Talk:Hasan M. El-Shamy

Absurd criteria for notability

Hasan El-Shamy has a long and distinguished career, with many important publications. It would be a deep shame for wikipedia to not provide information about such an accomplished scholar. He has taught and researched in a field that is neglected, Folklore, at a state university, Indiana, so it is not surprising he does not have a "named chair." His works, especially his two volume tale type index, represents the unique and valuable product of many years labor. No one else would have had the knowledge and fortitude to do this work. The type index is a supreme reference guide, as important as the great type indexes by other folklore scholars. No one who has digested and compared the folklore collected in thousands of volumes, tens or even hundreds of thousands of tales, should ever be considered not notable. As a field, folklore is already barely known, so there has to special effort made for Wikipedia to add to the knowledge, rather than contribute to its loss. Lack of notability is the worst possible criteria for value, and it is self-fulfilling. Without a Wikipedia article, no one will be able to find material about a scholar, so people will assume those scholars are not important. This then leads to a completely distorted idea of who matters, who has done great work.

Please reconsider the criteria, and look instead at things like publications from recognized presses, citations, book reviews, etc. If someone is reviewed by notable scholars then that indicates they themselves are notable. Look for past debates that they have been important participants within (i.e., notability is not necessarily present, but past as well).

Nlight2 (talk) 21:53, 17 December 2022 (UTC)