Talk:Julius Iversen

Re sources

Well, this is odd. The original Russian Wikipedia article (Иверсен, Юлиус Готлиб) says the article is based on material in "Энциклопедического словаря Брокгауза и Ефрона (1890—1907)" -- that is, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, which according to its article was indeed published then (although FWIW the English article gives the dates as "1890–1906", but whatever).

However, Google Translate translates the string "Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона" into English as "Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh [Edition]"! It translates the string "Брокгауза и Ефрона" as "Britannica"! I suppose this would be OK (although I could do without the editorializing) if Brockhaus and Efron was just a Russian translation of Britannica Eleventh.

But its not. The dates for Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition are given in our article as 1910–1911, after Brockhaus and Efron. Brockhaus and Efron is an entirely different entity altogether. Although it was just a translation (at first; original material was added later), it was a translation from a "German" entity, the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie which was first published (in German) in 1796-1808. (Our article Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary makes it sound like new work, but it wasn't.)

Don't know what to make of this. Anyway, the Russian Wikipedia article "Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона" is indeed about Brockhaus and Efron. It looks like somebody at Google Translate is yanking our chain or just high, but maybe there's another explanation. Herostratus (talk) 00:21, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

re notability

Well he's notable enough to have an entry in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. If he's notable, he's notable only in Russia. Non-English folks are a little harder to get a handle on. If he's notable it'd be under WP:SCHOLAR. WP:SCHOLAR gives nine points.

Point 1 is "has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed". He made in impact in the field of the study of Russian medals, which is kind of narrow. If he'd done the same work on English or American medals, though, he'd possibly be considered notable, so why not Russian?

On the other hand, judging by the titles and the subjects, they look like they could well be more like catalogs than deep scholarly works. What is there, really, to say about Medals Created During the Reign of Alexander II and so forth? But maybe he goes into stuff about the historical artistic influences on their design and the sociological and political aspects of the human institution of awarding medals and so forth. Kind of doubt it but haven't read the books so can't be sure.

This would probably be the only criterion of WP:SCHOLAR under which he would qualify, I guess. He doesn't have any awards or memberships that I know of that qualify; he may have been a member of the Imperial Russian Archaeological Society, which probably doesn't qualify. (But he was made "senior keeper of the parlor of mintage at the Hermitage Museum". Yeah its only the parlor of mintage but the Hermitage is hugely important, so that's kind of an honor.)

And he taught at the Petrischule, which is a high school (albeit a distinguished private high school). He wasn't a university professor as far as I know.

So I dunno. He wrote a bunch of stuff. I don't know if he's notable, but I do know that I'm not likely to dig up any more material proving it at this date. He's been dead for over a century. I don't think it likely that anyone is going to find much success "adding reliable, secondary sources about the topic" at this late date. So I'm inclined to remove the notability tag as not helpful. Maybe the article should be deleted but as long as its not I don't the use of uglyfying it with a tag that'll likely be there forever. Herostratus (talk) 01:05, 21 October 2012 (UTC)