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.

Michael Efroimsky

Does this scientist meet our notability requirements? I put a notability tag on yesterday and the subject removed it, saying that the NASA link he added was sufficient. I don't think it is but would prefer guidance to replacing it myself. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 06:21, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

The first thing to do in assessing the notability of scientists is look at the citation record in GS. This gives an h-index of 22. For a very highly cited field this is marginal, but probably over the bar. Xxanthippe (talk) 07:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC).

Ah, but you're forgetting that we multiply by 0.7 in the case of anyone dickish enough to come to WP to argue for their own notability. EEng 12:54, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the page without doing further research, it looks like marginal notability to me. For one thing, it should be tagged for connected contributor issues (where EEng would multiply by 0.7, I feel sorely tempted to multiply by 0.0 whenever I see this sort of thing). I'm less of an h-index fan than some other editors. According to the page, he has co-authored two works that might or might not be influential (the two cited sources). What I would do is look into the ways other experts have cited those works. If there are independent sources saying that the work has been significantly influential, I would regard that as establishing notability (and would want to see those sources cited on the page). On the other hand, if the citations are more routine and there does not appear to be independent assessment of importance, I would want to see the page deleted. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:22, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Just to "come to WP to argue for their own notability" is not so dickish sometimes. Our coverage is so incredibly erratic that the question often naturally arises - I've been asked that privately by a couple of super-notable people of the "wrong age" (now long retired) to have got articles "naturally". A perusal of Category:Lists of members of learned societies shows the problem clearly, where the lists are complete. I think it's important we all keep in mind how very poor WP is this respect. When I worked at the Royal Society List of Fellows of the Royal Society elected in 2012 was over 50% redlinks, as were the preceding years (of course all the redlinks were male, but that's another story). Now that's much better (no thanks to me - mainly User:Duncan.Hull). Obviously removing tags etc is bad, but to ask the question is entirely natural. I got a laugh at a conference by suggesting that dying was much the most reliable way to get a WP bio ..... Johnbod (talk) 13:00, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Acting chancellor

I'm just curious if acting chancellor or vice-chancellor of a university are given an automatic free pass over WP:BIO ? --Saqib (talk) 09:54, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean about a free pass, but in my opinion having a temporary appointment, by itself, does not ordinarily establish passing WP:PROF. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:16, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: By free pass I meant to say if temporary appointed chancellors qualify for a WP article under WP:PROF. --Saqib (talk) 05:17, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Only if they're otherwise notable (e.g. through GNG or a different PROF criterion) or the position becomes permanent. I wouldn't think that the temporary appointment would be good enough by itself for #C6. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:25, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@David Eppstein and Tryptofish: OK on the basis of this discussion, I initiated an AfD on a acting vice-chancellor, however an editor @FloridaArmy: says the subject still meet PROF#5 because the professor held the office of vice-chancellor. So does it means an acting VC passes PROF#5? --Saqib (talk) 15:11, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the others who have already weighed in above and I don't think that interim or acting status passes muster. For someone who is a vice-chancellor, president, or provost it should be a moot point for most people because they should meet other criteria as highly respected, senior scholars. But by itself an interim, acting, or otherwise temporary appointment doesn't pass muster for this criterion. If there is confusion on this point and widespread consensus then we should edit the policy to clear it up. ElKevbo (talk) 16:45, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

@ElKevbo: It would be better to make some changes to the policy to avoid confusion. I can see we've several BLPs on acting vice-chancellors. --Saqib (talk) 16:52, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I am strongly opposed to making changed to a policy while there are several AfDs underway. Even if done with the best of intentions and the support of the vast majority of editors it still feels...slimy? It's far better for us to weigh in on the AfDs and use those processes as another way to see if there is consensus to make this change; we may be in the minority and the policy may need to be clarified to say the opposite what we think it should say. ElKevbo (talk) 18:13, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree that we should not change the guideline right away. I took a quick look at the AfD and the bio page and, although I won't participate in the AfD after having taken part in this discussion here, I think that it is a poor test case for the issue of "acting" appointments. The subject is not someone in an acting position, but rather is someone who is "former" in multiple positions because of now being emeritus. (I have not looked at any measures of scholarly impact.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I also didn't think that the subject was in an acting role; in addition I thought subject passed GNG. Anyways, the article is deleted now.  M A A Z   T A L K  08:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Editors here need to know about this

Draft:RfaProf. Frankly, I'm rather appalled to discover that the discussion there has been going on without a notification here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, at least most of us are spared the vast amount of talk page dissertations it has already generated (now including mine). Not that these seem to be altering the draft much. I think it is good to have preliminary discussions for such a major proposal. But clearly it will end up here, so people may like to board up their windows now, if not retreat to the storm cellar or hide in the bath. Johnbod (talk) 15:02, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Appalled, really? If you want to talk there, there is a talk page. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:23, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

The point was not that I wanted to talk but thought that I couldn't. The point is that an effort to revise this guideline should include a notification at this guideline. It's the same thing as if editors created a page to discuss Alanscottwalker without notifying Alanscottwalker. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:36, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, I don't know. I assume you are not saying it's required, but I don't see why whomever those people are can't talk about whatever they want to talk about, without a notification (you are correct about talking about a User, but talking about a guideline does not seem the same, at all): they may abandon it, they may refine it, they may later seek additional input, etc. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:57, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm saying that "Appalled, really?" was not helpful. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:02, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Well, "appalled", seems serious over-reaction. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:06, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

(ec) But "rather appalled" was?? I see nothing but benefit in attempting to improve a long and significant proposal for change in the draft space, before bringing it here. Looking at the talk page, it hardly shows a cabal at work. Johnbod (talk) 17:07, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I also see I see nothing but benefit in attempting to improve a long and significant proposal for change in the draft space, before bringing it here. However, it is unfortunate that the existence of the draft was not notified on this talk page as it gives critics the opportunity to allege that the process was carried out in some way surreptitiously. Xxanthippe (talk) 08:23, 1 May 2018 (UTC).

OK, I'll accept that. I apologize. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:10, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

I am also an editor who found it strange that this page, where the highest concentration of editors interested in WP:Prof is to be found, was not notified of the discussion of the draft. More informed input input could have occurred at an earlier stage. I think that Tryptofish has nothing to apologise for. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:49, 1 May 2018 (UTC).

There was never anything preventing the OP from giving a neutral notice, here, which is the custom with notices -- moreover, multiple long-time editors here have been giving input there, what's the point in criticizing them, they are not doing it in secret, it's on a public page. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:43, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I speak only for myself and for me, it's both an etiquette issue and a game theory issue. Typically, we have venues where these discussions are supposed to happen; that's why we have watchlists. Further, holding this sort of conversation in a smaller forum is a method to develop a proposal. Creating consensus in a larger group is mathematically harder to achieve. I don't probably want a change so I'm hostile to a semi-private working group trying to move the ball while I'm playing defense. Chris Troutman (talk) 11:11, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Disagree about typicality of discussing proposals, they spring-up everywhere often on some talk page User or otherwise, and they regularly involve long spit-ball conversations between various users. It's a fine thing for people to be conversing and thinking about. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:40, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

I thank Xxanthippe for the kind words. As far as I'm concerned, it's no skin off my back to say I'm sorry and move on. I was right to indicate that editors here needed to be aware of that discussion, and it was a mistake on the part of those discussants not to put a notification here right away. But it's legitimate to say I should have worded it neutrally. I was genuinely troubled by the lack of notification, but I didn't need to say it here. Similarly, some other editors probably would have been wiser to let what I said go, instead of raising an issue about it, because there has now been too much talk here about how notification should have been made instead of about the merits of the possible changes – but it is what it is. Anyway, I think we should move on. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Others may think that creating this draft without an explicit notification here is a tactical mistake but it's by no means required. Editors are free to work together in smaller groups as they discuss ideas and create potential drafts of possible proposals. On the same token, other editors are free to chime in without being explicitly invited and to draw other editors' notice to the discussion. So while the initial note here was a little bit brusque I don't think that anyone has done anything wrong. Continue discussing and collaborating, here or there! ElKevbo (talk) 22:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

• Note. The proposal is now at Wikipedia:Draft rewrite of Notability (academics). Xxanthippe (talk) 22:38, 10 May 2018 (UTC).

Sergiu P. Pașca

Notable? - Biruitorul ^Talk 01:18, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I haven't given it a deep examination, but seeing that he is a junior faculty member, I'm guessing not. Unfortunately, we get a lot of not-yet-ready pages about promising young academics early in their careers. But other editors may disagree with me. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:33, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Help with notability for Ann Bowling

Hi, I'm normally a wikignome and almost never work on bios, but I ended up working on an academic bio because I came across someone who needed help. Because of my inexperience, I'm having a hard time figuring out if she is notable enough. Here is her Google Scholar entry, but I don't really know how to interpret her stats (they seem solid, but I don't know). I and some other editors have been working with her over at Draft talk:Ann Patricia Bowling, and I strongly suspect she is notable enough - she designed a questionnaire to determine old people's quality of life, and she says she's won some book awards but I just don't really know what are good next steps to decide either way. Can anyone help out with this? -Furicorn (talk) 00:31, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Based only on a quick look, I think that there is a pretty good chance that she does meet the criteria for notability at WP:PROF. Her h-index and citation numbers look good. It would be a good idea to find pages here about other academics who study aging and quality of life or something close to it, and then look up their Google Scholar numbers: if her stats are similar to others in her field that are already here as bios, that would be a strong argument for notability. (I see she says that she has colleagues who have bio pages, so those would be reasonable people to start with.) But if others doing similar work have much higher rates of citation, that would point towards not creating the page. If you can reliably source that she has held full professor appointments (not lower) at multiple universities, and has won non-trivial awards, then I'd say you are there. If you get partway along all of that and would like more feedback, feel free to post here again. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:17, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Citation record is stunning, albeit in a very highly cited field so, unless there is some other issue, notability should be unchallenged. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:32, 31 July 2018 (UTC).

@Tryptofish:@Xxanthippe: Here is what I have so far. I don't know how significant this award is but she claims to have won "Highly Commended in the Basis of Medicine section" from the British Medical Association Medical Book Awards (used to be called Medical Book Competition I believe) twice:

• Bowling, Ann. Research Methods in health (4th ed.). Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education, Open University Press. ISBN 9780335262755. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help) allegedly won in 1998, but I can't find any list of who won that year
• Bowling, Ann (2017). Measuring health: a review of subjective health, well-being and quality of life measurement scales (4th ed.). Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill Education, Open University Press. ISBN 9780335261949. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help) allegedly won in 2015, and I've at least found evidence she was shortlisted on page 11 of this PDF, but I can't find a list of winners

Searching for one of her books, I noted that it is cited at Participation bias, which seems positive at least

She says she was elected Fellow to the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians, but I can't find any way to confirm that.

She lists her professorships as Professor of Health Sciences, University of Southampton (2012-17), where she is now Visiting Professor. Previously Bowling was Professor of Ageing at St George's, University of London (2010-11), Professor of Health Services Research at University College London (1995-2010). I can only confirm that she is currently Visiting Professor at University of Southampton because it is listed on her staff page, but if there was a way to confirm the others it sounds like she would pass the bar.

I'm still working on figuring out who her colleagues are for comparison, but I'm glad to hear that someone feels her citation record is stunning. -Furicorn (talk) 03:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

She seems clearly notable to me - she's worked at several top-tier UK medical schools. User:Bondegezou is an academic in related fields & might be able to comment. Johnbod (talk) 03:31, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Johnbod: does anything need to be done to confirm her work history? -Furicorn (talk) 05:44, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

It would help - also adding the many books that are missing: see here. Johnbod (talk) 12:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I strongly urge caution in adding lists of books and journal articles to Wikipedia articles. These are meant to be encyclopedia articles, not excerpts of the subjects' CVs. ElKevbo (talk) 13:49, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Currently there are only the 2 textbooks, both now on their 4th editions, and 6 papers. This seems to be the sort of career that essentially works through books and papers - in rather a humanities fashion than a typical scientific researcher way - so if notability is a concern (and I'm not sure it needs to be) a few more of these are probably good. Johnbod (talk) 14:01, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

The point that I'm trying to make is that simply listing books or articles without providing explanation or context isn't very helpful for readers (or editors trying to determine notability). If a book or article is important enough to include in an encyclopedia article, it probably warrants an explanation to help readers understand why and how it's important. ElKevbo (talk) 14:12, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Fine in theory, but as we know, in practice working out and describing exactly why an academic is significant is (at least until the obituaries come in) often extremely difficult, and rather few of our academic bios even attempt it. Johnbod (talk) 14:15, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

She used to be in the Faculty I'm now in at UCL. I'd say definitely notable. "Research Methods in Health" is a commonly used textbook. Bondegezou (talk) 06:51, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: can I cite you as a source for that post? Is that even valid? -Furicorn (talk) 07:26, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

@Bondegezou: also is it a big deal to be a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians? I don't know the UK so I have no sense of this. -Furicorn (talk) 07:55, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

You can quote my opinion, but I can't imagine it has that much weight! FRCP is a pretty big deal, but I don't think being an FRCP automatically makes one notable.

To try and find some more useful arguments, I note "Research Methods in Health" has been cited over 4600 times according to G Scholar, while another of her books, "Measuring Health", has been cited over 2000 times. Bowling (2005), "Mode of questionnaire administration can have serious effects on data quality", doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdi031, has been cited over 1200 times. The following are RS book reviews of "Research Methods in Health": [1], [2], [3]. Here's a book review of one of her other textbooks: [4]. Bondegezou (talk) 09:13, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks @Bondegezou:, that is all very useful and I've tried to work it into the draft article. With regard to citing you, I actually meant more about citing you that she worked at UCL. Someone else managed to find citations for her work at University of London, but evidence of her UCL post has been a bit scarcer, so I was trying to think of ideas on how to source that. -Furicorn (talk) 18:45, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I figured out I could get evidence that she was Professor in 2009 based on the "About the Author" in one of the Google Books sites for an earlier edition of one of her textbooks, but I still need sources for the entire term -Furicorn (talk) 18:53, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

After reading what other editors have said here, I'm reasonably confident that she is sufficiently notable to have a page about her. About sources to cite on the page, it basically comes down to WP:RS. And about that part of the discussion about listing her writings, it's very much the case that our pages should not be CVs, so such lists should be kept minimal as a matter of encyclopedic style, but on the other hand, knowing about her publications is useful information for an editor to reassure oneself that she is notable. It's particularly useful if an independent secondary source can be cited about her publications, as opposed to citing the publications themselves. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:20, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

For reference, she listed the following 3 people as colleagues Emily Grundy (google scholar), Carl May (google scholar), and Virginia Berridge (no google scholar). Having them listed in the talk page got them slapped with notability warnings by a discussion participant, and have lots of sourcing problems, I think with better sourcing they may be notable enough. Certainly I think if Berridge's page is correct, then she seems likely to be notable enough based on her multiple honorary fellowships. -Furicorn (talk) 23:45, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

For anyone here who might have some thoughts, I posted some follow up questions at WP Bio/Sci&Aca/Talk#Help on sources for Draft:Ann Patricia Bowling -Furicorn (talk) 03:37, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

Some possible food for thought...

Machine-Generated Knowledge Bases describes how a team used AI and 30,000 existing WP articles on computer scientists on WP to create a trained basis set, then fed it a large set of names and papers (200,000+) from which the AI came back with about 40,000 people not documented on WP but that the AI believed had similar coverage, with the argument that we (WP) are missing these articles.

There's plus and minus to this both ways in terms of notability in general and NPROF, I'm dropping this here for discussion/consideration. --Masem (t) 14:59, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I took a quick look at List of computer scientists and Category:Computer scientists. I'm not going to actually count, but I find it unlikely that we really have 30,000 such bio pages, which makes me wonder how the AI researchers chose their populations. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:36, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

It would make more sense if one dropped the word "computer" from Masem's comment. Many of the people in the public "first 100" quicksilver data set are medical scientists. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:08, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

They chose 30000 existing WP articles on all scientists as a training dataset, but their first released dataset is on 30000 computer scientists, 85% who don't have wikipedia articles. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:16, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

That being the case, I think it's pretty obvious that PROF criteria vary as a function of the field of scholarship, so if they are building criteria that are not specific to computer scientists but applying those criteria specifically to computer scientists, that's potentially a source of error. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:51, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Looking at the first nine scientists in that "first 100" set, two have had WP stubs created in the last four days (Adrian Luckman and Andrea Gore). I think we are looking at the possibility of a flood of stub biographies in the near future. - Donald Albury 22:07, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Are you saying that's a bad thing? Anyway, see Wikipedia:List of Wikipedia articles created using Quicksilver. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I do say that it is a bad thing. There is too much dross coming through already. Also, many people do not wish to have BLPs on Wikipedia out of a concern for privacy, so let's not force them to. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:33, 8 August 2018 (UTC).

That's not a reason not to have an article on someone. If there's nowhere cclose to enough sourcing, sure, but if the person is discussed in reliable sources and in a manner that doesn't blatantly violate BLP, then we should have an article on them. --Masem (t) 23:41, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

As long as we are talking Quicksilver's generated output and applying just enough human checks and additions (read: not bot created) , then it should be fine. --Masem (t) 22:38, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I think the human checks are essential and non-trivial. I would not want to see a mass of stubs that end up at AfD. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I haven't finished looking yet, maybe 2/3 of the way through the 100 names. So far I have found 8 articles, seven created since August 3, and one, Miriam Adelson, which was a redirect until 3 August. Four are very short stubs, with a couple already nominated for deletion. The other four are longer, particularly Miriam Adelson, but then, she is married to Sheldon Adelson. So, about 10%, maybe more, of that first 100 have had articles started in the last five days,and I expect that will increase. Once the list of 40,000 is widely available, we are looking at, potentially, thousands of new biographies about living persons being added in the coming weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if someone writes a bot to convert all the people in the database into WP articles. The bot-approval process may be able to control that, but someone could get impatient and run a bot without approval, or run one that is throttled down enough to fly under the radar. There will also be some mis-identifications. The entry for one of the "first 100" is already linked to a WP article for someone else. We will have to watch for data from Quicksilver being added to the wrong article. - Donald Albury 23:51, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I would also not want to see a mass of stubs that end up at AfD, but for a different reason: if it happens for many of these people, it probably indicates a problem with the nominator rather than with the stub. I've already removed one badly-misplaced A7 tag on a subject from this set who easily passes at least two of the WP:PROF criteria (Leanne Redman). If people want to run around deleting things, there are other subjects where the search for bad things to delete is much more likely to be fruitful. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:18, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Huh. Andrea Gore (passes WP:PROF#C5 at the very least with a named chair, and also WP:PROF#C8 as editor-in-chief of Endocrinology), Leanne Redman and Wendy Troxel are all redlinks now. XOR'easter (talk) 18:25, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

See User talk:Warren5th. XOR'easter (talk) 18:33, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

I'd recreate all three of these articles, but somebody would probably get mad at me for that. XOR'easter (talk) 18:39, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

@XOR'easter: They were only deleted to enforce a prior block on the creator, so there's nothing wrong with recreating them yourself. – Joe (talk) 18:52, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

They were deleted out of process and my contributions to the Redman article, at least, should be restored rather than recreated. By my count Beetstra deleted eight of the Quicksilver articles: Polina Lishko, Leanne Redman, Wendy Troxel, Christina Economos, Victoria Talwar, Susanna Larsson, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, and Andrea Gore. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:31, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Part of the issue is that Quicksilver used a selection of 30,000 articles on academics, but we have no way of knowing if that was a "good" set relative to notability. Anyone can create an article, and whether it stays or not depends on if someone else sees it and AFDs it. Since Quicksilver argued that the additional 40,000 they have posed as having equivalent coverage to the 30,000 is a reasonable metric, we aren't sure if that 30,000 all really are appropriate for an article or not. (It would be better if we provided Quickserver the right subset of 30,000 that we considered in no danger of AFD for notability and had it work from that, then there could be reasonable assumptions that 40,000 new articles could be added by bot...) --Masem (t) 18:45, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

All we need then, is enough volunteers to review 40,000 or 50,000 articles about academics to find 30,000 we think are worthy of using in the training set. :-) We also should make sure that any articles created by bots are reviewed properly, somewhere between draft and new page patrol. - Donald Albury 00:07, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

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)

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 [5]. 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)

• 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)

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)

@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)