self-organizing rather than society-sponsored. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:32, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your very thoughtful comments David. The AfD for Hanan Mohamed Abdelrahman is a perfect example of the difficulty with having the same guideline to define notability for academic researcher, academic educators as well as academic administrators. There would be more clarity and less confusion for WP:NPP reviewers if we defined specific criteria to determine if an academic is notable for their educational contributions. Whatever criteria we use in terms of authored text books, teaching awards, public education, etc, they will and should be different from the notability criteria for academic researchers. Since one glove does not fit all hands, this is how many university promotion guidelines operate, with different promotion criteria for different tracks such as research, education or clinical excellence. David, you have clearly thought much more carefully than I have regarding suitable notability criteria for academic educators. Maybe you could take a first stab at drafting such a section? Martinogk (talk) 21:48, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

Just a quick comment on this sensible discussion and a suggestion.

The comment is that we do not want to keep the bar too low, so that every Tom, Dick, and Assistant Professor gets in, but neither do we want to make it too high, so that people are deleted who appear borderline because they are hard to source. The criteria in other biographical areas are much looser than for academics. To take on example at random, WP:NBASKETBALL requires that the person have appeared in one game as either a player or head coach in, among many others, the USSR Premier Basketball League as early as 1923 (I’m not making this up). WP:NGAELICfor Gaelic games, if you have played at senior inter-county level in the League. Likewise WP:NBASE provides that if you have played in a least one game in the KBO League ... well, you get the point. We are in line with other areas if we include borderliners at the cost of including some clunkers.

The suggestion is that an obituary in national newspaper be a criterion of impact. They are harder to find for living persons, though.ch (talk) 22:36, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

ch: Nice comparison and reflection. While I would not advocate to lower our notability criteria to that level (A two hour scientific guest lecture at Udmurt State University in 1932!), I think we could learn from the sports world by making our criteria much more specific and clear. That will help both content providers and NPP reviewers. Martinogk (talk) 23:23, 2 March 2019 (UTC)

It's easy for sports biography criteria to be specific and clear. But (in case you're not aware) there's a strong feeling among most of the community outside any particular sport, and many inside, that our sports bio criteria typically set the bar much too low (possible sign of a peasant's revolt here). Criteria for politicians are also generally specific and clear, and much tighter; you don't hear much complaining about those. Specificity and clarity aren't so easy to achieve for academics, as the archives here show. Johnbod (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

A peasant's revolt? Count me as a peasant. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:16, 3 March 2019 (UTC).

With respect to teaching with measurable impact, typically we can measure the impact of resources on online learning platforms. — Charles Stewart (talk) 00:07, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Changing the structure of the criteria is going to break every link/reference made to this guideline in archived discussions from the last 13 years. I'm not sure that's worth it just to improve the organisation.

As an aside, please let's not treat the Strickland "mishap" as a failure of these guidelines. It wasn't. She clearly met the criteria long before the Nobel. The fact that we didn't have an article on her between May and October 2018 was the mistake of a single AfC reviewer; the fact that we didn't have one for the 15 years before that was a collective failure of our editorship to write one. – Joe (talk) 08:18, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

break every link/reference - Call the new criteria A-F and archive the old ones in a footnote. EEng 10:29, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Nice suggestion! Martinogk (talk) 13:41, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Well, I'm a nice person. EEng 14:03, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you all for an interesting, constructive and fruitful exchange with good ideas and suggestions. Based on the discussion, I have restructured the article into four notability criteria, with subsections for different metrics. It is just a restructuring, and I have not changed any of the actual notability criteria. In fact, the criteria are verbatim the same, except for some very minor edits such as changing "awards" to "educational awards" in section C2. Having said that, it would be great if some of the metrics could be expanded on and specified in more detail. It is my hope that this new structure will make that easier and also show where the existing gaps are. For example, under C2, it would be nice to clarify what types of educational awards count towards notability. Martinogk (talk) 22:19, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Martinogk: I really appreciate your efforts and your boldness in implementing the changes discussed above but I think we need to give other editors more time to weigh in before changing this guideline. It would probably be helpful to make this a formal RfC or at least post notes to some of the relevant Talk pages (e.g., WT:N, WT:UNI) to ensure that other editors have a chance to see and participate in this discussion. ElKevbo (talk) 23:15, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Given that this is a guideline (and not just an essay), which was accepted by the community after an RfC, I think that a major overhaul would need to go through another RfC, too. --Randykitty (talk) 23:21, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree on the need for an RFC, and am generally supportive of the proposed revisions. I think they are better organized than our present guidelines and don't really constitute a substantial change in criteria. One aspect that I would hope we could also cover, though, is a problem area of our current guidelines: what to do with scholars in book subjects (rather than journal subjects), for whom citation counts are inappropriate and book reviews are what count? It's all very well to say "go to WP:AUTHOR instead", which is more or less what we have been doing in practice. But in many cases our current guideline misleads the nominators of deletion discussions into proposing book scholars for deletion when they have few citations or few cited works, only to run into a snowstorm of keeps because they have many well-reviewed books. I think we could avoid some wasted effort on discussions of notable scholars by putting something about scholarly books into part A of this guideline. Maybe just "see WP:AUTHOR", maybe that a scholar may be considered notable if they have multiple books from reputable publishers, each having multiple reliably published reviews (although that seems like a pretty low bar). —David Eppstein (talk) 23:59, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Pretty much agree with that. One factor not currently recognised in any notability quidelines, which I think is sometimes relevant, is (for pages up for a while) the level of views. I can see the objections for using this for pop culture, sport etc figures, but if an academic who seems borderline notable, and is not contoversial etc, is getting a steady 30 views a day, that tells you something. Johnbod (talk) 02:32, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Long ago we used to also consider the number of incoming links from other articles. I think that if a scholar is cited as an authority in many Wikipedia articles, they're probably notable. Of course that would also likely lead to abuse in which less-notable academics spam their publications across Wikipedia and then use that spam to argue for notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:51, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: Sounds very appropriate with an RfC. I think you know better than me how best to solicit that. Sorry if I was too quick. Note that the article history now provides a very specific restructuring proposal that people can look at. David and Johnbod, you make very important points. The first point is also related to time. A newly published book will not have many citations (yet), while it may have many positive book reviews, making the author notable based on that. Regarding the other two points, many Wikipedia articles are based on academic research, and in order to judge the quality of a particular reference, it can be useful to look up the Wikipedia page about the cited scientist. Hence, Wikipedia articles about academics serve dual purposes, unlike an article about e.g. a basketball player, a senator or a trombonist. Martinogk (talk) 13:54, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Martinogk: No worries! We appreciate your boldness and helpful suggestions!

David Eppstein and Johnbod: I would strongly oppose any addition or change to this notability guideline that incorporates references in or data from Wikipedia. I agree that in some ways those measures could be interesting and useful but they're too problematic (very easy to abuse, confusing and circular, etc.) to use. We need to stick both the letter and the spirit of core policies and practices such as WP:RS. I agree with the above discussion that it may be appropriate and useful to make an explicit reference to WP:AUTHOR (and perhaps even WP:GNG) to ensure that everyone understands that just because someone isn't notable under these specific, niche guidelines they may still be notable under other guidelines that are different or simply more broad. ElKevbo (talk) 15:23, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree completely with that. At best, a lot of wikilinks means that there may be notability, but it could also mean a determined spamming effort. It should not be an argument in deletion discussions. --Randykitty (talk) 15:28, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting using incoming links, & I'm not sure David Eppstein was either. ElKevbo, can you explain how using long-term views would be "very easy to abuse, confusing and circular, etc.", short of a borderline-notable academic being ready to click onto his article several times a day for weeks or month on end? We've already got "confusing", most people seem to find. Johnbod (talk) 15:52, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I simply think that it's circular to use Wikipedia data to establish or measure notability because the entire purpose of evaluating notability is to determine whether a subject merits an article. If we were ever in a situation where the only convincing criteria for notability is that somehow an article already existed for a lengthy period of time and received a substantial number of views then we'd be in a really strange place! In fact, I imagine that most editors would not find that argument convincing since it seems that (a) the article should have never been allowed to remain in article space for so long and (b) we've now opened up a situation where editors are encouraged to create articles for subjects that may not meet our traditional notability criteria but try to keep the article under wraps for a lengthy period of time in the hopes that it will somehow gather a lot of incoming links. I think the spirit and intent of WP:RS and WP:V are clear and wave us away from using this as a consideration. ElKevbo (talk) 16:16, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I can't see what this strange (and strained) hypothetical has to do with it, frankly. I'm certainly not suggesting it should the "only convincing criteria for notability", but a factor that might be brought into consideration for some of our many borderline cases (which tend to be what people are looking at this page for). Nor do I see the relevance of WP:V. Johnbod (talk) 17:00, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

What I said above for links, also goes for page views. A fair number of views may suggest that notability may be found and an effort should be made. However, it cannot ever be an argument that there is notability. --Randykitty (talk) 17:04, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

I'll just add that pageviews have long been accepted as a valid argument for WP:PRIMARYTOPIC puposes, and rightly so. Johnbod (talk) 18:01, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it makes sense in that situation where the discussion is not about whether the topics are notable - it's presumed that they are - but which one should be the primary topic. ElKevbo (talk) 20:43, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Section 4 is unacceptable as it refers only to scientific entities. A better phrase would be scholarly or professional Xxanthippe (talk) 01:17, 15 March 2019 (UTC).

Good suggestion. I like scholarly. Another option is academic. Martinogk (talk) 01:32, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

There are other places where scientific is used, as if there are no other forms of scholarship. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC).

Brief and neutral statement

@Martinogk:, what is your brief and neutral statement? Currently, the RfC listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines is far from brief and I have doubts as to its neutrality also. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:47, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I think that page just copied what I wrote on this page on March 2, as I did not add any new text yesterday. I am obviously not knowledgeable on how to post an RfC. How can it be fixed? Would appreciate any help. Martinogk (talk) 11:35, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I added a sentence on this page just below the RfC box, hoping that will fix the problem, but I am not sure that is the right way either. Martinogk (talk) 11:46, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

As noted at WP:RFC, Legobot copies from the end of the {{rfc}} tag through to the first timestamp after. It doesn't check who added the text, when the text was added, nor does it summarise or edit for length. So if there is a a lot of text and no meaningful request between those points, that's what you get at the RfC listings. These are updated once an hour, see here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:07, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

OK, thank you! I really appreciate your help. Is it okay now? Martinogk (talk) 13:45, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Notability of taxonomists

I have recently seen a fair number of short articles or stubs pass through the new page queue that cover taxonomists, both in zoology and botany. Clifflandis has been very productive in this area. They all have in common that they have a certain (sometimes large) number of taxonomic descriptions to their name. While some of these (e.g. Ida Mary Roper) come with a good amount of other coverage, many (e.g. Elisabeth Ekman, Jessie Milliken, Euphemia Cowan Barnett; or to pick a non-Clifflandis one, Lothar Seegers) are just on record for a number of scientific publications, and for being a referenced taxonomic naming authority. In botany, this means they are listed at List of botanists by author abbreviation, which is independently and officially curated; there is no such list for zoology, AFAIK.

Strictly speaking these do not satisfy our notability requirements for academics as currently written. The closest might be "a significant impact on their discipline", but that generally would be overstating the case. Naming species isn't hard, rare, or (post-19th century) particularly impactful. They sometimes have published a lot, but taxonomic descriptions don't usually draw in the big cite numbers. And I don't think that the "highly cited" criterion applies to taxonomic names, even if the taxon were referred to every time as "Taxon Author".

On the Pro side, there does seem to be a tacit practice of giving these a letter-of-the-law notability pass. (As has been pointed out to me, they are also often linked as authority in taxoboxes, and having them sit there as redlinks sucks.)

Disclosure: I personally am in favour of these articles; I think it's exactly what an encyclopedia should contain, and if we could replace each article consisting of a plot summary of a web cartoon series instalment with one of these, I'd be happy. But every time I see one in the NPP queue, I'm aware that technically I should send it to AfD. I am therefore hoping that we can pull in some comments here and arrive at a general rule about how to assess the notability of scientists whose main claim to notability is that they have named taxa. A general threshold (established at least x currently recognized taxa) might be an idea. My personal take is that such a threshold might be the way to go. - If something like that is agreed on, it should be added to the specific criteria notes. Notifying Wikiproject Tree of Life, and New Page Patrol; if any other projects come to mind, please add. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:05, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Elmidae I think my analysis closely tracks yours. Are you, or anyone else, maybe Clifflandis aware of what results, if at any, people with this notability claim have had at AfD? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:22, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

I've got one lingering at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shinobu Akiyama, which was what made me want to clarify the matter. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:28, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

• I don't think you can have a numerical criterion; all taxa are not equal in this respect. Someone who establishes a new family and 10 new genera is more notable than someone who adds 11 new species to a genus with 100 species slready. Naming species is often part of a review of a larger group, and the taxonomist may be notable for this. But I agree that merely naming a few taxa doesn't by itself constitute notability. It has to remain a matter of judgement. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:39, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
• There is Luigi Aloysius Colla, which I created in June 2006, and which has not been expanded since then. That may not be quite as sparse as some of your examples, but I do have to admit that his claim to notability is very slim. The article has survived more than 12 1/2 years without being challenged. I do think that naming species is evidence of potential notability, but I don't have it in me to fight hard to keep Colla if his article is challenged. - Donald Albury 22:53, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Actually his political roles might well get him through, plus his 2 described species are very important. Johnbod (talk) 01:20, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

If you search IPNI, there are 918 records including "Colla": [8] Peter coxhead (talk) 12:33, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

• Without commenting on the merits of any specific individual, I think a reasonable alternative would be to create a series of "List of" articles collecting taxonomists by class (or at some other level, if that is too broad), to which individually non-notable taxonomists could be redirected. bd2412 T 23:09, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Alternately, if a taxonomer is only active in one clade, they could be merged to a section of the clade's article on relevant researchers that have worked on that taxon. But probably the 'list of..' format is more useful. --Nessie (talk) 02:52, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Note that the pure lists of names already exist (List of botanists by author abbreviation, List of zoologists by author abbreviation) - we would be looking for some added value here. One might consider a scope along the lines of List of transgender political office-holders; i.e., a one-line (or a few lines) entry with a bit of background.--Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

• I didn't even know there were any taxonomists left anymore, what with Uber and Lyft and so on. EEng 15:19, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
• I don't think very many people would agree to make all researchers in some scientific specialty automatically notable. And if a taxonomist hasn't named a species, what have they done to deserve to be called a taxonomist? So we need something beyond that, for an individual article — high citations, significant and ongoing media coverage of their work, etc. For the run-of-the-mill taxonomists, either just naming them at their species article or in some cases a list would be a better solution. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:41, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
  • You don't have to name species (or other taxa) to be a taxonomist. You could write an monograph of a genus or family without describing a single new species. Lavateraguy (talk) 12:14, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

  just naming them at their species article – it's unlikely that a taxonomist who had only named one species would be considered notable. high citations doesn't make sense for authors of taxa since every scientific article about that taxon will (or should) include the authority at least once, often complete with bibliographic information. What makes authors of a "reasonable number" of taxa or a few "important" taxa inherently notable is that they are mentioned repeatedly in reliable sources, from scientific articles to horticultural encyclopedias. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:51, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

• Don't all taxonomists name taxa after themselves (or get crossnamed by fellow taxonomists in cruel jokes) - thus forever enshrining their names in Latin form on the back of some beetle or other taxa?Icewhiz (talk) 19:56, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

  Naming a taxon after yourself is a massive faux pas. There are a couple current taxonomists who are widely reviled as glory-seeking "taxonomic vandals". The behavior that has earned them this reputation often involves naming species that were (tentatively or definitively) identified as new in the work of another researcher, but which were not formally named in that work. This deprives the person who originally "discovered" the species from having the opportunity to name it. However, even these taxonomic vandals don't go so far as to name species after themselves. More notable taxonomists are more likely to be the namesake of a species (whether intended as an honor or a joke) described by somebody else. Plantdrew (talk)

  I apologize then for impugning the field with the false self-naming claim - however aren't nearly all taxonomists (with a tenure of some years) enshrined by their peers (as a joke or honor, the inner humor in this field being rather obscure for the outside observer who knows little Latin or taxonomy) on various taxons? The end result is the same, regardless of the naming mechanism. Icewhiz (talk) 08:33, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

• I have my name on two taxa - a nothogenus and its sole species. I don't consider that to make me notable. There should be some fuzzy threshold. (Monographers are more likely to be notable.) Lavateraguy (talk) 19:35, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
• This is tricky because WP:PROF as a general framework is probably what should be used, but WP:NACADEMIC criteria may not really apply the same. How would you compare the productivity of someone who named 100 species vs published 100 papers in a different field? I'd be really wary of that, so maybe the best criteria is if there is secondary coverage of the person with respect to their scientific work. If there's nothing more than a university webpage or obituary, I'd probably say they're not notable. If they had some independent coverage, then I'd drift towards yes. I think it's just going to be a gray zone unfortunately. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Publishing 100 papers counts for nothing in satisfying WP:Prof. The only thing that counts is the influence of the papers on others in the field as measured by citations. The same for naming species. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:43, 11 March 2019 (UTC).

Taxonomists fall into a really weird place with regards to citation impact. Taxonomy is the only scientific field where 250 year old publications are routinely cited (albeit in an abbreviated format that won't be picked up by citation impact analytics). Plantdrew (talk) 03:23, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

The only? I don't know about "routinely" but I have occasionally cited Euclid. And I'm sure the classicists might have a word or two about what they cite as well. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

That's actually what I was getting at. We as editors really shouldn't be using things like citation counts, publication counts, etc. since it is rather arbitrary. Numbers of species descriptions is even trickier than that, which I why I'd argue to stay away from those metrics almost entirely. If someone was a modern day Linnaeus, we should have secondary sources that make the case for us instead. Kingofaces43 (talk) 06:01, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

• The "list with added value" proposal by Elmidae above sounds reasonable to me. XOR'easter (talk) 15:31, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  It's reasonable, but doesn't solve the issue of what counts as notable. Kingofaces43 mentions "secondary sources", but what do these have to contain to count? Multiple secondary sources contain citations of taxon authors, as Plantdrew notes. For me the issue is different: what is useful for our readers? I think that when there are "enough" (10+?) articles on taxa with a particular author then it's useful for readers to wikilink to even a brief article. I suppose wikilinking to some kind of 'list with notes' would work, but where else do we do this? Is there an example I can look at? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:25, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Admittedly the above example is the only one I'm aware of. (I believe List of cryptids was of that type once, but it got bluelinkified following a certain amount of friction). --Elmidae (talk · contribs)

List of American supercentenarians is perhaps a good example. --Randykitty (talk) 18:50, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

But if you compare the proposed list with List of American supercentenarians#100 oldest American people ever, the entries all have articles, which is the intention behind lists like List of botanists by author abbreviation (A). If the 100 oldest American people ever are intrinsically notable, then so are taxonomists who named say 20+ taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:42, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Your example proves no such thing about the implication from naming many taxa to notability. If we compare, e.g., list of cosmologists, all of them have articles, too, because they have all been deemed notable enough to have articles. Their notability does not come from being on the list; that would be circular. They are on the list because they are notable. There are many other cosmologists who are not notable and not on the list. Similarly, if we are to have a list of taxonomists, I would argue that it should only include taxonomists notable enough to have their own articles, through whatever we agree is the correct notability criterion for taxonomists. But that criterion should not be "because they are on the list". —David Eppstein (talk) 21:03, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: we agree. My point was that I'd asked for a list that included items not sufficiently notable for an article with information in the list instead. The example given doesn't meet this request. No list in Wikipedia can create notability. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:48, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

We're not going to ever have a List of non-notable taxonomers. Perhaps a better example is Glossary of leaf morphology. All the entries are important enough to be included to help readers understand other articles. A few terms have articles, but most links are wiktionary redirects or to sections of other articles. Something similar could be done with phycologists or mymecologists or whatever, without an expectation of each entry linking to an enwiki article. --Nessie (talk) 22:24, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

But each entry would link, to the article on the species. More generally, I think the articles are non-problematic and useful as part of the hyperlinked network of the encyclopedia . The guiding rule is NOT PAPER. The real reason for notability considerations is to avoid being swamped with articles which will be only promotional or vanity, but these won't be. I've never thought it a priority to make such articles, but why should I object if someone else does? DGG ( talk ) 23:58, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

I think you mean link to the article on the taxonomist. Otherwise I agree entirely. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:36, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

It ought to be possible to look up a species and from there find the other species credited to the same taxonomist. That's just basic, old-school benefits of hyperlinking. Having a list that binds together articles on species would be a straightforward way to do this: an article on a species links (perhaps via redirect) to the list of taxonomists, which then links to the articles on the other species, organized by taxonomist. (Having redirects to the list page would also prevent redlinks in infoboxes.) Restricting a list to having only blue-linked items is one organizational scheme, but it's not the only way to do things. Here, we have a situation that calls for a navigational structure in a way that doesn't necessarily apply in other sciences. XOR'easter (talk) 17:11, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

You're much much more likely to find that in the approriate category within Category:Taxa by author ( 2,841 ) than on an individual author's article. Ideally though, yea, it should be listed on the taxonomer's article as well.--Nessie (talk) 17:27, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

To answer your question Peter coxhead, passing mention wouldn't really count in secondary sources which is the same standard for other topics. If there's an indiscriminate list of people who named species within a genus or something citing a specific species like Lycorma delicatula (White, 1845), that doesn't really count towards notability. Instead, you need something at a minimum like, "Professor X identified many of the species in genus Y". Essentially, it has to be sources saying they did something of note beyond just naming species, and it has to be focused on the person rather than the subject material's importance. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Kingofaces43: they did something of note beyond just naming species Firstly, you can't just "name" a species; you have to provide something in the way of a description/diagnosis (what depends on the nomenclature code). Secondly, the implication is that describing a species is not "of note"; I simply disagree. Describing a species and having that species name and description accepted by reliable secondary sources (which is what is needed for the person to be referenced as the author of a species name) is in and of itself of note. Just a few names won't accumulate enough "note" to be "notable", but for me, 20 does and 100 certainly does. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:09, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm speaking in relative terms, and when I say name, I do mean the general description process that you mentioned. It's a big deal for any new student to get published in a journal, etc. It's expected for a professor. That's an approximate parallel here, though with some differences. Naming a species relative to taxonomist notability could be similar to how we generally don't consider primary research publications highly significant as standalone, but reviews and other secondary sources are. It's an application of the "average professor test" in WP:PROF. If they just named a species, their name goes next to the species name in the article and that's about it. If someone has put the notability of that taxonomist in context for us, then that can warrant an article. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:52, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

So if I understand you correctly, you would agree with Peter coxhead that Someone who establishes a new family and 10 new genera is more notable than someone who adds 11 new species to a genus with 100 species already - i.e., scale and impact matter. The thing is, such work in taxonomy may have huge carry-on effects and be in use for a century, and still not garner the author any great coverage, beside their name being cited every time someone cites the taxon (which, as discussed, is not a usable metric). - We may well be looking at the old notability pitfall here that basically says you are shit out of luck until someone writes your obituary :/ --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

The examples given are nice well written articles that do no harm and some good, but none of them are critical to have. Maybe I am a heretic for stating this, but it matters less where we put the notability bar for taxonomists, while it matters a lot that we clearly specify where that notability bar is located. That way, Clifflandis and other excellent editors will be encouraged to continue writing without the risk of wasting time on articles for deletion. It also saves time for NPP reviewers and AfD evaluators. Hence, thank you Elmidae for raising the issue. I hope it leads to clear guidelines, whatever those guidelines are. Martinogk (talk) 14:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Law school Deans. Med school Deans. Are they notable?

I recently submitted a new article about a man who had been the Dean of three different US accredited graduate-level law schools that grant juris doctor degrees.

An editor declined the submission. On the basis that the subject had only been the Dean of the three law schools.

The law schools of which he had been Dean all had Wikipedia articles. One was the fifth-oldest law school in the country in continuous operation. Another was a "highly selective" US News & World Report tier 1 law school, considered one of the Princeton Review's Best Law Schools of 2018.

The editor said the subject of the bio did not satisfy Wikipedia:Notability (academics) criterion 6.

That criterion says the person is notable if he/she: "has held a highest-level ... administrative post at a major academic institution...."

Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#Specific_criteria_notes, point #6, adds some gloss. It says that "Criterion 6 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has held the post of president or chancellor (or vice-chancellor in countries where this is the top academic post) of a significant accredited college or university, director of a highly regarded, notable academic independent research institute or center (which is not a part of a university) ... etc. Lesser administrative posts (provost, dean, department chair, etc.) are generally not sufficient...."

"Dean" means different things, depending upon context. Undergraduate school deans and law school/med school Deans are very different animals.

In the case of US graduate-level law schools, the Dean of the law school is the person who has the highest-level administrative post. It is not a "lesser" (i.e., non-highest level) post.

This differs from being a dean (or department chair) at a US college (such as a dean of students at an undergraduate college, or a dean of the college of arts and sciences at an undergraduate university with a number of colleges), where that position is often not the highest-level administrative post. This undergraduate dean - context suggests - is what the reference in Note Point 6 refers to.

Even the poorly referenced Wikipedia definition of dean notes this difference between being the Dean of a law school/med school, and being the dean of a college/university.

It is worth noting that the law school or medical school may not even be affiliated with any undergraduate institution. Consider Brooklyn Law School. Or the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. It makes no sense to say a Dean of Brooklyn Law School is notable, but a Dean of Harvard Law School is not.

Law school Deans are at least one cut above deans of primarily undergraduate divisions within colleges and universities. There are over 4,000 of universities and colleges in the US. There are only about 200 ABA-accredited US law schools. And students in the US go through undergraduate university first, before they go to graduate-level law school.

I believe this reference to "deans" should be revised in WP:NACADEMIC. Recognizing (as the Wikipedia entry for Dean does), the difference between undergraduate deans (of undergraduate colleges, etc.) and graduate law school and medical school deans. The second grouping should be recognized as notable. That way, we won't have to worry about editors nominating for deletion (or not allowing on Wikipedia) articles such as that on former Harvard Law school Dean Albert Sacks - whose only claim to notability in his article is that he was ... a law school Dean.

BTW, there is a country distinction here. In some countries, one can become a lawyer by undergraduate study. Not in the US. So the approach that is best to adopt may differ by country. 2604:2000:E010:1100:8069:D17F:7325:3D9 (talk) 03:43, 16 March 2019 (UTC)