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General Notes & Caveats

I merged the "General notes" and "Caveats" section, and eliminated a few of the notes, which were either redundant or contradictory. Feel free to comment.

  • Deleted: For people who have made a substantial impact outside academia but in their academic capacity, the appropriate criteria for that sort of notability apply as an alternative—as for a person notable for popular writing in their subject. If notable only in another capacity entirely, see the general criteria for that field. This paragraph is grammatically incorrect, and is a essentially the same as criterion 7.
  • Deleted: An alternative standard, "the academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor" is often cited. This criterion has the advantage of being concise though it is not universally accepted. Determining the notability of an average professor is difficult in itself and usually relies on one of the nine more detailed criteria above. When used, this criterion is generally applied to indicate that a tenured full professor in a high ranking institution in the US, or equivalent rank elsewhere, is above the average. You can not have an official guideline, and then say that part of it is not universally accepted. Concepts that don't have community consensus belong in an essay. Furthermore, stating that an an above-average tenured professor is notable is in contradiction to Wikipedia's general notability guidelines, which state the following: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list.
  • Kept: It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources are publicly available; see Wikipedia:Verifiability. For the routine uncontroversial details of a career, official institutional and professional sources are accepted as sourcing for those details. This note makes sense. Not everything that is theoretically notable can be verified, and we cannot have articles which are non-verifiable.
  • Kept: Note that as this is a guideline and not a rule, exceptions may well exist. Some academics may not meet any of these criteria, but may still be notable for their academic work. It is important to note that it is very difficult to make clear requirements in terms of numbers of publications or their quality: the criteria, in practice, vary greatly by field. Also, this proposal sets the bar fairly low, which is natural: to a degree, academics live in the public arena, trying to influence others with their ideas. It is natural that successful ones should be considered notable. This note is good advice. Assessing the notability of academics is inherently more difficult than many other fields because their work is rarely covered by newspapers or mainstream media sources, and not all academic fields operate the same.
  • Deleted: An academic who is not notable by these guidelines could still be notable for non-academic reasons. Redundant. This is stated in the header paragraph of the guidelines.
  • Deleted: It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for an article in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources are publicly available; see Wikipedia:Verifiability. This is an almost word-for-word duplication of the third note. NJ Wine (talk) 17:30, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Great job on pruning the duplication, I agree with most of what you've written, but I don't think there's a consensus for removing the "Average professor test" which has been around since the earliest versions when this was accepted as a guideline and is still used in AfDs often. There are many guidelines that have multiple not universally accepted parts (heck, even policy isn't universally accepted). I think more discussion needs to happen before this is removed. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 01:33, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I think that the "average professor test could go back in". Xxanthippe (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC).
Michael Scott Cuthbert & Xxanthippe, I have a few major problems with the "average professor test."
(1) Although all assessments of notability contain some degree of subjectivity, they are absolute tests that are not dependent on the notability of others. The "average professor test" is a relative assessment that states that an academic more accomplished than the average academic is notable. No other Wikipedia notability guideline bases notability on an average in a given field.
(2) The paragraph states the the average professor test is not universally accepted, which means that it belongs in an essay, not in a guideline.
(3) Currently the test grants notability if the academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor. Everyone's concept of what is an average professor will differ. There are roughly 1.5 million college professors/instructors in the United States, many of whom do little research (e.g., at a community college). I seriously doubt that we can use that entire pool of professors, or even the entire pool of professors in a given field as the average. NJ Wine (talk) 03:06, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I agree. Speaking as a scholar of (U.S.) higher education, I assert that no one is qualified to judge faculty members from all disciplines as there are simply too many disciplines and too many differences between them. I would not even trust most faculty to be able to identify "average" outside their own specialty much less in a field completely outside their discipline. The only way this kind of comparative criteria would work is if we had panels of experts from every specialty in every discipline to judge each individual case. I understand what the criterion is trying to get at but it's simply unworkable in practice. ElKevbo (talk) 03:32, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
ElKevbo, You bring up a very good point. While the "average professor test" may nominally seem simpler than some of the other notability criteria, it is nearly impossible to use correctly. I understand that this note was included to ensure the notability of an academic who doesn't meet the other criteria but is leading figure in their field. However, I think that the ignore all rules concept is already stated very clearly in the following note: Note that as this is a guideline and not a rule, exceptions may well exist. Some academics may not meet any of these criteria, but may still be notable for their academic work. It is important to note that it is very difficult to make clear requirements in terms of numbers of publications or their quality: the criteria, in practice, vary greatly by field. Also, this proposal sets the bar fairly low, which is natural: to a degree, academics live in the public arena, trying to influence others with their ideas. It is natural that successful ones should be considered notable. NJ Wine (talk) 13:44, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

The average professor test has proved its usefulness as a reality check for junior academics and students with robust egos who think that Wikipedia would be improved by an article about themselves. In some cases this will lead to the realisation that their claims are not sufficient and are not worth the effort of creating an article that will inevitably get deleted. The claim that the test is not workable in practice is untenable because it has worked without problem for at least the past four years, although this may not be apparent to those who started their editing in May 2012. How is "average" to be determined? Well, as every issue on Wikipedia is determined -by consensus. Looking back over the academic AfD pages for the past few years it seems that a uniform consensus usually emerges without much difficulty. The problematic cases are often those in which a strong COI or POV is involved.

An editor has removed the paragraph on the Professor test from the article, giving the reason "3 of the 4 people discussing it believe it should be removed". However, on reading through this section, I find that two editors have argued to remove it and two to retain it. I do not think this is enough consensus to delete a long-established guideline. What do editors think? Xxanthippe (talk) 02:58, 10 June 2012 (UTC).

Xxanthippe, I'm going to ignore your uncivil comments, and just deal with issue at hand. A review of even the featured examples on the Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)/Precedents page does not indicate that uniform consensus is common. Unless you can show AfD or DRV examples, I don't see the average professor test (APT) as being much of a check against junior academics and students who want their own Wikipedia page. Quite the contrary. As the document is written, there are 9 criteria for notability, and an academic meeting any one of them is notable. If included, the APT is a bizarrely-written 10th criteria that allows individuals who don't meet C1-C9 to claim notability. Rather than prevent the creation of articles for non-notable individuals, the APT creates a potential pathway to be exploited.
The biggest concern that we have is that there is no agreement about what is an "average professor". The APT states the following: The academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor. Just to start, I think that the language of this statement is wrong, considering that there are roughly 1.5 million professors and university instructors in the US, and most aren't doing much research (e.g., instructors at almost any university, most professors at a community college). It's pretty clear that we are only assessing an academic against other academics who regularly do research.
ElKevbo makes a very good point that it is nearly impossible to accurately determine the "average professor" in a given discipline unless you are from that discipline. Although certain parts of criteria 1 to 9 may be a bit vague, they provide a standard which any editor can read and use to determine if a subject is notable. The APT requires expert knowledge of the current research being done in given discipline to ascertain if a professor's research is above-average or not. I understand that the APT was instituted to deal with academics who may have done important research but didn't quite meet C1-C9. However, we already have the following escape hatch clause in this guideline: Note that as this is a guideline and not a rule, exceptions may well exist. Some academics may not meet any of these criteria, but may still be notable for their academic work. NJ Wine (talk) 04:50, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that Xxanthippe was being uncivil, and I do agree that the statement that 3 of 4 favor removing seems incorrect. His count of 2 and 2 (I'm against removing) seems right. I'm not going to get into a revert war with someone whose views on AfD I tend to agree with and respect. But I do think that some more discussion should happen before changing it. Note that the average professor test was the entire summary of WP:PROF prior to mid 2007 (see for instance [1]), so I have a feeling that by removing the line, you're removing the whole basis upon which the more detailed criteria have been formed. thanks! -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 05:03, 10 June 2012 (UTC) (this paragraph was accidentally removed; I believe El Kevbo's reply below is to Xxanthippe, not me, but not sure.)
Someone else deleted the material; only after you reverted that deletion did I delete the material again noting that the consensus appears to clearly favor deletion. But now that I look back on the discussion above I see that my original understanding of the discussion is incorrect because I didn't notice that one of the participants misformatted their response and I incorrectly thought that he or she supported removing the statement.
So let's return to the original question: Should this statement be present in the guideline? Once again, I assert that it's impossible to enforce because it's impossible to define. If you disagree, please tell me how we can define "average" for all specialties in all academic disciplines. Further, I assert that test is out of step with the broader notability policy by being inherently relative and subjective. In other words, we don't require that sports players be "better than average," we simply require that they have played at the most competitive level of their sport as documented by reliable sources. I get that some editors want to have a guidelines that prevents every assistant professor from having his or her own Wikipedia article. But that can be done using other metrics that are actually usable and well-defined instead of this one that is so ill-defined that it's useless. Let the colleges, universities, and professional and scholarly organizations do the really hard work of figuring out which faculty members are truly notable instead of trying to force Wikipedia editors to do something that they can't actually do. ElKevbo (talk) 05:04, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
NJ Wine kindly asked me if I could start looking at past AfDs to see when the "average professor test" was used and how (and I'd think importantly, what the outcome was). I looked through my contribs (which are mostly from 2007-9; I've taken a long time off AfD, but am enjoying being back amongst great people...who do occasionally disagree. :-) ). The consensus might have changed since then, but I want to say that I'm not cherry-picking; these are all the citations in about 50 Prof AfDs I found:

There are three where I was the citing author (that's a bit high, but remember that these are only AfDs I participated in, so I'm overrepresented):

In none of these six cases did someone use the average prof test for keep (with no one arguing against it) where the result was delete. I'm not sure that six citations are enough to be representative, but from these six there's no evidence that the average prof. test is a refuge for inclusiveness.

(While I'm going back through old AfDs; here are two nuggets that I found that are unrelated to the discussion but which I found amusing: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes--Profs: I wrote a long time ago and it's still around. Those who have participated in the four years since I did a lot of AfDs might decide it needs updating. I loved this blast from the past Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kevin_Puts -- where all the votes were for speedy delete before WP:PROF people (DGG and Antandrus) started entering the discussion and asserted notability to save the article; he won the Pulitzer Prize for music this year. Shows that we do have some foresight. Best, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 06:26, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for the reply. After reading your six examples, my feelings about the average professor test (APT) are a bit different. I'm not sure that I support the APT, but I'm not as opposed to it anymore. How do you feel about keeping the test, but perhaps wording it or defining it a bit differently? I dislike the verbiage about the test being not universally accepted, since material without community consensus belongs in an essay, and by saying it's not universally accepted, we undermines the APT's validity. I suggest that if we keep the APT, we take out that clause.
More importantly, I think we need a clearer description of who the pool of "average professors" are, and what "more notable" means. The current language of "more notable than the average college instructor/professor" does not properly define how notability was judged in those 6 sample AfDs. The pool of average professors are professors actively doing research in the same discipline, and "notable" mean much more notable than average. Although this may seem rather semantic, the talk archives for this page is filled with understandably inaccurate comments that the APT makes half of all professors notable.[2],[3].
While I think that editors who are regularly involved in academic AfDs understand how the APT should be utilized, I don't think that we should have a guideline that is written one way, but means something different. Keep in mind that some articles of questionable notability never make it to AfD, and a person could create an article on a non-notable individual based on a misinterpretation of the APT. NJ Wine (talk) 21:01, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
(pasting after an edit conflict; not a reply to NJ Wine's latest comments...) Continuing in the light of a gorgeous afternoon, starting from May 2007 and going backwards, I found 12 more AfDs that used the Average Prof Test:
In none of these 12 AfDs was average prof used as an argument for Keep in an article that was deleted, and we can add 6 more to get 18 where it never happened that the Average Prof Test was used only by the Keep side in an article that was Deleted. So while I too worry that it might be used as too low of a bar for notability, historically it hasn't been the case that it's inconsistent with community standards. (but again, I haven't been on AfD patrol since late 2008, so things might have changed). -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:28, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

My impression is that the "average professor test" hasn't been used much in individual AfDs since the introduction of the more specific criteria in this guideline. If anything, it serves to calibrate "how much is enough" for criterion #1, rather than an independent criterion itself. But there are many more recent AfDs to check in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators/archive if you want to confirm this. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict; pre David's addition): Having written all that about how well the APT has worked in the past, I admit to the same concerns as NJ Wine that it is worded in such a way that we could be encouraging articles for 51% of all college and university educators. I wonder if we could try out some wording here that might gain some consensus to put on the page. I also think that the wording should state that the specific criteria have evolved out of the need to clarify what was originally a pretty simple principle. Perhaps something like:
The criteria above are sometimes summed up in an "Average Professor Test". Put simply: when judged against the average production of a researcher in his or her field, does this researcher stand out as more notable or more accomplished than the field?
This wording leaves out how much more notable is needed, but I think it strongly conveys that 51st percentile won't cut it ("stand out as" is the key phrase there), but rejecting a 98th percentile researcher for lack of a Nobel Prize is also absurd (especially if it's a field that doesn't have Nobel Prizes! "than the field" is the key phrase there). I don't think we'll come to an agreement of whether the top 25% of researchers are notable or merely the top 5%, but this phrasing gives a very concise way of dealing with the majority of AfD, PROD, and Speedy cases that don't fall in that top 25-to-5% range. Best, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:48, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

David is right: the APT has been used less often recently. Here are all the cases of it I could find (without looking at blanked AfDs) since 1 Jan 2012:

So for the first time that I've found, we've seen it used as a Keep argument in an AfD where no one argued against the fact that the prof was below average but that he was still non-notable. My preference for preserving the test is mostly that it requires "delete" voters to show that they have an understanding of what is average in a field. Criteria 1-4 and 8 also require this knowledge, so I don't think that APT is adding an additional burden on AfD participants, just clarifying what they are supposed to already be arguing from. Best, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 22:20, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

I am in awe at the amount of research that has been done here. I find that being "above average" is a necessary but not sufficient condition to keep. On Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kenneth_Kim and its first manifestation: that was a case in which a vast amount of COI and POV came into play. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:06, 11 June 2012 (UTC).
I appreciate the AfD research that has been done but I don't see how it's useful or relevant as I find it highly unlikely that most Wikipedia editors who have commented on whether a faculty member is above or below average is competent to make such a judgment. That a poor and inaccurate measure has been used in the past is no reason for us to continue using it.
And I'm going to bow out of the discussion now as Ive said all that I have to say. You've had input from an expert in this area and it's up to you to take it or leave it. It would be a very good idea for you to seek other expert advice on this topic but that is also up to you. Best of luck. ElKevbo (talk) 02:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I guess I'm confused about how it's harder to say that someone is above average or not than it is to say whether someone has made a significant impact in their field (cat 1) or whether a person's honors are of high prestige in their field (cat 2). I thought that the best objection to the APT is that it might set too low of a bar. So my research was mostly to see whether it was or not, and I think it shows that it hasn't been used in that way. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
One would hope that a person who contemplates writing an article about themselves or somebody else would be able to assess whether they are "above average" or not. If they are not able to do that it might be best for them to leave the writing of the article to those who can. Not everybody is qualified to write any article in Wikipedia. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:09, 12 June 2012 (UTC).

I think that this thread has been productive. I think there is value is keeping the APT, but changing the verbiage, and making it part of criterion 1. In almost all the above cases, the APT is being used to assess a subject's performance in light of criteria 1 (The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources). I am suggesting the following text, which is based on Michael's proposal above: ''When judged against the average impact of a researcher in his or her field, does this researcher stand out as markedly more notable or accomplished than the field? NJ Wine (talk) 03:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I think "markedly" is a fine adverb to include. It rules out the 51% criteria, but doesn't set a bar higher than most of what I've seen get a "Keep" at AfD and leaves the community to decide (and re-decide) exactly what means. Thanks NJ Wine for the productive discussions. I prefer keeping it where it is rather than as part of criteria 1 because it also applies to several other of the criteria, but it's not a huge preference. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that "markedly" is too strong. I would prefer the slightly softer "clearly". That proviso about being compared to the subject field is a useful addition though. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:27, 14 June 2012 (UTC).

section break

I agree with User:Xxanthippe that "markedly" is too strong. In fact I don't see a problem with the orginal paragraph. Personally, I would appreciate it if User:NJ Wine would stop trying to rewrite parts of this guideline. I would prefer that proposed changes be written here (for consensus) in order to avoid edit conflicts over the actual guideline. For example, the back and forth edit conflict pertaining to "...for which sources exist" or "...pubically available" was not the best Wikipedia style of editing. Once "...publically available" was reverted it should have been taken to the talk page for discussion. Insistence by one editor that a choice of words be repeatedly placed in an article or guideline becomes an edit conflict and there is risk of violating the 3RR rule (please see WP:3RR.
Furthermore, I have misgivings about the unilateral merge and subsequent edits of two sections of this guideline. This may not have been an appropriate action. This does not fall under WP:BOLD WP:BRD because it appears that consensus was not sought involved with this revision. With signifigant guidelines such as this I think any such major changes need to be proposed and vetted via consensus before altering this guideline. At the moment I am thinking about reverting all such edits and placing all the new changes here as proposals. Wikipedia is a community effort. Unless we follow consensus then we risk giving credence to POV ( see WP:NPOV) or WP:COI. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:17, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Also, WP:BOLD states "The admonition "but please be careful" is especially important in relation to policies and guidelines, where key parts may be phrased in a particular way to reflect a very hard-won, knife-edge consensus – which may not be obvious to those unfamiliar with the background. In these cases, it is also often better to discuss potential changes first." ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 04:42, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I am inclined to back Steve Quinn here. There has been too much non-consensus editing in this episode. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:02, 14 June 2012 (UTC).
  • I agree with talk:Xxanthippe and Steve Quinn and the other people with similar positions. I think it folly to tamper with the wording. There are some parts of it i think useless (including "average professor", but in the actual application, it gives reasonable results. This wasn't the case 4 years ago, when there was the frequent misconception that , especially in the humanities, what was required was essentially "famous," but we see to be doing reasonably. Of course not all AfDs end as I think they ought to, but the errors run in both directions. My guess is that we are probably fairer here than in most fields in Wikipedia DGG ( talk ) 07:52, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Steve, Your interpretation of Wikipedia policies is not quite accurate in this case. You cite the three-revert rule, but when I look through the history of this article over the last month, no editor has even come close to violating those rules. To be cited for 3RR, you need 4 or more changes to the page in less than a 24 hour period. Furthermore, the bold, revert, discuss cycle does not require a pre-obtained consensus before changes are made. All the changes made to this guideline were subject to extensive discussion on this talk page. After some degree of disagreement, we have come to a rough consensus about the verifiability of sources and the average professor test. The merger of the two sections was done to eliminate duplication, and is discussed above. If you have a disagreement with the content of these changes, feel free to discuss it. However, please do not not revert these changes because just to make a point -- please see WP:DRNC. NJ Wine (talk) 13:23, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Steve's interpretation is correct: BOLD goes one time, but as soon as it is clear that there is significant opposition to making changes, you stop the BOLD cycle and are required to look for consensus first. This goes for normal articles, it goes even more so for policies and guidelines. Please do not make any further edits to this guideline until a clear consensus to do so has been obtained here. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 13:46, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Guillaume2303, With the APT (average professor test), I removed it along with some duplicative material, and stated my reasons in detail on the talk page. The APT was restored by another editor. There was extensive discussion about keeping the APT but modifying it. New verbiage for the APT was hammered out, and I updated the guideline to reflect that. The time period from my first edit removing the APT to the most recent edit implementing the modified APT was 10 days. That is not edit warring, and is fully in compliance with Wikipedia policies on editting. NJ Wine (talk) 16:27, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
So far this forum does not support the view of unilaterly altering this guideline. Unfortunately, there really has not been extensive discussion pertaining to keeping these edits. There was a long post by NJ Wine at the top of this thread but that does not constitute an extensive discussion. In addition, edit conflicts can be deemed as edit warring outside the 24 hour window. This is because the overall pattern of the edits are reviewed and then a determination can be made on a case by case basis. Common sense usually prevails.
The main problem with editing this guideline according to one's taste is that this guideline affects alot of people. Hence, it attracts alot of editors. So, arbritrarely changing parts of this guideline (without consensus) will probably create edit conflcts that may turn out to be emotional battles. I feel that this should be taken into consideration. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Steve, I've made a total of 3 edits to WP:PROF related to the APT. While I am sensitive to the fact that this is a guideline, my edits do not constitute edit warring by any sense of the imagination. WP:EW states the following: Wikipedia encourages editors to be bold. A potentially controversial change may be made to find out whether it is opposed. Another editor may revert it. This is known as the bold, revert, discuss (BRD) cycle. An edit war only arises if the situation develops into a series of back-and-forth reverts. Read through some articles about controversial political or religious issues (e.g., campaign for "santorum" neologism, Mitt Romney dog incident, and you will see real edit warring where there are multiple reverts and counter-reverts in the same day with no talk page discussion.
As for the APT test, before today, 5 editors had commented on it, and an extensive search was done by Michael Scott Cuthbert to evaluate how the APT was actually being used. I started the discussion fully opposed to the APT, but have come to the conclusion that it should remain, but with different verbiage. I know that you stated above that you believe "markedly" to be too strong of a word. Do you have any other concerns about the current verbiage of the APT. NJ Wine (talk) 18:40, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
No one is being accused of edit warring. I agree that so far no editor in this forum has been edit warring. It came up as something to be aware of. The point is that editing the actual guideline instead of proposing on the talk page can cause problems such as edit conflicts. As you have seen yourself, editors can get carried away and get into some fierce battles. This was one thing I did not want to see happen here. Pertaining to consensus I think most of the editors here are talking about consensus that has developed in this thread. I understand that you are editing in good faith, and have no intention of edit warring. So please, relax, no one is accusing you or anyone else. This was meant to be a back and forth discussion, but it developed into a misunderstanding. I apologize. Steve Quinn (talk) 19:02, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm of two minds here. I'm quite satisfied that NJ Wine's edits were in good faith and constructive, but I also agree with the principle that one should move slowly in changing guideline (and policy) pages. I'm concerned that the roll back of edits not only undid the changes in the organization of the notes, but also undid other edits (including mine) that I thought were non-controversial. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:40, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

{od} (I'm adding here because I'll reply about the "Two thoughts" separately). I think NJ Wine acted very well -- I think we get so used to people pushing their views with all three reverts that when someone actually does a bold thing and reverts once that we (at least I) get up in arms thinking that it'll be a no-discussion fight. That's not what happened here. Two editors (if I recall correctly) on the side of change reverted once each; two editors on the side of keeping each reverted once and then we settled down for a polite discussion, which I thought was nearing consensus, but I may have misjudged. (Personally, I wish WP would go to a 1RR before discussing the matter on a talk page, but that's not likely to change soon. I know that if an editor changes my prose for an article or book, by the time of the first revert it's polite to start discussing why this is important for both sides). As I noted below, I think the new wording for APT preserves the flavor and intention of the original, pre-WP:PROF guideline (which was an indication of when it was safe to Keep, not an indication of when one should definitely Delete). I think that we should go back carefully through the history log and make sure that nothing was inadvertently deleted in the past two weeks that hasn't been discussed here; but in sum I think the process had worked well and that we should change back to the versions before Steve's most recent, good-faith revert and continue discussing from there. (Also note, that our interpretation of the guidelines will differ by enough that we don't need to agree on every detail of the wording. I think I agree with Xxanthippe on wording more often than I do with NJ Wine, but in AfDs I've been voting more with NJ Wine than with Xxanthippe because I think I have a lower bar on cat. 1 than X. does) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:46, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Two thoughts:

  1. Although it's said "instructor/professor" for a long while, I've always understood the "average professor" in the APT to actually mean professors, a group that does not include the very junior grade of instructors (except at a school, such as a junior college, that has no actual professors), adjuncts, post-doc researchers, etc.
  2. It might be more accurate to phrase this the other way around, i.e., not "if you are as notable as the median professor in your field, then you get an article" but "if you aren't as notable as the median professor in your field, then you almost certainly don't get an article". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

2. was what I was trying to get at. What about this wording "The writer of a BLP about an academic subject to these guideline should consider if the academic is likely to be found to be more notable than the average academic in the field. Articles about academics less notable than the average are unlikely to be kept." I think we can forget about instructors. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:26, 15 June 2012 (UTC).

I'm sure that those discussing here realize that "Professor" is a very different title from country to country and even from university to university, department to department. I think in the newest APT wording we discussed above I put the word "researcher" in "when judged against the average production of a researcher in his or her field, does this researcher..." that way we include British Lecturers, Senior lecturers and Senior research scientists at top American schools (who tend to be strong researchers) etc. and exclude junior college professors, teaching school professors, etc. who do not produce research from the comparison pool. That in itself was already a raising of the bar from previous wordings, but I think it's pretty uncontroversial. I'm not sure I like saying what's "unlikely to be kept" because it goes against the context of the rest of the page which is a list of reasons to keep, not to delete. Thanks for the great contributions Xxanthippe and WhatamIdoing. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:46, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the problem in another way... (Musicologists)

Trying to see what my field's people looked like on Wikipedia, I looked through the Category:Musicologist_stubs (because in actuality, few musicological topics become AfD fodder, just people), and from what I've seen, almost every article there fits the far beyond average threshold. It may be because we're a bunch of f'ing luddites in my field that so few people make vanity articles etc., but I think I see only a handful that I'd definitely vote for Deletion on AfD: Jason_Grant, Erica Azim, Geoffrey_Chew_(musicologist) (weak del), Tom_Perchard, and one other that I can't mention because she's a friend of mine (and is a borderline case anyhow). Rafael_Ajlec also seems NN by the article, but I haven't done a search and is unlikely to have Internet sources). Walter Everett (musicologist), Jerry_Zolten, and Alan_W._Pollack are possible other candidates for deletion. So I guess part of where I'm coming from is that I'm in a field that if anything has a dearth of articles on clearly notable people and little problem with average profs having articles on them. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 23:08, 10 June 2012 (UTC) if anyone wants to take those four to AfD, please be my guest!

Michael Scott Cuthbert, I guess musicologists aren't a particularly vain bunch. Someone may disagree, but the fields that I have seen with the most articles with questionable notability are the natural sciences and theology. I will create AfDs for those that you deemed non-notable. NJ Wine (talk) 21:04, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
(Actually, we're just as vain as other researchers, but we're on Wikipedia less often... :-) ) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 05:41, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposed changes

There was consensus for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th proposals. The 5th proposal was withdrawn and the 6th was clearly rejected. Armbrust, B.Ed. WrestleMania XXVIII The Undertaker 20–0 06:21, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

was an RFC with ID A2D40F4, now closed

Five proposed changes to the notability of academics guideline are being considered. NJ Wine (talk) 18:16, 15 June 2012 (UTC) 4th I created this section so that the general discussion may continue in the above section if need be. Also, I created this section in order to delineate the proposed changes that have lately been the source of edit conflicts. Furthermore, because there is support for doing so I have reverted the article as it was, before most of the recent changes occured. Restored to revision as of 01:31, 4 June 2012 by User: Xxanthippe [4]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Steve Quinn (talk • contribs) 18:53, June 14, 2012‎ ----Steve Quinn (talk) 22:05, 14 June 2012 (UTC) (adding signature).

does anyone feel like we need the full 30 days to resolve this proposal? I'd prefer if we could agree on 7-10 days. I know not everyone edits daily, but it seems like at least a few of the proposals are approaching SNOW already and not attracting a lot of comment from people outside this pseudo-project. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:37, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
No objections raised here and so far nearly all of the proposals have had one-sided support. So, I'm going to be bold and suggest that we close the discussion in early morning (we could say 00:01 UTC, but we're prof-types; we're not that precise) on 26 June 2012, having given people 11+ days to comment on the proposals and two more days from now. We should probably count a "Support except include Tryptofish's changes" on proposal 6 as being an Oppose vote on proposals 2-4. (Xxanthippe: can you clarify if you intended to be voting against changing proposal 4 or if your comments there are meant to be read as "leave alone, but if it has to be changed, use "clearly" instead"? Thanks) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 03:00, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
Closing RfC -- it would be good to see if someone, esp. someone who disagreed with me, agrees with my determining of consensus. The RFC page did not require the closer to be unaffiliated; of course that would be better, but I don't see that happening. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk)
Good job Michael Scott Cuthbert, thanks for stepping in and taking care of this. I know it is difficult to speak into empty space about determining consesus. Although, I wasn't happy iwth the turn out I do support consensus. It looks like we got all the opinions and we are going to get. Personally, I am surprised more people did not participate. Anyway, I have no problem closing the RFC. One more thing, as NJ Wine seemed to notice -- there have been previous discussions about changing some of these things -- so I guess the consensus is there also. "Six two and even over and out" (Dick Tracy) --- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:34, 28 June 2012 (UTC)


1st proposal: Change " Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist..." to " Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources are publicly available.." (Support or Oppose)

Consensus was Support Tryptofish's version -- nearly unanimous. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Better than either of those two choices, I like Tryptofish's version: "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability." It shortcuts the contention over how best to paraphrase WP:V by instead just directly referring to WP:V. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Tryptofish's version: "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability." NJ Wine (talk) 20:39, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Trypofish's version I agree with User:David Eppstein. Also this change is mentioned in the fifth proposal. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 22:32, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Trypofish's version. Generally, I would have no objection if everything else were to be left as it was before. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:26, 15 June 2012 (UTC).
  • Neither support nor oppose -- the actual meaning of the latter is better, but it's more likely (no matter how many caveats are given) to be interpreted as "free and on the Internet" which I most strongly suppose. Support using Typtofish's version which defers to a higher power. ;-) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Triptofish's The first allows basically everything, and the second could cause disagreements as to what is "publicly available". Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:24, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Well... I don't think that Tryptofish's statement is sufficiently restrictive, but I don't actually disagree with it, either. We require more than just WP:V-compliant sources. Your personal blog is WP:V-compliant. Notability actually requires sources that are both WP:V-compliant and also independent. After you've established notability, you can use non-independent sources (your own blog, your employer's staff webpage, etc) to fill in the article, but notability requires more sources than just those. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that Tryptofish's statement is meant to summarize the notability policy but adds another restriction to the concept of notability; that is, no amount of notability will justify keeping an article if there are no sources conferring Verifiability. But lots of RSes does not in itself confer notability. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:30, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

2nd proposal: Change "Subjects of biographies are required to be notable; that is significant.." to "Subjects of biographical articles on Wikipedia are required to be notable; that is significant..." (Support or Oppose)

Consensus seems to be slightly towards Support -- 3 support !votes here, 2 general opposes under section 6, but this section was not specifically referenced. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

3rd proposal: Support or Oppose the following: Merge General Notes & Caveats -- Eliminate Several Notes. Please use diff [5] and also note that some content has been removed without an acceptable consensus.

Consensus was Support -- 4 !votes for Support here, 2 against via Section 6. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Strongly support change The material that was removed was duplicative. Here's the material in question.
(a)For people who have made a substantial impact outside academia but in their academic capacity, the appropriate criteria for that sort of notability apply as an alternative—as for a person notable for popular writing in their subject. If notable only in another capacity entirely, see the general criteria for that field. This paragraph is grammatically incorrect, and is a essentially the same as criterion 7.
(b)An academic who is not notable by these guidelines could still be notable for non-academic reasons. Redundant. This is stated in the header paragraph of the guidelines.
(c)It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for an article in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources are publicly available; see Wikipedia:Verifiability. This is an almost word-for-word duplication of the third note. NJ Wine (talk) 20:39, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support -- sometimes you need to be redundant to get the point across, but these three things aren't the things that people need much reminding of. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support merge repetition is unneccessary. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:33, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Questions. Do you mean that (c) above is a duplication of the third criteron? I am not seeing where this is a duplication of the third note. Also, it is true that this is mentioned about three times throughout the page, but why is this a problem? This page is certainly short enough to read without investing a lot of time. Furthermore, it is possible that (a) and (b) refer to shades of meaning not readily apparent at this moment. It could come up during an AfD. After all, I imagine that this guideline was put together after some related issues came to the foreground. In other words perhaps these are in place after expereince produced the need. Still, I think one of the main arguments for not "merging and changing" is because this is a very short page to read. I could see a problem this guideline was long and winded. Anyway, maybe the author of the proposed changes (or someone else) can respond to these quereies. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Sorry about the confusion. (C), which is currently known as caveat 3, is the same as general note 3, not criterion 3. I see no reason to have the same paragraphs repeated multiple times in the same guideline. I think it interferes with the flow of the document. NJ Wine (talk) 00:33, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

4th proposal: Keep, Change or Remove the original average professor test. The average professor test was removed then restored more than once. It was then altered. The orginal description was a paragraph:

Consensus was Support with "clearly" instead of "markedly" -- 4 !votes for Support here, 2 against via Section 6. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)


An alternative standard, "the academic is more notable than the average college instructor/professor" is often cited. This criterion has the advantage of being concise though it is not universally accepted. Determining the notability of an average professor is difficult in itself and usually relies on one of the nine more detailed criteria above. When used, this criterion is generally applied to indicate that a tenured full professor in a high ranking institution in the US, or equivalent rank elsewhere, is above the average.
It was then changed to:
"The criteria above are sometimes summed up in an "Average Professor Test". Put simply: when judged against the average impact of a researcher in his or her field, does this researcher stand out as markedly more notable or more accomplished than others in the field?"
  • Strongly support new version The old version is unacceptible because it doesn't state that a professor must be compared to professors doing research in their own field, and doesn't make it clear that "more notable than average" doesn't mean that half of all professors are notable. NJ Wine (talk) 20:39, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I have suggested above the phrase "The writer of a BLP about an academic subject to these guideline should consider if the academic is likely to be found to be more notable than the average academic in the field. Articles about academics less notable than the average are unlikely to be kept." Xxanthippe (talk) 03:26, 15 June 2012 (UTC).

Xxanthippe, Your proposal would make the vast majority of professors notable, which I opposed. The currently language of the APT states that a professor must be more notable than the average professor, and based on Michael's research of AfDs, our practice has been that "more notable than average" means a good deal more notable than a typical professor. Your proposal implies that a professor at the 50% percentile in his or her field is notable. NJ Wine (talk) 06:05, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
To my reading of the text it doesn't suggest anything of the sort. It suggests that any BLP below the 50% is certain to be deleted. Xxanthippe (talk) 10:41, 15 June 2012 (UTC).
  • Strongly Support NJ Wine version -- I think that we've reached a general consensus on this above. I think I slightly prefer Xxanthippe's "clearly" over NJ Wine's "markedly" for the adverb, but both have very similar connotations, and it's not worth fighting over. I don't think I like Xxanthippe's phrase "The writer of a BLP...(etc.)" but I think we should use this section for now just for discussing what's been reverted and talk about other additions separately. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 15:02, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm fine with "clearly" over "markedly" if you everyone prefers that. NJ Wine (talk) 18:08, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
If it's retained, let's keep Xxanthippe's "clearly" then. Thanks. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 05:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

5th proposal: (Support or Oppose) insisting that acceptable sources should be available on the internet. Please see diff [6].This was ultimately changed to "Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability." Please see diff [7]

Nomination withdrawn-- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Good idea. done. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

6th proposal: Retain the status quo ante:

Consensus was Reject -- two !votes supporting. Three !votes against here plus several other !votes for changing specific portions of the guideline above. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
There are arguments above, see DGG. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:23, 16 June 2012 (UTC).
In any case, I oppose this per my support for various changes. Ryan Vesey Review me! 01:37, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notability of learned societies with weak coverage

You may find this discussion of interest. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 19:42, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

It is of interest to us (or at least me). Thanks for bringing it to our attention. The solution is not obvious. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:57, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Notes to specific criteria: 1

I want to separate out another proposal, since it's coming much later than the rest of the discussion. I love Media-hound's KISS recommendations, but I feel like there's one thing left out of the notes to specific criteria 1, and that is something like:

  • Independent reliable sources that describe the article's subject as having made a significant impact on their discipline should be considered important in determining notability by this criterion. Descriptions such as "A leading particle physicist" or "a pioneer in Lutheran church history" in a leading newspaper or magazine (or multiple such citations in less prominent publications), while not necessary to pass criterion 1, are strong external indicators of notability.

I know it was a SNOW KEEP in the end, but I was amazed that while discussing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard K. Olney I didn't have anything in this guideline that covered the nominator's concerns in the absence of high citations and prestigious awards. We can't always change our guideline to cover every circumstance that someone could find, but this seems like a significant hole in it. Thanks! -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 03:00, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

MIcheal, I think I understand what you are getting at here. The only problem I see with the second sentence of the above proposal is that it appears to support a Point of View. In particular, it probably supports the point of view of the source. We can't always give the opinion of a source (reliable or otherwise) undue weight. For example, the press is known for inflating characteristics and descriptions. Such inflation can be either negative or positive depending on the perception of the subject. Likewise, even peer reviewed scientific articles are known for inflating the positive characteristics of published results. Pertaining to the peer reviewed articles, this is not a bad thing; it is just something to be made aware. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 02:49, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
But, if multiple independent sources independently use that sort of language (e.g., quotes from individual experts in the field), then it is surely indicative of notability. We would need to be careful to distinguish the situation in which, for instance, one writer uses the language, and then everybody else just picks up the language from that writer. --Lquilter (talk) 00:16, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
Notability doesn't depend on the sources being unbiased or even-handed. It's okay for the sources to have a POV. We shouldn't, but they may. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Does editing a book count like authoring a book for WP:AUTHOR#3?

Hi, folks.

I have run into a situation about the notability of Susan Stryker. The pros and cons are on the talk page for what one editor (correctly) calls a borderline situation. Although she has received several low-level honors, the basis for her notability appears to be an academic book she edited that has received two published reviews, thus potentially meeting WP:AUTHOR#3. What we can't find any guidance on is whether editing a book counts the same as authoring one. Because very, very many academics edit rather than author books, I this was an important point, and another editor (wisely) suggested I bring it up here. Thoughts?— James Cantor (talk) 17:01, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I tend to think it doesn't count for as much. If the case was marginal already (as from your description it sounds to be) then editing a volume rather than writing it doesn't count for as much. On the other hand, if an edited volume won a major award or had a surprisingly high amount of reviews (which two isn't, unless they are in major newspapers or something like that) then it could still be significant despite being only an edited volume. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:11, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • (ec) Hmm, not simple indeed... Editing a book is a huge amount of work, but writing a book all alone is a huge undertaking, too. There is one thing that is more difficult for an edited book as opposed to a single-author book: getting people to contribute... While writing books and book chapters is more important in the humanities than writing journal articles, in the life sciences, writing a book chapter does not bring much prestige nowadays. So it is often not simple to convince people to contribute and it may therefore be a sign that a person is well-regarded in their field if they manage to bring together a good bunch of authors. Of course, we also see all kinds of thrashy books, badly edited and badly produced by all these "predatory" publishers cropping up all over the place. But I guess those would not get reviewed in reputable journals. In all, I think I would tend to accept book reviews of edited books as a sign of notability of an editor, albeit on a slightly lower level than reviews of single-author books. But I guess this is where you were already (didn't check that discussion, I must admit), so this may not be too helpful... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • While a general guideline would be useful, I think the editor who brought this up (User:Roscelese) made a compelling point that is specific to this case: "The sources clearly treat the work Stryker did in selecting and introducing the material as important, singling out the former in particular as a great strength of the book." A general guideline around the significance of editing would be a useful starting point, but will never be definitive, because editing can mean different things in different scenarios. -Pete (talk) 17:16, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm inclined to say that in academic fields (not the fiction or mainstream market) editing a book also fulfills our criteria, or to speak more clearly, a review of or an award for an edited book is just as admissible for notability purposes as a review of or an award for a written book. The amount of effort that goes into selecting, introducing, footnoting etc. is often recognized by the sources. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
  • My general thoughts (not specific to this case; she seems like a pretty clear [but not overwhelming] GNG/PROF pass to me given what I know about awards in gender studies): in the humanities, at least in the US, editing a book is generally not at all equivalent to writing (even co-writing) a book (if it were, I'd be less worried about tenure). However, the focus of the reviews and their content as well as the focus of any awards needs to be taken into consideration. Some (positive) reviews of edited volumes are primarily about the quality of the articles themselves; the fact that they're collected in a single volume is almost immaterial to the reviewer. Others praise the collection of articles on a particular topic and the research quality of the introduction as together having the potential to define a new field of inquiry. In my own field of musicology, but related to this case, the edited collection "Queering the Pitch" which almost single-handedly established sexuality as a topic for music research, would be a clear pass of notability, as reading any of its reviews would attest. It can be hard to judge without access to the reviews. My last edited volume had one review which entirely focused on the articles chosen and their individual contents -- this review would confer no notability to the editor -- another was almost entirely devoted to discussing the selection of articles, ordering, and the framework of the introduction -- this would, I'd think. Reading the reviews is the best way of knowing the difference; in lieu of that, I think that one should take an award for best edited volume in a field as a proxy that the edited volume is markedly more notable than typical collections and assign notability to the editor(s) accordingly. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 04:56, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree with the above. Editing a book is less notable than writing one. Both contribute to notability but editing a book is almost certainly not enough for WP:Prof by itself. Writing a book might be if the book makes enough impact. Writing is creative, editing primarily administrative. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:44, 6 September 2012 (UTC).
(1) IMO the Stryker notability concern is an example of the systemic bias problem in wikipedia -- lots of editors but only a few of them have expertise or even bare knowledge outside of cis-gendered, straight, and male perspectives. (2) ANYWAY I would recommend that we add a note about edited collections, saying that they have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Not just for whether the collection is, as a whole, notable, but also for the editor's contribution. Sometimes it's significant, and sometimes the editor is not much more than a name attached to an entry in a series. And (3) Can we get an article on Queering the Pitch? --Lquilter (talk) 13:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I think it depends some on the case, but editing a an important book can be very strong evidence for notability. For example this book is an incredible resource for everything related to spintronics, and while there's more than 50 individual contributors, much of the credit goes to the two editors who put the whole thing together. a13ean (talk) 14:44, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I think this question is somewhat moot. Academics who edited a lot of publications, e.g. John Woods (logician) or Dov Gabbay are usually notable for other stuff as well. They don't generally get to edit much otherwise... So, it's very seldom the case that editing a single book is a make-or-break issue for the purpose of this guideline. And I also think that AUTHOR #3 is a poorly phrased criterion and open to a lot of interpretation. Any author whose (single) book had a couple of reviews deserves a Wikipedia biography? I don't think so. Perhaps that is an ok criterion for fiction writers, but for academics that's far too low of a bar. And I'm quite ok with having articles about notable books (per WP:BK) without a corresponding biography for the author, especially when a young academic was the writer. I remember writing The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, but didn't consider writing a biography for its author because it's too early for that in my view. Tijfo098 (talk) 21:22, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Well, somewhat moot, yes, but the reason I brought this up here at all was because we ran into exactly that situation. So, although I take Tijfo's point that this would be a rare event, there are a lot of bio's here, enough so that rare events do happen.— James Cantor (talk) 21:58, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
    • Yes, I agree with James Cantor -- not just because of that specific example, but because it seems to me that academia is an area where it's often difficult to clearly demonstrate notability for people who are very highly respected and well known within their field. Movies, popular music, etc. generate a whole lot of secondary sources. So if there's a rule of thumb that can be identified that allows us to get past the need for notability discussions in a number of cases, I think it's well worth spelling it out as clearly as possible. -Pete (talk) 23:58, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
Academia is an area where it is particularly easy to assess peer impact by means of citation data bases. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:40, 12 September 2012 (UTC).
Only in fields where citation databases are plentiful and accurate. Which is true for most of the sciences in the last decade or so, and not true in the humanities today and the sciences beyond 10 years ago. A scholar in my field (Reinhard Strohm) who just won a huge prize (Balzan prize [abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/balzan-winners-include-nyu-law-professor-17202310]) has a negligible h-index. Just about every guide I've ever seen to judging academic impact warns against using citation indices and h-indexes. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 04:42, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
I think you mistake the nature of Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not assess academic merit in the way done by a university appointments or promotions board. Wikipedia simply determines if a person is notable by virtue of having been noted by multiple independent reliable sources. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:46, 12 September 2012 (UTC).
Granted, but h-index scores work better at assessing notability in the sciences; they are less effective in the humanities/social sciences. --Lquilter (talk) 17:49, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
I think that it's a pretty strong assertion to say that a long-time editor and contributor mistakes the nature of Wikipedia. I am fully aware that being noted in independent reliable sources is the key to WP's definition of notability -- and sticking to that principle ensures that WP's definition of notability does not become a jargon word but instead adheres closely to the generally accepted idea of notability. The question at hand is whether a search engine that tries to extract, from freely Internet available and machine readable sources, the number of citations of an author's name (most not doing any particular checking to ensure that the author is the same person and not someone with the same name) is an accurate measure of the actual number of multiple independent reliable sources out there. I agree that it is for many fields, but it definitely is not for others. When an important prize committee is trying to decide to whom to give the award, they too are trying to do a similar mission as good WP editors do: identify highly notable researchers whose work has had a major impact on the field. When their expert opinions diverge wildly from the numbers given by h-index and Google Scholar, are we really to suppose that they're not interested in notability or perhaps instead that our crude tools for automatically assessing notability are failing in this instance or for entire fields? Googling "h-index accuracy humanities" gives many citations that show its lack of effectiveness, and none that I've found that embrace it. The criticisms are that different length of articles vs. books are not measured, low coverage of journals (fewer than 1/3 of JSTOR's journals are included--and even that is a selective repository), does not distinguish between mainstream and minority interest research. A Canadian study noted that in the arts and humanities between 1/3 and 2/3 of all full profs have h-indexes of 0 (compared to less than 1/8th in the sciences). I think that asserting the use of citation databases as making it easy to assess academic work across fields against so much published evidence to the contrary could almost be considered original research and should be avoided. Best regards, -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

UK/USA Professor difference

In the UK Professor is a title/role that very few academics reach. The equivalent of the USA's professor is simple a lecturer in the UK who uses the title Dr (if they have the qualifications to do do). "The person holds or has held a named chair appointment" - Professors in the UK are usually the heads of schools/departments. Am I correct in thinking, therefore, that being a UK professor in itself satisfies notability? In addition would all universities count as "major institution of higher education and research"? Gaia Octavia Agrippa Talk 11:45, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

My experiences are in the US, and I'm sufficiently unfamiliar with the UK system that I'm not going to try to answer the question of whether a Professor there will always pass this guideline. However, I can answer your second question by differentiating between what (in the US) we call "research universities", as opposed to, for example, community colleges. At least in the US, there are plenty of institutions of higher learning that might be within "all universities" (unless one is very careful about differentiating between universities and colleges – and then you get into the thorny issue of top-level colleges that do distinguished scholarship but do not have graduate schools) but are not the kinds of "major institution" required here. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:01, 26 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree with the assessment of User:Gaia Octavia Agrippa of the USA/UK Professor contrast. However I would not support an automatic pass of WP:Prof for UK Professors. In the case of a Professor at the University of Manchester Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James John Miles the AfD was closed as no consensus, although some of the article's supporters tried to push the ex officio line. As for the second question, I agree with Tryptofish. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:13, 27 September 2012 (UTC).
I think there's no clear consensus here. I am inclined to regard UK Profs as traditionally fitting a Distinguished Professor/Named Chair role for US profs, but more and more UK schools are promoting to Professor by the US model, so it's less clear now than it once was. (Oxford's music department, for instance, went from having one professor to now six or so, just in the past few years; they'd all be a clear pass still, though). I tend to think of full professors at significant schools in either system usually as notable, so the difference doesn't materialize much in my thinking, only when the university itself is marginal as a research institution does it make a difference. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 04:30, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
Looks to me like a UK professor is more akin to a US departmental chair (it used to be this way in The Netherlands, too) and we don't assume automatic notability for such chairs either. In any case, I think that the automatic pass of named chairs is one of the weaker parts of this guideline (being an editor-in-chief is another one). Being a departmental chair, having a named chair, or being a professor in the UK to me all means a red flag that someone most probably is notable, but in that case, there will be enough other sources (or highly-cited papers and such) that we won't need to assume notability automatically. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 07:40, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
I don't think the analogy to a US department chair works. US department chairs are primarily administrative responsibilities that most extremely active researchers try to avoid (alas, most must do our duty from time to time). UK Professorships were traditionally given to the most esteemed member of a department and do not involve administrative responsibilities. I wouldn't argue for adding department chair to the notability list, but I'd very strongly defend named chairs as being a strong indication that the scholarly community has recognized the notability of a prof's work and think that an absence of highly-cited papers for such a prof probably means that paper citation databases aren't how the community judges notability. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 01:37, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree. Being a UK Professor adds to notability (more than being a US professor does) but does not confer it automatically-see the example above. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC).
On the question of whether all universities count as "major", there are quite a few schools in the US that only have a few hundred students, but still offer at least a master's degree. (This is particularly common among schools that focus on religion or fine arts.) I would not count any small school as being "major".
In terms of two-year colleges, it's my impression that few of them in the US have "professors". They mostly seem to have "instructors" or "teachers" or "lecturers". But it probably varies by state.
Finally, I agree with the remarks about the weakness of some of these items for presumed notability. One thing worth keeping in mind is that, no matter how much you want to "presume" notability, you've actually got to have enough independent sources (i.e., not employer-based sources) to meet WP:V's requirement that articles be based primarily on third-party sources. That means that some people whose work is very important, but whose self-aggrandizing behaviors aren't in overdrive, will not qualify for separate, stand-alone articles entirely about themselves. In those instances, we need to talk about these people as part of larger subjects, such as in articles about their research areas or in articles about their universities. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:41, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Stanislav George Djorgovski

I was reviewing this Articles for creation submission and wanted to know if the subject is notable. Please add your comments here, not the submission itself. Thanks! SwisterTwister talk 22:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

52 papers on Google scholar with over 100 cites indicates strong notability by WP:Prof#C1. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC).
Yes, that's a huge number, far more than are needed to pass #C1. His CV lists that in 2001 he became a Fellow of the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering; I'm having some difficulty finding out exactly what this means online but it may well also pass #C3. In any case, the citation record indicates that he is clearly notable. There's also plenty of third-party reliably-published articles aimed at non-specialists that are primarily about his research, quite a bit more than for most of our articles on academics; for example see [8] [9] [10] [11] —David Eppstein (talk) 22:47, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Heads up

I just discovered that Google Scholar now calculates impact factors of academics, e.g. [12]. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:11, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

It appears to only be active for scholars who have set up profiles there, so it's probably a small number. I searched on 15 scholars I knew and none had a page. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 14:59, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

IEEE Fellows are notable?

This guideline stated that, essentially, IEEE Fellows are automatically notable. The phrasing was as such:

" or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE)"

I strongly recommend removing this wording.

According to the IEEE: http://www.ieee.org/documents/fellow_stats_summary_years.pdf there are 6,531 fellows of the IEEE. This includes some extremely obscure people many of whom have absolutely NO independent sources written about them nor have any fame whatsoever. A good argument should be made that such fellowships amount to the fame that would justify including WP:BLP for such people. On a case-by-case basis, I can understand including certain fellows and excluding others, but including all of them seems extremely problematic.

Please help work out what the level of fame and exclusivity should be required for any fellowship to automatically confer academic notability.

Junjunone (talk) 19:24, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

First, yes, this is a big honor. To give some sense of calibration: IEEE Fellows (and the roughly comparable ACM Fellows) mark the level of seniority at which my department (at a big US public university) would seriously consider hiring someone into an endowed professorship, and below which we wouldn't. More to the point, since the purpose of WP:PROF is to shortcut tedious deletion discussions in clear cases, my experience is that deletion discussions of IEEE Fellows almost always result in a pass. I don't understand the significance of your argument re the number of fellows: what makes you think that number is too large or too small to provide a useful criterion? E.g. there are a similar number of U.S. state legislators at any one time, but they are clearly considered notable by WP:POLITICIAN. As for "please don't undo my big change to the existing consensus until we reach a new consensus": that's not how it works. Reach consensus for the change first, here, then make the change. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:58, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I think we might want to contextualize how it is a big honor. Not all IEEE Technical Societies are the same and, for example, while CS has a very elite reputation, that is not the case across all 38 technical societies. Applying this criteria across the board is problematic from the standpoint that while an IEEE Fellowship of a CS associate is probably an enormous deal, an IEEE Fellowship associated with a more obscure society is not as big of a deal. Junjunone (talk) 20:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Also, that's 6,351 fellows out of about 400,000 members - most of them academics and professionals. RockMagnetist (talk) 20:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
The acceptance rate for conferral of fellowship status is much higher than what the ratio of fellows to members might suggest: http://www.ieee.org/documents/fellow_stats_affiliation.pdf . In fact, this rate of acceptance is higher than most other fellowships I've been looking through. Junjunone (talk) 20:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that's meaningful. There's a lot of self-selection in the nomination process. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:47, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
You have evidence that this is the case outside of CS too? Junjunone (talk) 20:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Beyond the facts that they maintain (by regulation) a similarly low number of new fellows as a percentage of their total membership, compared to other fellows programs, despite what their nomination-to-acceptance ratio might be, no. But I find that numerical evidence pretty convincing. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:55, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I see. This isn't a very convincing argument to me since large Technical Societies like CS will tend to dominate the membership roll. With the small number statistics on the fellowship applications and acceptances, I'm not convinced that this is the case for smaller societies who evaluate their fellowship applications on independent bases, I gather. I agree that most if not all of the IEEE Fellows that are in CS are worthy of articles. However in other technical societies, I'm not convinced. Applying this as a blanket badge of notability may be good and correct for computer science, but perhaps not so much for a smaller group like GRSS, for example: http://www.grss-ieee.org/ . Junjunone (talk) 21:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Let me ask: have there been any examples of pages about IEEE fellows where it turned out that notability was dubious, and the argument in favor of notability centered only on the fellowship? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I know of one example: Anthony Peratt (physicist). This article was re-created in spite of Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Anthony_Peratt. The only basis I can see for this seems to be based on the fact he is an IEEE fellow, so when I came here to read this guideline I was somewhat startled that this was such a bright line. Junjunone (talk) 21:55, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello again Junjunone. Since I wrote the current article on Anthony Peratt (physicist) I too am startled. But that is because I have only just learnt from your post above that a previous version existed, but was deleted in 2007. How on Earth did you find out about that? I really wasn't aware of that previous article, and I must say I really do not believe you when you say you are a new editor who only started editing 3 September 2012. And it is a bit sneaky, and again not something I'd expect from a new editor, to change the WP:Prof guidelines [13] just so you can delete that one article. You do seem to have something against me [14], so I think you have a personal stake in trying to get this changed, and therefore the guidelines should not be changed. Aarghdvaark (talk) 09:15, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Either my argument stands on its merits or it does not. You can attempt to poison the well all you like, but I think most thinking people can see the problem. Automatic conferral of notability by means of a single fellowship seems awfully problematic. According to the present version of this guideline, the article you created is automatically notable even though you only used primary sources from Peratt and a vanity press publication. Junjunone (talk) 15:09, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Anyone can find an old deletion discussion by using the search box on Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#Old_discussions. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Aarghdvaark, considering you found it necessary to call Junjunone a troll [15] to another editor, about an unrelated discussion that didn't involve you, isn't it a bit much to claim Junjunone has an issue with you? IRWolfie- (talk) 18:52, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Let's get back on topic here. If someone has an IEEE fellowship, they probably satisfy the high-citation criterion for notability. Of course, an article should also be verifiable. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, looks like I'm wrong. I did a WOS search and his most-cited paper has 25 citations. His h-index is 10. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:11, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, usually they also pass #C1 but probably not in this case. On the other hand, Peratt has a bunch of awards that might be enough even without the IEEE Fellow. And as you say, verifiability is necessary even for people that pass the criteria here; that's not usually a problem for things like the IEEE Fellows because you can look them up on the IEEE web site, but I recall seeing at least one AfD for an article claiming IEEE Fellowship but without being verifiable that way. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:53, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
This article appears verifiable to me, if only to primary sources. It just looks like is obscure and not independently sourced, and if it were to be sent to AfD I would think that the fact it passes the bright line of notability seen here would be pretty convincing (it was to me). I supposed that WP:PRIMARY may come into play, but there is enough hedging in that section to make me wonder. Junjunone (talk) 20:59, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Does the IEEE biography count as independent? Some societies might just ask the awardee to send them an autobiography. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
If it were the bio at the end of one of his papers, I'd agree that it's not independent (though still usable for verification of uncontroversial factual material such as degree dates). In this case it appears in this newsletter as an addendum to a collection of biographies of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Administrative Committee, so I would argue that someone collected these bios and put them together — that is, there is some level of editorial control here. (Also, being on this committee should count for very little in terms of notability, which is what this guideline is about, but you were instead talking about verifiability, a separate issue.) —David Eppstein (talk) 22:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Right... so I think this example is quite illustrative. If he wasn't an IEEE Fellow, the BLP would be marginal at best. But because he is a fellow, Wikipedia seems inclined to agree to include this article. If this example was removed, we would go back to the state of limbo. Which is preferable? Junjunone (talk) 22:32, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't know that this is a good test case, actually, because of his WP:FRINGE beliefs, which tend to attract a crowd of Wikipedia editors who want to stamp out pseudoscience from our articles (regardless of notability). For instance, this seems to be the main idea of the comments by "Mainstream astronomy" in the earlier AfD. A better test would be an academic who is similarly borderline but more mainstream. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:39, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Assuming you're not asking me to do some project where I run WOS searches for all 6351 scientists, is there a particular h-index, for example, that you'd like to see as being indicative of marginal notability? Junjunone (talk) 23:14, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
You could take a look here [16]. Whatever standards are held to it is desirable that they be uniform. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:30, 13 November 2012 (UTC).
I don't think that was phrased accurately. Low h-indexes are not evidence of marginal notability. What they are is a lack of evidence of one particular way of satisfying notability. And you have to be careful because WoS is not a good database for some IEEE fields (particularly CS). But something like Parett's citation record would be marginal to me: what I'm seeing is a single well-cited publication (his "Physics of the plasma universe" book, with 111 cites in Google scholar) and all the rest much lower (max 24 cites, again in Google scholar). I would be hesitant to argue for using criterion C1 with numbers like that. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:34, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
One source of test cases is a search of deletion discussions that mention IEEE fellowship. Of course, the deleted ones aren't so useful because we can't look at the articles any more, but several were kept - including Richard Francis Lyon, Tsuhan Chan, Edward Keonjian, Anurag Kumar, and Frank Kschischang. That last one could sure use some work. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:22, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I found several past deletion discussions mentioning the IEEE Fellow criterion.

  1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul K Chu (2007), no consensus. One of three keep comments based it on IEEE Fellow status. Would also pass #C8 as editor-in-chief of a major journal, as mentioned by a different keep comment.
  2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shahid Hussain Bokhari (2) (2007), no consensus. Much of the discussion centered around the significance of his ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow awards.
  3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/James Solomon (2007), withdrawn and kept. One of the five keep commenters mentioned being an IEEE Fellow among several other markers of notability.
  4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Dwyer (professor) (2008), no consensus. He was fellow of a different society, IEE, which the nominator called out as being inadequate according to the version of WP:PROF at that time, which was much more vague than what we have now. One keep opinion (mine) said that IEEE fellow would be enough but agreed that IEE fellow was not. The discussion appears to have involved some sockpuppets with opinions not based on Wikipedia guidelines. A second nomination was headed for deletion when it was discovered that the article was a copyvio and speedy deleted.
  5. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vaidyanathan Ramaswami (2nd nomination) (2008), deleted. Keep commenters argued that he had high citation counts (now #C1) and there was some discussion of IEEE membership (with consensus being that membership alone does not count for notability, but with one opinion that Fellow might be enough).
  6. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anurag Kumar (2008), kept. Keep arguments mentioned membership in two Indian national academies as well as being IEEE Fellow.
  7. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Asad Abidi (2008), kept. Keep opinions cited several different criteria of WP:PROF as it existed at that time. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, so would pass #C3 regardless of whether IEEE Fellow is considered sufficient.
  8. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Edward Keonjian (2009), kept. Three out of seven keep opinions cited his being an IEEE Fellow. The others were based on the existence of a published autobiography and newspaper obituary, and other non-academic markers of notability. Note that his citation record in Google scholar is quite meager.
  9. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tsuhan Chan (2009), withdrawn and kept. Keep arguments included criteria C1, C3, and C8.
  10. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fredric J. Harris (2009), kept. Keep comments mentioned six different WP:PROF criteria.
  11. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Diogenes Angelakos (2010), withdrawn and kept. The discussion was closed before any delete or keep comments could be recorded. The one comment that was left on the discussion linked to an obituary that mentioned IEEE Fellow status, but noted that this status could not be verified on the IEEE web site. Nevertheless the nominator used this evidence as a reason to withdraw.
  12. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Oommen (2010), withdrawn and kept. Arguments for keeping centered primarily around Fellow status in both IEEE and IAPR. Arguments for deletion centered around lack of significant coverage in secondary sources, and the withdrawal happened after more sources were added to the article.
  13. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nikil Dutt (2010), kept. Keep arguments mentioned multiple WP:PROF criteria including high citations, named chair (actually not accurate, his "Chancellor's Professor" title is not a named chair and is below the "Distinguished Professor" level cited in WP:PROF), editorship of a journal, and IEEE fellow.
  14. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tryggve Fossum (2010), kept. Commenters asked whether he is an IEEE Fellow but apparently not.
  15. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Frank Kschischang (2010), withdrawn and kept. Nominator mentioned being a fellow but did not believe it was adequate for notability. Keep comments cited his endowed chair as well as his IEEE Fellow status.
  16. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ian Watson (scientist) (2010), deleted. The article was claiming IEEE membership as a marker of notability; criterion C3 was used to clarify that this was well below the fellow status needed to quality.
  17. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/YinYang Bipolar Relativity (2011), deleted. This is an AfD on a book, not on a person, but one commenter argued that the content of the book was notable in part because the IEEE had awarded fellow status to somebody using it as basis. This did not end up being the consensus view.
  18. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Liang-Jie Zhang (2nd nomination) (2011), kept. Keep arguments mentioned multiple WP:PROF criteria including (borderline) high citations, an award, fellow status, and journal editorships.
  19. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/V. David Sánchez A. (2012), deleted. Editor-in-chief of a journal, and (according to the deleted article) an IEEE Fellow, but his fellow status could not be confirmed on the IEEE web site and the final decision emphasized the article's verifiability problems.
  20. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uwe Muegge (2012), deleted. One of the commenters was claiming IEEE membership as a marker of notability; criterion C3 was used to clarify that this was well below the fellow status needed to quality.
  21. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Francis Lyon (2012), keep. IEEE Fellow status was used as one argument for keeping, others being notability for his inventions. However one editor wrote about his fellow status, "I don't think we usually consider it definitive as sole evidence, except if a Life Fellow".
  22. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chen Guanrong (2012), kept. Keep arguments mentioned multiple WP:PROF criteria including high citations, a named chair, fellow status, and journal editorships.
  23. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Derek Abbott (2012), no consensus. Keep arguments included WP:PROF criteria C1 and C3, but delete arguments discounted his IEEE Fellowship, claimed a lack of significant coverage in reliable sources, and pointed to promotional editing patterns.

My take on this is that most of the time IEEE Fellow is found in conjunction with other markers of notability but is not uniformly correlated with high citations (see Edward Keonjian), that it does not trump verifiability (see the Sanchez case), and that (surprisingly to me) it has been a helpful part of WP:PROF in cases that ended up in deletion, by clarifying that lower levels of membership are inadequate for notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:30, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Nice work! The comment in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Francis Lyon about Life Fellows is curious. Isn't a Life Fellow basically a Fellow who has been around for a long time? RockMagnetist (talk) 00:41, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I can't find it on the IEEE web site, but according to Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers#Membership and member grades, yes, Life Fellow is given to Fellows who are at least 65 and whose age + years of membership is at least 100. I don't think that should make any difference for us here. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you very much for taking the time to make this valuable and instructive collation. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:30, 14 November 2012 (UTC).
Other societies whose fellowships were judged sufficient for notability include:
RockMagnetist (talk) 01:41, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks David Eppstein and RockMagnetist for your thorough analysis of deletion debates. I'm inclined to say that it is concerning how often IEEE Fellowship status is treated as a bright line. As we keep it as an example in this guideline, it seems concerning to me that it will be used in the future as a debating point more often than with other fellowships that aren't mentioned. I think that a prestigious fellowship might be part of the evidence that a scientist is notable, but it seems to me that one shouldn't be basing this determination solely on that basis. Junjunone (talk) 02:12, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I have an interesting problem with a potential article on a scientist whose h-index is a whopping 61. No doubt about C1! Yet I have been unable to find any secondary sources for biographical details. And he doesn't meet any of the other criteria. Weird. RockMagnetist (talk) 02:30, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
61? Well, it is lately much more possible with consortiums and the like. If that's the case, maybe you should apply some weighting or cuts? http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.1904 Junjunone (talk) 02:53, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
No, the papers span decades and most have a small number of authors. RockMagnetist (talk) 03:05, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
That is peculiar. Did you try a LexisNexis search? Junjunone (talk) 13:44, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't even know what that is. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:23, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
It would have helped if I had spelled it correctly. Essentially it's to journalism/law what WoS is to academic science. If you are using an academic library to access WoS data, I assume they'll also have LexisNexis capability. I assume you've already tried a GoogleNews search. Junjunone (talk) 15:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
No information at all. Despite the "Academic" label to the specific search I did, it mostly came up with people in business. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Moving on: a proposal

I would like to try to see what the general consensus is on this subject. I think that it might be a good idea to eliminate the specific example of an IEEE fellow while keeping the general wording about prestigious fellowships in. This is not to say that IEEE are or are not prestigious, but that I think it is better to evaluate these situations on a case-by-case basis. Singling out one particular fellowship seems unwarranted to me. Junjunone (talk) 15:53, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I would rather see a few more examples added. Without examples it is hard to interpret "major scholarly society". RockMagnetist (talk) 15:56, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
That seems fair. Perhaps the list from above is informative (AGU, AAAS, ACM, APS Fellows). American Council of Learned Societies and Guggenheim Fellowships come to mind as well. I think it is important to make some distinction between being named a fellow of a large learned society and Prize Fellowships (already covered in other areas of the guideline) as well as less prestigious fellowships such as graduate fellowships and postdoctoral fellowships. It would be nice to get some international examples. Could we also include wording about evaluating each recipient to make sure that there are enough independent sources to write the article about them? Junjunone (talk) 16:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
We should also do this in a way that makes clear that certain learned societies' fellows are not sufficiently selective (e.g. FRSA) in a way that makes our criteria clear and non-arbitrary. By the way, the American Mathematical Society is also just starting up a fellows program [17] but since they haven't yet specified the target proportion of their membership or ongoing acceptance criteria I think it's too soon to say whether or not they meet this criterion. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:13, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I agree with that. In trying to come up with something like a comprehensive list I stumbled upon this category: Category:Fellows of learned societies. That may be useful. Junjunone (talk) 17:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
There certainly are "Fellows" that are not notable (I myself am a fellow of a 700-member society, and I don't think that that particular fact in itself makes me -or any of the other fellows- notable). Would it be an option to have an annex with a list of societies whose Fellow status is regarded to make people notable? That would avoid people fighting in an AfD about whether some society's Fellow status (like my society :-) satisfies this criterion or not. The annex/list need not be complete, it could be amended if needed, of course. --Randykitty (talk) 20:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
A separate page might be a good idea: Wikipedia:Notability (academics)/Fellowships. Junjunone (talk) 19:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Establishing criterion 1

Suppose that the only evidence available for notability is that an author is highly cited. Given that links to search pages are normally to be avoided in an article, how do you demonstrate this? Or is it good enough to say it on the talk page? RockMagnetist (talk) 17:37, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Yet again, you are conflating what goes into an article (facts, reliable sources, no links to search pages) with what goes into deletion discussions (analysis of notability, search results perfectly acceptable). Your continued confusion on this matter after repeated corrections is coming to seem as either tendentiousness or intellectual dishonesty. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
(David Eppstein is referring to a discussion at talk:Toniann Pitassi.) Everything I have read (as well as common sense) suggests that, if a subject is notable, its notability should be established in the article itself; a deletion listing shouldn't be necessary. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:26, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I have no dog in this fight, and that kind of mathematics is pretty far from my own expertise, but I looked at the page that prompted the question here, and I think that RockMagnetist is asking a reasonable question, not at all tendentious or dishonest. What I see on the page is a couple of statements that the work is highly cited, and the statements themselves are cited to Google search. It makes the page look to me like it's straining to show that the subject, who is on the razor edge of WP:PROF, really is notable. I see that a third editor began the question, by putting a proposed deletion tag on the page, and then David Eppstein edit warred over RockMagnetist's putting a notability tag on the page. I'd feel a lot better about the whole business if someone were to add some material from one or two of those many sources that cite the work, indicating that those sources regard the work as significant, instead of simply relying on footnotes pointing to Google. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:53, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
With a GS h-index of 31 there is not the slightest doubt that the subject clearly passes WP:Prof#C1 so I hope that nobody will waste our time by taking this BLP to AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC).
I'm not particularly interested in AfD here, but the original question was really about how to write about the subject of the page, and I'd suggest doing what I just said above. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
By the way, when I said that she was "on the razor edge of WP:PROF", I was basing that on what one can actually read on the page. And what one can actually read there is, well, what our readers will read. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:29, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. However, I think my real question is still unanswered: Can citation metrics be used only to protect an article during deletion discussions? That seems to be the consequence of not allowing links to search pages in articles. This could lead to unnecessary deletion discussions because the evidence for notability is buried in a talk archive or a user talk page. Perhaps a citation-based notability template should be created for talk pages? RockMagnetist (talk) 23:57, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
You raise a reasonable point. Google scholar allows scholars to create profiles of themselves (for example this [18], chosen at random) which could be used in an article but not everybody has made such a profile. WoS profiles can also be made here [19]. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:36, 7 November 2012 (UTC).
Yes, the idea of something like a template for talk pages is an idea worth pursuing, especially if it helps avoid unnecessary dramas over deletions. So, part of what I think may be the answer to your question is that we might be able to do better at providing that kind of information in talk. The other part of your question seems to me to be about the use of such metrics on the biographical page itself. Personally, I wouldn't object to having links to such metrics within the infobox at the top of a page, along with other person data (but probably not within the main paragraph text), but I'm not sure that my opinion there represents consensus. As I said before, I have low enthusiasm for sentences in the main text like "the person's work has been widely cited (inline cite to search link)". I think it's much better encyclopedic writing style, much more informative to our readers, and much more likely to make notability recognizable to fellow editors, if instead one actually cites independent sources that cite work by the biographic subject, demonstrating the influence of that person's work. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

This problem is similar to what we have for articles about academic journals, if you need a reference for an impact factor. It's even worse there, because one cannot link to a search result within JCR or Web of Science (because they use dynamic links that are location and session specific). In those cases I use the following reference:

According to the ''[[Journal Citation Reports]]'', the journal has a 2011 [[impact factor]] of 0.506.<ref name=WoS>{{cite book |year=2024 |chapter=JOURNALNAME |title=2011 [[Journal Citation Reports]] |publisher=[[Thomson Reuters]] |edition=Science |accessdate=2024-11-16 |series=[[Web of Science]] |postscript=.}}</ref>

I think this works pretty well and something similar could be done for citation data (of course, the JCR does have a page/chapter for each journal, but in WoS this would be a search result). To make this stuff a bit more interesting, one could add a section to an article "notable publications", where one presents the three most highly-cited papers of a person, for example. One could add a text like "Doe has published 132 articles that have been cited over 3000 times, giving him an h-index of 32. His three most-cited (>150 times) papers are:". BTW, more and more researchers get a ResearcherID, which can be cited direcly. I assume this will in time be replaced by the new ORCID, in which Thomson Reuters and Scopus collaborate. Once that's in place, our taask would be much easier... Hope this helps. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 19:54, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

In what way is a ResearcherID an improvement over a VIAF number? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:04, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Ha, that one's new to me. I just had a look and it would appear to me that the advantage of ResearcherID is that it includes complete citation analyses based on WoS. See, for example, this one. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:25, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, on the negative side, VIAF only seems to cover published books, not journal articles or book chapters. But on the positive side, it encompasses the Library of Congress, German National Library, etc., rather than being a product of a single commercial database provider. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:36, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
That's what ORCID is supposed to remedy, I guess. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:39, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
If it's like the DOI system in requiring membership fees for participating organizations it's going to be problematic for diamond open-access journals. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:22, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
As far as I know, journals don't join, just the databases (WoS, Scopus). --Guillaume2303 (talk) 21:58, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
So far, I think the WOS citation idea by Guillaume2303 is the most useful in the short term. However, that approach won't work if the main source is Google Scholar. I have put a citation statement on a couple of talk pages, which is fine as long as it doesn't get archived. I think adding a discussion of this issue and possible solutions to this guideline would be useful. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:25, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I wonder if someone might have the solution for this one. Msrasnw (talk · contribs) started a page on Richard B. Frankel. He's the one I mentioned with 258 articles, 10,966 citations and an h-index of 61. I would love to be able to cite WoS with this information, but I can't find any alternative to citing the results of a search. (A note on selection: if I only include institutions that I known for sure he was affiliated with, the numbers drop to 194 articles, 9836 citations and an h-index of 59. That's an average of 50.7 citations per paper.) RockMagnetist (talk) 22:05, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
But we don't need to go to citation counts to see that he's notable: the APS Fellow does it. Anyway I think that it would be more helpful to recount his key accomplishments than to give his batting average. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:02, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
I'll certainly add his key accomplishments as I can find sources for them (you'd think they would be easy to find, but they aren't). Even if I find them, though, those citation statistics are highly unusual for someone who has only published papers with small numbers of authors, so it would be nice to mention them. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:45, 14 March 2013 (UTC)
More importantly, we still haven't come up with a satisfactory method of reconciling criterion 1 with verifiability. Guillaume2303's suggestion showed promise, but I haven't figured out how to make it work. RockMagnetist (talk) 14:25, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I still feel that 1 is far too broadly phrased. Is there really any academic who doesn't satisfy any other criteria, but we still agree is notable enough for an article? Citation counts, indices and the like vary so widely between fields that it's nearly impossible to have any sort of quantifiable standard here, which leads to endless debate in AfD's. I don't have any problem using 1 as a fallback in rare cases, but it seems like we could save a lot of hassle by emphasizing the easy-to-evaluate criteria rather than that one. a13ean (talk) 14:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Add this to the nutshell section

I've been looking at Articles for Creation for academics, as well as fixing references in many existing pages. Many page creators feel that an academic is notable if they have many publications, and that it is enough to list those publications. I'd like to add a bullet item to the nutshell section:

  • Most academics will never be notable people, just average people. Having published doesn't make an academic notable, no matter how many papers and books there are. Notability depends on the effect the work has had on the field of study or the academic community, and what other people, organizations, or books say about him or her.

StarryGrandma (talk) 18:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Do take the trouble to read WP:Prof where it is made clear that publishing stuff does not make a person notable but having that stuff cited by others does. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:23, 28 January 2013 (UTC).
This IS the Talk page for WP:Prof. Much of WP.Prof (Notability (academics)) does concern one way of assessing the impact of an academic's work, using citation counts. (There are other ways.) When reviewers decline Articles for Creation for academics using Yet Another AFC Helper Script, the gaget includes a link to the page. The problem is getting new editors to read and understand it. Usually they just add more of the academic's publications and try again. The Flesh-Kinkaid grade level of the opening paragraphs of this article is 15.6. Citations aren't mentioned until halfway down a long page. Most of these new editors have no idea what paper citations or citation metrics are. And some of the people they are nominating deserve articles.
I am proposing putting a clear English explanation in the "This page in a nutshell" section at the top of the page. That might get read and understood. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:39, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
I think that this proposal is a good idea, but I'd like to consider whether we could accomplish it more succinctly. Currently, the third bullet point of the nutshell is:
  • "This notability guideline specifies criteria for judging the notability of an academic through reliable sources for the impact of their work."
Perhaps we could revise it to:
  • "Having published does not, in itself, make an academic notable, no matter how many publications there are. Notability depends on the effect the work has had on the field of study. This notability guideline specifies criteria for judging the notability of an academic through reliable sources for the impact of their work."
--Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
I like that. It makes it clear right at the top of the page. Any objections to the revision? StarryGrandma (talk) 22:03, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Me, too. Great suggestion! --Randykitty (talk) 22:31, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that sounds like an improvement. RockMagnetist (talk) 23:06, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
Change first "effect" to "impact"? Xxanthippe (talk) 00:22, 30 January 2013 (UTC).
Good question: I went back and forth about that, and I'd be happy to go with whatever the preference is here. My thinking was to not repeat the word "impact" twice. (It's also in the last sentence.) But I agree that "impact" conveys the concept more accurately. Alternatively, we could change one of those occurrences to "influence". --Tryptofish (talk) 00:42, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
In legislation it is not a good idea to use different words for the same concept. "impact" has a generally accepted technical meaning. Best wishes, Xxanthippe (talk) 01:17, 30 January 2013 (UTC).

Proposed addition

A danger of WP:PROF is that it can be used to justify very low-quality biographies with no potential for growing into a good biography - particularly if only Criterion 1 is satisfied (see, for example, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Teresa Maryańska). To emphasize the role of common sense in assessing an article, I propose changing this sentence in General notes:

Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability.

to

A biography should be a full and balanced account of the subject's public life (see Pseudo-biographies); and its sources should comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability.

The pseudo-biography section is only intended to apply to BLP's, but the discussion makes sense in a broader context (besides, this kind of quality problem mostly arises with BLP's). RockMagnetist (talk) 17:00, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

While I agree in spirit with what you are saying, and have occasionally !voted to delete an academic biography because the sources on the subject were so slim despite reasonable citations, this proposal ignores a problem that we have on Wikipedia where academics with unquestionably notable accomplishments (members of national academies etc) still come up for AfD because some deletionists think that awards and high impact research are not enough without a full-length biographical publication on the subject, something that typically only happens after they die. I think your changes may make things worse in that respect, and lead even more to becoming an encyclopedia of pop celebrities and soccer players. (Also, I'm not at all convinced that the example you chose is a good one: Maryańska apparently has only two pubs that rise above single digits in Google scholar, so is far from a clear case of passing criterion C1.) —David Eppstein (talk) 18:01, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
First a note on Maryańska: I see six publications with over 60 citations each in Google Scholar. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:07, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Oh, I see — I was searching her surname with the accent included. Dropping it finds more. That case is also problematic for a different reason: there are offline sources that look like they may say something nontrivial about her (e.g. the Dinosaurologists one) but it's unclear because they are offline and no quotes or description of their coverage is included. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:27, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I'm hoping someone will be motivated to look at that book. I don't have access to it. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:36, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I think that it is misleading to describe this as a battle between "deletionists" and "inclusionists". Most of us are in between. I too would like to see scientists get more attention compared to pop celebrities and soccer players, but addressing that real-world disparity is not a legitimate goal for an encyclopedia. Also, I don't think the coverage of other subjects is at all relevant to the coverage of scientists. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:39, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I think this is covered in the General notes - not everyone who meets the criteria actually has enough coverage to write an article about them. I know many people who are notable enough to include in Wikipedia, but for whom it would be difficult to piece together enough information to write a biographic article. In the case of academics, of course, it tends to get even worse because their notability tends to be a function of the impact of their academic work...and short of a Festschrift this can be very difficult to document.

This may be the real problem: it's often easier to document an academic's non-academic contributions than their academic work (say Jerry Coyne's blogging and activism, which get lots of press vs. his very major contributions to speciation). It's in precisely the areas that matter least that it's easiest to satisfy GNG. Guettarda (talk) 20:11, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Similarly, I was able to find biographical data on Xue Feng because he had been imprisoned and tortured. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:59, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with the view that we want a full biography or nothing. Of course we want a full biography and that is what we work towards, but we have to start somewhere. A single sentence such as "X is an English chemist known for discovering Y" is still going to be useful to readers who just want to know who X is, and it is something to build on. --Bduke (Discussion) 20:31, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Bduke here, since there's lots of scientists who are clearly notable, but there's only reliable sources about the work they have done, and not their life. However, I also think that criteria 1 should be interpreted very strictly -- I don't think one or two articles getting news blurbs or some baseline h-index should establish notability. The other criteria are so much more robust and less dependent on interpretation that I think 1 should only be used in exceptional cases. a13ean (talk) 20:37, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
I think there are many articles for which there is no realistic prospect of reaching a full biography, so starting somewhere ultimately gets us nowhere. If we can say (verifiably) that "X is an English chemist known for discovering Y", and that's all we can say, it might be better to just redirect to an article on Y (as WP:PSEUDO would recommend). If X discovered Y and Z, it's probably worth a bio. If, however, if all we know is that X is an English chemist whose publications are well cited, it's probably not worth saying. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:15, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
It's worth seeing the essay WP:Permastub, as well as noting that, for Wikipedia broadly (not specifically academic biography pages), the longstanding consensus has been that stub pages are permitted, and are unlikely to be deleted at AfD solely on the basis of being stubs (see also WP:NOPAGE). We can try to encourage fuller pages as a guideline to best practices, but you won't be able to get a stub deleted if it passes WP:GNG. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:28, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
If we can't say more than "X is well-cited" then yes, I agree, we probably shouldn't have an article about them. But I'd be surprised if that were the case. To begin with, we should be able to determine their academic affiliation and their field of study. Guettarda (talk) 21:35, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
We're not talking about WP:GNG. I am thinking of cases where one of the criteria, "significant coverage", is not satisfied. Note that even Wikipedia:Permastub says "Where possible, they should be merged to larger articles and redirected there." That's consistent with the recommendations of WP:PSEUDO. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:42, 7 March 2013 (UTC)
As an example, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Teresa Maryańska I am suggesting that an article should be created on the Polish-Mongolian excursions to the Gobi desert and Teresa Maryańska redirected to it, because that is what she is known for and that is what the sources discuss. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we need an essay to clarify what "full and balanced" means in the context of a scientific biography. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:44, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

In this respect, for a start, if we are going to claim that someone is notable on the basis of their academic impact (#C1) then the article should state, with appropriate reliable sources (not just citation counts, but e.g. review articles) what some of the person's noteworthy contributions actually are. "So-and-so is a mathematical psychologist" isn't good enough; so are many other non-notable people. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:39, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, are we talking about academics in general or scientists in particular? I think you can forgive me for being confused with all the references to "scientists" above. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 06:40, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

My apologies to academics in other disciplines! The only biographies I edit are those of scientists, so I think in terms of them. RockMagnetist (talk) 06:51, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
No worries Rock! just feel like this needs to be pointed out from time to time as long as that confusion persists since it sometimes colors how we view the (fewer) scholars in the social sciences and (even fewer) scholars in the humanities and arts who come up for AfD from time to time. I've never heard of citation indices discussed in my work on music from a humanistic standpoint though it comes up from time to time when I present at music and CS conferences. FWIW, my citation counts on my music + computers papers, as far as Google knows, are about 10x as high as for my humanities articles despite music+CS being a much smaller field, and I know (but Google doesn't) that my other papers are cited more often. So from experience at least, the difference between the sciences and humanities is enormous with respect to citation numbers, and I think they shouldn’t be used at all for the latter. What to use instead? awards, quality of academic appointment, number of articles in top journals (when a CV or JSTOR can be trusted), quality of press for published books, etc. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Off topic: I have edited the section on citation indices to recognize that although they are becoming more widely used they still need to be treated with caution. However they provide a means of making notability criteria, whatever they are, more uniform across the board. Also. Google scholar has improved substantially in the last few years and the strictures placed on it seem out out of date. This may need to be looked at but I will leave it for the time being. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:24, 11 March 2013 (UTC).

As a practical matter, we use Google Scholar, since WoS is not always available, and often, where GScholar profiles are available, not as reliable! You have to make allowance for the field of the subject being discussed, and we do not always agree on how those allowances should be set. The h-index endures, mainly because it is a good rule of thumb, although there certainly are cases where people argue from number of citations alone in the bizarre cases where a scholar published very few important papers, for whatever reason. RayTalk 02:25, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with the above. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:40, 11 March 2013 (UTC).
  • I very strongly disagree with the proposal. WP is an encyclopedia, and covers what is important. What us important about a scientist is the work they do, not the details of the personal biography. The professional biography -- education -- positions -- is important background in understanding the career, but the actual thing that makes a scientist notable is their published scientific work (I say scientists, but similarly for all researchers). If someone comes here looking for information about an academic, it will normally be because they have seen their work referred to and want to know the degree to which they can rely on it. They don't care about the details of the childhood or their hobbies or their marriages or their children. It's not irrelevant, to a certain degree if the person if famous enough, because then we care about everything in the effort to understand him. But those are the rare exceptions, and notability is about just notability , not fame. Fame is the criterion that produces abridged encyclopedias , because very few people in any field are famous. Full and balanced is not the criterion for a WP article. It's the criterion for somewhere between GA and Featured article. Almost no wp articles about anyone or anything are full and balanced--it is very difficult to write a featured article, even when the material is available. Even the fullest and best sources for most scientists such as the obituaries for members of the National Academy of Sciences will talk in great detail about their work, and very little about their personal life. When I see a bio emphasizing the personal life, or even giving it equal treatment to the professional life, I conclude it is written by a friend or relative, and is meant to express personal admiration, not respect for the work--and I would apply this to every field whatsoever. Not that such bios are worthless, but they're not encyclopedic. Even for famous people: the details of Einstein's sexual entanglements are very interesting --as gossip about a famous person, and he's famous enough that some of it belongs here because of general interest. A notable NAS-level but not really famous scientist of my acquaintance after his wife's death chose to publish an account of his own early romances; I think it has been read by everyone who knew him personally, and all his students & still-living colleagues, but I doubt anyone else. DGG ( talk ) 00:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
I agree with the above too and disagree with the proposal. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:21, 12 March 2013 (UTC).
Yes, "full and balanced" probably is too strong a term. My thinking on the subject is evolving in light of the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Teresa Maryańska, and I would like to wait until that AfD is finished before offering an alternative wording. RockMagnetist (talk) 02:44, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

I wrote a bit more about citation numbers in the humanities for C1 above in a reply to an earlier statement by RockM, just wanted to point it out since it's buried in the above text. (And I completely agree with DGG's disagreement with the proposal). -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

You were right to point that out - I hadn't noticed it. Do you think something in the guidelines should be modified to take the humanities into account? RockMagnetist (talk) 16:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
The guidelines have, what I believe is sufficient cautionary language that should discourage their use, but they're not always followed. What I'd like to emphasize here is that there have been (in the archives) several citations from RS that state "do not use citation indices/h-index in evaluating humanities work" or "citation indices are not commonly used to evaluate humanists," so an attempt to bring use them in AfD as objective sources is a kind of Original Research in itself. Attempts to separate Wikipedia's definition of notability from a discipline's definition of notability have been rejected consistently when defined that way; guidelines such as WP:PROF exist to try to codify what we believe a discipline's definition is, not to create a new one. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 05:13, 17 March 2013 (UTC)
I have noted before [20] that a de facto recognition seems to have developed among regular contributors to these pages that citation patterns vary between disciples and certainly between the sciences and the humanities. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:46, 17 March 2013 (UTC).
I certainly would like a statement about not using h indexes in humanities, just to avoid confusion. But I'm not much concerned about most of the traditional humanities in the Anglophone academic tradition, because anyone who would meet any reasonable standard of notability , will also meet WP:AUTHOR, which is an extremely lax guideline--considering most academic books are reviewed in the specialty journals. Finding the reviews can be a bit of a problem, of course, because this cannot be done comprehensively with free resources. (As the exception, book reviews in MUSE and JSTOR journals are usually indexed in WorldCat. Google Scholar infuriatingly still refuses to index book reviews.) There are some true problems: really esoteric fields where there are very few people working and few indexed publications, fields that publish in non-conventional media, and especially people publishing only in other languages than English, where the reviews are likely to be indexed only by sources found outside the country of origin only in the very largest research libraries (I have insufficient skill with them myself). For faculty in the creative arts, the best guideline is the relevant part of WP:CREATIVE. Especially for visual art, the criterion of being in the permanent collection of major museums works in both directions--it's one of the best notability guidelines we have. DGG ( talk ) 03:18, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
I agree with DGG, a statement against using h-indexes (or other numerical summaries of citation numbers) in the humanities should be added. Web of Science and Google Scholar's ability to extract citations from footnotes is sorely lacking. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 08:09, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
As I commented at the AfD for Maryańska, descriptive biology is different from all other scientific fields. People normally publish many small papers, but the are cited only by specialists in the exact same narrow group of organisms--and the way people need to work is to specialize to such an extent that there are normally only 2 or 3 such individuals in the world at any given time. Citation factors here are absurd altogether. I never really understood this until I had the chance rather late in my career to work in a department where there were also classical biologists. But we usually accept the criterion of having identified new species--which is in fact extraordinarily inclusive if we interpret it as a single species, or having a species named after oneself, similarly so. DGG ( talk ) 03:29, 12 April 2013 (UTC)
I wonder about the consequences. In theory, there is no problem with using citation numbers despite low citation indexing, so long as the indexing "miss rate" occurs in proportion with the general rate of citations. I have found citation numbers to be fairly consistent within a particular field - that is to say, chaired professors will do better than regular ones, who will in turn do better than un-tenured ones, etc. In practice, if we removed the ability to note citations to humanities professors' work, I would consider them to pass the new C1 only if their work has been the subject of significant scholarly analysis by others. This might bring us into closer alignment with WP:AUTHOR, which similarly requires others to write about the subject's work. RayTalk 09:18, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

If anybody proposes a change to the guidelines let's see a draft here. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:36, 14 April 2013 (UTC).

Academic journals

Although this guideline only covers persons, academic journals are very important here and people here are generally knowledgeable about this subject. There exist a lot of articles on journals and there are regular AfDs. Unfortunately, often only (very) few people participate in those debates and articles are sometime kept or deleted based on just one or two opinions. Not all participants are always familiar with academic publishing, leading sometimes to unrealistic expectations about third party sources providing in-depth coverage of journals. On the other hand, sometimes people think that a handful of citations to a journal make it notable (compare that to the generally hundreds of citations that we require for academics themselves...) Perhaps some of the people here would like to watchlist Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Article alerts and contribute to those debates from time to time. Two current discussions that could use some expert input are about the Journal of Law and Social Deviance and Knowledge. Understanding. Skill. Thanks! --Randykitty (talk) 12:20, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

And the AfD on the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 could use some more input, too. --Randykitty (talk) 13:48, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
Do note that we have a separate guideline essay Wikipedia:Notability (academic journals). But I think as you say there is a large overlap between people interested in AfDs of academics, of academic journals, and of academic units. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
That is indeed an essay and not a guideline. At the time, it was criticized by one group of people as being too lenient and by another group of people as being too stringent... Nevertheless, it has been used in quite a large number of PRODs and AfD debates and not too often challenged. In practice, it's often the editors arguing that a journal should be kept that challenge provisions of this essay, until they note that it is much more difficult for a journal to pass WP:GNG... Anyway, I think there's indeed an overlap in interests and expertise here. The Academic Journals Wikiproject does not have many active participants and more people would be welcome, even if it were only to keep an eye on AfDs and the talk page discussions. Some of the issues discussed there (for example, on selective databases) are obviously related to the discussion just above this section. --Randykitty (talk) 15:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Inclusion of Pulitzer Prize for History

This award is specific to USA history. I have no doubt that this award is notable. But there cannot be a official guideline of specifying it in Notability (academics) since there is no evidence that there is a specific field of US history (like History of Islam) which is separtated from world history. And there can be no doubt that Turing Award is more specific to the question of academic discipline. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:03, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

That's covered by criterion #2. Am I missing something? Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:09, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I am here debating the Inclusion of Pulitzer Prize for History in criterion 2 not whether it is notable or not. I have no doubt that it is notable. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:21, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't think nation-specificity is an issue here. The point is to list a small number of examples of awards whose winners are unquestionably notable. This is clearly one such. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:27, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Very much unquestionably notable ok. But the title of the page is Wikipedia:Notability (academics) or establishing the guideline by which it can be judged a academic article is notable or not. And one can only include Pulitzer Prize for History in criterion 2 when it has a academic value(notability is not the same). Can anyone point a source that there is a department titled American History. But departments like Indology or History of Islam do exist in many departments. Or in other words there is no academic discipline titled American History because it is largely associated with the world history and it is thus difficult to talk history of USA without talking history of say UK or USSR or say vietnam in the 1970s. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:42, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Also, biologists are unlikely to win the Pulitzer in history. Unfair exclusion! Prejudice! Your point is? —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 6 May 2013 (UTC):
I started the debate when my attempt to get list of the Jnanpith Award get reverted. If pulitzer in history is notable then Jnanpith Award is also. Do note that apart from being the top literary award in India it is awarded to only 53 individuals since 1965 among a billion Indians making it having a 1 to 2 crore ratio. I got reverted since the User:Randykitty claims it does not have a academic value being a literary award. My point is then how does pulitzer in history has a academic value. It is the same as claiming Ayn Rand has a academic value. It is not the point of whether Ayn Rand is notable or not or whether is philosophy has any academic value or not. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:58, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

::::Randykitty, I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that we should only consider awards that are exclusively for academics? RockMagnetist (talk) 18:14, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

WP:AUTHOR does not mention prizes. Maybe it should. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:27, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
You are partially right though but I can show a number of examples to prove you wrong. Take the example of Girish Karnad. He is a great literary theorist and playwright and can be both considered an academic since he has taught in a number of universities(including the US). Many authors are literary theorists and are thus considered academic. Solomon7968 (talk) 18:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
If someone is an academic and you have a reliable source for that AND they are also a winner of this Indian prize, then they meet the notability requirements, so what's the issue? Barney the barney barney (talk) 18:20, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I want to add the Jnanpith Award in the criterion 2. There are 3 awards which are specific to the US and not a single from any other country. It definitely falls under Wikipedia:Systemic bias. To maintain a fair representation I propose to add Jnanpith Award in the criterion 2. Solomon7968 (talk) 18:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

As others have already said, and unlike the history Pulitzer, this is an award for contributions to literature, and not to a field of academic study. So it belongs in WP:AUTHOR (or would, if awards were listed there) and not here. It is not a question of whether it is appropriately meritorious: it is simply off-topic. It is entirely possible that an award-winner is also a contributor to academics (e.g. as you say as a literary theorist) but that would not be the reason they won the award. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:38, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
(A reply drafted before several of the others above and appended after an edit conflict.) So it seems that this "Pulitzer Prize for History" discussion was started as a misdirection in some round-about way of trying to get a different issue discussed. And it seems that we are basically here to discuss this edit. Personally, the way this was brought up does not put me in a very good mood to consider the actual suggestion. The sentence in the article is just trying to provide a few good examples of academic awards – not list all notable awards of all sorts. It seems that Solomon7968 is asserting that the Jnanpith award should be included so that there will be "a single non USA source to present a international representation". It may be worth pointing out that the Nobel Prize is not a US award and neither is the Fields Medal, so there are non-US awards listed already. If we think that's not enough, we should then discuss which is the best additional example to add – not assume that the Jnanpith is the only candidate to be added. When considering what awards to list as good examples of academic awards, it is not necessarily clear that an award for literature is the best choice – as Randykitty remarked when editing. Of course, we can consider adding multiple additional examples, and we can consider removing some of the existing examples. But whatever is to be done should be done by reaching a consensus on the Talk page first, and editing the article afterwards – as Randykitty remarked when reverting this addition for at least the third time. (The first revert that I notice was by someone else.) Personally, I think Randykitty is right about this particular suggestion. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:43, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
OKAY I find the consensus is listing some awards in WP:AUTHOR in the model of Wikipedia:Notability (academics) but criterion 2 should list Turing Award also. Solomon7968 (talk) 18:49, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't necessarily see a consensus expressed here to add a list of awards in WP:AUTHOR. I suggest to go discuss that suggestion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people) rather than here. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:04, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
BarrelProof is definitely right of my intention of including a single non USA source to present a international representation. Any sensible editor will find Wikipedia:Systemic bias in criterion 2 in which which three USA centric Awards are listed among 6 (50%) without even listing Turing Award. And surely there is no need to build a consensus on including Turing Award. Solomon7968 (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The consensus is not listing some awards in WP:AUTHOR. Any change to that guideline will have to be discussed on the talk page there first. And I really don't see why Turing Award (an award given by a US-based society, by the way) needs to be added here. We have a mix of US and non-US awards and I don't see any reason to start fiddling around with this guideline to "correct" some non-existing bias. --Randykitty (talk) 18:59, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
    • US based society no doubt but less biased than pulitzer in history which are awarded for only US and you(not you alone) are blind to say that there is no bias. Why should we have a single US centric award. I would instead vote to add Ho Chi Minh Prize instead Solomon7968 (talk) 19:06, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  • We should be quite limited with the number of examples we provide. However, it's true that our current list of awards is not very diverse. We have two (Nobel & MacArthur) that cover multiple subjects; Fields (math); and Bancroft & Pulitzer for History (both history). All are European or US-based, so we could easily replace one or two with a non-European/US award. In terms of which one, we probably don't need two for history, and the Bancroft is quite specific in subject. I would vote for dropping the Bancroft & replacing either the Fields or the Pulitzer with a non-Anglo award. It would be give more weight to the "etc." if readers could see awards outside of English-speaking/European-based can also be highly notable. --Lquilter (talk) 19:09, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Maybe the current examples for awards are inappropriate for a different reason. Is anyone who won a Nobel prize likely to fail WP:GNG? It might make more sense to list examples of awards that might actually be needed to establish academic notability. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:09, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I strongly oppose any USA centrism but to be true there are very few significant academic awards outside US and Europe. I listed Jnanpith Award because I truly believe it is of international standard. Solomon7968 (talk) 19:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Since all of the Jnanpith winners have Wikipedia articles, there doesn't seem to be much of a bias problem where it matters most - in article space. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:23, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
The Fields and Turing are both examples of awards that are considered to be the clear top international award for their fields (mathematics and computer science respectively). But their fields are not very far apart. I think we should include one but not necessarily both. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:22, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Good point. Also, while it certainly matters most in article space, it's probably more helpful to have diverse and, as you say, cutoff-level examples than blindingly obvious, US/Western-centric examples that 99% of editors will already know. Jnanpith might be a good example. --Lquilter (talk) 21:13, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I think Randykitty is right that Jnanpith belongs elsewhere. I was thinking of the awards from academic societies: for example, perhaps a given society has society-wide awards that are sufficiently notable and section awards that are not. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:26, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
The Kyoto Prize might be worth considering. (Note that the List of Kyoto Prize winners is almost all bluelinks.) —BarrelProof (talk) 21:43, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
That's another highly prestigious prize that is way above the cutoff. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:48, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
It's definitely at the right level of notability, but it's the same sort of prize as the Nobel: offered in a variety of fields, but not specific to a single field. So (other than geographic inclusivity) I don't see what it adds to our list of examples. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:49, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
I support inclusion of Kyoto Prize. I read an interview of Ashoke Sen where he said that Nobel Prize tend to award prize in sciences when the result is experimentally verified. So extremely theoretical physicist do not generally get the Nobel (e.g Edward Witten, Stephen Hawking etc). Again in Nobel we have a shortfall of technology prize which can be covered through the Kyoto Prize. Solomon7968 (talk) 22:42, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Can anyone explain what is the difference between Biological sciences and Life sciences in the Basic sciences category of List of Kyoto Prize winners. Solomon7968 (talk) 23:07, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
See About the Kyoto Prize: "Biological Sciences (Evolution, Behavior, Ecology, Environment) ... Life Sciences (Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Neurobiology)". RockMagnetist (talk) 23:26, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion about what inclusion on the list means. These are *examples*. They should be awards that most people reading the list are already familiar with, to help calibrate what the criterion leads. This is not intended to be a list of all awards that count for notability. So the criterion for inclusion should not be "this is a significant award", but rather "this example adds to our understanding of which kinds of award are significant". —David Eppstein (talk) 23:19, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I support your argument but by even your argument Kyoto Prize should be on the list. It is a fact that most number of wikipedians are from USA. Inclusion of Kyoto Prize will help them to judge the merits of biographies of entries of Asian Scientists on the relative of Kyoto Prize. Solomon7968 (talk) 23:28, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Is there a consensus reached that Kyoto Prize should be included in criterion 2???? Solomon7968 (talk) 18:23, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Too obvious?

We have two threads mixed together in one confusing discussion. I'd like to separate my thread. I think that listing prizes like the Nobel Prize as examples misses the point, which (to paraphrase David Eppstein) is to improve our understanding of which kinds of award are significant. A list of major awards does not improve our understanding, because:

  1. These awards are a long way from the cutoff for notability.
  2. With few exceptions the awardees have articles already.
  3. Most of the awardees easily pass WP:GNG. Indeed, the citations for major awards provide enough information to write a bio without any further sources.

Instead of major awards, Criterion 2 should include some specific examples of awards that fall on each side of the cutoff for notability. Above, I mentioned a possible example: for a given academic society, the society-wide awards may qualify but not lesser awards. RockMagnetist (talk) 23:37, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Please explain in detail your examples and what is your notabality mark. Even many national societies are not notable. For example we do not have an article on Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. Solomon7968 (talk) 23:47, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Right now I'm making the general proposal that we provide such examples. If there is agreement on that, the details would be determined in later discussions. RockMagnetist (talk) 23:57, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I oppose your view Bangladesh Academy of SciencesCategory:Fellows of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences used to have Abdus Salam as a foreign member. Again the same society lists Qazi Motahar Hossain (called chess guru of Bangladesh) as a ex-member. Societies cannot be a judging factor since many of them have foreign fellows who are way ahead the original members like the example I pointed. This is a real problem in many Asian countries. Solomon7968 (talk) 00:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

You're getting distracted by details. I gave an example for illustration, but all I'm proposing is that we give examples on the edge of notability instead of far from it. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:13, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Also, the question for Criterion 2 is - which awards are enough in themselves to establish notability? Any notable scientist can have non-notable awards. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:17, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Your proposal is seeming hypothetical to me. We have a article on the Pakistan Academy of Sciences but not on Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. The answer behind this is neither of the two is notable. Pakistan got a brain like Abdus Salam whereas Bangladesh lacked. One scientist can forever change landscape of science research in a country or a field. Your Society based approach in my view will be fatal. Solomon7968 (talk) 00:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
Look, the existing text in Criterion 2 says "Examples may include certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies, ..." Emphasis on certain. I am in no way implying that all societies have sufficiently notable awards. Clearly, societies that are mentioned in Criterion 3 are examples of societies with sufficiently notable awards. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
There are very few Societies in which a fellow scientist can be considered de facto notable and all are from Europe or USA (not even China or India). So I will suggest not to go ahead in this way since it will give rise to US-centrism, but I started the main debate to get rid of it. Solomon7968 (talk) 00:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm not talking about fellowships either - that is Criterion 3. I am striking my reference to society awards because it has distracted you from the main point of my proposal. Why don't you wait for someone else to respond, and we'll see if anyone else understands it? RockMagnetist (talk) 00:49, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Pulitzer The Pullitzer is an award for writing, not for research, and is awarded for a particular book, not for a career. It qualified a person under WP:AUTHOR Even the award for history has gone to people for non-academic popular works of history and not all the winners have been academics: some have been political figures; some have been journalists, some primarily novelists. A winner of any of the sections of this prize, history or otherwise, is notable regardless of whether or not they are an academic. It's listed here, as a major national prize, but the rule is that a major national prize at the highest level for anything at al makes a person notable (and there will always be news stories, for those who go by that). The individual books for which the award is given are individually notable also, under BOOK. (and there will always be major reviews as well as new stories, for those who do not see beyond the GNG) I notice with utter amazement that not all recent winners have bios here yet, and most of the books do not have articles. I imagine this will soon me remedied. (I'll discuss societies below) DGG ( talk ) 22:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
At least there is one sensible editor like you who can understand this simple fact that Pulitzer Prize is not de facto academic though it is de facto notable. Solomon7968 (talk) 23:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Balancing -- three discussions...

It seems to me that there are three separate discussions going on all in the name of balance. They seem to me to be:

  1. National balance -- should we only list international prizes or if we list ones only open to certain nations and regions should this list be more balanced?
  2. Field balance -- there was a time when nearly every prize listed was a science award. This has been expanded to include history now, do we need more? My view is that the page still has too much wording specific to science but this was a place where there was an attempt at a mix. Should awards that are sometimes won by academics but are often not (arts, etc.) be listed?
    I can list a number of fields where we do not have the slightest coverage on wikipedia. Kenneth O. May Prize of History of Mathematics is one such example. I translated three articles on the receipents from German Wikipedia but it lacks coverage being a significant field. Added to these contribution of Indian mathematics or Chinese mathematics not given their due recognition here. Solomon7968 (talk) 21:20, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  3. Prominence balance -- the awards currently listed are absolute slam-dunk awards that there is no question about the notability of both the award and each recipient. Do we want to include certain prestigious but less "duh!" awards on this list? Do we want to list awards that are not sufficient?

I've said enough about field balance above -- it should be maintained or expanded -- and I think that national balance should be expanded as well as much as possible (that probably means expanding the list); I think that the revert of the good faith effort to add an award in another region for another field happened a bit too fast for my tastes, but I think that both editors have done a good job of starting a collegial discussion here and that's what really matters. Let me talk about prominence balance instead:

I am in general in favor of it, but I worry that unless we make a concerted effort, adding less well-known awards has a good chance of disrupting the balance of fields and exacerbating the balance of national/international/regional awards. I do think that it is good to talk about some awards and fellowships which are clearly notable but not sufficient in themselves to qualify as A1. It would also be good to reference specific cases from AfD where an individual had a substantial award but where the article was deleted. My sense is that the bar for awards to count for WP:PROF is in practice significantly lower than what we mention here. I would reword to call awards such as the Guggenheim (currently listed as a "lesser award") a "major" award and call the Nobel, MacArthur, Pulitzer (why just history? any of them!) something even higher.

It is hard to name specific non-qualifying awards without sounding dismissive ("non-notable" is certainly not right; even "minor" rings of condescension. Perhaps "awards of importance but not sufficient in themselves to convey overall notability to the recipient"). Though for my own field (musicology) I could easily come up with a list of 2 or 3 awards that would definitely pass A2 themselves, 3-6 that I believe should count but would be more controversial, and 10 or so that are big news in the field but not sufficient in themselves to pass on A2. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 20:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Nice summary, Michael. Satisfying all three constraints may require a long list of awards. Maybe it would be better to not mention any specific awards. Instead, we should just say that the award itself should satisfy notability criteria. I browsed through a few random articles on awards, and in all of them at least half of the awardees had blue links (often much more). An alternative might be that the web site for the award should have some information that could be used in a biography - for example, a nontrivial statement of why they chose the recipient. RockMagnetist (talk) 22:03, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
It may seem that satisfying all three constraints may require a long list of awards but it is not necessarily true. Though I am ok if a consensus emerges on having no awards. Solomon7968 (talk) 22:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

This is an academic guidline and a academic study without awards seems hypothetical to me. A short but diverse representative list must be there. Solomon7968 (talk) 22:28, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

  • societies The present guideline includes all major national societies at the highest level. I consider this unrealistic, and only applicable to countries with significant academic establishments. My impression is that the qualifications under WP:PROF have always been interpreted as international--bnot as notable only within the country, but the notable as judged by international standards. This is definitely eurocentric, but the world's academic establishment at the current time especially in science is eurocentric--as seen by the current insistence of the Chinese government that scientists publish in internationally recognized journals. It is in a sense realistic, because only the international journals --and very predominantly the ones published in English, for that matter, are significantly read outside one's own country and are likely to influence science generally. This is from my own view of the world - -and no doubt the view of almost everyone here-- very highly undesirable, but it is the actual situation, and WP follows the outside world, rather than pretends it is as it ought to be. I am certainly willing to interpret this a little broadly and inclusively. and I think we in general have done so.
What societies should count, I am reluctant to prescribe. I have insufficiently knowledge of the standards outside the US and the UK--I am not even sure about the other countries of Western Europe. It is not that I wish to exclude, but that I personally do not know enough to include. My limited checks here of some people who were members of societies in other countries of the America indicate that very possibly not everyone in those national societies would be notable if they had had similar careers in the US or UK. . I am aware that in most other subjects we do not make this distinction, as in sports or the arts, though I believe we may not have accepted the national sports teams of a few very small countries as conferring notability. the US & Western Europe,
I rather like RockMagnetitist's wording above. DGG ( talk ) 23:26, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree that notability of Scientists should be determined in a international level. But we should not confuse between text book authors and scientists. Take for example C. V. Durell who is a author of UK textbooks. We can similarly have text book authors of different countries and languages but Scientists should be determined in a international scale. But again this argument does not holds for subjects like Computer Science or say the specific branch of Physics, String Theory. All text book authors are de facto top scientists in this few respective fields. Hence I propose to separate text book authors from scientists and mentioning their specific criteria. Solomon7968 (talk) 23:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
And, as predicted, discussion of the third balance has completely shifted field balance to once again equate academics with scientists. I know a lot of great textbook authors who aren't great scientists; they're not scientists at all. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 04:57, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Textbook writers would qualify under #4. And all power to them as they make an immense contribution. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:11, 8 May 2013 (UTC).
  • Comment. It would indeed be valuable to have a list of scholarly awards as an addition to Wikipedia's knowledge base. However, I am not sure that it would be a good idea to rank them for the purpose of this guideline and put a list of borderline ones in it, this might lead to incessant quibbling. Remember what is the rationale for WP:Prof#2: the core criterion for notability of academics is WP:Prof#1-scholarly recognition by peers. Other categories like #2, #3, #5, #6, #8 have been put in to short-circuit unnecessary discussion (which so often occurs in these AfDs) by implying that a person who satisfies these latter criteria will invariably satisfy #1. It would be very unusual to have a person who satisfies #2 but does not satisfy #1. I am inclined to leave #2 as is, possibly with the inclusion of the Kyoto Prize if this is felt to carry the same weight as the others. DGG's summary is apt: Wikipedia reports the world as it is, not as it should be. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC).
First delete pulitzer in history because it belongs to Wikipedia:Author not here. And I agree with your argument for Science and technology but not for history. How can you claim pulitzer in history is a greater award than any other history award. Solomon7968 (talk) 06:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
There is a catch 22. The notability of a prize is determined (mostly) by the notability of its recipients. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Xxanthippe (talk) 06:05, 8 May 2013 (UTC).
I'm not sure that is a problem. Both are derived from the scholarly recognition of peers. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
But the question is how we are to determine it, not ourself having such authority. And our judging of prizes by their recipients is a shortcut, tho a very useful one --the actual criterion is that the outside world regards those prizes as showing distinction, which can usually be fairly easy to prove. DGG ( talk ) 19:02, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
That's why I think I've come around to opposing the idea of trying to rank prizes (I've been chewing on this since this started). We should stick with the ones that are unquestionably the major prizes in their field, that every educated person should recognize (the Fields, the Nobel, etc). There are, of late, a lot of "new" prizes that try to establish their prestige by giving them to people who've already gotten lots of other prizes, but the prizes in themselves don't tend to confirm anything, other than amounts of money. I think keeping things vague enough so that rather than following the guideline by rote, editors can use their judgment on specific cases, as we have now, is a good idea. For instance, I would remark from personal impression (as a math postdoc) that while the Kyoto Prize goes to great and prominent mathematicians, it's not a prize grad students and postdocs gossip about, or even much know about, so I would not grant it Fields or Abel-like status. RayTalk 15:47, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Brief aside (I hope)

'Xxanthippe: Do you have any professional qualification to judge the value of Kyoto Prize'. If not mention it while making a comment. And if Jnanpith Award is not included then neither can you include pulitzer in history because they are not primarily academic though a good number of academic winners have won. Both belongs to Wikipedia:Author. Solomon7968 (talk) 06:52, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that Xxanthippe is only interested in arguing than making anything constructive in wikipedia since his edit history shows that he has more edits in project pages than in article name space. Solomon7968 (talk) 09:12, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Solomon, adding personal attacks on valued contributors is not going to help your position (not even veiled attacks, like your comment to DGG that he's the only sensible editor here, implying that the other ones are not)...
I am giving facts, no personal attacks anything, what you and Xxanthippe is promoting is Wikipedia:Systemic bias. I am trying to counter it and thus DGG seems sensible to me. Solomon7968 (talk) 10:24, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
The definition of Wikipedia:NPA reads Racial, sexist, homophobic, ageist, religious, political, ethnic, national, sexual, attacks as personal attack. If you have confusion go and check it before commenting. Solomon7968 (talk) 10:32, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm giving this a separate subsection because it does not contribute to the above discussion. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:22, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
You're right, Solomon7968 - you haven't made personal attacks. You have just been uncivil: "belittling a fellow editor". RockMagnetist (talk) 16:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:No personal attacks "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done.'" There is also material on my talk page. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:45, 9 May 2013 (UTC).
I stand corrected. Sad that we even have to quote the rules on this. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:58, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't care what Xxanthippe says. He has a history of reverting consensus edits and promoting Euro-centrism and Systemic bias on wikipedia. And again he has more edits on wikipedia project pages than in article name space. Solomon7968 (talk) 08:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Three Specific Points on awards

  • Inclusion of History Award - Since there is no universally recognised History Award, the inclusion of two specific to history of USA falls under Wikipedia:Systemic bias.

My solution Add a paragraph (criteria) listing just three or four national awards in history.

  • I might drop history altogether, especially if all the awards are both subject-specific (history) and region/place specific. Nobel covers literature and economics which seems to me to demonstrate. I like the addition of Kyoto.

    Rather than write a whole paragraph on history, I wonder if we might, in response to discussion above about borderline & highly-notable, do a bifurcated split and note that there are "highly notable awards" that themselves confer notability, such as Nobel & Kyoto, and there are other awards that are the highest in their field that denote notability in a particular field, and give examples here of a couple of international subject-specific prizes, and a couple of domestic broad-topic awards -- say one for a European/US entry and one for China/India/South America. MacArthur would work well here for the US because it's quite broad-topic, but it's probably more notable than we would need -- it's been said before that MacArthur itself confers notability, and I take it that an example of a prize that recognizes notability might be better. --Lquilter (talk) 12:14, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Hmm I like the point but the problem is there is no de facto notable non-US or non-Europe Awards. In case of India there is no equivalent of Macarthur fellowship though there exists the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship and List of Fellows of the Lalit Kala Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship but they cover only the arts. Again their wikipedia coverage is also not very good. Solomon7968 (talk) 12:26, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Nobel is not by itself a good example, because it represents the much higher standard of famous, not notable
Anyone with a Pulitzer prize is notable. But I agree it belongs in author
I don't support a list at all--any list is likely to be used restrictively. Highest national or international award in a given field can be said. Fellowship in a major national or international society also, without trying to say which ones are major enough.
All these are in some sense just shortcuts to deal with obvious notability. The real criterion is distinction in the field, and these are among the things which obviously prove it. DGG ( talk ) 18:54, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
Certainly we should decide whether there should be a list before discussing what should be in it. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

When will consensus finally arrive

My solutions after lengthy debate:

  • Drop History Awards:Since there is no universally recognised History Awards
  • Drop Brancoft Prize and pulitzer in history Any opposing editor should argue this on Wikipedia:Author not here.
  • Since Nobel and Fields Medal only refer to the highest distinction it cannot judge the average Academic. Rewriting the criterion to give it the necessary vagueness to explicit it.
If this is the consensus please support it or oppose. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:08, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I think you're saying, drop all references to specific awards. Is that correct? RockMagnetist (talk) 16:13, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
No I am saying Nobel and Fields Medal is de facto notable but we should also allow a certain vagueness so that the criterion is not so rigid. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I think this is silliness. Does Solomon7968 wish to suggest that winners of prizes like the Bancroft and the Pulitzer aren't notable? Does he think that criterion 2 (major, top-tier prizes) should be the barometer by which we judge notability for all academics? If he does not, I propose we close this discussion and go back to editing Wikipedia. RayTalk 16:20, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I will suggest you reading the comments of User:DGG. This is a discussion of Academic. Pulitzer in history is a separate topic. It is like asking whether President of united states should be a criterion of scientists. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:27, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that academic historians don't frequently and usually win the Pulitzer and the Bancroft? While I'm sure we occasionally give Nobels in physics to people who aren't physicists, and Nobels in economics to people who aren't economists, I think any prize that really great academics win regularly would be academic prizes. It would make sense to list them under WP:AUTHOR, but I really don't understand what you're hoping to achieve by continuing this discussion, or trying so hard to get them removed from the guideline. It seems like you're really just wasting everybody's time. RayTalk 16:33, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I started the debate when User:Randykitty reverted my edit of Jnanpith Award. Your argument of pulitzer is(was) my argument. You can check the award for notability. 3 awards from USA falls according to me under Wikipedia:Systemic bias, again you can check my contrib history I am not only doing this debate alone. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:38, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Let me ask again: does this substantively change the criteria in any way, or are you just poking around for semantics because you don't like the United States? RayTalk 16:52, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I like USA but Awards in USA or UK can be a judging factor only for science not for literature or History. I have no objection to specific USA awards only awarded to US citizens if they are for science. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:57, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
It is not matter of liking USA or not, I did'nt even objected to the macarthur fellowship but pulitzer in history belongs to Wikipedia:Author not here. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

A very simple proposal

Drop all references to specific prizes. Use only general criteria to determine which prizes are evidence of notability. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:25, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Rationale: Specific suggestions for prizes can have the following problems, as has been discussed above:

  1. They are open to criticisms of national or subject bias.
  2. If they are too prestigious (as with the current choices), the academic notability guidelines are almost certainly not needed.
  3. If they are less prestigious, it will be difficult to choose a representative selection, and the choice is likely to be controversial.
RockMagnetist (talk) 01:02, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
Seems reasonable to me for the criteria here, although it may just shift the same arguments to individual AfD's. It's probably the best option though. a13ean (talk) 16:29, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I support the argument. Solomon7968 (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I see no reason to change the status quo. Although the Pulitzer Prize for History or for General Non-Fiction would certainly qualify a recipient for WP:Author it could also qualify for WP:Prof#2: see William Manchester and Barbara Tuchman for clear cases of this. By contrast, a Nobel Peace Prize would not qualify for WP:Prof#2 although it would for WP:GNG. The implication of the guidelines is obvious that the prize should be in a relevant field. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:23, 10 May 2013 (UTC).
I don't see the relevance of your comments to this proposal. Plenty of reasons were discussed above. I added a rationale above that summarizes them. RockMagnetist (talk) 01:02, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
The relevance of my comments is this: You make a proposal to drop all references to specific prizes. I oppose it because I believe that the current guideline works satisfactorily and your proposal will make the guideline less workable. To expand: the bar for WP:Prof#2 is set much higher than for WP:Prof#1. If the bar on #2 is removed then the doors will be opened to all sorts of quibbling about which prizes are notable and which are not. This will be much harder to get agreement on than #1, because in #1 there at least some sort of basis in the data in Google Books, book reviews, library holding records and citation databases, which can be referred to in most cases, although there is often disagreement even there. In determining the notability of Prizes from your general criteria there is little to go on apart from ghits and expressions of personal opinion. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:58, 10 May 2013 (UTC).
An editor below says "Every award seems notable... to me if it is given for arts". This is exactly the attitude I had feared. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC).
You are taking my concept in a different context. Take National University of Rwanda and try to compare it with Harvard or princeton of USA. I belief we should consider every award with its due space. It may be true that nobody in USA might consider the Rwandan artist a hero, but he is in the special place of heart of many Rwandans, who belief that he is the messanger of Rwandan culture to the outer world. Here the National University of Rwanda award may seem non notable to you but it seems notable to me. Solomon7968 (talk) 07:43, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't know how high the bar is intended to be for #2, but it is certainly lower than the specific examples. To quote WP:Prof#2: "Examples may include certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies, of notable foundations and trusts ..." Does anyone really need to be told that if those are sufficient, then so are the highest awards? RockMagnetist (talk) 04:37, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
Every award seems notable (I don't know of somalia or Afghanistan) to me if it is given for arts. Every country has its own culture and the country gives awards to promote its culture. We should have specific award criterion only for science. Solomon7968 (talk) 03:09, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
This is far too broad. E.g. an award from one's dean is almost never notable. A best paper award at a conference is not usually enough for notability by itself, but there may be exceptions. In the arts, a ribbon at the county fair is not notable. But I would be willing to accept the top-level national award in the arts (or other fields) as being notable, even for very minor countries. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:39, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
Please read my Rwandan message to Xxanthippe.
Solomon7968 (talk) 08:11, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
To quote David Eppstein an award is an academic award if it is given solely to academics not vice versa that a significant academic has won the award. Now a significant number of Jnanpith Award winners are also academic even some are politicians. This surely do not make Jnanpith Award a award of politicians. I will advise you Xxanthippe to please change your bias. Solomon7968 (talk) 00:39, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, I like examples, and just because the process of choosing examples isn't easy, is, I think, no reason to give up the benefits. Here's my proposal:
Say up-front that awards can range from highly notable themselves (e.g., Nobel Prize); to highly notable within a particular field (e.g., xxxx) or particular nation/region/other criteria (e.g., MacArthur, Jnanpith); at the lower end you would find awards that are important .... --Lquilter (talk) 14:10, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
In principle, I like that approach; but do you think that you could find a set of examples that would satisfy everyone? RockMagnetist (talk) 15:27, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
I will suggest Lquilter to rewrite the criterion 2. Then if we find consensus it is Ok else I don't see any value in endless debating. Solomon7968 (talk) 15:43, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I can try, but probably not necessarily this weekend ... it seems like folks are hot & active on this page, so if someone else wants to take a poke at it in the meantime, feel free. (-: --Lquilter (talk) 04:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the point about the arts is that the criteria for the sciences are international, but for subjects relating to a particular language or country, the standards are necessarily specific to that country. The Rwandans know best who are their national poets: outside the one attempt of the Nobel Prize for literature, and some awards for musical performance, almost everything in the arts and humanities is nationally-based. DGG ( talk ) 06:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
To say "almost everything in the arts and humanities is nationally-based" is far too wide a generalisation. That may have some truth for contemporary creative art and literature but it by no means true for scholarship in the humanities. Mainstream scholarship in psychology, sociology, economics, politics, history, philosophy is judged by international standards. Even literary criticism of the world's great creative writers such as Tolstoy, Proust, Dickens, Murasaki Shikibu is assessed in an international context. See those articles for sources. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:47, 12 May 2013 (UTC).
Xxanthippe do you have any sources to claim that the academic subject history is judged by international standards. And we have Nobel prize in economics to judge economics. And I have no idea of the subjects like psychology, sociology, politics or philosophy and if they have any international award. Solomon7968 (talk) 04:00, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

C6 Clarification (Presidents)

There has been some debate at AfDs about what qualifies for the C6 criteria. I think it's mostly clear, but I do take the detractor's point that the clarification of "major" as meaning "significant" does not add to the discussion. Here is the current C6:

The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society.

And the current Specific Criteria Notes:

Criterion 6 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has held the post of President or Chancellor (or Vice-Chancellor in countries where this is the top academic post) of a significant accredited college or university, director of a highly regarded notable academic independent research institute or center (which is not a part of a university), president of a notable national or international scholarly society, etc. Lesser administrative posts (Provost, Dean, Department Chair, etc.) are generally not sufficient to qualify under Criterion 6 alone, although exceptions are possible on a case-by-case basis (e.g., being a Provost of a major university may sometimes qualify). Heads of institutes and centers devoted to promoting pseudo-science and marginal or fringe theories are generally not covered by Criterion 6; their heads may still be notable under other criteria of this guideline or under the general WP:BIO or WP:N guidelines.

Proposed change, with changes in bold. Splitting into two points, one for presidents, etc., and one for heads of institutes.

Criterion 6 for heads of universities and colleges may be satisfied, for example, if the person has held the post of President or Chancellor (or Vice-Chancellor in countries where this is the top academic post) regardless of the conditions of the subject's appointment or his or her previous academic qualifications of a college or university where that institution is
  • accredited, degree-granting, and established for several decades. Or
  • enrolls a large number of students and whose overall notability has been clearly established beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • is a highly notable and established independent academic research institute or center not part of a university.
Lesser administrative posts (Provost, Dean, Department Chair, etc.) are generally not sufficient to qualify under Criterion 6 alone, but may qualify for highly notable institutions and notable sub-schools which have achieved great recognition on their own. (e.g., certain highly renown medical schools, business schools, film departments, etc.)
Criterion 6 for heads of national or international scholarly societies requires that the notability of the society itself be clearly established beyond reasonable doubts. Heads of institutes and centers devoted to promoting pseudo-science and marginal or fringe theories are generally not covered.
Heads of institutions or research centers not meeting this specific criterion may still be notable under other criteria of this guideline or under the general WP:BIO or WP:N guidelines.

Thoughts? The rationale for removing "On a case-by-case basis" is that this guideline exists to give guidance to voting and "case-by-case" does not. "Medical schools" (Harvard Med, for instance) and "Business schools" (Wharton school of business) tend to be the easiest to find cases where the dean would be notable, but I also wanted to include an example of a department that might qualify (USC's Film Department, for instance) -- sorry for the American slant of these examples; it's what I know, but I didn't want to put them in the Specific Notes themselves. I think that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a fine phrasing for the higher standard used for lesser academic posts, scholarly societies, etc. but I'm not wedded to it. Only that we avoid recursive definitions, which "major," "significant," and "notable (See WP:PROF)" tend to do. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Administrative posts like Dean are only present in universities which have the school concept. Now the school concept is largely in USA context. So I belief the Afd should also be of some USA academic. I am curious to know which article are you saying. Solomon7968 (talk) 17:08, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
You can take a look in the discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William D. Carmichael‎. This man was a dean of a highly notable buisness school but in itself he is not notable(according to me) Solomon7968 (talk) 17:13, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

AfDs for two academic awards

Editors interested in this guideline may also be interested in two active deletion discussions for awards that may count for criterion #C2 for their recipients: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Onsager Medal. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:37, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Two more: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Giuliano Preparata Medals and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science Prizes. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:06, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

PROF qualified main topic articles written as biographies

Withdrawn. -- Jreferee (talk) 12:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal - Add the following to the guideline: "If the main topic of an article primarily qualifies under the Notability (academics) guideline and the article is written as a biography, the article should be rewritten to present the main topic so that it primarily is focused on the Notability (academics) qualification(s) rather than the person's biographical life events."
  • Support (as nominator) - (This originated at COIN (here.) The WP:PROF nutshell now reads "Many scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources." However, it stops short of giving guideline as to what to do for WP:PROF qualified articles that do not qualify as biographies but are written as biographies. If the main topic of an article qualifies under WP:PROF but not as a biography, then the article should present the main topic so that it clearly is focused on the WP:PROF qualification(s) and not the biography life of the person. If the article is presented as a biography, then it may be hard for editors to see that it should be judge as something other than as a biography. Notable topic written in a way that does not focus on the main notability seems to come up in WP:PROF articles. These sometimes end up in AfD. I think if WP:PROF is clarified on these points, an article message template can be created so that WP:PROF-qualified main topic articles can be tagged to request that the article be revised. This also may help inform editors of the situation so that WP:PROF qualified articles are less likely to end up being listed at AfD. (Post any alternate wording below the initial proposal). -- Jreferee (talk) 21:05, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
  • I do not support: this is too rigid, and I think does not take into account the degree to which there are actual problems. . If there is little material on the life, obviously little can be written. The structure of the article should be just the same as any other article on a person: a paragraph of orientation in the lede, followed by his basic biography and education, followed by his professional work: that section will normally start with successive positions, starting with the first position after he finishes his education. Normally there follows a list of awards and other distinctions, and then a listing of the most important publications.
The problem is dealing with bios that contain too much detail on the minor events of somebody's life, but these are not unique to academics. The public interest in such details is greater for entertainers, and could be seen as having particular relevance for politicians--who are judged to some extent by their overall character as much as their political views. Otherwise an excessive emphasis upon the details of someones upbringing and marriages and places of residence and contributions to local charities is just as inappropriate for a businessperson as for an academic. and there's a partial exception for creative artists: to a considerable extent their artistry is seen ads an expression of their personality, sand their specific artworks are often understood as related to their biography (I believe many literary critics consider this approach rather limited, but it still does account for much valid popular interest: e.g. Emily Dickinson) There is of course another dimension: the more famous the person, the more there is appropriate interest in the details of their lives--because people use this for understanding genius (or, worded a little less politely, people have a great interest in the personal life of anyone really prominent, because they love to gossip, and can do this best with people everyone has heard of. For scientists or anyone, there may be such interest within their own immediate community, but such concerns are best left for those communities to deal with locally) We're talking about general interest. This applies in all fields whatsoever. Since WP is written for the readers, their concerns are relevant.
The primary case where articles are too expansive about their early life and formative influences, and the accomplishments of their parents and grandparents and siblings. Such articles have generally been autobiographies, and the material except for the really famous inappropriate for anyone. (They are not always autobiographies: there's been a recent surge of this for businessmen, whose publicists think it makes them appear more human, and want the opportunity to talk about how their childhood business experiences led to their successes later. And of course political figures often want some emphasis upon how their exposure to social problems in youth led to their interests in dealing with them as legislators.)
Otherwise, the problem is only those people who ignorantly think that if we do not know the biographical details we cannot write the articles. Such objections often do come at AfDs of academics, but they pop up also elsewhere and are equally ridiculous. The place for this perhaps is in a section elsewhere on writing about people more generally, not here specifically. DGG ( talk ) 23:43, 15 September 2013 (UTC)
    • Why is it ridiculous to think that we can't write a real biography without secondary biographical sources? We are left with the choice of a perma-stub that just lists the often singular feat that lead to satisfying notability, or a biography based almost entirely on primary or autobiographical sources. Or worse, in some cases. Gigs (talk) 15:57, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. I am not clear about what this proposal is attempting to achieve. Could the proposer cite one or two BLPs where the proposal would improve matters? Xxanthippe (talk) 00:04, 16 September 2013 (UTC).
  • Oppose. I think WP:V covers this better: write about the things you can source (that are relevant to the subject) and don't write about the things you can't source. Anything more than that is WP:CREEP. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:08, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

The reason for this proposal is that this notability guideline allows us to have articles on people with notable work or accomplishments that don't have any real biographical secondary sources. In these cases, we can likely never have an actual biographical article that isn't entirely based on primary sourced information. As many of you know, this has been something I've been concerned about for a while.

My ideal solution would be to require biographical secondary sources to satisfy notability, for all articles about people. To me that seems like a no-brainer but there has not been consensus for it in the past, since it would likely lead to the eventual deletion of thousands of sports and academic biography perma-stubs.

Jreferee's proposal is an attempt to address this issue in a way that would not result in mass deletion. I am not sure I am comfortable with a notability guideline dictating the content of articles. We have always held that notability only determines what subjects qualify for stand-alone articles, and does not govern the content of those articles. Therefore I can't support the current proposal as a potentially dangerous incursion of notability into article content, even though I agree completely with where he's coming from with it.

It could potentially be reworked into a proposal for the BLP or Verifiability policy instead, if it can be worded in a way that does not invoke our concept of notability. Gigs (talk) 15:52, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with having permastubs. I also don't see anything wrong with having articles about people that happen to be about their accomplishments (properly sourced) rather than about their hairstyle and children's names. I even don't see anything wrong with calling such articles "biographies". So you have failed to convince me that there is a problem to be solved by this proposal. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose I don't see the problem. All we write in articles has to be verifiable. I would not have any problem with having an article about, say Galileo Galilei or Isaac Newton that would solely concentrate on their works and the impact those had, birth and death date and place, and, perhaps, some mention of the places where they worked, but omitting any information about their private lives (possible spouses, children, siblings, parents, whether they had an affair with the neighbor's wife, snorted cocaine, or whatnot). Those people are notable for their scientific discoveries, not their private lives. If we have verifiable info about their private lives that is encyclopedic, then include it (but if it has nothing to do with their work, like: "Newton was an avid stamp collector", it should not be included). Basically what DGG and David Epstein already said above. --Randykitty (talk) 16:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
    • I think you misconstrue his proposal. Galileo has biographical secondary source coverage that would qualify him as a notable person regardless of this subject-specific notability guideline. He's specifically targeting people who would not be notable due to a lack of secondary source biographical coverage, but qualify as notable because of some accomplishment under this guideline. Gigs (talk) 16:18, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
  • You misunderstand my comment. I was considering the hypothetical case where we would not have any information about the private life of Galileo or Newton, just their birth/death dates and such. We could still write a useful article, concentrating on their works. --Randykitty (talk) 17:27, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It should be possible to write a BLP about a person whose achievements are substantial as per WP:Prof with only the minimum of biographical information apart from proof of existence. Superfluous biographical information can be removed. Wikipedia is not a gossip magazine. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:26, 17 September 2013 (UTC).
  • Weak oppose — I support the aims of the proposal and I actually think that some of the Oppose votes do as well; but I don't see it as being a substantial problem among biographical articles that have passed under WP:PROF in the past and I'm reluctant to add "should"-type criteria without specifying what editors who don't want to rewrite or don't have the skills to rewrite such an article should do. Birth and death dates, for instance, are rarely claims to notability, but we include them even if the only citations tend to come from sources connected to the author. Other information such as where the scholar grew up and name of spouse is also sometimes allowed to be included even if not a contribution to notability (it seems we have a sort of OBIT test: if it's information that could reasonably appear in an obituary for a source, we keep it). Names of children, pets, complete list of locations lived in, etc., already tend to be cut so I don't see the need for additional guidelines. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 03:01, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - We likely could use some style decisions around when to focus primarily on the professional achievements of someone and how much personal information to include, but that's a much bigger question that applies way beyond just academics. There is no reason to attach a style guideline like this just to academic bios, and not to, say, athletic bios, actor bios, and so forth. The question is really more about style for biographical articles generally, and it should be treated as such. --Lquilter (talk) 13:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment - The proposal addresses articles that already are written as a biography, not making a future decision on whether to subsequently write a biography instead of one focused on PROF. If person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, but the amount of reliable sources on the person's biographical life events is relatively small in comparison, and a biography already article exist, I don't see how it can be said obviously little can be written when it in fact has (based on the proposal). Regarding the advise "don't write about the things you can't source", it has been written. Now what? Delete because the topic does not qualify as a biography or tag for fixing? We don't have verifiable info about their private lives that is encyclopedic but the PROF qualified article has already been written as a biography. Now what? Reality is that PROF qualified topics written as biographies are deleted at AfD where the topic does not qualify as a biography. The proposal is about existing articles or future PROF articles that are written as biographies that do not qualify as biographies. Until we fix this, I think the encyclopedia will continue to be deficient in this area. -- Jreferee (talk) 01:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. First, I think the argument that a distinction is needed between bio articles and proposed WP:PROF articles seems to overcomplicate writing articles on notable academics. I believe WP:PROF is meant to be a tool that supports articles on notable academics, and is not meant to be a criteria for writing articles.
Also, I can't really imagine how this would work. If a notable academic has three signifigant fellowships (for example AAAS and some others) and is an editor of a scientific journal, which of these achievements will be the topic of the article under WP:PROF ?
Furthermore, only a CV page delineating awards, achievements, and cited research, and no other sources is not the real issue or problem. The problem would be if the CV cannot show any notable achievments, awards, or impact via cited research. This then shows that the subject, i.e., the particular academic, is not notable per WP:PROF, if there are no (other) independent sources that discuss this particular academic. Therefore, this person does not merit inclusion. As an aside, on a particlular CV page, the awards and fellowships probably can be otherwise verified if required. Citation rates can be investigated, even if only on Google Scholar.
So, the articles that are linked to a discussion at the conflict of interest noticeboard, that started this discussion, need to have acceptable sources, or else propose them for AFD. For example, I doubt that this article will survive an AFD. Also taking these several articles to AFD would be a lot easier than trying change an inumerable number of biography articles to some other type based on some other criteria. --- Steve Quinn (talk) 05:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Well...

If you want to see an example of WP:PSEUDO biography based on whatever accomplishments could be gathered from the media, see Michael Tracey. In case of marginal notability, I'm not convinced that secondary sources are actually all that helpful. Does that page need a final gloating paragraph that might be losing his tenure? That's the most recent media coverage I could find about him [21]. Someone not using his real name (talk) 01:27, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there any relevance of this case to the guideline that this is a talk page for? The article you link to presents no evidence that its subject passes WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like there is a concensus that Michael Tracey page should be proposed for deletion due to lack of notability.Wuser6 (talk) 19:02, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

This guideline in academic research and mainstream media

Sort of, at least: [22] --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:25, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting -- thanks for posting this article about the lack of correlation (in four science fields) between WP entries and h-indexes, showing that we have a ways to go in ensuring notability. But that doesn't mean we're not trying or that the situation wouldn't be worse without the efforts of people here. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I think if current efforts are based on set of editors and have no robotic assistance, they may be biased and we should establish criteria that deal with various science disciplines fairly. Is one participation in Olympics equal to 10 high impact articles?Wuser6 (talk) 19:04, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
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