Talk:Beth Hayes

Notability

I am not convinced that this person meets the notability guidelines set forth at Wikipedia:Notability (academics) or elsewhere. As best I can tell, she was a promising economist who met with an untimely death and has been memorialized by two prizes named in her honor, one at a school she attended and the other at a school at which she taught. Is there reliable third party coverage of her life, her career, or accomplishments elsewhere that can be added here in order to establish her notability? JohnInDC (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe that she does meet the criteria specified:

She has been referenced in the publication "On Women" by David Cass that was cited. There may well be other references of which I am not aware.

The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times. (I believe this has been met by the creation of at least one significant, perennial award at a top university)

The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field.(Hayes is still widely cited and quoted in all four of the widely different areas of economic theory and now, practice. This because of the foundational aspects of her accomplishments.)

My final thought is that at some point this is a chicken and egg problem for all but the most famous or notorious and what I thought that stubs were intended to address. Until an entry is created there is no place for others to contribute additional material. The collaboration that makes Wikipedia so valuable must begin with an individual contribution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tobydavid (talk • contribs) 15:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I read the "On Women" speech and can't truly credit it for anything. It's not an article but instead a kind of rambling discourse - notes of a "talk" to some grad students reproduced on the author's personal website at Penn - which by its own terms it was "off the record" and was more in the nature of a personal reminiscence than any kind of "publication". Second, having an award named after you is not the same as winning a significant one based on the quality or strength of one's work - awards come in all kinds, from the prestigious to the trivial, and are named for any number of reasons, which may have little or nothing to do with Wikipedia notability. As to her being widely cited, that's not even mentioned in the article. If that's in fact the case, then you need should state that, in the article - literally. "Hayes's work is widely cited and quoted in all four of the areas of economic theory and practice" or whatever - and then offer up a few examples, perhaps as references, of reliable third party citations that illustrate her influence. If her work was indeed seminal and foundational, that shouldn't be hard.

You are right that stubs are there so that others will add more information but if you are going to create an article in the first place it is incumbent upon you to include enough in the article, even as a stub, to make it clear that the article meets Wikipedia notability standards in the first place. Stub or not, the article has to pass that test. As this one stands, it is almost a candidate for speedy deletion (in my opinion). You seem to be familiar with her and with her work, and I gather you're an economist yourself - it should not be too hard for you to pull together some material that will shore up her notability. Please do do that - it's not really fair to put that onus on others. JohnInDC (talk) 15:38, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I took out the reference to the Northwestern University award - the citation was to a personal CV, reflecting a single award of a $500 prize in 1986. I tried to find another source to verify that the award still exists or was given out more than that once, and failed. JohnInDC (talk) 15:46, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I will be happy to add citations to her work as my schedule permits. I did not see similar refences to citations in the listings of other economists that I had used for a reference. Also, I have yet to master the art of rapid Wikipedia editing, particularly for things such as citations. I just did a google search on "Beth Hayes Asymmetric" and got quite a number of hits for articles citing her original work in that field, alone.

"On Women" was a lengthy public address which has been transcipted, etc. There was sufficient information, however on Beth Hayes to indicate the the award was created because of her merit as an economist and not simply because her family left a large endowment to the University. I believe that he suggests that she may have been his best graduate student and the significance of that is that another of his graduate students is a Nobel lauriet in economics.

As an economist, I had become familiar with the work of Beth Hayes in two separate and quite diffent areas of economic theory. When I looked to see what other topics she was researching, I discover how brief her career had been. Then, I learned about the about the award given in her honor. That made me curious and I eventually came across what David Cass had written about her. As with most of Wikipedia contributions, I thought that if I was interested in a historical person or event then others might be interested, as well.

I would happily supply some citation information, but frankly, I am not anxious to devote too much more time to this project, particularly if you think it will be deleted, anyway.Tobydavid (talk) 20:30, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Please, if you have or can come up with reliable sourcing to demonstrate her notability, I encourage you to add it. If Beth Hayes is notable in the Wikipedia sense then an article about her is a welcome addition. But also please go read WP:Notable, which explains the general concept of what notability is and why it matters here. The trick about Wikipedia, which is not at all obvious to new editors, is that it is not a repository of merely "new" or "interesting" information about various subjects, but instead a compendium, a collection, of existing information, analyses, opinions, syntheses *already* generated by others. The presumption is (as to people anyhow) is that if a person has been the subject of a range of independent and reliable third party coverage (e.g., established magazines, newpapers, books, TV etc.) then they are presumptively notable and are properly included. Conversely in the absence of such coverage they are - and here I am summarizing - presumptively not. There are different specific criteria for different kinds of persons - e.g., an academic may not get much media coverage but may be well known within professional circles or have received a number of significant awards, etc. within his or her field, which are the professional equivalent of, you know, Time or People. So someone like Beth Hayes probably needs to meet one of those criteria, and as I suggested, the best one may be the consensus among economists, reflected by references and discussions of her work, that she is an important figure in the field. A quick review of WP:Reliable,WP:Verifiable and WP:Original research might also be enlightening and also help you understand why "On Women" likely fails to meet the criteria for reliablity or independence of the subject.

I'm not saying that this article is going to be deleted no matter what you do but instead to encourage you, as a professional who is well-situated to evaluate the nature and quality of references to or discussions of Hayes's work, to find some reliable, independent third party sources to confirm what you believe to be true - namely, that Hayes was an important thinker whose work has made a "significant impact" in economics. I can read the New York Times or ARTNews magazine and judge whether a painter or a potter is notable but it's much harder to penetrate the world of academic publications to figure out whether, e.g., citations to her articles are by recognized economists in their fields or by aspiring PhD candidates.

Finally, also please try to appreciate this from the point of view of someone who knows a bit about Wikipedia but not much about economic theory. To my eyes, based on what you've put in the article, Beth Hayes was a promising economist who died young, and who, following the efforts of her mentor at Penn, had a (minor) award named for her. She also authored two articles and co-authored two others. That's it. My own rudimentary efforts to sort out her notability, or lack of it, have produced a number of links merely back to the original articles, as well as a variety of citations in other articles that I'm, frankly, in not much of a position to evaluate. As I said above, if her work is so important to the field, it should be comparatively easy to come up with a few reliable sources who say so! JohnInDC (talk) 21:42, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I asked for a bit of help here. JohnInDC (talk) 15:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

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