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.

---

Centralized discussion
Proposals	Discussions	Recurring proposals
Discussion on CfD speedy criteria C6 (Disambiguation fixes from an unqualified name). Discussion on refining Community de-adminship (aka Admin Recall) to formalize a RfC. Proposal for achieving infobox-template coherence of properties in Wikipedia(s) Discussion on promoting Wikipedia:Notability (events) to guideline status Discussion regarding the "Wikipedia Forever" fundraising banner. Discussion on promoting Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals) to guideline status Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived.
archive • talk • edit • history • watch

Archives
Archive 1 May 2005 - Mar 2007 Archive 2 Mar - Sep 2007

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

Contents 1 Merge to Wikipedia:Notability WP:BIO 1.1 Time to make the merge 1.2 Third opinion 1.3 Another object vote 1.3.1 arbitrary page break 1.3.2 another arbitrary page break 1.3.3 yet another arbitrary page break 1.4 "Notable in their field" 2 The role of WP:PROF with respect to WP:N 3 Merge tag 4 WP:FLAG-SCL 5 Time to reconsider the guidelines 6 Proposed revisions of the guideline 7 Over average 8 Festschrift -- criteria? 9 WP:PROF revision draft - revisited 9.1 academic/administrative post 9.2 Preamble? 9.3 Journals 9.4 Major awards 10 general discussion 10.1 General criticism 10.2 Historical aspects 11 Recent (now resolved) mass A7 deletion of academics 12 Proceeding with the replacement? 12.1 General Comments 13 Move to proceed with the replacement 14 Replaced 15 Vanity of vanities, all is vanity 16 Relation to the general notability guideline 17 Essay Rant about H-indexes 18 Books published by leading academic publishing companies 19 "Independent?" 20 FYI 21 New reference for impact analysis in computer science 22 My concerns about WP: PROF 23 I'm finding this page really helpful. 24 UK use of professor 25 Law school deans (in the U.S.) 26 Criterion 5: named/personal chair? 27 Notability guideline for academic journals 28 Presidents/chancellors of smaller schools 29 Presidents of academic societies 30 will these do for notability? 31 Article of interest 32 Membership to Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and WP:PROF#C3 33 Hooshang Heshmat 34 Connes on citation counts 35 Criteria for becoming a Professor in the UK 35.1 Failing the Prof test

[edit] Merge to Wikipedia:Notability WP:BIO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Time to make the merge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Third opinion

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

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

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

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

Nsk92 posted (diff) on my user talk page:

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

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

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

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

[edit] Another object vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen to this comment by Nsk92. As an academic and a copyeditor who edits within and outside her field, I find an awful lot of puffery in bios about academics. Or, the bio is so sparse as to be severely disappointing if one should ever wish to consult it. An awful lot of them were clearly and plainly written by either the subject or their students. On campus, some professors beg their students to nominate them for awards, here on Wikipedia, some ask their students to write their bios. It shows.Levalley (talk) 01:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

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

I agree there, too. Some of the bios I find egregious I come across while copyediting, but to go through a deletion proposal seems extreme. Still, one wishes that the folks who write the bios would put in the volunteer effort necessary to make pages about the actual topics in which these profs are supposed to be experts. If the "expertise" doesn't flow from an article on a topic, I find the inflation of the prof's bio incomprehensible. But going to the trouble to get rid of them seems timeconsuming.Levalley (talk) 01:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

100 juried articles citing someone seems to come close to meeting the criteria for "widely cited," but, personally, I believe "widely" also means "outside of narrow publications in one's own field." If a group of people all cite each other, and no one outside their narrow field ever uses their information, I am not convinced that each one of them is notable. It sounds very much like fringe thinking - at least when applied in other, non-academic fields. I say this because I'm aware (as an academic) that merely being an academic and getting published (especially in certain periods of time, when there are flurries of publication) is not necessarily a criterion for notability. Although, since I see so many of these articles, I'm thinking of writing articles about people I think are truly notable (following guidelines of course), since the ration of self-nominated "notables" to the real notables is diminishing on Wikipedia.--Levalley (talk) 01:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

I agree, very much, but it gives me some pain as I come across articles like this all the time, and I hate to single out poor Mr. Greiter.--Levalley (talk) 01:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

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

Wikipedia:Notability (academics)

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

Wikipedia:Notability (people)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] arbitrary page break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] another arbitrary page break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] yet another arbitrary page break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] "Notable in their field"

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] The role of WP:PROF with respect to WP:N

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Merge tag

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] WP:FLAG-SCL

Hello, fellow editors ... I would appreciate any feedback and comments on my draft WP:FLAG-SCL protocol and other Flag protocols ... Happy editing! — 72.75.110.142 (talk · contribs) _{02:31, 20 April 2008 (UTC)}

[edit] Time to reconsider the guidelines

1. The person is regarded as a significant expert in his or her area by independent sources. 2. The person is regarded as an important figure by independent notable academics in the same field. 3. The person has published a significant and well-known academic work. An academic work may be significant or well known if, for example, it is widely used as a textbook; if it is itself the subject of multiple, independent works; or if it is widely cited by other authors in the academic literature[1]. 4. The person's collective body of work is significant and well-known. 5. The person is known for originating an important new concept, theory or idea which is the subject of multiple, independent, non-trivial reviews or studies in works meeting our standards for reliable sources. 6. The person has received a notable award or honor, or has been often nominated for them.

There are six guidelines. Omit #6 and the list could be a summary of what qualifies an individual for tenure at any major university.

But I am bothered on another level. I'm new here and I am puzzled. I went today to an article, saw that it was tagged, read the rules, and put up what I thought was the sort of info that would establish notability. Then I looked around wikipedia. Single episodes of Buffy the Vampire slayer have pages. Newly-published novels. Novelists with one novel out. Art-house movies. Totally insignificant Hollywood movies have whole pages. It looked to me as though every actor who has every appeared on screen and every player who has walked onto a major league field seems to have a page. But professors have this long list of qualifications. Obviously, I have a bit of an ax to grind. But hear me out. Professors write things that matter, even when those things appear exclusively in academic journals. It can be useful to watch the young up-and-comers. Useful for them to have pages so that when they pop into the news people can look them up. Useful to be able to do a quick check when you run into something written by someone in a field you don't follow and want to know who he is. But mostly I am bothered by the double standard. Professors are public figures. Why do one-game ball players get their own pages, and people like Bakhle who is doing work that people pay attention to do not? Can we talk about this?Butler stacks (talk) 00:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)Butler stacks

Note that this rant, disparaging as it is to creative work, was also posted to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Janaki Bakhle‎.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see it as disparaging at all, and perhaps you had best review WP:BITE before commenting in future. --Relata refero (disp.) 05:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

"Newly-published novels. Novelists with one novel out. Art-house movies. Totally insignificant Hollywood movies"... compared to say professors with one book out. I would be surprised to see very many newly-published novels or novelists with one novel out that haven't hit the big time quickly, that don't have notability by being noted.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• I'm not going the trivialize the work of novelists or professional athletes, but I will say that having an article on Nicholas J. Hopper and his research in cryptography might contribute to a better understanding of cryptography in general. I mention Hopper because some of the early discussion about notability for academics took place at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper, and articles about him have been deleted several times for lack of notability. I don't think we need to exclude academics who are not "more notable than the average college instructor/professor" because most academics are doing notable work. Omitting junior faculty members is likely to do more harm than good. Authors who have had a book published without subsidizing the publication, whether the book is published by a commercial publisher or an academic one, whether or not they are academics, generally have enough reference value to warrant an article. Editors who might want to create an article on a professor are likely to be discouraged by the attitude towards academics sometimes shown in AfD discussions epitomized by phrases like "just another professor". --Eastmain (talk) 03:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• • Do we actually have independent sources on any of these? They aren't, as a general rule, WP:V. Nor have I seen an article on most of them that is more interesting than their resume.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Being an academic myself, I confess that I do think that having encyclopedic articles on scholarly and academic subjects is somewhat more important than those on some transitory popular culture subjects. However, lowering the inclusion bar for articles about academics is not the answer (if anything, the bar set in this guideline probably needs to be raised somewhat). Between academic topics and academics themselves, it is certainly much more important to include WP aricles on academic and scholarly topics rather than people. An encyclopedic article about an academic only becomes useful if it helps the reader understand the development of a particular subject and see who is significantly influencing it and how. Much (probably most) of academic work, while certainly useful and credible, is not really particularly notable (this is true for both junior and senior academics). In fact, in most cases, when we write a scholarly article, we cannot predict what will happen to it and whether it will become influential or quickly forgotten. I have to say that I find the state of most currently existing WP articles about academics to be rather unsatisfactory. They rarely give more than basic bio info and maybe a list of selected publications. These kinds of articles are not particularly encyclopedically useful. They don't really tell the reader anything substantive about the development of a particular subject. A good article should try to explain which ideas, techniques, results etc a particular academic has contributed to the field and how his/her work actually influenced the field. I think one of the reasons for this state of affairs is that the existing WP:PROF bar is a bit too low. Having more stringent requirements would force people to write more substantive articles and prepare them better before posting them on WP. Lowering the bar to include essentially every tenure-track (or even tenured) professor would have the opposite effect. We would get a bunch of uninformative resumes dumped on WP, often for vanity reasons. Nsk92 (talk) 12:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

If you think this type of information is important, why not improve existing articles to add it? Wikipedia is a voluntary organization, and attempts to force people to do things tend to have very limited effectiveness in volunteer-based organizations. Trying to force people to stop writing imperfect articles is more likely to result in people not contributing at all than in more perfect articles. Wikipedia's policy has long been to have very few core requirements and to make these requirements very simple and clear. So long as the information presented is verifiable, reliable, and neutral, our general policy has been that it is much better to have an imperfect article that fails to say everything that might be said than to have no article all. We should expect volunteer-generated articles to start out imperfect, and we can always improve them later. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I have always viewed the notability criteria for academics as an exception to our general policies. Our general policies make clear that all that's required is coverage by multiple reliable sources. Because publications are academics' business, many if not most academics pass that threshold. Anything more stringent represents a deviation from our policies, plain and simple. However, as a practical matter, academics tend not to like our core policies, tend to want a more selective approach, and tend to want to use importance as a ground for inclusion rather than coverage by reliable sources. Realizing that as a volunteer organization our ability to force academics to behave differently from the way they want to is limited, and that moreover we need academics and their expertise (and their desire for perfection) more than they need us, we accept non-compliance and indulge these tendencies as a modus viviendi. However, I would recommend against any further deviation from core policy than what we already accept. We can only indulge so much. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[To Nsk92:] People won't write better articles if the guidelines were tighter, the existing standard of articles would just get deleted more quickly. Only regulars at AfD even read the guidelines, while most people starting articles are newbies or IPs. I agree many articles on academics are currently poor, but Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia, the articles don't have to be perfect to start with, just sufficient to provide a skeleton which other editors can flesh out. Deletion doesn't help the article to develop, and the line in the deletion log inhibits editors in future who might be able to write a good article from bothering to even start one. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:33, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

You could be right about this, I am not sure. A part of the problem is that at the moment relatively few people from academia are involved in editing WP articles. Yes, WP is a communal enterprise but at the moment the community involved in editing academic artcles and articles about academics is just too small and it cannot adequately cope with giving proper attention to the articles that are being created. So in practice, the situation with most stab-like articles about academics is that after having been created they are not substantially improved afterwards and remained in fairly poor shape for a long time. It does seem certain that to me that if the standard is lowered, the problem will substantially proliferate. It is true that most newcomers do not read the guidelines before creating articles about particular academics. So you are correct that raising the standard may not improve the quality of the initial versions of the articles about academics after they are created. But an AfD nomination or just a notability question tag might actually induce people to improve such articles, but providing more details, citing more sources, etc. I do not have a firm or well-defined opinion about the wisdom of raising the bar in WP:PROF but I do dislike the idea of lowering the standard to the situation where any tenured academic would pass.

I do have a suggestion of my own regarding WP:PROF, along a completely different angle. I think the current version of the guideline gives the appearance of a fairly narrow definition of the notion of an academic as someone who is a university or college professor. I personally think that an academic is someone who is engaged in scholarly research and is notable for their scholarly research. There are plenty of people like that working in the industry (e.g. at Microsoft), in the financial sector, self-employed, etc. It is perfectly possible for such people to be notable for their academic work (many of them are) and they should be regarded as having passed WP:PROF in such situations. In a number of AfD's I have seen people make a point that so-and-so is not a professor and therefore is not covered by WP:PROF. I would like to see this point clarified in the guideline. Nsk92 (talk) 18:53, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I should clarify, I'm not in favour of either lowering or raising the bar at this time. I don't think it matters much if an article isn't improved in a relatively short space of time, as long as the existing article isn't complete rubbish (or defamatory, of course). After all, print general/specialist encyclopedias usually have several years between editions. AfD is not, in my opinion, the right forum for improving articles; suggesting deletion of articles on notable people just because they need improvement tends to be a big waste of people's time, even if the article in question does end up improved.

I'd agree that the current guidelines are rather biased towards academics who work in universities, but if you want to propose a more inclusive wording it would be probably better to start a new thread. Espresso Addict (talk) 19:17, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

You must recognize the difference, however, between an academic X having published a reliable work, which basically every academic including junior ones will have done, and X being discussed or profiled in a reliable work, which is rare. The latter is the normal requirement for notability per WP:N. I know that Nicholas Hopper, for instance, has a number of papers of varying degrees of influence but that doesn't mean that anyone has ever written about him in a reliable source. I think the mistake is in conflating the notability of a creation with the notability of its creator. Mangojuice^talk 17:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The reason why we concentrate on those in the academic profession is that there are visible criteria., since they have to publish, there is a structured series of ranks, and there is regular participation in a rewards structure of journal editorships and visiting professorships. Thus we can tell what we need to tell, the people who are recognised in the profession as being notable by the criteria there. We can see this, and judge accordingly without having to evaluate the intrinsic notability of their work, for which we are not qualified. We rely on the ones who are, and their evaluations in their 3rd party independent reliable published sources for peer-reviewed publications and citations and the can be measured. For those in the industrial or other sectors its different. in some areas there are patents, but then we have to distinguish the actual significant exploited patents, because it is the practice in many fields to patent everything possible. Some industries do participate in the academic system to some extent, and that helps, though distinguished industrial scientists rarely publish as much as if they were in the academic sphere. Some companies have their own rewards systems--I've argued that IBM & Microsoft Fellows are notable. and there are awards. But an example of our incompetence to do this is that almost none of the members of the National Institute of Engineering have articles, and that would be considered undoubted notability -- we do noteven have a category!!. DGG (talk) 22:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Actually, what I meant, for the most part, was people employed outside academia who are engaged in traditional academic research (which may be a part or in addition to their non-academic career). There are many people in the private sector and in the government who publish research articles in scholarly journals, give talks at scientific conferences, etc. These people can and often do achieve traditional academic notability without actually being employed as university/college professors. I would like for this to be stated explicitly in the guideline. Regarding patents and technological innovations in the industry, I agree with you that these issues often present a more difficult problem and I would be more catious about applying WP:PROF to them, for the reasons you stated. Nsk92 (talk) 01:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't particularly find the guidelines useful. Why don't we stay with the basic one; that someone besides the author and friends have written something biographical on the subject?--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

That is required of all articles. It's nice to have a guideline like this, though, because it can give people a rough sense of the importance of a subject, so that we don't delete a topic that probably is notable just because it's not currently sourced. It's like WP:MUSIC that way. Mangojuice^talk 12:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

And the next two people to respond to me state that actually following that rule would be too restrictive. It's nice to have a guideline like this only if it doesn't take over the core rules. Frankly, I think WP:BLP encourages us to delete biographies that aren't currently sourced.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:10, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. WP:BLP encourages us to delete biographies with negative or controversial claims that aren't currently sourced, and encourages us to source all such articles. Mangojuice^talk 12:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

As a regular participant in AfDs regarding academics, I do find the WP:PROF guideline useful. I think that it will need more, not less, detail in the future. Stating that anyone whose work has been cited by someone other than the author or the author's friends is notable would set the bar too low. Requiring somebody to have written something biographical about the person would set the bar too high (in academia, in most cases, one does not biographical type articles written about them until the person is dead or is just about to retire). Nsk92 (talk) 12:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

exactly. requiring earlier biographic information is basically limiting living academics to the Nobel Prize or equivalent. Even for the members of the National Academy of Science & the Royal Society, the official bio comes as an obit. Ditto for most reference sources. Why? The reason is in part because the career of an academic is not over till then, and one doesnt want to have the one or two bios that might be on record in print reflect only part of the accomplishments. Obviously, that doesn't affect us, because we can & do add as appropriate. What sort of people in general get bios when alive--mainly people in professions that rely on public relations: politicians, media people, wrestlers, that sort of thing. Academics are in general neither notable nor interesting for the details of their life history; they are interesting because of the work they do, and that's what a user would mostly want to come here and read about. (and there is a similar problem with businessmen.) DGG (talk) 00:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not really that high of a bar. An academic author with even one book will usually have a bio blurb on the book jacket; authors who write mainly papers are still covered in department newsletters, talk announcements, some journals include bios, and so on. Yes, if we wait until a national newspaper writes a biography about someone, that's asking too much. But some biographical information in a reliable source, which is really all we need, should not be hard to dig up for a really established academic. Mangojuice^talk 12:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

there are only books in the humanities, usually. And a book jacket blurb is any way if anything a less reliable source than an official website. The website is under the supervision of the university--the blurb is done by the publisher's advertising agency. I am reluctant to use such blurbs even for routine information. For people in the internet era, there's almost always the official website, which is recognized as a good source for non controversial bio. It always lists the important part of the bio--degrees and positions and awards and publications. Where the person was born and went to high school is of very borderline importance in any case, & has no relation to notability. Pre internet era, we usually end up relying of biographical dictionaries & encyclopedias, as we do with most earlier bios in otherfields also..

[edit] Proposed revisions of the guideline

I know that major guideline rewrites are rarely a good idea but I'd like to give it a shot in this case anyway if there is sufficient support.

I have been actively participating in a fairly large number of academic and general BLP AfDs for a couple of months now. My experience shows that, while valuable overall, in its present form WP:PROF is considerably less useful as a practical guide (especially for newcomers) than other notability guidelines such as WP:BIO and WP:MUSIC. The problem is that the specific criteria listed in WP:PROF are not very well defined and the focus is not on what actually is typically being discussed in various AfDs (such as citation rates, reviews, etc). I noticed that on a few occasions where people actually tried to use the specific language of WP:PROF (rather than when making general references, such as "per WP:PROF"), the guideline proved to be fairly confusing and I found having to argue based on precedents rather than based on the guideline language in such cases. E.g. "regarded as a significant expert" and the clause about textbooks fall into this category. A few examples of problems of this kind coming up in AfDs are: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William E Brown (university presidents issue), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrew Colin (mathematician) (significant expert interpretation), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Laurence Clancy (textbooks), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vaidyanathan Ramaswami (2nd nomination) (general confusion about what to look at when discussing academic notability), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jim Falk (the article was kept, quite correctly, but mostly based on arguments not clearly articulated in the current guideline; the nominator's assertion "I still don't see how he satisfies any of the WP:PROF criteria" was not explicitly addressed as such).

I have attempted to produce a (rather preliminary) draft version of a revised guideline which is available in my sandbox: User:Nsk92/Sandbox3. I have tried to give a more precise definition of the class of people to be covered by the guideline (there has been some confusion and disputes about that in AfDs as well) and to list the actual criteria that, in my observations, people actually use in practice in academic-related AfDs.

I'd like for all of you who are interested in this guideline to take a look at this draft, and see what you think about the general idea of using this draft as a starting point. If there is sufficient consensus, we can proceed with further discussion and refinements (I should stress that the specific bars for various criteria in the draft reflect my personal preferences for the moment; they obviously would have to be adjusted and refined further based on whatever discussion might follow). If there is no sufficient appetite for a major revision at this point, I can certainly live with that too and might think about more incremental changes in the current guideline text.

You are free to edit my sandbox draft User:Nsk92/Sandbox3 in the meantime.

Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 01:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

• First general comment--I congratulate Nsk for starting what has long been needed. I think this is a very hopeful approach to a revision, though it will need some tuning at the least. I do not want to get into the details yet, but some of them will need adjustments to accommodate the different systems of higher education. In general, I think there are very few factors that are important by themselves alone--it is usually a combination--this is natural, because they are interdependent. (i.e., one gets prizes because of one's contributions to the field). I think first this should be written more generally, as general factors, a few specific indications that are accepted by themselves alone, and then the notes. To what extent this should be started anew or worked into the existing structure is secondary to deciding on the criteria, and I suggest we consider that separately. I would not like to move fast--this will take contributions from various sources, I'd like to do a version myself--but this will be impossible till the coming holiday weekend.(Memorial Day in the US). The basis for this should be what is in fact being accepted at AfD.

More-specific comments: (to be expanded on gradually)

1. All major research universities are not equal--some are of much more significance for notability than others, in the sense that all the full professors at Harvard are probably notable, but probably only some of the ones at Penn State--though Penn State is certainly a major research institution. This will vary somewhat from field to field. The named chair distinction is particular biases towards the private universities with their large endowments from private donors, often naming chairs after themselves or their families: there are proportionately many more named chairs at Princeton than at Berkeley, though they are overall of about the same distinction as universities.
2. National Academies. The Académie française, the Royal Society, the (US) National Academies are all certainly firm indications of notability. I am not sureof some other countries, especially in the developing world with smaller systems of higher educations. I dont want to show cultural bias here--inedeed I've often suggested (successfully) interpreting the criteria liberally for people from such countries), but there has to be a recognition of reality.
3. Fellows. Fellowship status in different academic discipline societies are not of equal significance. I think we'd have to go society by society.
4. A clearer distinction is needed between the criteria in the humanities and other book-based fields with the sciences and other periodical article based fields--and also with the technical report-based fields such as computer science. Citations dont work well for the humanities.
5. I do not accept "appointed academic office" except at the highest level, president of a US college or above, or Deanship of a really major professional school. I've modified the criterion to account for this.
6. I added editorship of a major journal in the field--this applies to editor in chief. This has been accepted as a deciding factor in many AfDs. It would not apply to editorial boards, who are often composed of as many people as possible.
7. I added a statement about faculty in the fine arts, who can alternatively be judged by the criteria appropriate to their art.
8. I separated the statement about notability in other fields--obviously this applies to all types of people--a professor however unimportant who is a world champion figure skater, say, or much more likely a member of a legislature, is notable for that & the criteria here are irrelevant.

I have not yet even looked at the notes. DGG (talk) 21:33, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

DGG, Thanks a lot for your comments. A few brief remarks.

1. The named chairs. You are right that this tends to somewhat favor private universities. Nevertheless, I think it may be worth having this criterion in the guideline. My thinking here is the following. I think that the main and mostly used criterion should be Criterion 1. The others, like the named chair position, a major award, being an elected member of a prestigious academy, etc, are meant to be, at least in my mind, shortcuts for dispensing with relatively clear cases. So for these shortcuts I wanted to set up a relatively high bar which, by itself and without spending more time, would guarantee notability. One can then cite them quickly and move on. For most people, a more detailed argument for satisfying Criterion 1 could be made, where things like lesser awards and honors, editrships of journals, etc, could be contributing factors.

2. I basically agree with you here and probably some extra provisor is required.

3. I hope it should be possible to find some language that sets a sufficiently high bar here without explicitly listing the societies in question (which is probably not practical).

4. Fine by me.

5. I don't have strong feelings either way here. I put the "president of a university" category mainly because it came up during several AfDs. I don't know what the others think but I'd be willing to drop this item completely. If a real academic is a university president, they would be notable under other criteria anyway or could go through WP:BIO. If it is mainly an administrator or a political figure, I am also willing to let them go through WP:BIO instead.

6, 7, 8 Fine by me.

Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 21:53, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

DGG, I noticed that you removed the criterion "The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity" from the draft. I meant it basically as a carry-over from the current version of WP:PROF about people who write highly popular general audience books on academic subjects or are frequently quoted in the media as academic experts. I do not have a strong opinion about retaining this criterion. One could argue that such people will pass WP:BIO anyway. But I'd like to make sure that you really did mean to delete it since your post above does not mention this point. Nsk92 (talk) 22:04, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I've put this one back in for now, pending further discussion. Nsk92 (talk) 22:13, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll just chime in here with a thanks for starting this process and an endorsement of DGG's points on a general basis. I'll have to take a closer look later on. --Dhartung | Talk 22:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Aye, per Dhartung, thanks. As for #5, the "president of a university" category agree with (and maybe go beyond) Nsk92's that administrators ought to be judged by the yardstick of WP:BIO. An academic's work is, on average, equally spread across three classes of tasks, 1) research/scholarship, 2) teaching 3) administration. Any given academic weights their effort unequally, and WP:PROF seems intended (to me at least) to emphasise research, to weight teaching-heavy academics as being less notable, then there is a difference of opinion on how to treat those most heavily involved in administration. My view is that department heads, deans, etc. ought to be judged by standard WP:BIO (multiple independent sources of them as a topic) standard, if their case for notability is via administrative work, department chair, faculty dean etc, rather then scholarly impact. Others have advanced the opposite view, that such administrative standing confirms status as a scholar, and I think that view holds sway at AfD. That's a topic that may be worth addressing explicitly in a new guideline (I see no need to debate it further, unless someone else is particularly keen to). Best regards, Pete.Hurd (talk) 23:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: "emphasise research, to weight teaching-heavy academics as being less notable, then there is a difference of opinion on how to treat those most heavily involved in administration": so, just like the academic tenure and promotion system, no? Anyway, I don't have a lot of detailed commentary to add at this point but I do agree that this effort to clarify the guideline and to make it more similar to what we actually do in AfDs is a good thing. One point I do think should be made somewhere, though: the draft guideline is very present-centric. We do and should apply different standards to academics from years past. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

"just like the academic tenure and promotion system, no?" I suppose so, but I'm not arguing that this is because it reflects the one true metric of academic notability, but if the rationale for WP:PROF is that academics become notable for their academic work, but aren't subjects of WP:RS coverage, then I think WP:PROF ought to focus on the aspects that relate to their academic work. I see no reason for academic administrators to be any more notable than administrators in any other type of organization, so my little point was why have administrative criteria in WP:PROF? Pete.Hurd (talk) 02:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting point about present-centric, I must confess that I have not thought about this. Something more will certainly have to be said. Perhaps something about publication of collected works, memorial journal volumes, awards and lecture series named after specific people, etc, as going towards satisfying Criterion 1. One might make some of these into separate criteria. E.g. I would probably be willing to accept that if an academic's collected works have been published by a reputable publisher, that makes the person notable. Nsk92 (talk) 23:55, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a different tack, but for historical academics I would think 1) they are more likely to be the subject of WP:RS sources and meet WP:BIO, and 2) I'd feel that they would be not be notable if they fail WP:BIO and their work doesn't deserve a paragraph in a general WP article on their subject. I realize this is more stringent than WP:PROF is one present cases, but... Pete.Hurd (talk) 02:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

For scholars from before the 20th century I'd probably agree with you, at least as a practical matter. But there is a group of scientists/scholars who worked in the mid-20th century, in the pre-internet era, where things might be different. They have not yet made it into the history books but evaluating their academic impact now is more difficult since most academic publications from before 1970s are not yet electonically indexed. I think it is a bit unfair to apply the WP:BIO standard to this group of people (here is a possible example: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D. Bap Reddy), yet we don't really have much else to go on. I personally would be mostly OK with deciding that anyone whose collected works have been published by a notable publisher is automatically considered notable. Collected works usually contain some biographical data but possibly not enough to pass WP:BIO by themselves. Another factor that could be taken into account, as at least a partial indicator of notability, for this group of people if they had a notable award or a lecture series named after them (again, probably not what WP:BIO is talking about). Nsk92 (talk) 02:26, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

as for administrators, the problem with teaching and with administration is that it's much harder to find objective criteria & there is much less in the way of public mention. I agree that the sort of dean who wasn't a major academic is not all that likely to be notable--deans of student life and that sort of thing is really a separate profession in the US & I don't want to encourage articles here.

as for historical figures, it's a different matter under the general criteria, if they are in a standard biographical dictionary, they are now fairly uniformly being considered notable--on the grounds that first we're a superset of what is in other encyclopedic works, and second there is undoubtedly more information, but it takes a great deal of work to unearth it. For continental europe, the German directories are extremely complete in this regard, and there are a few people who are systematically and successfully making stubs for everyone listed in them, usually working from the deWP articles which are based on those directories, generally without exact citation. They're among the few people at enWP working on the humanities, and I woudn't want to discourage them. There are similar works for Eastern Europe, but no systematic effort yet, while the people entered from them have generally been sustained at AfD, in some cases over my negative !vote there--I've actually been pretty skeptical. But as for our criteria, they'll all generally have a book or two, and the acceptance can be shown by being in libraries. I agree there is a problem with minor local dignitaries who hold some sort of academic appointment, and also with gentleman-scholars likewise. --I think we'd do well to insist on at least a locatable major publication to consider them an academic. DGG (talk) 16:49, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Regarding administrators, my personal preference is to discourage articles about them unless they can show bona fide notability for scholarly research or if they pass WP:BIO. However, there is still a good reason to explicitly say something about them in the guideline since these cases periodically come up in AfDs. In the current draft I have set the automatic bar for administrators at a fairly high level (university president, institute director, etc). One of the goals in doing that explicitly was exactly to counteract AfD arguments that some administrator is notable because they were a Dean or a Provost somewhere and to force them to go through WP:BIO instead. An alternative approach for achieving the same result might be to explicitly state that academic administrators, regardless of the level, are only notable if they can satisfy one of the other criteria or pass WP:PROF. I personally somewhat favor the first option since in a number of cases it can still serve as a useful shortcut/quick notability test for real academics who happen to have high administrative posts.

Regarding non-living scholars, I did add a few things into the text regarding partial factors for demonstrating notability, such as publication of collected works (we might seriously think about making that a separate criterion sufficient for demonstrating notability), producing PhD students who become notable scholars themselves, having academic awards and lecture series named after a person, memorial journal volumes, etc. This certainly deserves further discussion. However, while it is necessary to say something applicable to historical figures, we should not overdo it either, and the emphasis needs to be on BLP cases since that is what the great majority of the AfDs are about. Nsk92 (talk) 21:40, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

The part about having notable students seems a bit too close to WP:INHERITED for comfort, to me. In some rare cases it may be appropriate (I included a statement of that nature in Johannes de Groot, although I think he's sufficiently notable for other reasons as well) but it's a direction we should be careful with. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree w David that notable students == inherited notability. Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:29, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have removed it from the draft. Nsk92 (talk) 03:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I want to applaud Nsk92 for taking the time to review and alter the guidelines -- I'm trying to take a Wikibreak now, so I'll just say a few comments. The new guidelines are helpful in their specificity, but they are much more science focused than the current WP:PROF -- yes, all the academies and awards listed are simply examples, but all of them are awards for scientists. Coupled with a growing emphasis on citation counts, the new guidelines will probably make it much harder for humanities and social scientists to enter. In addition, the rules seem more than just a clarification, but also a general tightening of notability guidelines. In particular, the "average professor test" is gone -- I know that that's probably too vague to be generally applicable, but it has helped guide me in how to judge the other criteria of WP:PROF. "Is this the type of award I would not expect an average professor to have earned?" I know that others disagree with the average professor test, but I think that it should be discussed separately before being removed. Thanks, -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 20:45, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

What you say about emphasis on sciences is very true. The examples listed are from sciences simply because, as a mathematician, that is what I am personally more familiar with. I would certainly want more examples added covering humanities and, in general, probably a more detailed discussion related to humanities to be included. I hope that people more familiar with the humanities than myself will provide substantial input here and edit the text. I am not sure what happened with the "average professor test". I don't remember deliberately removing it myself; I might have done it by accident or maybe someone else editing the file removed it. I am perfectly happy to put it back in, at least for now, and to have a discussion about it at some point. Regarding the general tightening of the guidelines, that is probably true, and, again, it reflects my personal bias. Again, it is certainly something to be discussed and to be modified to whatever consensus is. I have my personal prefernces but they are not very rigid and in general I am much more interested in having a functional guideline rather than in setting the bars where I personally want them to be. Nsk92 (talk) 21:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked at the text and the "average professor test" is still there, taken verbitim from the current version of WP:PROF. It is located a little bit above the "Notes and Examples" section. Nsk92 (talk) 21:16, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

My mistake -- I somehow missed it even though I was looking specifically for it. One issue in the humanities, is that one of the main qualifiers of notability tends to be hard to ferret out: having added a significant idea or view to the discourse. If we're looking for something objective, in book-producing fields, number of reviews of books is a pretty good determinant of notability. Also the words used to introduce a citation ("in her groundbreaking account of the Great Schism...") tend to be more important than citation counts. But even then one has to learn to read scholarly understatement ("It would be unwise not to note X's account..." = X's acct. is supremely important!), and not believe that scholars compliment each other the way pop movie critics praise films.

Another issue that arises is that the same prize or admission to a scholarly society is often given to people in different fields or at different stages of the career and carry widely different weights. To take one example I know something about: an artist who wins the Rome Prize is (IMO) immediately notable -- it's usually given to the top American artists in their 40s. A composer is likely notable, but not necessarily (they tend to be less far in their careers). A historian who wins the prize at the tenured level almost certainly is, at the untenured, possibly or nearly. At the pre-doctoral, unlikely in itself. There are lots of similar prizes.

Though, maybe b/c of where Wikipedia is in its coverage of the humanities vs. the sciences, it's much less common that there are real AfD debates for humanist scholars. New articles tend to be slam-dunk major figures or no-brainer-delete graduate students. The tough cases (associate professor with a few articles and a book with only two reviews) are so rare, maybe it's best for us to still go with our guts and not try to formulate definitive policy yet. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 20:14, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Over average

A comment about:

An alternative standard, "the academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor" is often cited.

Roughly speaking, this would mean half of all academics on should be considered notable! (Of course, I am here substituting median for mean, but I guess the point is clear). While we are at it, why not "define" notability as being slightly less average than average? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.78.83.211 (talk) 20:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Festschrift -- criteria?

After looking into a recent COI issue I came across a professor who had recieved a Festschrift, since this is a book honouring a respected academic, should this be considered as criteria to assert notability of an Academic. Gnangarra 04:36, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

It has been cited as such (usually under WP:PROF #6) in several AfD cases, including one now active. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:51, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:PROF revision draft - revisited

Hello, all,

I am back from my wikibreak and have finally gotten around to working on the revision of WP:PROF again. As a reminder, a draft version is sitting in my sandbox, User:Nsk92/Sandbox3 and everybody is welcome to edit it. I made a few extra changes, mostly relatively minor, and had taken a look at the entire text. I think it is in not too bad of a shape right now (in any event, more practically useful and informative than the current version of the guideline) and I'd like to get moving on it and if possible, proceed with a replacement relatively soon, if there is consensus.

While we do not need to perfect and iron out every detail, there are a few things that deserve further discussion before any replacement is made:

• Are certain provisions, e.g. Criterion 2 re awards, too tight? (My own thinking here was to set the automatic bars, like Criterion 2, relatively high, so that easy cases can be dispensed with quickly, and to make most people go through Criterion 1).
• Do we need Criterion 6 (major academic/administrative posts, like the University President) at all? (My own thinking now is that it is better to keep it, since the issue comes up periodically in AfDs and there are periodic discussions re whether being a Dean or a Department Chair makes one notable. Having Criterion 6 will clarify these issues and set the automatic bar for administrators appropriately high).
• Do we need Criterion 7, re academic impact outside academia? I don't have strong feelings here. This criterion is a part of the current guideline so it could be kept on historical basis. On the other hand, I personally am willing to let people like Carl Sagan and Bill Nye go through WP:BIO.
• The draft is probably too exact-science-centric (since I myself and a mathematician and am less familiar with what's going on in Humanities). Perhaps some extra stuff re humanities, e.g. a few examples of awards there, could be added.

Please take another look at the text. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 14:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd actually remove the word professor from the article (odd for an article that has an address of WP:PROF I know) and use just academic. Professor is used in so many different ways in some many difference countiries that the generic and more neutral academic is preferable. --Allemandtando (talk) 15:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

"the academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor" this phrase does not represent a world view and represents systemic bias. College has a very specific meaning in many places in the rest of the world (the UK being one of them), so does instructor. For example in the UK, a college instructor would be someone who would teach you a non-academic subject at a college not a university. --Allemandtando (talk) 15:40, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This clause has been a traditional part of WP:PROF and was copied in the draft from the current version of WP:PROF. I am not a terribly big fan of this clause myself, but some people do like it. It is rarely invoked at AfDs, and, since it is presented in the draft as an alternative, I do not see much harm in keeping it. On the other hand, if there is substantial sentiment in favor of removing this clause, I'd be happy with that too. Perhaps one could replace instructor/professor with "academic" there.

Regarding your other suggestion to eliminate the word professor from the guideline, I don't particularly like it. Most academic are professors and most professors are academics and in the colloquial usages the two terms are close. As long as the guideline actually mentions the issue of difference in academic ranks systems in different countries (as the draft does), I don't see a problem. Also, one of the things that is different in the draft compared with the current version is that in the first paragraph the draft tries to define explicitly the class of people covered by the guideline and to explain what is being meant by an academic and by academic notability here. Nsk92 (talk) 15:50, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Most academic are professors no they aren't - that comment doesn't represent a world view. --Allemandtando (talk) 15:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't understand. Could you elaborate? As far as I know, in countries like India, China, Japan and in Latin American counties most people engaged in academic research have some kind of an academic position (at a college or a university). The same is true for European counties, Russia, U.S. and Canada. Nsk92 (talk) 16:09, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

That is true, but emphasis should be put on the word most. In France, for example, many academic researchers work for one of the great research organizations CNRS, INSERM, etc. These people don't have to teach (although many do some teaching) and none of them have an official university position with the title "professor". In Russia, many researchers have similar positions with the Academy of Sciences. Even in the US, many researchers are not employed by universities, but for example by the NIH intramural programme, DOE, DoD, etc. And then there are of course all those academics doing research in industry. I think the majority of academics involved in research are, indeed, employed by universities (or colleges in the US), but I don't think it is even a large majority. --Crusio (talk) 17:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, although I still think of CNRS and NIH jobs as academic positions. One of the new things I tried to do in the draft (compared to the current WP:PROF version) is exactly to stress in the opening paragraph that an academic is somebody engaged in scholarly research and known for such research, regardless of where they are employed. Nsk92 (talk) 18:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Should criterion 8 (editor of a major journal) also include, e.g., program chair of (perhaps multiple) major conferences? It fits the same role, I think: peer reviewing at its highest levels.—Preceding unsigned comment added by David Eppstein (talk • contribs)

Hmm, I'd be a bit wary of making it a separate criterion. There are lots of conferences of varying degrees of prestige, including various paper-mill conferences with fancy names that make their money by charging huge fees to the participants. In general, it is much easier to organize a conference than to start a journal, and having this as a separate criterion might lead to too many needless discussions in AfDs. I'd prefer to mention being a program chair for a conference within the discussion of other ways of satisfying criterion 1 (item 3 in the Notes and Examples ection of the draft). Nsk92 (talk) 16:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

How is it a way of satisfying criterion 1, when it's about reviewing and selecting other academics' research rather than creating one's own? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:49, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Technically, you are quite correct. However, one does not become a judge of the work of others without having accomplished something first. So one could argue that serving on an NSF panel or being the chair of a program committee is an indirect indicator of the influence of one's work in the field. This explanation does sound flimsy, though... Nsk92 (talk) 17:03, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I am less familiar with NSF, but NIH puts a significant number of junior academics on its study sections. Some of these I would certainly not classify as "notable". Simple membership in such a panel is therefore not necessarily a sign of notability. Being the chair of such a panel is, of course, something completely different. I would turn Nsk92's reasoning around: if someone is notable, there will probably be many more indicators than just being on an evaluation panel or being chair of a program committee. I think it will be a rare case indeed where we would have to decide on the notability of an academic and only have panel/committee membership to go on... --Crusio (talk) 17:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Crusio. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:16, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] academic/administrative post

"Do we need Criterion 6 (major academic/administrative posts, like the University President) at all?" my thinking on this is still no. The rest of the criteria load very heavily on demonstrating the criterion 1 is met, impact of their work/ideas. I think major academic/administrative posts is really very different, more like the notability debates over whether this or that CEO is notable. My thinking is that (much like Cruisio's comment about it being unlikely that panel/committee membership alone would demonstrate criterion 1) that academic/administrative posts alone cannot demonstrate criterion 1, and that a notable egghead in a senior academic/administrative post would be better judged on raw WP:BIO grounds if the major claim to notability is academic/administrative post. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Basically, I agree with the logic here and think that people like university presidents etc probably can go through WP:BIO anyway. However, the issue of Deans/Provosts/Department chairs etc periodically comes up in AfDs and it'd be good to have a quick way of dealing with it. As I said, my main reason for wanting to keep criterion 6 is/was to ward-off arguments that some-one who is a Dean is automatically notable. Perhaps another way of doing that is to add a special note that an holding an administrative post is not, in and of itself, an indicator of notability. On the other hand, if some-one is the director of a reputable independent research institute, in my view this does indicate automatic academic notability. Nsk92 (talk) 18:20, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[ ... nodding head in agreement ... ] Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Preamble?

For discussion, a suggestion that a preamble/rationale be included. One cobbled together here in nutshell format. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:10, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell: Within Wikipedia, subjects of biographies are required to be notable, or "worthy of notice"; that is "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded. The standard criterion to demonstrate this biographical notability is that the person is the subject of significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. Many scientists, researchers academics and other thinkers (collectively referred to as "Academics" for convenience) meet the requirement, through their work, of being notably influential in the world of ideas, without meeting this standard criterion. An academics work is frequently commented upon, or otherwise cited, without the academic being "the topic" of this coverage. Furthermore, sources demonstrating such notable impact of an influential academic's ideas may be overwhelmingly, if not exclusively in primary sources. This notability guideline attempts to frame criteria appropriate for demonstrating the notability of an Academic through the impact of their work on the world of ideas

It is certainly a good idea to have such a "nutshell" preamble. This particular version looks a bit too long, though, and it'd be nice to shorten it. Nsk92 (talk) 17:13, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Aye, it's way too long! Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell: Subjects of biographies are required to be notable, or "worthy of notice"; that is "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded. Many scientists, researchers, philosophers artists and other thinkers (collectively referred to as "Academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources. This notability guideline attempts to frame criteria appropriate for demonstrating the notability of an Academic through the impact of their work on the world of ideas

Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks pretty good. I was editing the draft while you posted this, and put another version of a nutshell description there (sorry, I missed your second version before pushing the save page button). Feel free to replace it with yours or to try to mutate/combine them together somehow. I think it is better to work on the nutshell portion directly in the draft itself, since they are taking a fair amount of space here. Nsk92 (talk) 17:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell: This page specifies the notability requirements for inclusion of biographical articles about academics in Wikipedia. The standard criterion for demonstrating biographical notability is that the person is the subject of significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources. Academics are notable for their scholarly work having made substatial impact in their academic field. Academic notability is often demonstrated not via the standard biographical notability criterion but by demonstrating that the work of an academic is frequently cited, used or commented upon by other researchers, without the academic himself/herself being "the topic" of this coverage.

copied current version from Nsk92/Sandbox to here, prior to welding. Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:43, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This page in a nutshell: Subjects of biographies are required to be notable; that is significant, interesting, or unusual enough to be worthy of notice, as evidenced by being the subject of significant coverage in independent reliable secondary sources. Many scientists, researchers, philosophers and other thinkers (collectively referred to as "Academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources. This notability guideline specifies criteria for judging the notability of an Academic through the impact of their work.

last draft from me for today. Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Journals

Current footnote 2 states "journals charging significant fees to their authors for publication do not qualify". What here is "significant"? Most open access journals charge authors between $1000-$3000 for publication of their articles. Do these not classify? --Crusio (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, good question, I am note sure. In my subject (mathematics), it is basically unheard of for reputable journals to charge per page fees to the authors. No serious mathematician would really consider paying $1000 (or even $500) to have their own article published, open access or not; such a thing is very much against the culture of the subject (and our grants traditionally do not have money for such things anyway). I don't know what the standards and conventions are in other subjects. Perhaps this footnote should be removed and the issue could be dealt with on a case by case basis. Nsk92 (talk) 19:18, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I submitted to PLoS Biology earlier this year, impact factor >14, publication fee US$2850... Pete.Hurd (talk) 19:24, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I am removing this footnote from the text. Who knows, maybe even in math the practices will change soon and open journals will take off (although I can't imaging NSF actually agreeing to fund such publication fees for us). Nsk92 (talk) 19:29, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Just chiming in late: the page fees for humanities journals often reflect the number of copyrighted excepts (even though they could apply fair-use to reproduce excerpts for free, timid journals rarely do) or expensive to reproduce images in the journal. If there are no art images or copyrighted musical scores in my papers, I don't pay anything. But once I start including many color images of manuscripts I need to start looking for grants to cover a couple thousand in costs. The same fees apply to many University Presses for books: ironically, it can often cost a lot more to publish with an extremely prestigious press (with high ideals of image reproduction and many lawyers) than with a self-financed press!

The many, many differences between fields make me want to keep WP:PROF extremely general. Once we start adding too many specifics that help with AfDs in one field, we're removing people's option of resorting to common sense in other fields where the specifics don't apply. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 20:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major awards

I think the draft version's "major awards" are much higher than consensus has placed them. I don't think anyone has ever argued that a Nobel laureate or Fields Medal winner is not notable. If these are the level of awards needed for #2, then we don't need to have a #2. I tend to think that winners of awards a couple levels lower (Award winner for best book on Medieval Theology; best article on machine-learning) are usually notable. That level might be too low for some, but I don't think there's consensus for enshrining an award level much higher than that in print. (As a guideline, I think it can include some ambiguity and reflect differences in opinion among people who contribute to academic AfDs). -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 20:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

This is exactly one of the points that I wanted to have discussed and hashed out here. My original thinking, when writing the draft, was to have the bars for most items other than criterion 1 to be set fairly high (so that criterion 1 is the one most often used and the other ones are sort of shortcuts for fairly clearcut cases). I applied this reasoning to awards as well since it is difficult for people outside the academic area in question to judge the level and prestige of most awards and since criterion 2 would provide automatic proof of notability. On the other hand, as you say, that is not how the issue of awards is handled in AfDs in practice (Nobel prize winners never end up on AfDs and usually lesser but significant awards are considered sufficient). So perhaps it is better to write criterion 2 in a way that is more reflective of AfD practices and standards. That is, to leave the debate about whether a specific award is prestigious enough to the actual AfD discussions and to deal with it there on a case by case basis and to change the language of criterion 2 to something less stringent. I'd like to hear at least one extra opinion on this before editing the text, since my own feelings are rather mixed on the issue. I do think that things like named post-doc fellowships, standard NSF grants, internal university awards, etc, should be specifically excluded. Nsk92 (talk) 21:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree about those awards that always or never confer notability. However, it would be handy to have a list of awards that would be considered to confer notability, rather than each time hashing it out at AfD. Could such a list (to be updated when appropriate if an AfD has deemed some award to confer notability) be an addendum to this? --Crusio (talk) 22:05, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to say that I would be hard pressed to come up with a list like that even in my own field, Mathematics (apart from the obvious ones, like the Fields Medal and Abel Prize, there are quite a few rather prestigious awards by AMS and by other countries' math societies, a few by private foundations etc). Given the fact that there are very many academic disciplines and only a few of us here, it is not really possible to come up with a good list like that covering all academic areas. I think it is better not to be so prescriptive in the guideline and to formulate the general principles there instead, to be applied on a case by case basis in AfDs. Nsk92 (talk) 22:23, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Some comparison quotes from other notability guidelines on the awards issue.

From WP:MUSIC (for bands and musicians):"Has won or been nominated for a major music award, such as a Grammy, Juno, Mercury or Grammis award."

From WP:FILM (for movies):"The film has received a major award for excellence in some aspect of filmmaking". There is a footnote for this item:"This criterion is secondary. Most films that satisfy this criterion already satisfy the first criterion. However, this criterion ensures that our coverage of such content will be complete. Standards have not yet been established to define a major award, but it's not to be doubted that an Academy Award, or Palme D'or, Camera D'or, or Grand Prix from Cannes would certainly be included. Many major festivals such as Venice or Berlin should be expected fit our standard as well."

This actually suggests that these other guidelines require an award to be fairly major to automatically guarantee notability. Nsk92 (talk) 23:45, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's far more stringent language than past WP:PROF related award discussions have been. Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Right, and I am still pretty confused on the issue and undecided as to what to do in the WP:PROF case regarding the awards criterion. Nsk92 (talk) 12:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I tried to strike some middle ground here. I changed the text of Criterion 2 from major awards to "highly prestigious" awards and added an explanation to Criterion 2 that major awards (Nobel etc) always satisfy it and that some other significant prestigious awards (e.g. prizes of academic societies) may also satisfy Criterion 2. I also added an item to Notes and Examples that lesser but significant awards and honors may be used to partially satisfy Criterion 1, with the caveat that things like named postdocs, internal university awards, standard grants, etc, do not qualify. Please take a look. Nsk92 (talk) 14:32, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

we don't really have this problem with Nobel prizes and the like. The usual meaning of major awards in WP is awards at a national scale that are the highest level for the area of the award. Sometimes lower levels are accepted also, such as the formal nominations for academy awards. Should we therefore accept the formal nominations for the Nobel prizes? DGG (talk) 16:02, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

The problem with Nobel nominations in sciences is that they are never publicly announced (in fact, the screening committees are required to keep this info secret), and the candidates themselves are not told that they are or have been considered. So I think there would be a big problem with verification of a nomination. I would imagine that if someone has been seriously considered for a Nobel prize, they would be obviously notable on other grounds as well... Nsk92 (talk) 16:22, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I strongly suspect that sources supporting "seriously in the running for a Nobel" would very rarely meet WP:RS. I was about to suggest that some mention be made in the "Notes & Examples" section that the Film & Music equivalents for awards are what they are, but the "nominated for" presents a real kink. So now I'm thinking that specific mention of gravitas parallel to Grammy, Mercury, Academy Award or Palme D'or might not be that helpful, or would it? Pete.Hurd (talk) 19:06, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, I don't think it is necessary to explicitly mention Grammys, Oscars, etc, in WP:PROF, even for the purposes of comparison (in fact, it would be kind of out of style -:). And indeed, there is also a substantive difference there regarding the status of nominees. For awards such as Oscars, after the initial nominees are pre-screened, the list of "finalist" nominees is made public and being on that list constitutes a substantial honor by itself. There is no such process for major academic awards, at least as far as I know, and usually only the winners are announced. Nsk92 (talk) 20:09, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Whoops -- wrote a long response about how many profs end up getting a keep based on, say, 4 "probably"s and 2 "possible"s to the criteria without any of them being totally kept. Then went and closed the window instead of saving. In brief: good work on #2! I like the edit that seems to reflect this common outcome. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:26, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] general discussion

I've been trying to formulate a general approach to this, not yet in terms of the proposed criteria, and in starting, Idistinguish several entirely different situations. The central one that we are discsussing is
I. Those people known primarily as researchers within the 21st & late 20th century conventional academic system in the US and Western Europe. (I'm going to use US examples, assume the necessary translation). Here the situation is relatively easy to define. There's am established pattern of rewards, which corresponds roughly to academic rank. We can either use academic rank as a surrogate, or the factors that determine academic rank, which are number and quality of publications. The advantages of using academic rank is that it equalizes between fields--we do not have to consider the publication patterns in different subjects. The disadvantage is that we do have to consider the nature of the different universities. Obvious this criterion in general applies usually only to those in research universities or equivalents, but not all of these are equal. There is a considerable difference between being Professor of Mathematics at Princeton and at University of [ ] State. The first can realistically be assumed to be notable, the second might be, but the assumption cannot be made. There is of course no really reliable rating here--it all goes by reputation, which people attempt sometimes to quantify, without any general validation. We've ben making thesedistinctions routinely in our evaluations, and there is no problem at the high end, but just how far that high end goes down is another matter. At even the best university, some departments are better than others--and it changes with time. There's of course the subsidiary question of what level to use: tenure=associate professor, or full professor. The level we have been using is full, though I could argue for lower. (Obviously some pople at lower levels will be notable from the importance of their work--we even have a few postdocs that have been sustained at AfD.)
The most likely alternative is to go by publications: these can be counted, and the quality of the various academic publishers for books and forthe quality of various journals is generally agreed within a field--and for journals, there's a more-or-less acceptable numerical ranking from JCR. The question then is the count, which is very different in different subject. The standard tenure level for the humanities at the best universities in the US is 2 books, one of which at least must not be based on the thesis. The level for full is of course more, but it isnt that easy to quantify. The level in academic fields varies--at the best places its more than just counting. Fortunately,m there is a usable surrogate for quality of individual articles, the impact factor or h value, if used with full attention to he different subjects (I note the h value will not reflect the situation of a small number of very notable papers--there are dozens of modifications) This sort of evaluation really reuires some degree of subject knowledge--enough to know the publication patterns. We have such knowledge in most subjects, we use it routinely at AfD, and it is usually accepted. For fields where we don't, we go more by analogy.
There are also surrogates for research publications: large research grants, multiple distinguished students, editors-in chief of major journals, important prizes, leadership of major professional organizations. These will always be found to accompany academic productivity of a high order, but are often easier to demonstrate.
There's another possibility: Sometimes we attempt to judge the actual importance of the work, as experts would ion a tenure or promotion or grants committee. (In addition, such judgmnts require other factors we are even less equipped to judge--such a committee also looks into expected future productivity ) This I think a little risky--we have too few people who can do this objectively over the necessary wide subjects so the results are idiosyncratic. There are some subjects where the people here seem to think they have the necessary expertise.
And there is one further difficulty: not all disciplines are necessarily equal. There is an ungenerally unstated feeling here that even in good universities, professors of such subjects as education may be at a lower academic level than in the more conventionally rigorous fields. I don't want to discuss the merits of this position--it's rarely said outright at AfD, but often does clearly affect the evaluation. I don't know how to handle this one--in principle its distinction in the field that matters, not the intellectual merit necessary to give distinction in the field. But I admit sharing some of the common prejudices. DGG (talk) 08:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

IIa. Those known for research, but outside the developed country mainstream, are a special case, because, although there are many internationally known figures of true distinction there, there are also many whose importance is present on a national, but not an international standard. We have in the past been sometimes willing to judge on such a national standard in recognition of the developing nature of the academic systems, the need for freedom from cultural bias, and the difficulty of evaluating the equivalence of the evidence. To what extent this is appropriate in a universal encyclopedia renmmains unclear--I see good arguments for either position.
IIb Related, is the problems of people, often from such countries, in fields of study where Western academic standards and ranks and publication methods are not used, in particular the many traditional Islamic or Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist scholars--and sometime also US fundamentalists. I see no way to evaluate t hem, except by apparent eminence in their communities. Even so, the sourcing problem is often impossible, as the sources are unpublished or unavailable. I see no solution until we have increased participation of appropriately knowledgeable editors, who are able to convince the general community here of their objectivity. (The same is of course true of people working in fields sometimes called pseudoscience).

IIIa. Teachers, and administrators, and the like are much harder to evaluate. Administrators, except for the top tanks of university administrators (President, Chancellor, and often Provost-- all in the US sense) they are usually not of particular scholarly note. Unless they have some special distinction that can be proven through good references, they're not likely to be notable (the case of college presidents I discussed a little earlier--they usually do have news sources and local importance in the area, and I think can conveniently be considered always notable). In almost all colleges and universities (again, I use these terms in the US sense, please translate as necessary). As for teachers, in most colleges and many universities, excellent and experienced teachers can attain the rank of full professor with less scholarship than necessary for researchers in the best universities. I find this tricky: I do not consider local teachign awards as meaningful. What can count here are such things as awards on a national basis or national leadership in professional organisations, just as for any profession. There are also textbooks. Though valid, in my opinion ur standards here need to be tightened a little, and that's a separate discussion.
IIIb In some fields of study, there are particular problems. Many Lawyers on the faculty of law schools are noted primarily not for legal scholarship, but for their legal practice, and will need to be evaluated as such--the standards here are not very satisfactory. Physicians, are often primarily clinicians--such designations as "Clinical Professor" are a good indication. Theyll almost always have published a few papers, but need to be evaluated on the notability as practitioners--this is a little vague too, though head of service in a major hospital is usually accepted as a firm indication of notability. Similar problems happen with agriculturalists and engineers and business people. Creative artists who are not primarily scholars are best evaluated on the basis of the artistic work the same as those not in universities--this seems generally accepted here.

Finished for now. I deliberately didn't map these on the current or proposed standards. DGG (talk) 08:19, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General criticism

It looks like this is moving even further in legitimising original research.

Wikipedia covers what others have already written about. i.e. only of there exists a secondary source with coverage of the subject. If there is no independent biographical information on a subject, wikipedia should not be writing the first biography.

We should have no non-source-based criteria. No award qualifies a person for a biography. It is the commentary accompanying the award that qualifies a person for a biography.

Non-source-based criteria is subjective, parochial, and changeable. “Professor” does not always mean tenured, or even “any good”. Many journals charge money. Surviving review is helped by having friends. In some fields, publications and citations are far cheaper than in others. The prestige of awards changes with time, and is also subject to nepotism. Important work may involve only incremental changing. Wikipedians, as uncreditialed voluteers are not appropriate to judge these things. If you personally are well qualified to judge, then consider writing original biographies for http://en.citizendium.org/ . I personally would then be happy to accept a Citizendium biography as a sufficiently reputable and reliable source

There is plenty of independent biographical material out there. It may not be on the net, widely published, or free. Wikipedia already has a bias towards web-sourced subjects, and a real challenge is for it to gather reputable and reliable print-only sources. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:09, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

response. There is not such material, except for people after they retire or die, or win a really major prize or make a sensational discovery that gets by chance public interest.. The other material actually out there is not in fact independent of the source--it originates in statements prepared by either the academic himself or the PR office. Yes, one can find statements introducing speakers, but how do you think they;re prepared--they are usable for routine facts, but only to the same extent as the CV. Similarly a newspaper article on a scientist at a local university--where does it come from? Or a write up in an alumni paper?. It comes straight from the university PR office, who are often good at preparing fine sounding PR but in my experience usually rather poor in describing the reasons that show actual notability. ::Some other misconceptions: Full Professor 99% of the time in the US does indeed mean tenured, except for specific anomalies like visiting appointments. WPedians are perfectly able to judge what prizes are considered the most notable in all sorts of professions, academic or otherwise, and we do so all the time. similarly we can judge what counts as a first rate journal, or an academic press---there are objective considerations. As for nepotism and the like, that is equally likely to affect people writing articles in the press as in the academic world. As for differences in fields, this affects every area of Wikipedia. I could perfectly well say that all awards for porn actors and wrestlers are of inherently negligible importance, and based entirely on nepotism and personal connections. I could more precisely say and in fact do strongly feel that it affects the dfference between classical and popular musicians. Notability is notability in the field.

This is one general area where we can be objective. There are some others, music performers, athletes. We should take advantage of that. Research to determine notabilty is not OR in the WP sense--research to write an article is. DGG (talk) 08:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

A quick comment in relation to SmokeyJoe's post. I certainly disagree with much (probably most) of what you said, such as the statement that no award is indicative of notability in and of itself. Certainly not true, e.g. for such things as Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, etc, and also goes very much against the long-standing consensus in these matters, exhibited by the AfD discussions in particular. There is no WP:OR involved in checking whether or not someone received a particular award. Deciding what this information means does involve a judgement call, of course. But that is true about any notability information and also about verifiability, in most cases. We constantly do have to decide what constitutes a reliable source and what does not. Such discussions properly belong in AfD where people make such judgement calls and consensus of some sort is achieved. Regarding the insistence on the expressly biographical material in all cases and the claim that there is plenty of it availbale if one only looks. We have been through this discussion about 6 months ago when a merge proposal was discussed. It is simply not the case that for scholars, even fairly famous ones, there is a substantial amount of biographical coverage available from independent sources during their lifetime. This fact comes from the practices and conventions of academia as a profession. If we accept your thesis then almost all BLP articles about academics would have to go while even third-rate minor movie/TV actors would retain theirs. Clearly, an undesirable outcome which goes against the goals of Wikipedia as a project. Nsk92 (talk) 12:34, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

A quick thought regarding DGG's general comments. On the practical side of things, there are two issues that need to be agreed upon before a guideline revision is effected and both of which you mentioned: what to do with "administrators" and what to do with "educators".

1) First, regarding "educators". I'd like to channel most of them through [[WP:BIO] and that is what the current revision draft, User:Nsk92/Sandbox3, does. I think the focus of WP:PROF should be on people known for their scholarly research. The obvious exceptions are people who won major awards in educational area (they are few of them and they'll probably pass WP:BIO anyway) and those who actually enage in academic research (perhaps on educational subjects) themselves. For everybody else, in the absence of a significant publication record and therefore of a significant record of the use of their work by others, it would really be too speculative and too ORish to try to make notability decisions regarding them.

2) Regarding administrators. Here the logic is basically the same (either they should be required to pass WP:BIO or they should be able to pass WP:PROF based on notability of their research), but a practical consensus decision on how to treat the issue in the guideline is necessary, since this issue does frequently come up in AfDs. For that reason the issue does need to be addressed in the guideline in some specific and explicit way. a) One possibility is to say explicitly that no administrative rank, in and of itself, is sufficient to demonstrate academic notability and that people holding high administrative positions are required to either pass WP:BIO or to pass WP:PROF based on its other criteria (related to notability of their research). This is one possible approach. b) The other approach, currently utilized in the draft (is to say that only the highest level administrative positions (such as university President etc) automatically guarantee academic notability and that lower positions (Dean, Provost etc), should generally be required to pass WP:PROF in a standard way or to pass WP:BIO. I have a bit of a preference for the second approach since it does allow a quick shortcut for people like university presidents, institute directors, etc (again the issue of those periodically comes up in AfDs), while functionally accomplishing the same thing as option a); so it will be a useful time-saving device. Nsk92 (talk) 13:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree with both--that;'s why I treated them separately, to show the differences. As for college presidents, perhaps it should be a general rule that the head of any institution with an article of its own is notable, or at last of those outside some certain classes (I cant see it for high schools). This would really simplify discussions. Just want to mention that at most research universities, provost is a title of very high distinction, being in fact the guy whose main job is to arbitrate who actually gets hired and promoted. But such people are always academically distinguished, so there's no problem--and the title is used very variously elsewhere. As for heads of institutes, it depends--again, at the very least we mean institutes with an article of their own. DGG (talk) 00:30, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

General comment. Most other special notablility criteria, particularly those in popular culture such as our criteria for sports figures, entertainment figures, and pornographic actors, are designed to make it easier for people in these categories to be included by specifying various additional ways to establish notability over and above the general criteria (the subject can either meet the general criteria OR the additionl criteria). The criteria for academics, however, has long had the peculiarity of making it harder to get an article on an academic into the encyclopedia by establishing additional requirements for establishing notability over and above the general criteria (the subject has to meet the general criteria AND the additional criteria). The net result has been to tilt the encyclopedic balance in favor of popular culture by making it much easier to include a pornographic actor or similar popular culture figure than an academic. I don't really understand why the encyclopedia should be doing this. It doesn't strike me as accurate that academics are less important or contribute less to knowledge than popular culture figures. One argument given for tougher criteria is that because the business of academics is publication, an average academic will often meet the general notability criteria of having ones work covered by two reliable sources, and it's been perceived that ordinary academics shouldn't be included. But why should this be? Given the direction the encyclopedia has taken on many other topics in favor of increasing inclusion to the point where it now includes articles on many elementary schools and highways, why shouldn't it include ordinary academics if that's the result of the standard notability criteria? Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 14:01, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

That's logically not true; you can always drop back from any guideline and justify a keep on notability alone. But I the main notability guidelines are not have they published, it's "has there been material written in reliable, independent sources about the subject", and I've seen the academic guidelines used to keep articles that could barely turn up a bio on the inside of a book cover, much less any independent source about the subject. The notability guidelines are not and have never been about the value of the subject of the article.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:05, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Prosfilaes. The problem with academic publishing is that this is indeed what academics do and that this is in and of itself not a notable activity: the majority of scientific publications are not even cited once. Furthermore, whereas several book reviews in reputable sources may establish notability for a novelist, the academic habit of citing sources is very different and sometimes even rather casual (it is estimated that a large proportion of citations are actually wrong....). Most scientific articles cite about 30-40 other articles, reviews cite sometimes several hundred. The value of one single citation is therefore not very high, hence the argument I sometimes see in academic-related AfDs that "his article has been found important by no less than 7 other scientists" is not really very impressive. In short, I think it is perfectly reasonable to insist on a solid citation record as evidence for notability. WP:PROF just indicates that a few such citations are not sufficient to establish notability. In addition, as Profilaes notes, a bio should be kept if it passes WP:BIO independently of WP:PROF. The latter, I feel, is a clarification of WP:BIO for the special case of academics. --Crusio (talk) 15:33, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Prosfilaes and Crusio here. Academic notability means primarily notability within the academic profession. Simply publishing papers is just an indication of an academic doing their job, noting particularly notable there. Same for a moderate number of citations. In fact, as a matter of personal preference, I would have liked to see a bit of a tightening of the current WP:PROF standards. However, I think that getting a more clear and practically useful update of the current guideline is a higher priority. Nsk92 (talk) 15:42, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Historical aspects

This is a point I left out last night. Before the rise of the modern Western academic system over the period 1800-1900, not only were there many fewer professional academics, but publication standards were much more various, and notability other than by publishing much harder to determine. Technically the standard of being covered by other encyclopedias tends to be met, because the biographical encyclopedias tend to list them all--even if they give very little information (many of our articles on these are copied from deWP, which accepts such sources even without exact citation). It is however extremely hard to find biographical details except for the most distinguished, and we're left with no more than a list of books, whose importance is very hard to determine 2 or 3 hundred years later. I see no solution here except continuing to accept the information in other encyclopedias.
Additionally, my comments on the less developed countries apply to the US before 1900-1920, where most professors in distinguished colleges were not really scholars in a world-wide competitive sense. They are however usually in encyclopedias of the period, though without much in the way of details.
For many oft he historical figures, it's simpler to go by university, for a list of successive holders of a major chair, and assume all of them to have been notable in their period. (I am of the impression the same problem applies to many other early figures in other professions, and is solved more or less the same approximate way..) 00:30, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

A few quick comments in regards to your suggestions. I modified the explanation of criterion 6 a bit to explicitly require that an academic institute would have to be notable (in the sense of WP:N) if we are to consider the director of such an institute to satisfy criterion 6. I also added a minor qualifier regarding Provosts of major universities although I myself probably would prefer to leave that out (in major universities provosts will be serious scholars anyway who will surely satisfy other criteria of the guideline). Regarding historical figures (from 19th century and before). There was a bit of a discussion of this issue back on May-June. I basically think that with such historical figures we don't have much of a choice but to essentially go through WP:BIO, to avoid getting dragged into WP:OR. E.g. having an encyclopedic entry in one of the older encyclopedias seems sufficient for that purpose. These kinds of cases have not frequently come up in AfDs yet (at least not that I can remember) and I don't think there is an established consensus on how to deal with them as of yet. So I would probably prefer to avoid discussing them in detail in the guideline for the moment. Nsk92 (talk) 04:13, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent (now resolved) mass A7 deletion of academics

See WP:AN#Mass speedy deletion of Fellows of the Royal Society. Someone added stubs on 60 Fellows of the Royal Society; some other ignorant admin didn't recognize this as a claim of notability and speedied them all. Now undeleted again, so the drama is over, but might be of interest to editors here as an example of what can go wrong if we aren't more explicit about notability when writing new stubs. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:17, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

A disturbing episode, but it certainly does demonstrate the need to clarify the guidelide and make certain things more explicit, lest next somebody decides that being a member of National Academy of Science is not notable. Nsk92 (talk) 03:38, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proceeding with the replacement?

Since the discussion has kind of stalled, I'd like to propose that we proceed with the actual guideline replacement in about 5-7 days or so, unless there are objections or someone feels that there are still some significant issues with the revision draft that need to be hashed out further. The draft itself, at User:Nsk92/Sandbox3, can still be copy-edited and tweaked in the meantime and everybody is welcome to do it. Nsk92 (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll give it a look. Comments forthcoming. DGG (talk) 03:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General Comments

I recognize this is a rewrite and clarification along the same lines as the present, not an attempt to do it from a radically different perspective. So considering that, There are some overall problems.I stat these a problems, not that I necessarily have a suggestion--what suggestions I do have will follow.

1. Vagueness of key term. Defining acadmics as notable is the have published significant work is not getting us very far in the way of precision. We may need this to indicate that this is sufficient without evidence of anything else, but otherwise it's just the substitution of one undefineable adjective for another. This is just one example, the problem occurs throughout the guideline.eg. important figure, well-known work.
2. Related, but particularly problematic: The reliance on the word notable, as in notable award. Unless this means any award with an article in WP, then it uses a term we know to cause problems. If it does, then it relies upon the problematic word as applied in other guidelines.
3. The provisions are duplicative. It is impossible to meet most of them, without meeting several others. I recognize some are more confenient to demonstrate, but that doesn't explain all of them.
4. More of the actually relevant things we look at should be in the guidelines: position, citations. (even without redoing it totally in that sort of prescriptive direction)
5. It is necessary to be explicit that this alone is sufficient, regardless of the general notability guideline, and specifically that 2RS is neither necessary or sufficient. (while still saying that a person who's an academic can be notable for something else entirely under other guidelines. )

Details forthcoming.DGG (talk) 16:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

As this is intended to be more of a useful heuristic, I don't see that your point 3 ("The provisions are duplicative") is really a problem. As long as there is substantial consensus on each item, that the items are not totally independent dimensions seems to me to be a plus, rather than a negative. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Does the preamble not address your point #5? Would a strengthened preamble be enough to do this? Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I am with DGG on the importance of including the last point (if there's consensus that that's what we believe): everything else on the page seems to make it harder for an Academic to have an article than a non-academic while the waiving 2RS for academics who make this guideline balances that nicely.

I also agree that we should be relying more on positions rather than significance or notability of awards. It seems more NPOV to say "let universities judge who is significant" and (going a step further) let non-WP institutions judge which universities are more significant. In the U.S., I think the most neutral arbitrator of institutions is the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, but it doesn't directly discuss quality. The National Research Council/National Academy of the Sciences graduate school rankings also have high respect, but they're updated only every decade or so and don't include non-Ph.D. granting programs. Finally, the elephant, U.S. News -- much less agreed upon, but probably still useful as an outside source for roughly classifying institutions in the U.S.. (As far as I know, none of the "international/world-wide" university rankings have become important or oft-referenced sources within higher education; but perhaps individual countries have their own ratings systems?). In any case, I'd be more comfortable with saying that an academic at a certain rank at a certain level of school (perhaps Assoc. at the top U.S. schools, and full at the second-tier of research institutions) is notable in itself. That to me also removes much of the bias of fields that I see often in WP (no, we won't find an art historian with a high web-of-science index; it doesn't matter if the top award in French literature is unknown to us), and moves the judgment calls to the realm of experts.

(Finally, yes, I know, universities are dens of nepotism and bias, but I refuse to believe that WP is both less biased and more informed than a tenure board at a top university). All the best, -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:38, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Most of these published rankings of institutions are very US-centric. That seems problematic to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

A few quick comments re DGG's and other's points. I am not sure what exactly could be done about points 1 and 2: ultimately, all notability guidelines have to and do involve certain subjective and undefined terms like "major", "significant" etc whose interpretation is left to the reader. Perhaps one should make it clear (e.g. by wikilinking) in certain cases that "notable" (for awards, journals, institutes, etc) means satisfying WP:N. I don't think it is possible (or desirable) to explicitly define such adjectives without getting into a logical loop; the best one can do is to give some examples; and maybe a few more should be added. I don't have a problem with addressing no 5 more explicitly, say in the preamble or somewhere else; should be relatively easy to do. Re no 3, there is some duplication but, as Pete Hurd noted, there is not much harm in it and it serves completeness purposes (other notability guidelines do that as well). Regarding no 4, I am not sure what is meant here. Citations are already explicitly discussed in the text (much of criterion 1) is about that and for positions we do have a separate criterion now for named chairs. I would not be comfortable going much beyond that in starting to rank universities in various ways or saying that a tenured position in this or that university automatically guarantees notability while in another one does not. There is too much arbitrariness in trying to formalize anything like that at the level of a WP guideline, there are too many variations between disciplines and countries and ultimately things like that go against the spirit of the other notability guidelines and the past practice in relation to WP:PROF. I think the guideline should concentrate on the key aspect: verifiable evidence of having made significant impact in one's academic field. Everything else ought to be largely secondary and in my view the other criteria (apart from criterion 1) are largely convenient shortcuts for dispensing quickly with fairly obvious cases (such as a named chair or a fellow of the Royal society). There is really no need to make an explicit rule saying, for instance that a tenured professor at the university X (say NYU) is automatically notable but at the university Y (say Stony Brook) is not automatically notable. In all likelihood a tenured professor at NYU will easily pass the other criteria as well, and figuring out what and how to say about comparing the stature of different universities would be a giant headache. Moreover, blanket rules like that would set the bar too low for my comfort and would veer too much towards credentialism. It is true that the tenure process at most universities is much more rigorous than anything that happens on WP. But, in my personal opinion, having earned tenure at a good research-oriented university is not yet, in and of itself, a sign of academic notability. I do tend to view academic notability as being "a cut above the rest" in one's field. In most cases the granting of tenure does not actually imply this (what it does imply is that an academic produced a substantial amount of very good and solid work that is highly regarded by his/her peers), and I would prefer to look for a more direct evidence of one's research having made significant impact. Nsk92 (talk) 18:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Re DGG's points #1&2 and Nsk92's comments above. I agree that further reducing the ambiguity of those terms, or reducing their use in the guideline is going to be really problematic. Can I suggest that if the new version doesn't make this aspect worse than the current version that we proceed with the new version unless we have a concrete (or probably workable) idea/proposal that would make it better? DGG, do you think the current version is a step backwards? IMHO "eg. important figure, well-known work" are made a lot more concrete in the drafts "Notes and Examples" section than the equivalent concepts are in the existing version. Pete.Hurd (talk) 19:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, in relation to point 5 from DGG's post, I added a paragraph to the introduction stating explicitly that WP:PROF is an independent guideline from the other notability guidelines; it is a bit muddied up there but please take a look and see if the same point can be made more clearly. I also made sure, by wikilinking to WP:N, that at least the adjective "notable", when used in the text in relation to scholarly societies, institutes, etc, is understood in the WP sense defined by WP:N. I think that with most of the other adjectives it will really have to be left to the readers and to hashing things out during AfDs to actually interpret them. Probably a few more specific examples of awards in the "Notes and examples" section would be helpful and I hope that somebody can add them (especially maybe mention some prestigious prizes in the Humanities). I do agree with Pete Hurd's last point. I do not think it is possible or desirable to come up with a perfect text; all pages on Wikipedia are living things that change fairly quickly anyway. I would settle for a marked improvement over the current text of the guideline which I hope this draft is. In fact, I think that in terms of WP policies and guidelines marked incremental improvements are better than revolutionary overhauls (but if one waits too long, the latter eventually become necessary, with all the unpleasant mess that revolutions bring). There are many small ways in which the revision draft is a marked improvement over the current text of the guideline (clarifications re named chairs, elected fellows, administrative positions, the scope of the guideline, collaboration distance, etc). Many of these issues keep coming up in the AfDs and the present text of the guideline is getting rather more out of step with the practice. In view of this I would settle for an imperfect but improved text now, rather than a highly polished and perfected text 3 months from now. Nsk92 (talk) 21:14, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I took another look at the current version of WP:PROF and I think that the problem with various undefined adjectives, such as important, significant, well-known, etc, is actually significantly -:) worse there than in the revision draft: in the current text of the guideline the main criteria themselves are less specific and more abstract, and there are fewer examples that actually explain what they mean. So in this regard the new text is probably an improvement. Nsk92 (talk) 01:30, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

With great respect for all the work that Nsk92 has put into the rewrite, I think if I had to decide between the current version and the proposed revision, I would go with the current. The current version is quite a bit more general in terms of fields while being shorter. The clarifications made in the new version are helpful, but (nearly?) every example comes from the natural science, engineering or mathematics and thus I think it will create more disagreements when it comes to humanities, arts, and social sciences AfDs than it will clear up. I've tried to find a way to embrace the rewrite, but reading both of them through from top to bottom again now, I don't think I can. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 20:59, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The examples come from natural sciences because I am a mathematician and because that is what I am more familiar with. This problem should be easily rectifiable with the help from others here, including you. I would certainly welcome any additions of humanities-specific examples and I have asked for them several times and I still hope that others will add them. I am doing it again now: please add some more humanities-related examples to the draft. I did try to add some things that are specific to humanities such as mentions of reviews of books in considering satisfying criterion 1 and in pointing out the need to heed the differences between publication and citation rates between humanities and natural sciences. I agree that more could and should be done but I don't think the current version of the guideline is actually better in this regard: it is a lot more abstract with fewer examples of any kind. I don't see that as an advatage since in practice this means that the guideline (in terms of its particulars) is largely ignored and various particular points are fought over and over in AfDs. Nsk92 (talk) 21:34, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

As another humanities-related example, the new text specifically discusses the possibility of looking at the WorldCat data on how many libraries hold a particular book when assessing notability. This argument has been used in AfDs a number of times, mostly by DGG and at least once by myself, and it relates specifically to humanities (since in natural scciences most publications are articles rather than books). Again, the current guideline text does not have anything of the sort, while the WorldCat argument has proven successful in a number of difficult AfD humanities related cases. Since humanities AfD cases are often particularly difficult to judge, it would be nice to have this point explicitly mentioned in the guideline, as the draft does. Nsk92 (talk) 21:49, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Another new provision of the draft that benefits both humanities and natural sciences is the named chair provision. I remember that this issue came up a few times recently in AfDs in relation to people from humanities (I remember some cases from law and philosophy). E.g. this AfD here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karen Hanson for a person who has a named chair position in philosophy. Thankfully the AfD was closed as keep anyway but having a revised guideline in place would have been distinctly beneficial in this case. Also, here is an example of an AfD where I successfully argued a keep (this time for a classicist) on the Worldcat data grounds:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eve Adler. Again, the article was kept, but it would have been helpful to be able to point to something in the guideline in this case. Nsk92 (talk) 22:39, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move to proceed with the replacement

I'd like to make one more pitch and propose a motion to proceed with the replacement of the guideline by the revision draft (currently at User:Nsk92/Sandbox3). I think that in many ways the draft is an improvement over the current guideline text. Judging academic notability is difficult and I think that the revised version does a better job of indicating what the main quantity to measure is (the impact of one's academic research) and of providing practically useful guidance in evaluating academic notability. I feel that for people who are not academics themselves and who are not academic-related AfD regulars, the revision draft provides distinctly more helpful practical guidance in this regard than does the current guideline. Many of the perennial AfD issues are explicitly addressed and clarified (the definition of an academic and the scope of the guideline, the issues of named chairs, university presidents, collaboration distance, etc). It is true, of course, that the draft is certainly not perfect and has weaknesses such as the issue of undefined adjectives and a bit of a slant towards natural sciences over humanities. However, I think that these weaknesses are ultimately outweighed by the improvements. The issue of undefined adjectives is actually worse in the current text of the guideline and the revision draft does have substantially more examples that clarify what they actually mean. In terms of humanities, as I explained above, this is a rectifiable problem (caused in large part by the fact that I myself am a mathematician) and one that can be addressed with the help of others and one which I have tried to address myself as well. I would also argue that there are certain things in the draft that specifically benefit the humanities and that improve the situation over the current text of the guideline in regards to the humanities. E.g, especially, the examples discussing using reviews of books, and using WorldCat data (see my posts above), as well as provisions re named chairs and editors-in-chief of academic journals. The bottom line is that, in my opinion, as a practically useful guide for evaluating academic notability, the draft is an improvement over the current text of the guideline, which is rather abstract and rarely invoked in terms of its specific criteria. I would appreciate if people express their opinions on whether proceeding with the replacement now is a good idea. Thanks, Nsk92 (talk) 14:56, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support. We can argue about the remaining vagueness in the new version, or likely overlaps between its clauses, but I agree that on all counts it is clearer than the current one, and (in cases where they differ) a better line to draw. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:15, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Darn, David beat me, I got an edit conflict! :-) Excellent job Nsk92! --Crusio (talk) 15:17, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support Even if imperfect, it is very much improved, IMHO. me too on the thanks to Nsk92 for doing all this. Pete.Hurd (talk) 16:44, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support, as the proposer. Nsk92 (talk) 17:18, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Note: DGG has requested[1] 48 hours to suggest some wording changes. I think we should certainly wait for his input. Nsk92 (talk) 19:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Neutral: I've expressed my concerns about the wording above. What I haven't done enough is expressed my confidence in the people working on this project. If the people who have contributed to the draft think it is an improvement, my overall respect for them leads me to think that I'm probably incorrect in my opposition. I believe that they have at heart the best interests in the encyclopedia and in developing good articles on academics of all fields. If they believe that the new guidelines will help, then I will not stand in the way of proceeding with unanimous support. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 23:34, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: I am in the process of clarifying some points, and will finish tonight. I am editing the draft, but in such away that the changes I would make can be discussed individually. As a general guide, the wording is overspecific for mathematics and related subjects, and special wording for the humanities is needed. I am trying not to slant it too much in the direction of my general view that the criteria should be broadened. DGG (talk) 18:44, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I looked over your edits so far and basically I quite like them. Nsk92 (talk)

• Comment The first thing that is striking is that it is much longer than the present version. The first two sentences are excellent. A much better, more useful and more reflective of practice, definition of academic than before. In fact so excellent that they make the entire remainder of the preface quite unnecessary. I think it should be cut out entirely or put at the bottom in Notes & Explanation. (The part about interaction with other guidelines duplicates what is said immediately below, and is unnecessary.) Below the numbered items in the criteria section, I think only the "average professor" test should be retained, the rest should go to N & E. In N & E, things like Festschrifts or published collected works, which should be decisive, are underweighed. Finally, to DGG, because I agree with him of course - slant away! ;-).John Z (talk) 22:46, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

• comment I like what David Eppstein has done to address John Z's point above, I see no thumbs down... Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Replaced

In the absence of any opposition, I installed the new version. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. DGG (or the others) may still want to clean up the language a bit, but this can be done directly in the guideline text. Nsk92 (talk) 16:07, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vanity of vanities, all is vanity

I agree that there is tons of self promoting trash on WP, especially about pop culture, the Internet community, and other fields. However, I think there is also some pandering to the academic community. Many academics, although they might be wonderful people doing great work for the public benefit, have WP articles that merely report the positions they have held and the papers they have published. The articles are more like resumes and hold no interest for any reader, except in the case that someone wanted to "check up" on the person. Borock (talk) 00:29, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

We are here to be informative, not to be entertaining. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:36, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

We are here to be encyclopedic and useful, neither of which these articles are. Nor is an article that tells you nothing about the person who is the subject of the article, and which no one is reading anyway, particularly informative.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:36, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

This may be drifting off-topic, but I'm becoming increasingly unhappy with "encyclopedic" as a description of what we do. It's so tautological that it can mean anything at all. I do agree, though, that it's better to describe the academic's work itself than the record of his or her work. It's more difficult, though: it requires actual understanding. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:38, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

It's not tautological unless we take Wikipedia as the prime example of an encyclopedic. One of the things that distinguishes Encyclopedia Brittanica and friends from Who's Who and friends is the fact the first doesn't have biographies that are merely a list of positions and papers.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:35, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Stubby biographies are an inevitable result of the way Wikipedia is organized (i.e. anybody can edit). That's not a problem. As for the other, "encyclopedic" as used on Wikipedia is often tautological, but there are certain things implied in the use of the word "encyclopedia," which has traditionally been a compendium of relevant knowledge. Most people only get into an encyclopedia if they have done something so significant that many people know of it (hence the general notability criterion). Academics are an interesting special case because they are in the business of generating knowledge, and information about who they are is often useful in referencing or placing knowledge in context. Going at least as far back as the Encyclopédie, there has been an emphasis on thought and the originators of thought. This distinguishes the general-purpose encyclopedia from a simple catalog of popular things. RayAYang (talk) 12:23, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think the innumerable bio stubs (where probably no additional info -apart from date of death- will ever become available) of obscure football players and other sports figures (for whom it is enough to have been on the field during a split second in some "higher league") do more to discredit Wikipedia than the much smaller number of stubs of academics.... --Crusio (talk) 12:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is way too much football and music, as well as minor geographic locations. I was just sent here from an AfD on a scientist. One thing I have noticed is that if a business engages in self-promotion the article is quickly deleted, the same with people trying to break into the music scene -- one of the most common things you see on the AfD page. Articles on academics are not so often nominated for deletion.Northwestgnome (talk) 16:55, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

It's my strong impression that WP:AUTO and self-promoting articles aren't really deleted anywhere. Bands and musicians get kept or deleted depending on how they measure up to WP:MUSIC, Companies and organizations by how they measure up to WP:CORP. I havn't seen any deletion of articles passing those criteria merely because they were self-promotional, but I have seen them (properly) gutted to stubs. It's certainly my opinion that biographic articles on academics are orders of magnitude less valuable to an encyclopedia than articles on the subjects of their research, but cutting back on the former isn't going to lead to more of the latter. IMHO, if I had to point a stick at a particularly low signal to noise ratio of articles, it would be in the direction of things like this and that others clearly disagree. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:36, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I have defended the game sites because they get people involved in WP, and maybe some will get interested in other things and make a positive contribution. Come to think of it, much the same could be said for the academic bios. :-) Borock (talk) 00:29, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Relation to the general notability guideline

Currently the opening to the guideline states that it is "independent from the other notability guidelines, such as WP:N,..., etc." and "failure to meet other notability guidelines is irrelevant". Whilst this makes perfect sense for other specific notability guidelines such as WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO I do not think there is currently a community consensus that this applies to the general guideline. The recent discussion at Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise shows little - if any - consensus on the relationship between the general and specific notability guidelines. Specifically a proposal that SNGs override the GNG failed to gain consensus support. Whatever opinion any individual editor has I think viewing the extended discussion between dozens of editors it is hard to see any clear consensus about the relationship between the specific and general notability guidelines. Wikipedia guidelines exist to reflect consensus, in this case I do not think the consensus exists that failing WP:N is "irrelevent" when considering any specific notability guideline and I do not see WP:PROF as being an exception. Accordingly I would like to suggest that the reference to WP:N be removed from the second paragraph (and replaced with an example of another specific notability guideline such as WP:MUSIC, WP:BK, etc.) and "notability guidelines" replaced with "specific notability guidelines" - or something to that effect. Guest9999 (talk) 02:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

If it were the case that articles in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators were judged to pass WP:PROF but were being deleted because they failed WP:N, then I'd be moved that there was a new consensus policy. But WP:PROF seems a reasonably clear expression of the accepted standard by which deletions of the originators are judged. If there a proposal to make WP:N be the one and only standard then point me to it. If there is merely the absense of consensus either way, then I think I'll continue to use WP:PROF where it applies. my 2c Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I am strongly opposed to Guest9999's proposal for many reasons, most of which have been discussed above on this talk page at length, both before and duringestrictive or the revision of this guideline over the summer. There are very good reasons for WP:PROF to be independent from the other notability guidelines, including WP:N. There are significant differences between how academics are covered by reliable sources and how their notability is determined in practice and between how most other topics, such as movie actors, music bands, brands of cheese, etc, are covered by reliable sources. It is very easy to misread and misapply WP:N, either in an overly restrictive or an overly permissive way, if these differences are not taken into account. WP:PROF provides a much more precise, specific, realistic and practically useful set of standards for determining notability of academics than does WP:N. As discussed at length above on this talk page, notability in academia comes from influence of one's academic work on the research of other scholars. However, the standards and conventions in which such influence is manifested are very different in academia from general culture and societal topics. Academics, even very prominent ones, are rarely written about personally, until they are dead or about to retire, and even then the information is usually brief. What counts most is how and whether other researchers use and quote the work of a particular academic in their own academic books and articles. It is very counterproductive to have constant debates about the meaning of the WP:N phrase "coverage of" in relation to an academic. As I said, it is very easy to misapply WP:N here in either direction, especially if WP:N starts setting specific requirements for the number of sources needed and/or sufficient for establishing notability. That is the road straight to AfD hell, so to speak, in relation to academics. For example, for a WP article on a societal topic (or even a scientific concept), often having, say, 10 references discussing that topic would be sufficient to pass WP:N. On the other hand, if an academic has a paper that has been cited, say 15 times, that itself is typically far from sufficient for establishing academic notability. Yet I have seen WP:N applied in this sort of fashion for an overly inclusive reading in relation to academics (in fact, in my observations, when WP:N is invoked in academic-related AfDs, it is usually to provide a more permissive reading than that of WP:PROF). On the other hand, and this is just as bad, there are many cases where an academic has a number of highly cited papers and/or books (say with 400-300 cites each), or where the person holds a named chair professorship at a major university, where academic notability is in fact obvious and yet where specific biographical type coverage of the person is lacking. It is easy to argue that WP:N is not satisfied in this case while in real life the person is certainly academically notable. So basically WP:N is too blunt and imprecise a tool when applied to determining notability of academics and it is better to use a more precise and well-developed standard of WP:PROF. Moreover, WP:N is too much in the center of notability wars surrounding articles on fiction, episodes, characters, etc. It is easy for these wars to shift WP:N from side to side and to introduce some specific requirements there that would really be disastorous when applied to notability of academics. I would very much like not to have to contend with these changing winds here, at WP:PROF, which is a relatively stable and functional guideline, and which is far removed from those notability storms. Nsk92 (talk) 03:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I propose taking a more anarchistic approach than guest9999. Rather than Tulmudic deductions of interpretations of the guidelines to infer what WP:PROF ought to say, perhaps it would be more productive to ask first if WP:PROF "works" at doing what it is intended to do, and if not how it could be fixed. How can function be improved? IMHO, there are too many truely non-notable academics included in WP, but when I look at the fictional characters, trivial sports figures, and gundam inclusion, WP:PROF looks positively golden by comparison. Other than to suggest that "no consensus" default to "delete" for biographies of living people, I can't see any realistic prospect for dramatically improving WP's retention criteria for academics. my 2c more. Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is wishful thinking to suggest that this guideline would act in isolation of any potential change to the general notability guideline. Any major change, either to adopt a more inclusionist or deletionist perspective would be a reflection on the shifting consensus of the community as a whole. If this guideline did not adhere to the new "ideological perspective" of the community it would either be changed, scrapped altogether or simply ignored. As it is, I am not suggesting any change to the guideline in the standard of notability it sets, just for its position to be clarified in line with community consensus. Based on the recent RfC I do not think that there is currently a consensus for the statement "WP:N is irrelevant when considering articles on academics". Removing the phrase from the guideline shouldn't weaken it if the actual content of the guideline does represent the standard of notability for academics that is accepted by the community. The statement would only seem to be of importance to the guideline if a large proportion of the community would imagine it not to apply... Guest9999 (talk) 05:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This is an abstract ideological/hierarchical argument. I am much more concerned with the practical implications and various potential unintended consequences of the type I discussed above. If the RfC you mention showed anything it is that there is no global community consensus on anything in relation to notability at the moment. In a situation like that one needs to go by more local consensus for particular guidelines. It is certainly true that most people who participated in the RfC were there because of the ongoing notability wars in relation to articles on fiction, episodes, fictional characters, etc. Few of them have substantial knowledge of (or interest in) WP:PROF or the specific issues relating to academic notability. Given that WP:N is very much at the center of these ideological wars, I really do not want the battles over there to affect the reasonably orderly workings of things over here. If and when the dust settles and something reasonable and stable emerges from WP:N, there may be time to revisit this issue. But for now, no thank you. Nsk92 (talk) 05:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

On consideration I withdraw my proposal. Mainly on the basis that - as you say - there really is little evidence of any consensus regarding notability at the moment. Effectively if people think an article on an academic should be kept or deleted because of WP:N, WP:PROF or any other set of criteria then they will likely make comments/nominations/proposals based on their own opinions/ideologies not on the precise wording of different guidelines. I'm sorry if this discussion has taken up too much of anyone's time but in the end I think all avenues of discussion in this area are worthwhile on the basis that one day one of them will lead to a solution to an issue that has already taken up too much of the community's time. Guest9999 (talk) 06:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I have been bothered by WP:PROF, in how it goes far against the trend at WP:N to base notability on, and only on, the existance of reliable secondary sources. WP:PROF instead provides criteria tied to qualifications, expertise, and other direct measures. It is used for expert subjects, and the guideline is (well) defended and maintained by editors who don't seem to be teenagers. WP:PROF is a worry, if it could be used as an example for other subguidelines. However, it doesn't seem to be causing any harm by its mere existence, and with regards to academics, it does seem to work in practice. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:05, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Essay Rant about H-indexes

http://11011110.livejournal.com/155632.html The short summary: we shouldn't be using H-indexes or similar numbers to measure notability. If someone in an AfD has enough knowledge to actually evaluate the impact of someone's research, that's one thing, but in the hands of outsiders they're too unreliable, and we have better markers to use instead. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I must confess that I have warmed up to h-index a little. While I would hate to see our P&T Committees actually use or even consider it, Wikipedia is a somewhat different matter. Here in an AfD we do not have a lot of time for pondering the case and a decision needs to be made relatively quickly. H-index has the advantage of being a number that is quickly computable (subject to the limitations of the databases used to compute it, more on this below). I agree that self-citations are a problem, but I think this problem is actually solvable if one modifies the concept of h-index to discount self-citations. There are various free software programs that compute H-index using googlescholar data (e.g. Publish or Perish) and I would think that it is not too hard to modify them to disregard self-citations. In general, when an H-index is very high, it usually means something and I would be inclined to view that a significant positive indicator of notability (even accounting for a big margin or error, discussed below). Certainly, there are exceptions and people gaming the system, but as a quick rule of thumb, I think it works fine. Similarly, if h-index is very low, this is some sort of an alarm bell. While it does not necessarily mean that the subject is not notable, it does mean that the subject is not obviously notable and that the likelihood of notability is somewhat reduced (it may still be that a person has a few very important papers/results).

My own beef/pet peeve with h-index is based on other grounds. It is commonly assumed that an h-index is easy to compute. That is not in fact the case, since the databases used for computing h-index (WebOfScience, googlescholar and Scopus) are all hugely defective, in their own individual ways, in the what citation records they store and how they store them. WebOfScience is extremely sensitive to even minor variations in how a particular paper is listed in the bibliography when it is cited in another paper; a minute variation is enough and then WoS does not recognize the citation as referring to a particular paper and thinks that it refers to a separate publication. Perhaps this is also due to some deficiencies in how citation information is actually entered into WoS. The result is that the same paper has its citation record split into a bunch of pieces which WoS thinks are citations of different papers rather than the same one. When a paper is cited as "to appear", WoS makes no attempt to conflate such citations with the citations of the same paper after it has appeared. This is less of a problem in disciplines with very fast publication rates (a few months). But in subjects like Math, where it often takes something like 4 years between a preprint version of the paper and the time it has been published (and even after that people often still continue for a while longer to refer to it as a "preprint" or "to appear" due to LateX cutting and pasting of their bibliography records), this is a significant problem. This split citation phenomenon is also fairly pronounced in googlescholar, although googlescholar is a little better than WoS in dealing with the problem. In my observations, for mathematicians googlescholar usually over-estimates the total number of papers published by a factor of about 3.5-4 due to the split citation phenomenon. For WoS it is even worse. On the other hand, googlescholar can often inflate the results since when the same paper (say paper "A") gets cited by paper "B" where "B" is first an arXiv preprint and then "B" is a published paper, googlescholar often counts such citations of paper "A" twice rather than once. Then there are other problems: WoS does not have data on citations that occur in books and conference proceedings, while googlescholar does have some of this data. As a result, WoS and googlescholar do produce some values of h-index (and fairly quickly) but I think these values tend to be rather inaccurate and to have a wide margin of error (I think easily in the plus/minus 5 range for mathematicians) compared to the "true" h-index. I once tried to compute my own h-index using a compilation of WoS, MathSciNet and googlescholar data (only in papers/books that have already been published, and fixing the split citation problem). After about 10 minutes I realized that it is completely impossible and would actually involve something like 8-10 hours of really painstaking work to compute my "true h-index". GoogleScholar tells me that my h-index is 13. But it could as easily be 7 as it could be 18. (I can see, for example, that googlescholar splits the citation record of one of my papers into pieces of 14, 13, 4, 1, 1, 1 and another into pieces of 19, 8, 3, 2, 1 and yet another into 12, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1; but, of course, it also counts a lot of citations in not-yet published sources which should not in fact be counted and double-counts some citations that were first made in preprints that were later published). So what we do get from WoS or GoogleScholar is some sort of a random variable, which is related to the true h-index but in a rather mysterious way. I think that, for the moment, this highly imperfect nature of the databases that are used in practice to compute h-index is a bigger problem then things like self-citations or deliberately gaming the system. Nsk92 (talk) 05:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Still reading this and the blog article, but first thought was: "doesn't WoS have an option to calculate a self-citation measure?" I seem to recall calculating these for a small set of Psychologists recently. Pete.Hurd (talk) 14:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so, or at least I don't know how to do it and I just looked at the WoS interface a few minutes ago to double-check. Nsk92 (talk) 15:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Pete is partially right. If one clicks on "citation analysis" to calculate the h-index, the new screen has a link to something like "without self-citations" (no time to check the correct name, it's in the upper right-hand corner). However, if you click that link, you get all articles that cited all articles from the selected author, minus the articles on which this person or any of his co-authors was an author (I think...). To get an h-index from that would be hours of work.... Having said that, I don't think that "gaming the h-index" will be a significant problem. Suppose someone would try to do that. For the first few "h point", that'd be easy, but then it becomes increasingly difficult. For someone who has an h-index of 20, the next article needs 21 citations to add 1 point to the h index... And a certain amount of self-citation is normal and legitimate, of course, as everyone tends to build on previously-done work. It's difficult to see when self-citation would become self-serving... --Crusio (talk) 16:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My concern is only partly about self-citation. I'm worried more about little logrolling communities that form walled gardens in academia with their own journals and conferences and papers all citing each other, and then form corresponding walled gardens of articles here. How do we distinguish the ones that are important from the frauds? Anything based purely on numbers of citations wouldn't help. Some measure of strength of connectivity from the rest of the web of scientific publication (maybe pagerank?) could work better. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

(ec) IIRC I remember coming across authors for whom >50% of the citations of their work were self-citations (I seem to remember some metric for journals that were based on proportion of citations to that journal that were internal to the journal, but that may be a false memory from a handcount as part of a debate about the pseudoscience status of some scientists work that happened here on WP). As for the El Naschie bruhaha, I'm with the bloggers who identify the publisher's willingness to countenance such poor editorial policies, and push such claptrap journals, as the prime culprits. Putting the blame on the scientific community for attempting use a quantitative metric for quality of scientists and journals just doesn't seem fair. There is a very real need for a quantitative measure of relative importance of impact, of scientists and journals. Everyone participating knows that there are many such metrics, and they are all viewed with some degree of scepticism by their users. It seems like a pretty classic problem of reliability of signals of quality, some exploitation of a signal most used by receivers will be selected for, receivers become more sceptical, signals may escalate in absolute value a la red queen, but variation ought to remain such that the correlation between signal and quality remains. If a more reliable metric emerges, then receivers will be selected to switch to that one, etc. It may be that no perfectly informative signal will emerge, but receivers may have an accurate probability distribution of signaller quality based on the signal. FWIW, tutorial on fine tuning WoK citation reports. Pete.Hurd (talk) 16:49, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Books published by leading academic publishing companies

I believe it should be added to the general list of criteria that academics who have published scholarly books at leading academic (high-prestigious) publishing companies with an international outreach (say, Palgrave Macmillan) are notable. An academic with such publications merits an article, in my opinion. Such a criteria would be comparable to several of the other criteria, including for instance no. 2 and 8. Jacq, C. (talk) 00:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

"The person has published scholarly books at leading academic publishing companies with an outstanding international reputation"? GVU (talk) 02:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this suggestion is a good idea, and it is not quite in keeping with the general spirit of the guideline. What exactly constitutes a highly presigious publishing company is rather debatable, and in general I don't think that simply publishing a book, with any kind of publisher, is sufficient for proof of notability (even for the book itself). If a book has made significant impact in the field, as demonstrated by references, citations, etc, that is a different matter. In fact, taking my own field, mathematics, I don't think there is any specific academic publisher, such that publishing a book with that publisher would automatically confer notability on the book or the author. Nsk92 (talk) 02:35, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

It may be different in other fields, though. I would say that an historian who has published books at Palgrave or a similar international company would be notable. GVU (talk) 02:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Nsk92. If publishing with Palgrave is such an important thing, then surely each and every book published there will 1/ rapidly garner citations and 2/ even more rapidly be reviewed in relevant journals, which would soon establish notability of the book and/or author.No need to change/add any criteria. --Crusio (talk) 10:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

In the humanities generally, the condition for tenure at the highest level universities at least in the US is in practice 2 books by major academic publishers. That corresponds to Associate Professor, which we still consider only sometimes notable. So anything beyond that would almost certainly be found notable here in any case, and almost always is. I would nonetheless not be opposed to a numerical standard for the applicable subjects--it can greatly simplify discussion. I remind people that in the humanities nothing happens rapidly, and citations take many years to appear, because they will not appear until someone has written another book citing them.--typically not even half of the ultimate ones will be in the first 10 years; even book reviews tend to be 1 and more usually 2 years late. DGG (talk) 14:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that such a criterion, which of course should be carefully considered, could simplify discussions. I've seen several biographies of academics I would consider not notable, who have only published a couple of papers in addition to their PhD. Publishing books with major academic publishers is something usually done well after you have received a PhD, and will always have an international academic impact to at least some degree. It's not always easy to measure by citations found on the web in humanities or social sciences, as they appear slowly, are fewer than in other fields and not always so available (and also may not be in English), but a company like Palgrave is highly selective and academics with several (like two or more) books published with them or similar will generally be at the same level as a Professor. In Europe, the professor title is reserved for fewer academics than in the US, so books with such publishers would be a good supplementary way to measure notability of European academics, especially in humanities and social sciences. Of couse, it should not be the only criterion taken into consideration. GVU (talk) 15:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I think these kinds of arguments are perfectly fine when raised in AfD discussions themselves, e.g., if this sort of situation does come up, one could, perhaps properly, argue that such publications should count towards satisfying or partially satisfying Criterion 1 of WP:PROF. But I would not want to put this as a separate criterion in the guideline itself, at least not yet. There are too many differences between various disciplines regarding the matters of prestige associate with different publishers and the guideline is already specialized and complicated enough as it is (and people have been complaining about it in AfDs). The guideline itself should concentrate on more general principles and criteria, of the kind that even a person totally unfamiliar with the field should be decide on reasonably quickly. Most AfD participants do not have any academic background and they should be able to make their decisions (and rather quickly) on more tangible and objective evidence. Even among the WP:PROF regulars who are academics and who regularly participate in academic-related AfDs, many of us (such as myself and Crusio, for example), are not familiar with relative reputations of publishers in other disciplinces, particularly the humanities (or even other exact sciences, for that matter). It was great news to me, for example, that the mere fact of a publication in a particular publishing house in any discipline would automatically make one notable (and I don't know if I am willing to accept this argument even now). I don't remember such points being ever raised in AfDs before. In general, it is not a good idea to put novel arguments into the guideline until and unless they have been used in AfDs sufficiently often. So for the moment I think that arguments regarding particular publishers according automatic notability to the authors published there should be left to AfDs and treated on a case-by-case basis. If a coherent and successful theme of this sort does emerge in the AfDs, then it may be time to revisit the guideline and see if something should be added there. Nsk92 (talk) 16:06, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This makes sense to me, and seems like an adequate solution. I would note, though, that there are several and easy ways to independently verify the prestige of leading publishing houses, e.g. by the prominence of their authors/books/journals, by awards (example) or by other sources which describe them as such, and because many editors active on the AfD pages are not familiar with these things, more specific criteria could, in time, be helpful, because number of citations found on the web is a bad way to measure prominence of academics in some disciplines. GVU (talk) 17:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

These are interesting points but I'd like to see how they play out in practice. I have to say that I am fairly skeptical of applying such transitivity argument from notability of publishers to notability of books they publish. The industry awards are given by the publishing industry, not by academics, and I don't know to what extent they reflect uniform superior academic quality. Unlike academic journals, book publishers do not have impact factors. Speaking from my own professional experience as a mathematician, we now have tons of publishers in math with very widely varying standards within each of them. E.g. Springer-Verlag is, generally, a very good academic publisher in math although recently their standards have been slipping because of change in ownership. But the quality of books published by Springer varies greatly, especially from one book series to another (and Springer has a ton of different book series), and even within any given book series. I have seen them publish very mediocre and even crappy stuff, as well as, of course, first-rate one. They do have a series called Classics in Mathematics where they reprint their older books that proved to be particularly successful and influential. If something is published in that series, I would be much inclined to view that as a proof of notability of the book and probably the author. However, as a practical matter, if a book makes it into the Classics in Mathematics series, it will already have had ten to the googleplex number of citations and notability would not be in question anyway. Nsk92 (talk) 17:43, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with everything Nsk92 & Crusio have written above. Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:55, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I would say that I agree that adding this to the guideline seems premature, but I'll say that it's not that far off for many humanities fields, and I would at least recommend that people who participate in a lot of AfD debates give some weight to the suggestion (at least when it comes to the humanities). I would think that people who get books published by top presses who would not pass the Notability guideline based on other criteria are the exception. Most people in history or musicology who get a book published by one of the three-letter abbreviation presses (OUP, CUP, HUP, Yale University Press, etc.) are notable or quickly become so (even if the book itself is not ipso facto evidence of it). People in the sciences need to recognize two things about humanities citations: (1) it can take a decade before they start appearing and (2) it's hard to know how often a book is being cited even if it is. So in the absence of other information, the press could tell you approximately how many citations the book is likely to have. Also to note that, contra DGG, two books is the norm only in very few fields in the humanities (and then as he noted only at the top top schools, those where many associate and untenured faculty are borderline notable and where often the title of associate professor is given long before tenure). Fields where the dissertation tends not to be published practically never require two books. When M.I.T. hired me, there was a suggestion that two books might be appropriate, but in negotiations we discovered that no one in the field could name anyone who had actually had two books by the time of tenure and the suggestion was quickly dropped. (I'm stating this at some length because WP Talk pages are now beginning to be cited by researchers and university officials and I don't want the notion that two books is the norm for all humanities to spread). I agree that it can be hard to tell what's a top press and what isn't, so this rule shouldn't be codified; but I think people should use their judgment and that for an Oxford University Press author, for instance, coming up for AfD there should be pretty clear evidence that the author is not-notable (not just "she doesn't even have a web page!") before casting a delete. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 08:37, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not buying this argument that, because it takes ten years for the citation record to become clear, we should switch to some less-reliable inherited measure of notability instead. What's the hurry? Why can't we just wait the ten years? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. In addition, notable books will garner (multiple) book reviews within 2 years of appearing. --Crusio (talk) 10:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Interesting that I should be on the conservative side this time. I think the general community accepts that full professorship at a major research university is a presumptive standard of notability Personally, i would accept tenure/associate professorship along with one major book at such a university as presumptive evidence of notability, but I am not at all sure the community will. There is usually a problem in saying that someone will be notable. DGG (talk) 03:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree with DGG that saying that reliable and verifyable evidence of notability (in the form of a demonstrable impact on the work of other academics) will almost certainly appear is to use the crystal ball. Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:25, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Re David's point about waiting 10 years: why do we allow for biographies of academics to be placed online based on less accurate sources such as their own webpages, promotional material, etc.? We've already acknowledged it's because we're not willing to wait until Festschrifts and memorial statements come in reliable sources at the end of the scholars' career or life. I don't really see the difference between not being willing to wait 20-25 years vs. not being willing to wait 10 years. I also would like to see Crusio's statement backed up about notable books garnering multiple book reviews within 2 years of publication -- unless we're going to have a much much higher standard of notability for books than the community has so far accepted, I don't see that in history or music history happening ever. I can't find a single reviewed book in Speculum (top journal of Medieval studies) that was less than 3 years old. 4 or 5 is pretty common. I found only about 20% of books reviewed in major journals in my field were out less than 2 years by the time they were reviewed. Just so long as we're throwing around numbers I think we should have them backed up. And regarding Pete's point, if evidence of impact is almost certain to appear then it would not be forbidden by the anti-crystal ball statute: in fact that is exactly the type of thing that is allowed by its first exception. I think the disagreement we are having is whether this impact actually is almost certain to occur. I see that mine (in all these) is a minority view from that tiny part of WP where academic press books are still the dominant force in the field, so I'll drop it at this point. Cheers, -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Independent?"

I'm very uncomfortable with this idea. If a subject does not have substantial reliable sources, we ought not have an article on it. Conversely, if it does, we shouldn't exclude it based on a subguideline. That's why they're called subguidelines, they do not and cannot override the general principle, just clarify when it's likely to be met. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:18, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

This has been discuissed several times already, including three threads up and when the guideline was being revised last summer. There are good reasons for keeping this guideline independent from the notability wars affecting WP:N and making WP:N rather unstable, especially in relation to the fiction and episodes&characters controversies. The actual requirements of WP:PROF also, of course, require evidence of notability to be demonstrated by independent reliable sources (look at the text of WP:PROF). However, the way academics and their research is in practice covered by reliable sources is significantly different from most general topics and it is beneficial to have the WP:PROF guideline being independent from WP:N to prevent instability of WP:N and possible unintended consequences of what happens there affecting the functioning of WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 22:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, WP:PROF aims to establish (through reliable sources) whether an academic has had a notable impact on thought in their discipline. The "independent" part aims to escape the WP:N/WP:BIO requirement that the academic be the subject of those reliable sources, as that would eliminate virtually all truely influential (but not newsworthy) thinkers. Pete.Hurd (talk) 23:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

This is largely correct, but there is another side to the story also. The problem with WP:N is that is is rather easy to misapply and misuse it in either more restrictive or more permissive way than what the actual consensus in relation to evaluating notability of academics is. For example, it is pretty easy to make an argument that having an academic's work is cited by independent sources several times (say 3 or 4 times, or whatever), is already evidence of that academic being covered by multiple independent reliable sources (true, in a sense) and hence sufficient for establishing notability (the basic WP:N standard). E.g. there is a current AfD, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eric Schechter, where somebody tries to make essentially this argument (that multiple citations of an academic's work are always sufficient for establishing notability). They are trying to invoke (obviously incorrectly) WP:PROF for this argument, but the argument itself is actually fairly easily supported by a possible reading of WP:N. It could also happen (there have been suggestions of this sort), that WP:N decides to include some sort of a specific numerical requirement for the number of sources that are necessary and/or sufficient for establishing notability. If they do something like that (say, decide, for argument's sake, that at least three sources are always required and that 15 sources are always enough), what would that imply here? Actually, it would create a real mess. I just don't want to have to deal with potential unintended consequences of some such changes, which are quite possible, that are motivated by some wars refarding fiction articles and that could cause messy fallout here. Nsk92 (talk) 23:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

However, we never should have an article on a person unless that person is indeed the focus of several reliable sources, so that we can write a full biography. If a person's ideas are notable, but the person is not, we should write about the ideas, not the person. As to anything else from N, subguidelines can't excuse themselves from it or weaken it, even if they say they do, so it seems misleading. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:35, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

On the contrary, that is the very point of WP:PROF: academics are notable for their academic work, namely for their ideas. When their work is covered extensively, that is what makes an academic notable in the real world, as well as here. Unlike movie actors, athletes or politicians, academics are almost never written about in person until they are either dead or are about to retire, and even then only briefly. That is the nature of academia: the traditions there are different and wrting about a person is simply not done. That does not mean that articles about academics whose academic work has made substantial impact are not needed. On the contrary, they are a whole lot more encyclopedic than articles about some teen pop star, where there is extensive info about that pop-star's favorite color, favorite tooth-paste and their ongoing boyfriend/girlfriend problems. Nsk92 (talk) 23:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I think, in that case, the important thing is to cover the ideas of the person, not the person him/herself. It's not to say we shouldn't cover academic topics, nor that they aren't of much more value than $TEEN_POPSTAR's latest idiocy, as I'd very much agree on both counts. But if the sources we've got cover the concepts and not the person, we should follow their lead, covering the concepts and not the person. That's exactly why we have the idea of notability, that we cover a given subject in depth if reliable sources choose to do so, and don't if they don't. Anything else is going to require original synthesis, and that's particularly bad in biographies. We should only have a biography if we have ample source material to have a full one. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

That is a rather radical view that does not correspond to the current consensus or common practice (and not just in relation to academics) and, if followed to the logical conclusion, would eliminate close to 90% of articles about academics, both living and dead; a very counter-productive outcome encyclopedically. WP:PROF takes the view that when the source says that a person X introduced an idea Y in some scholarly publication, which is important for such and such reasons, that constitutes coverage of both X and Y. A good article about an academic will necessarily concentrate on that academic's academic work. It is quite possible to write decent articles about academics of this sort, and I have written a few of them myself, e.g. John Stallings and Karen Vogtmann. They do not have much in a way of personal information (such as childhood, personal and family life, etc), so are not, in a sense, complete biographies. But articles like that have significant encyclopedic value and benefit the project. Nsk92 (talk) 00:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree completely with Nsk92. In addition, I often feel that all those articles concentrating on personal life, early childhood, girlfriend/boyfriend problems, etc. are just some kind of voyeurism and only marginally better than what one can find in any tabloid. Unless important to understand a person and her/his work, those details are trivial. Concerning the reliable sources, as WP:ACADEMIC recognizes, university websites may not be independent third-party sources, but they are usually reliable sources about someone's career. --Crusio (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Nsk92, I had a look at the articles you mentioned. I'm having a difficult time seeing what an improvement is over having a pseudo-"biography" at the person's name, basically stating "They came up with this idea", rather than simply mentioning them briefly in the article we (at least should) have on the notable concept. The idea is notable, but several dozen name drops don't make a person notable. In-depth information about them does. That's exactly why that requirement exists, to ensure that the subject of an article, in and of itself, is also the subject of the sources. If the idea's the focus in the sources, with the person mentioned as a footnote, the idea should be the focus here, with the person mentioned as a footnote. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure I am following you here, but the point is to represent an overall picture of a particular person's academic contributions in a single article about that person. Such contributions are almost never limited to a single concept or a single result. In a good article about an academic one can see both the different ways in which this academic influenced the subject they worked in and, to some extent, the evolution of the interests of the academic and how it interacted with the evolution of the subject the academic worked in. As a practicing academic myself, I find these kinds of articles about academics interesting, useful and attractive and I am fairly sure that many others do too. (In fact, if I remember correctly, these types of articles were, in part, what attracted me personally to Wikipedia in the first place. I was on the colloquium committee in our department for a couple of years, and frequently had to introduce our colloquium and named lectures speakers before their talks. On a few occasions, I found Wikipedia to be the only place where one could find coherently presented info about some of our speakers and their contributions.) Of course, articles about individual notable concepts are valuable too but ideas-oriented articles about academics provide a valuable complimentary part of the picture; this, in my opinion, is the essense of what a good encyclopedia should be about. Nsk92 (talk) 03:18, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

A guideline should not go against the policy: WP:CONEXCEPT Consensus decisions in specific cases do not automatically override consensus on a wider scale - for instance, a local debate on a WikiProject does not override the larger consensus behind a policy or guideline. The WikiProject cannot decide that for the articles within its scope, some policy does not apply, unless they can convince the broader community that doing so is right.

In other words, this guideline cannot be independent of WP:N, regardless of all the arguments listed in previous threads. Ask for wider consensus. 212.200.243.165 (talk) 17:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I restored it. Perhaps it could be better put, but this and the other special notability guidelines should not be interpreted to contradict the general guidelines. What they do is explicate the word "substantial" and in practice there are no problems The word "independent" is clearly not being used here to contradict the wider guidelines. (Answering one of Seraphimblade's concerns above, this paragraph says that this guideline can't be used to exclude.) Perhaps it should say it supplements WP:N & WP:BIO and is independent of other SNG's like WP:MUSIC.John Z (talk) 19:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

From comments above by few other editors you can see that this guideline is precisely interpreted in the way that you say it shouldn't be. That's why I think confusion should be removed from the lead. [2] 212.200.240.232 (talk) 16:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] FYI

There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#WP:ATHLETE needs updating that is also about WP:PROF. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New reference for impact analysis in computer science

I just added a new reference (footnote 5) regarding how to assess impact for computer scientists. Of most relevance for WP:PROF, it states very emphatically that ISI should not be used for CS. I think it makes for interesting reading more generally in connection with discipline-specific standards for our criterion #1, scientific impact. Something else from the reference that may be worth saying somewhere (I've seen it discussed in AfDs though it doesn't seem to be present in WP:PROF itself: in many disciplines, author ordering is significant, but in CS (and also in math) it's generally not. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:33, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] My concerns about WP: PROF

I recommend giving some merits (5% or 8%of merit?) to someone co-authoring with some Wikipedia (notable) in the same filed. Erdos number falls in this discussion. Someone having Erdos number 1 is some what prestigious (5%-10% merit?).

Last but not least, teaching experience (15 years or more) at higher education is accounted to decide notability along with some scholarly work (research). Math and science have never been more important to the future of our children in the US. Many universities in the US are prioritizing teaching over research. I believe the same thing holds true elsewhere. I don’t see this clause being noted anywhere in WP: PROF. In short, lots of things that people do that are highly valuable do not count towards making them more notable.

On the other hand, someone has seen articles about academics where the case for notability rested on teaching performance rather than research or textbook writing or whatever, but they're quite rare. I’m just a beginner to make a note of all these.

I would like to see these things are included in WP:PROF documents. Thanks.

--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 12:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Disagree. I am in agreement with previous discussion here that Erdos number amounts to inheriance of notability. Also, I don't think that teaching ought to be included in WP:PROF, if impact of teaching is truly notable, then it ought to be demonstrable through WP:BIO means. It is my impression that WP:PROF is intended to assess the impact of a person's ideas on the world of scholarship, and therefore ought to be limited to research, or research analogues.Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:16, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

“I am in agreement with previous discussion here that Erdos number amounts to inheriance of notability’’- Can someone help me to find this discussion? Thanks. --Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 21:23, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Is this you are referring to from WP:PROF:? Having a small collaboration distance from a famous or notable academic (e.g. having a small Erdos number) is not, in and of itself, indicative of satisfying Criterion 1. Many would think that Erdos number 1 has some meaningful significance for notability check. Erdos number 2 or more could be a fun. The followings what I’m writing to applies to math and science disciplines only: I've seen articles in math/science academics where the case for notability rested on textbook writing or whatever. As far as merits are concerned, I wonder how writing books could be much different than teachings at higher education. Is writing a good book equivalent to writing a good research paper for a good publication? Writing books is a kind of an art, likewise the teaching too. What is that scholarly activity we find in writing books, but not in teaching at higher education? It is understood that those who are good in teaching tend to write good books in math and science. What makes a good math/science teacher and what does not make a good book writer in Math/science? I see some mismatch in WP:PROF for academia especially in math/cs/science/engineering/medical science under the present situations across the globe. Thanks. --Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 01:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The point is that we cannot evaluate quality of teaching in most cases. We don't have the information to do so. On the rare occasions that we do (third-party published articles attesting to the exceptionality of someone's teaching) these articles are usually taken as satisfying WP:BIO, so the more specific requirements of WP:PROF are not necessary in those cases. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• I think that this discussion is misguided. Notability is not the same thing as deserving. Many very deserving people are not notable and the other way around. Think of mass-murderers, war criminals, and what not. Those people are notable but not deserving. A good teacher is very deserving (even though in most Western countries they are sorely underpaid) and, as far as I am concerned, worth her/his weight in gold. But if that does not result in publicity (i.e., articles in reliable independent sources), it does not lead to notability. Even if we would somehow throw overboard all current notions of notability and decide that "quality" and "deserving" merits a WP article, it would be impossible to write such an article for lack of sources. --Crusio (talk) 07:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• The notability articles in academia for example start with “John Doe a Professor at ….”. What is the definition of a Professor at a higher education and in wiki? WP:PROF begins with the words ‘Professor Test’. Professors are involved with teaching, research and working on some grants. I do not know how ‘grants’ are hooked to WP:PROF definitions. Grants could be any thing. Every faculty has to get going in some kind of research activities whether his/her department has a PhD program or not. Also everybody has responsibility of teaching 1 to 4 courses in the US. In England, and India, there are professors who teach just graduate classes (Departments or Graduate centers). I've seen articles in academics where the case for notability did not rest on someone are strictly a Professor. We find here lots of variations in the definition itself.

--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 12:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

• The teaching requirements indeed vary enormous (when I was a professor in the US, my contract stipulated a maximum of 6 hours teaching... per year! Some seminars, Grand Rounds, and such counted towards those 6 hours. I think I only taught 4 hours of regular classes in the 5 years I spent there... Some professors teach a lot and consequently don't have much time for research, for some it is the other way around. Some get lots of grants, others hardly any. Some publish many articles, some only a few. None of this, I surmise, makes a professor (or whatever title the person in question has) necessarily notable or non notable. If someone publishes 10 articles in Science, none of which ever gets cited, then I don't think that this persons has made a lot of impact in the field and consequently is not notable. That doesn't mean that the research was bad or not important (after all, Science found it important and good enough to publish). It just means that the work (and hence the researcher) has not impacted the field and is therefore not notable. If someone writes a textbook that is widely used in teaching, then that person has become noticeable to a great many students and hence is notable. Whether the textbook is any good is immaterial. I repeat, whether the accomplishments are good or bad, someone only gets notable when (s)he is remarked and reported upon. --Crusio (talk) 13:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Agree with Crusio here, the intent is not to identify Academics that are particularly good at their job. The reason we have WP:ACADEMIC and don't have WP:ACCOUNTANT is not that we are going through the list of professions alphabetically and identifying the criteria that mark someone as being outstandingly good at their job, and havn't gotten past ACB yet. Academics *do something* particularly relevant to encyclopedic topics, they generate knowledge, and it is that role that we are attempting to assess with WP:PROF. Erdos was just this guy, a notable mathematician, for certain, but as David Eppstein (IIRC) has argued elsewhere, far from the most important. The Erdos number is a historical accident, rather like degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Far more notable mathematicians could be substituted for Erdos if one really wanted to use a degrees-of-separation metric for academic impact. Those mathematicians who have made a notable impact on the practice of mathematics ought to pass WP:PROF, those that havn't, but have co-authored a paper with someone who has, should fail it. Good teachers should fail it, good teachers, who are verifiably the subject of extnsive coverage in reliable secondary sources discussing their excellence as teachers, should pass WP:BIO, because they are notable teachers. Pete.Hurd (talk) 17:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to clarify: Erdos is a good choice for Erdos numbers because he was a very good mathematician, worked on a wide variety of different problems, and had a huge number of co-authors. He is not "the most important" mathematician of his century (Grothendieck comes to mind as an example of someone more important) but I don't think it's accurate to say that he's "far from" the most important. Anyway, my main argument with respect to Erdos numbers is that they have more to do with what field you're in than with the impact of your own research: e.g. most computational geometers have Erdos numbers of 2 or 3, while typical numbers might be larger for say algebraic topologists, not because computational geometry is more central to mathematics (it isn't) but because it has closer connections to Erdos' own interests. It's too indirect to be useful as a measure of individual impact. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't mean to overstate your point (I took a quick look to see if I could find your comment to link to, but it must have been in an AfD I didn't come across it). Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, It would be more appropriate if we change WP:PROF to WP:researcher or WP:research-academia. --Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 12:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:PROF is just one of the short nicknames for Wikipedia:Notability (academics). The nutshell description on that page includes "[...] scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) ". Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:51, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It reads like this - "This guideline, sometimes referred to as the professor test,..". That is confusing. Here is the explaination - Not all professors (including full , assistant etc.) fall ih this. It just covers a portion of that. Also not all philosophers, researchers, scientists etc. fall in this - So it's good to pick something like WP:Scholars. We may abbreviate it to WP:SCHOL. We need to update the guidelines which currently reads as 'This guideline, sometimes referred to as "the professor test,..". This test is not about professors or full professors. Again not all professors are philosophers etc.

--Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (talk) 23:05, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

the use of the term Professor test is something I havent seen in a good while now, perhaps "formerly known" ?? DGG (talk) 01:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] I'm finding this page really helpful.

I've been editing (mostly copyediting) for a couple of months, pretty seriously. I've really gotten into the Wikipedia-thing and I am so grateful for what it does. But I've been mystified about notability issues on academic bios. This page helped more than anything so far, so your discussion is quite valuable. I learned a new criteria that explains one of my own problems with many academic Bios:

• Criteria 3 -5: Contrary to WP:N. Attempts to legitimise transfer of notability from the works to the person

Thanks for that.--Levalley (talk) 01:39, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, my feeling is that criteria 2, 3 and 5 are the ones that most directly translate WP:N into academic terms. Someone else has already noted them; therefore, they are notable. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

exactly. Researchers are known for their research., as athletes for their athletics, and so on. Criterion 2, awards, is in fact not just for academics: significant awards at a national level in a persons field are the easiest way to show notability. DGG (talk) 02:47, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] UK use of professor

I am looking at creating a page for a deceased professor in the UK, and I was pointed to this page. In the UK, lecturers and researchers are called lecturers and researchers, although with variations of rank and standing. Professorships are awarded on the basis of their work, often after many years, and most departments tend to have a single professor who is often to that department as a dean is to a school. A professor is a formal title that reflects both rank and an established basis of work. Will creating a page for a UK professor be unproblematic - because unless they have done what you require for a valid entry, they would not be called professor here. Mish (talk) 09:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think the comparison with a Dean is correct, it is more like Chair of a department in the US. Neither automatically qualifies for notability under this guideline. To create an article on this person, it would be best to include as many sources as you can find and, for example, include some of his most important publications. An indication of how often his/her work has been cited can also be helpful. Also, if there are any awards or such, that would go a long wazy to establishing notability, too. Hope this helps. --Crusio (talk) 10:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Professor#Most other English-speaking countries describes the situation in the UK pretty well. It's no longer true that most departments in the UK have only a single professor, and successful large departments at research-orientated universities can have a dozen or more. I don't think a UK professorship would be thought to confer an automatic pass of WP:Notability (academics). On the other hand it's often easier finding independent reliable sources for deceased academics than living ones, as obituaries are a good source. An obituary produced by their own university wouldn't be considered independent, but those in national newspapers or academic journals would certainly count, and I think magazines, newsletters or websites produced by learned or professional societies would too. And such an article would naturally be free of any suspicion of being an autobiography. Qwfp (talk) 14:05, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the help. Yes, chair would be closer. OK, I believe there were obituaries (I was invited to write one, but declined at the time), and publications which are cited. Not sure about awards, but certainly an award was established in her name posthumously, which presumably would count in her favour. Thanks again. Mish (talk) 16:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

What is actually closest then is named professorship in the US. Most large departments in major research universities of high standing have several of these, and they are all almost always or always notable--I cant think of one that has been deleted in years. When you get outside the major universities, then it becomes much less automatic. Same I'd say in the UK. DGG (talk) 02:40, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the help - I have created the page Tamsin Wilton. It is my first page, so would appreciate any suggestions for improving it and ensuring that it doesn't get put up for deletion. I have included bibliography and referenced the biography. Should I inform the WP:biography folks as well? Mish (talk) 16:50, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Law school deans (in the U.S.)

I'd like to propose that the notes regarding criteria #6 be expanded to include law school deans, at least in the United States. A law school dean is simply not comparable to a department chair. The American Bar Association sets forth regulations on the operation of law schools which must be followed for such an institution to receive and maintain ABA accreditation. These regulations specify that "A law school shall have a full-time dean, selected by the governing board or its designee, to whom the dean shall be responsible". ABA Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 206(a).

Thus, a law school dean may not simply be a professor selected by fellow professors, nor even by the President of the University. Various provisions in the ABA regulations act to require that a law school will have substantial independence from the university with which it is affiliated, so the law school dean effectively holds the highest post within a distinct academic institution. As an anecdotal matter, no one arrives at the decanal position in an American law school without achieving some status in some aspect of the legal community.

I'd add that similar standards are probably applicable to medical school deans, although I have nothing specific to cite for that hunch.

Cheers! bd2412 T 01:29, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Further to the above, I did a bit of research and, unsurprisingly, found that similar standards exist with respect to medical school deans. Specifically, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical schools, thereby making them eligible for federal grants and state licensure, sets forth the following conditions:

IS-7. Administrative officers and members of a medical school faculty must be appointed by, or on the authority of, the governing board of the medical school or its parent university.

IS-8. The chief official of the medical school, who usually holds the title "dean," must have ready access to the university president or other university official charged with final responsibility for the school, and to other university officials as are necessary to fulfill the responsibilities of the dean's office.

IS-9. There must be clear understanding of the authority and responsibility for medical school matters among the vice president for health affairs, the dean of the medical school, the faculty, and the directors of the other components of the medical center and university.

IS-10. The dean must be qualified by education and experience to provide leadership in medical education, scholarly activity, and care of patients.

...

FA-12. The dean and a committee of the faculty should determine medical school policies.

Taken together, these requirements indicate that appointment of a medical school dean is outside the reach of the university president, and that a medical school dean must also be a scholar in the field, and must have policy-making authority within the school. Hence, it should be clear that both law school deans and medical school deans are, by dint of their position, inherently notable. bd2412 T 17:24, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

What is the particular issue that these proposed additional guidelines will help clear up? I don't believe that there has been a problem of notable academic deans being deleted at AfD, has there? I feel that we should add guidelines only when they help prevent likely (or persistent) wrong AfD outcomes; otherwise the guidelines become too unwieldy. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, exactly this topic came up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Epstein (law professor), where another editor asserted that these guidelines exclude law school deans as the equivalent of department chairs (which I then did the research to address). bd2412 T 16:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but in his case there was little doubt that he was notable anyway by other criteria. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Still, the point was raised, and his holding of that position should have been dispositive if these criteria were implemented correctly. bd2412 T 19:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• (unindent) As far as I can see, the point was brought up by yourself. I don't yet see any reason to change this policy for law deans. I have to admit that I find the "precedence" for that (the named chair rule) the weakest part of this policy. --Crusio (talk) 20:09, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

  For the record, Niteshift36 was the first to bring up the fact of this person being a law school dean, and my research was in reponse to Amthernandez going ballistic over the assertion that law school deans are inherently notable (which, pursuant to the above-noted ABA regulations, they clearly are, as are medical school deans pursuant to the above-noted LCME regulations). Deans of medical schools and law schools are nothing like "named chairs" (whom the Dean typically has power to appoint), and if the rules are ambiguous enough to allow such a frivolous argument to be made, then the rules need to be clarified. bd2412 T 01:11, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oops, my bad about who brought it up first in that AfD. The point is rather immaterial, though. As for Deans having the power to appoint a named chair, that goes for any school, Law, Medical, or other. No Dean however, will be able to make such an appointment on her/his own: there is always a search committee and basically it is they who decide. --Crusio (talk) 07:36, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

• Part of the distinction arises from the nature of law schools in the United States - every American law school is a wholly postgraduate institution, meaning that an applicant must have already received a four-year bachelor's degree from a college or university in order to even be considered for admission to a law school (medical schools have the same restriction). Of course, no law school graduate may practice law in the U.S. without passing a state bar exam, which is why bar associations wield such expansive influence over the operation of law schools. This is why those law schools that are affiliated with a university tend to operate as institutions functionally separate from the university itself. They have their own libraries and other facilities, graduation ceremonies, distinct alumni associations, etc. The substantial restrictions imposed on the operation of law schools is one reason why, with over 5,750 accredited institutions of higher education throughout the United States, there are only 200 accredited law schools. Think about that - in the entire country, which has well over 5,000 colleges and universities, and over a million lawyers, there are only 200 law school deanships. bd2412 T 08:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

If there are no objections from anyone familiar with American law schools and medical schools, I will specify in the appropriate section that in the United States, deans of law schools and medical schools are likely to be inherently notable. bd2412 T 18:38, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think this would be a good addition (and I have been a faculty member at an American medical school). --Crusio (talk) 18:45, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Agree with Crusio. I don't see that it matters how many or few there are. I think this rationale confabulates "important person at work" with "historically notable" Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Then why have criteria number 6 at all? Our standards explicitly hold that a person is "notable" if they have "held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution"; I have bothered to perform the labor of providing evidence that law school deans and medical school deans hold exactly such a post (and no contrary evidence has been introduced here). Perhaps no amendment to the language of the criteria is necessary, as I can constantly keep a lookout for deletion debates regarding deans of such high-level, independent, professional institutions, and I can duplicate the evidence of this standard being met in each such debate. But that seems an awful waste of resources, since the criteria can simply be clarified to accept the evidence as provided. bd2412 T 22:53, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
      • You have not "provided evidence", you have asserted your opinion. The guidelines explicitly exclude deans and that exception has not been inserted by accident. --Crusio (talk) 00:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
        • What? I can assure you that the American Bar Association guidelines for accreditation of law schools are not my "opinion" - as great as it would be to be in a position to direct the level of independence with which all 200 such institutions are to operate, those are someone else's "opinions". Furthermore, those "opinions" are binding on every law school in this country. Those, along with the comparable rules governing medical school accreditation, constitute the evidence to which I was referring. bd2412 T 01:12, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• Of course those are not your opinion. But it is your opinion that those ABA guidelines imply automatic notability for deans of law schools. --Crusio (talk) 01:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• What the ABA guidelines do is make it clear that a law school dean is the "highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution". There is no place for opinion to enter into it, unless someone is proposing to remove criteria 6, which I have not heard yet. As you have been on the faculty of an American medical school, let me ask you, was the dean of that school lacking in notability? bd2412 T 01:49, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• (unindent) The highest official is the president or chancellor, not a dean, regardless of what school. --Crusio (talk) 02:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Albany Law School. William Mitchell College of Law. Thomas M. Cooley Law School. I could go on. bd2412 T 02:34, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Criterion 5: named/personal chair?

Criterion 5 currently reads:

"The person holds or has held a named/personal chair appointment or "Distinguished Professor" appointment at a major institution of higher education and research."

I'd like to propose deletion of "personal" from the above. In my understanding, a "personal chair" is just any full professorship other than a named chair or a departmental chair, i.e. as Professor#Most other English-speaking countries says, "a professorship awarded specifically to that individual". Are we really such a position at a major institution is automatically notable? This would seem to contradict Note 13, "Lesser administrative posts (Provost, Dean, Department Chair, etc) are generally not sufficient to satisfy Criterion 6". So a personal chair is notable, but being department chair isn't?? Unless the restriction to "major" institutions meant to be highly restrictive, rather than just meaning e.g. any accredited university? I'd welcome others' thoughts on this. Regards, Qwfp (talk) 17:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

my understanding of personal chair is a chair created specifically for a person or in honor of a person, as distinct from a ordinary chair without specific designation. Chair in department chair is not the same use of the word--normally, it means chairperson in an administrative sense only. DGG ( talk ) 23:17, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Notability guideline for academic journals

• I have created a first draft of a notability guideline for academic journals. Please feel free to comment/correct/complete, etc. As it would seem to relate to this guideline, I am posting this notice here, too, so that interested editors can contribute either on the draft's talk page or here. Thanks. --Crusio (talk) 12:48, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Presidents/chancellors of smaller schools

Curious — would the presidents of smaller private schools be considered to pass criterion 6? I have enough information to create stubs on several presidents of Geneva College who did nothing that would make them notable aside from being the Geneva president, but I don't want to do work for articles that will only be deleted. Nyttend (talk) 23:53, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Presidents of academic societies

The guideline 6 has been challenged at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elizabeth Ann Nalley with respect to a president of the American Chemical Society DGG ( talk ) 21:39, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] will these do for notability?

1. Distinguished Scholar award from the Communal Studies Association 2. Myers Center Award

? 212.200.205.163 (talk) 15:44, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

a) This type of question should probably be raised on WP:Help desk.

b) Neither the Communal Studies Association or the Myers Center seem to be notable so I'd say no. That's just me though.--RDBury (talk) 13:58, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Article of interest

People who have been involved in this guideline might like to comment here: Talk:William_Connolley#WP:ACADEMIC. MickMacNee (talk) 18:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Membership to Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and WP:PROF#C3

There are a couple of new articles whose only claim to notability is the subjects' membership to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. (Some of the articles in question: Helge Holden, John Grue, Erling Størmer, Kristian B. Dysthe.) Could someone help me to determine if membership to this academy is sufficient to pass WP:PROF#C3? Le Docteur (talk) 16:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hooshang Heshmat

Claims of notability for the academic Hooshang Heshmat are not supported by any reliable secondary sources. This article could be saved from deletion if sources can be found, but if not, what should be the outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hooshang Heshmat? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

• If you look at the article, you'll see that Dr. Heshmat is not in academia -- having a doctorate doesn't make one an academic. Also, this talk page isn't for the discussion of the notability of individual academics, nor is it for asking leading questions about article deletion discussions, it's for the discussion of the notability guideline for academics in general. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 18:11, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Connes on citation counts

From a recent interview with well-known mathematician Alain Connes [3] (p.14):

“

I think the number of quotations is a very very strange measure. If you look at citations in mathematics then it doesn’t make sense because there are very hard papers which very few people have read, and in fact there is really an inverse correlation between the difficulty of a paper and the number of people who actually read it, let alone quote it.

”

—David Eppstein (talk) 17:17, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

• How true, I love it! Especially since I am wrestling at this very moment with my presentation (10 days from now...) for the 4-year renewal of our institute, of which citation analysis and impact factors is an important part... :-) --Crusio (talk) 17:22, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for becoming a Professor in the UK

My understanding is that the typical criteria for becoming a professor in the UK at government funded institutions for higher education is that there is "sufficient evidence of sustained output of high quality, peer-reviewed research publications or other equally recognised forms of research output, and evidence that they have made a significant contribution to the discipline and earned an international reputation." This would seem to me to imply everyone in the UK who is a Professor at such an institution has been judged by an appointments panel to meet a requirment such as No 1 on our list: "1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. " What are the substantial problems with this interpretation? Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 16:17, 20 November 2009 (UTC))

I don't know that there is a problem. Professors in the UK are like full professors in the United States, and full professors at research institutions tend to pass this guideline (though, of course, if one failed to do so they would still be non-notable, university appellation notwithstanding). RJC ^Talk_Contribs 19:58, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Failing the Prof test

I have been working on an article on Professor Matthew Watson which has been deleted for lack of notability - failing the Prof test. I have been trying unsuccesfully to get it restored and think I have lost the argument. Is it the intention of those working on the guidlines that such professors might be deemed to have failed the test? Comparing this Matthew Watson with the other Matthew Watsons it seems to me our standards with respect to academics are far more demanding than for US baseball players or US soccer players. Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 19:09, 21 November 2009 (UTC))

• Yes, that's true. However, the fact that the jocks can't get their act together is no reason for us to follow their bad example.... --Crusio (talk) 22:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

• • My worry is not that there are problems with other articles it is that wikipedia's coverage is good in sports and pop music and films especially US ones but for some reason the academic criteria is far harder than for other areas and indeed than it used to be. It used to be the case that writing a couple of textbooks with a good publisher and publishing lots of articles in peer reviewed journals used to be enough but not anymore. (Msrasnw (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2009 (UTC))

• As far as I can see, writing 1 single text book, as long as it is widely used, suffices to make an academic notable. Writing a bunch of papers doesn't: all academics publish. But if those papers are modestly cited (usually counts of a couple of hundred times in total, with top papers getting 70-80 cites, and/or an h-factor >15, -in the sciences, at least) then that is enough to satisfy notability criteria, too. And (again, in the sciences), anybody below that really isn't that notable. --Crusio (talk) 11:04, 22 November 2009 (UTC)