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This miscellaneous page was nominated for deletion on 7 February 2006. The result of the discussion was keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

This discussion was begun at Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper, where the early history of the discussion can be found.

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Archive 1

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

General notability guideline template

Since the general notability guideline is central to most sub-pages, someone came up with the idea of creating a centralized template which will be consistent among the permutations from WP:N. Please see whether we can make this work here. The text is meant to be fairly generic, but it may make sense to add text following the template for fine tuning, or help us to make the template more applicable if it is not reflecting the consensus for notability. I certainly didn't get everything that I wanted, but I'm very happy to see the compromises that make this a fairly representive of the attitude of the project. --Kevin Murray 01:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: reversions of modifications.

Rather than opposing a template which brings continuity to the various sections of the notability infrastructure, why not help to develop language at the template which more clearly relfects the consensus. How can we make the template better? --Kevin Murray 16:58, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The idea of a template with a canned paragraph that must exist in every guideline is, simply put, one that I will never support. This guideline is very carefully worded, and that paragraph is not, and furthermore, I REALLY don't like the idea that some of the key wording of this or any other guideline be contained in a template that, when edited, may affect this guideline. If there's a way in which this guideline can, itself, refer to the pnc without the paragraph, then fine: I implemented such a change, but it was lost in the revert war. Mangojuice 18:36, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Please refer to the talk page at WP:N for consensus of using the PNC template here. The discussion need not be rehashed at every permutation from WP:N. The consensus is to use and that the consensus there is what matters. --Kevin Murray 20:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

No, the discussion needs to occur here if you want the template here. Your continual misunderstanding of that is not helping your case. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:31, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Please demonstrate the consensus here for the tag. Thanks. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

No, I will not discuss it there. My own opinions on the issue:

1. There is confusion among different editors about whether notability means (a) that there is sufficient reliably-sourcable material to write an article, or whether it means (b) that the subject is sufficiently important to merit an article on WP. This confusion is reflected in different attitudes to whether sources are nontrivial or reliable in AfD's, for instance.
2. WP:N is primarily concerned with (a), the existence of sufficient reliable factual material to write a nontrivial article.
3. Almost all academics active in research will satisfy that criterion. There will be material on their web sites, at various academic publishers, etc. with sufficient biographical and research material to provide a couple of paragraphs of article on many academics and much longer articles on some. The volume of factual material available has to do with how publically that academic has led his or her life and to what extent their research has captured popular attention, both of which are only loosely correlated with academic success or academic importance.
4. It is not feasible to include articles on all academics who satisfy (a), and using that as our only inclusion criterion will produce diffuse non-useful coverage. However, it is important to include significant coverage on academics and academic studies, to a level of depth significantly beyond what appears in the popular press, to make WP useful to people with more than a passing interest in the subjects they are looking up and to prevent WP from devolving even more than it already has into the world encyclopedia of minor-Simpsons-character trivia. Thus, to help focus Misplaced Pages's coverage of academic topics, we need topic-specific criteria for the other definition of notability, (b), importance.
5. Because of the topic-specific nature of importance, and because it is different from the existence of sufficient material to write an article, discussion of how to measure academic importance for WP article inclusion belongs here and not in WP:N.
6. Because most WP editors, even on academic topics, are not themselves academics and therefore are not familiar with the measures by which academics themselves measure academic importance (as they do, regularly, in tenure and hiring decisions), it is helpful for WP to have clear guidelines to help non-academics make reasonable decisions. That is the purpose of WP:PROF.
7. The wording of the template, and even more Seraphimblade's edits today, continue to obscure the difference between reliability and importance. More importantly, by replacing the relatively clear criteria described here for academic importance with statements to the effect that an academic may be important if he meets these criteria or he may not, and he may be important for other reasons or he may not, he makes these criteria impossible to apply.
8. Therefore, I oppose your and Seraphimblade's efforts to neuter the guidelines in WP:PROF, and I oppose your efforts to relocate the discussion to a less-informed venue that seems likely to be bother friendlier to your cause and to not understand the specifics of this area.

—David Eppstein 20:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Couple of questions:

• In my experience, if this guideline's intent is to exclude, it's doing exactly the reverse. I've seen a lot of professors kept at AfD, who haven't really been covered by any sources at all, basically on THEYWROTEALOTOFBOOKS or THEYGETCITEDALOT, even when there's nothing else to say.
• Why should we be judging "importance"? Isn't that the job of those who choose to write (or not to write) about the professor in question, and not ours?
• Why should we ever advocate a guideline that advocates writing without substantive sourcing (or the reverse, that advocates not writing despite substantive sourcing?) Seraphimblade 20:48, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The issue is that most professors meets WP:BIO in some capacity. This whittles it down by requiring certain things to apply in order for inclusion. Secondly, all notability is judging importance. Third, it's a guideline for inclusion, not on content. Soemthing meets WP:V, but still isn't "notable," that's where this comes in. This is a very necessary guideline. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Seraphimblade, you may be a respected WP admin, but I find it difficult to take seriously your claims that articles are often kept without your sources, given that your similar claims in Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Shahid Hussain Bokhari (2) seem to mean instead IDONTLIKETHEARTICLESOIWILLPRETENDTHATITHASNOSOURCES. And again, you seem to be confusing sources for factual information (which even most of the academic-for-deletion cases that I've !voted for deleting have) with sources for academic importance (where writing a lot and getting cited a lot really are important, no matter how trivial you feel that sort of evidence to be). —David Eppstein 20:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Actually, the article as it stands now is fine. I could not find those sources that are cited, but someone did a damn fine job of it. At the time, however, all I could find were a few trivial mentions, and when I went to look for myself most of the mentions were trivial and unreliable as well. I am wrong sometimes. :) But that's rather a moot point. That particular article would now pass these criteria and the PNC, so it really doesn't work for an illustration, and my questions remain. Seraphimblade 21:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
• I don't see how the addition of the PNC template reflects a neutering of the guideline. It provides consistency for those who come here first. I support the concept of special cases for inclusion as long as there is verifiable information. SB and I do not share the same vision all the way down the line; however, we do agree on consistency and being very careful to avoid CREEP.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Kevin Murray (talk • contribs)
  • Because it expands the guideline beyond what consensus has reached on the matter. This doesn't represent instruction creep, so there's no issue, not that instruction creep should be a reason to oppose sound action. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Well, that's also why I'm going for a more strict definition of "non-trivial coverage". Most professors do meet V, but I doubt a GA/FA could be written on most of them. And if I'm wrong? Well more power to us then, if we really can have that many good professor articles, let's get cracking on it! On the other hand, if all we can have is a forest of stubs (and prof pages are already largely a forest of stubs, largely due to this guideline), let's pull out the merging and deleting tools. (If most professors really do have some source coverage, it might even be possible to have a "Professors of Somewhere University" article. Or that may be a bad idea. But it's one possible way to deal with things, individual articles and arbitrary sub-guidelines are a poor one.) (edit conflict reply rolled in here) This is absolutely instruction creep. All we need is "Does enough independent sourcing exist to have a decent article, or not?" Anything else, which arbitrarily includes things for which the answer is no or excludes things for which the answer is yes, is subjective and creep. Seraphimblade 20:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Well, we're diametrically opposed on this one. I hoped we had reached some idea of where we were going, I suppose not. But when people are looking for who wrote a certain textbook, they don't care about the other professors at that university. That's a dumb, useless merge. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Well, as I said, that may not even be a good idea in all cases. (Would have to be updated as profs come and leave, and so on.) It was more a brainstorm. As to people looking for who wrote a textbook, sometimes they may not find that here at all, because the person who wrote it doesn't have a ton of source material about them. Sometimes they might. It's not our job to decide which academics are important, it's the job of those who write (or do not write) about them to decide whether to write or not, and if so how much! Seraphimblade 21:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Right, thus the need for a guideline on professors. I know you didn't mean for me to agree with you, but we're just on completely different sides on this - we both want verifiability, we just don't see eye to eye on notability, and I doubt ever will at this stage. --badlydrawnjeff talk 21:10, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
          • But that's the point, Jeff. Either we simply say "Enough source material exists for a long, high-quality article or it doesn't" (in which case factors totally outside the control of anyone here decide whether an article is written about anyone or anything, making it objective), or we say "Well, we're going to decide who's important and who's not" (making it subjective and original research). Even if our original, subjective criteria are good criteria, we don't do that, just like we don't allow well-done, thought-provoking OR in articles any more than we allow crankery. We go by how much has been published about (not by!) the subject, in every case, for every article, and then we've got an objective standard. Seraphimblade 04:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
            • To use your analogy, any guideline on what makes something "notable" by making some sort of judgment calls OR - that's silly. That's like saying discriminating sources based on a perceived reliability is OR. So can we stop with that line of thought and stop conflating notability with verifiability and get down to the real root of the issue? --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
              • Alright, let's get to the real issue. The real issue is, we have too many garbage, permastub articles, and while we're at it, we've also got too many policies and guidelines. In this case, one is leading to the other, and fixing one will fix the other. If we tie inclusion standards (and we don't have to call it notability, in fact I'd be against calling it notability) to potential article quality, the point is moot. "We write an article if there's enough source material available that we can someday write a great one, else we give it a shorter mention elsewhere or none." And there we go. No CREEPy sub-guidelines, no confusion-hell, not even any use of the confusing "notability". And so simple even a newbie could get it! Seraphimblade 04:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
                • But article quality has nothing to do with notability, importance, encyclopedicality, wikiality, whatever word you want to throw at it. There's no confusion here except by those who somehow think notability is something it isn't - and both sides have guilty parties, the ILIKEIT inclusionist types and the "not enough sources" exclusionist side. --badlydrawnjeff talk 04:47, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
                  • But we require sourcing. We only write from sourcing. That principle is a core policy here. On the other hand, it's a core policy as well that we'll keep an article even if no one likes it, provided it's well-sourced. Equating ILIKEIT inclusionism and a demand for sources just doesn't work, one's based in policy, one in fantasy-land. Seraphimblade 04:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
                    • Yes, we require sourcing for our articles. No, that has nothing to do with notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 05:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
                      • That may be true. You and I have agreed at various points that "notability" probably isn't the best name to use. (Might be the only thing we agree on, some days.) But the amount of sourcing available does have everything to do with whether we should have an article on subject X or not. Seraphimblade 05:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
                        • But not on a subject's notability. --badlydrawnjeff talk 05:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) Well...perhaps that's true, but if notability doesn't have a bearing on whether an article should be included or not, that's a discussion for other places. Personally, I consider earning a PhD to be a tremendously notable accomplishment in and of itself. But I still wouldn't support having an article on every PhD. Seraphimblade 05:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• And I would, but i know I'd never get approval for it and thus don't pursue it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The issue to me is not permastub articles. As I wrote long above, all academics can have their articles lengthened, if only by going into some detail about their research. If you're a no-primary-source fanatic (another attitude that baffles me) you can at least go through the citations and see what they say about the subject; e.g. it's usually not hard in math papers to find statements of the form "so-and-so proved that...". This is not the issue.

The real issue, and the real reason WP:PROF is necessary, would become obvious if you followed Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators regularly. It is that there are many important academics with badly-written stubby undersourced articles, and many no-name minor academics whose articles look superficially almost the same as the important ones. They all have a brief recital of years of study and academic positions, sometimes a list of works, and claims that the academic is known for his or her work in some subject or other. Generally, all these facts can be substantiated through some amount of reliable sourcing, though the appropriate sources are often missing at the initial stage of the AfD. To keep WP from becoming an indiscriminate academic phone book, we need some way of separating out academics who have contributed substantially to research or who are for whatever other reason likely to be looked up from those other academics who nobody cares about. Everyone who participates in the AfD process seems to agree on this; at least, even the more fanatic inclusionists (and I consider myself somewhat of an inclusionist, but not fanatic about it) still !vote to delete a smaller fraction of articles describing academics who are clearly unimportant despite being well-documented.

So I think severe damage is done to the process by pretending it's all about reliability of facts. It leads to people going into AfDs and claiming that articles have no sources when they clearly do. What they mean is not "these facts cannot be reliably documented" but "these sources don't convince me that this person is important". This only serves to frustrate those who disagree with the judgement of unimportance: if it were presented as a judgement call that would be unarguable but it's presented as an objective lack of sources when there are sources clearly present, and this only leads to fighting and bad feeling. And by pretending that reliability is all, you prevent us from discussing and clarifying the real criteria by which importance can be measured.

So, let me say again: we need a criterion to decide academic importance independently from factual reliability. That criterion is WP:PROF. Your attempts to force it to fit into a mold of criteria for factual reliability are misguided.

—David Eppstein 05:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I still disagree. If there really have been tons of sources written on an academic who fails these guidelines, we should have an article on that person. If no one's chosen to write about an academic who passes them, we should not. Of course, this could be useful as a guideline in the general sense (e.g., "Sufficient sourcing is likely to exist if..."), but far too many people take it as prescriptive, and that's mainly a fault of its wording. As to primary sources, I'm not one who says "no primary sources", but I certainly do say "Primary sources only to a limited degree, any article should be based mainly on secondary sources and utilize primary ones only for supplementary purposes." We shouldn't be deciding what's important. That's up to those who choose to write source material or not to. Seraphimblade 06:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There you go again. Your phrasing "chosen to write about an academic" implies that a source is only a human-interest story in a popular press or maybe an obituary in a journal, something that would say something about the person's non-academic life. You are picking and choosing what you consider to be a source to be only a certain kind of source, one that indicates importance to you, and excluding those sources that you don't think indicate importance, such as biographies on departmental web sites, corporate citation databases, citations to research in other academics' papers, etc. But those are all secondary, often reliable, and reasonably likely to be nontrivial. By restricting your attention to "only the kind of source I like" you are making WP:RS subjective and arbitrary. —David Eppstein 06:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

That's a straw man. I never said anything about needing a human-interest piece or anything of the like. If someone can write a good article about an academic from the sources you state, I say more power to them! Though, a departmental biography would be a primary source, or at least non-independent, as would be anything written about anyone by his or her employer. With the rest, it would depend how substantially they go into depth about the academic him/herself. If a paper who cites the person goes into great detail about that person and his or her research, sure, that works! If it's just a cite, that might certainly indicate that the paper is a reliable source about the research, and might be usable in an article on that, but it tells us nothing about the person. Seraphimblade 06:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

And to follow up on David Eppstein, I think we need these guidelines in the other direction also: there are occasional people who wander into these discussions and hold that no academic can be important until there are no books or two articles written specifically about their work, in the sense that articles are written about politicians and video stars. Now, it would be nice if the world worked in such a way that people in general paid as much attention to serious scholarly work--in science or in general--in the same way they do to media and sports personalities. So we need these guidelines to convince them that notability is with respect to others in the same profession, and that the notability of scholars is to be judged the way scholars judge them. DGG 06:13, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, that's why I want to get away from "notability" altogether. We should choose whether or not to write an article about a person (or anything) on the basis of how much sourcing is available. No more, no less, nothing else. Someone may be notable to the nth degree in the academic world, but if we can find little or nothing on them to base a biography on, we shouldn't have that biography. Seraphimblade 06:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

That way lies an encyclopedia with no intellectual depth, primarily about minor characters in TV series and wealthy socialites. —David Eppstein 06:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess I don't see that. For most minor characters in TV series, they really don't have much secondary material, and probably should be merged into the parent TV series article. On the other hand, most notable academics and researchers will have plenty of source material regarding them and their research, and we can write from that. I certainly can't see us lacking articles on Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein based on lack of sourcing. Regardless, though, it's not our place to "correct" sources, be that in amount or content, no matter how sure we're right we are. Seraphimblade 08:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

It is pretty well impossible for others to keep up with this debate. This section alone is large. Trying to keep up, I have to say I agree with DGG and David Eppstein, as well as with badlydrawnjeff. We need these specific guidelines and we need more articles on notable academics. We need good sources, but notability is not the same as lots of sources. Talking of sources, we need to be carefull about the use of the terms primary and secondary. They do not mean the same to a chemist as to a historian. Is a peer reviewed paper primary or secondary? I thought it was just me who was confused about this, but see Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Chemistry#Journal references: will we drown in them? near the end of that long section. On the main point, my view is that we should have lots of individual guidelines to decide whether we want to write an article and then only write it if we find sufficient sources. This is particularly true about academics where there are masses of sources and it becomes subjective whether we think they are sufficient, significant, trivial and so on. --Bduke 08:59, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me from reading this discussion that only Kevin Murray wants to put the pnc template above the current criteria. Seraphimblade wants it to be clear that notability doesn't imply inclusion, and that articles still need sourcing etc. I agree, and I think that's generally understood, but if someone could propose a wording change to make it more clear, we could move forward. Since it seems we can satisfy basically everyone, I've removed the disputed section tag. Mangojuice 10:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I replaced it. I did propose a wording earlier to clarify that sourcing is required (without using the template), but it was reverted. We're currently on the D cycle of WP:BRD, but that section is certainly under dispute. Seraphimblade 10:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

(EC reply to Bduke) That's probably Jeff and my fault. :) Perhaps we should get someone outside of and neutral on the discussion to summarize things, that actually might be helpful, if you know anyone that doesn't mind such work. This being said, of course, primary and secondary sources mean the same things anywhere. A chemist's lab notes (and of course the experiments the chemist performs) are primary sources. Papers and findings the chemists writes are initially unreliable sources (self-published). Once those papers are peer-reviewed and published, they become reliable secondary sources. Easy enough. Seraphimblade 10:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you that published peer review papers are secondary sources, but if you look at the link I give above you will find a chemist who thinks they are primary (with reviews as secondary) and I have seen several others who think this. I also do not think the distinction between papers and reviews is as clear as it used to be. There is also the question of published conference papers. It is not always clear to what extent they have been peer reviewed and for most purposes it really does not matter. Publications in science (certainly in chemistry) are not as clearly categorised as some people think, so I suspect your "Easy enough" comment. It is'nt. --Bduke 11:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, see WT:SCIENCE. There's a lot of discussion there about the level of reliability of academic publications. And different fields are different, further complicating things: in Computer Science, conference papers are rigorously reviewed, and in some cases are more prestigious than journals, whereas in other fields, conference papers are often largely ignored. Mangojuice 11:56, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, now I'm clear that you would like the guideline to say that coverage in multiple sources makes an academic notable, but apparently that is not agreed to: Bduke, David Epstein, Jeff, myself, and DGG all disagreeing on that point. It could be made clearer that notability (as described here) is necessary but not sufficient for inclusion, I suppose. But what you were trying to do is not compatible with that, I think. You were trying to say that WP:N says what is notable, and the criteria here are only for specifying when it is likely that such sources exist. I think it's pretty clear that sources will exist on academics much more easily than these criteria suggest, but that sources alone don't confer notability, because the quality of those sources really count a lot: multiple high-quality independent sources certainly do confer notability on an academic, but two conference or journal papers describing an academic's work certainly do not. But on the other hand, that latter kind of source is perfectly okay to base an article on if the academic is really worthy of note. Mangojuice 11:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

And BTW, (1) it doesn't matter whether "consensus" was reached at WT:N, because that isn't this talk page, and in any event (2) could you point me to where that discussion is, exactly? I'm having a hard time picking it out. Mangojuice 11:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The discussion doesn't exist. There was a discussion in March that showed a clear lack of consensus in the wording, discussion died out a bit about what the wording should be, and so a few people took that as indication that consensus actually existed for the wording and started pushing for it again. A rather bizarre series of events. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The discussion doesn't exist? Jeff, is that not you we've been going back and forth with over there?? To find the discussion, just look toward the bottom of the page. It is long, but in that case, there are quite a few supporting N being prescriptive and the sub-guidelines being advisory. Seraphimblade 20:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I see no discussion that indicates that some new consensus has been reached replacing the one from March. If it's there, please show us. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Should consensus have already formed, we'd be done here. But I certainly see it forming. There are still a lot of people who disagree, and that does need to be addressed, but it seems more and more people are realizing that the morass of sub-guidelines results in a lot of permastubs. I think a lot of people have also begun to ask "Is this what we want our project to be?" and becoming concerned. There are also legitimate concerns that such a byzantine system of guidelines makes things very difficult for newer users (and for that matter, even for experienced ones). Simplification would provide many benefits. "Don't write an article on a subject unless it can someday be comprehensive, decent, and meet our standards for the best articles" is pretty clear, and even the newest user can comprehend that. Seraphimblade 20:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The only one of those issues that i've seen advanced by more than you and Kevin at this stage is that they may be too complicated, but they haven't been able to address the counter-argument to that, either - that it isn't really complicated at all because people generally know or can easily know exactly where to go for what subject. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:36, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Easily addressed-some people do, but a lot don't, and having one place to go is by definition simpler than around ten. Seraphimblade 21:05, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The discussion so far

I'm adding a new section not because the discussion is concluded but because we need one for editing purposes. My view of the discussion so far:

• Seraphimblade feels that quantity of sources and sourcable information should be the only criterion for deciding whether to write or keep an article on an academic. For that reason he has been pushing edits that emphasize WP:N over the guidelines here, and that make these guidelines redundant. Consistently with this position, in order to make existence of sources a nontrivial barrier, he has also been pushing a strict definition of what it means to be a reliable source that involves human-written material by people unrelated to the academic's employer and about the academic as a person rather than about his or her research.
• I and others here feel instead that the requirement of sufficiently many reliable sources should be a very low barrier that almost all academics should pass. Once that minimal sourcing requirement is met, the question of whether to write or keep an article should depend on other factors: importance to the intellectual or pedagogical history of the field, markers of academic success such as awards or named professorships at good universities, attention from the popular press, etc. Consistently with this position, we would like to use as sources biographical sketches from the academic's own department or journal publications, publication lists and citation counts from commercial citation databases, nontrivial citations to the academic's work by other academic research papers: WP:RS allows primary sources to be used for unlikely-to-be-disputed factual material, and WP:PROF allows us to infer importance from facts in certain clearly circumscribed situations. As DGG would put it: if someone has a full professorship at a top university, they have already three times (at hiring, tenure, and promotion) gone through a much more stringent, thorough, and expert evaluation than we can provide here, so why not take advantage of that in our own evaluations? To which I would add that each of those expert evaluations has also involved many nontrivial secondary reliable sources of the type Seraphimblade would like: letters from external reviewers evaluating the candidate, which are unfortunately for our purposes kept confidential.

Does that seem like a reasonable summary of the positions involved here? —David Eppstein 15:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• My position has nothing to do with whether the article is appropriate, but whether the subject is notable/important/encyclopedic enough for inclusion. Serpaphim looks to sources, I look to what actually constitutes importance. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:55, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
• You got my position pretty well. But going one step further, I think it's too difficult to try to come up with a recipe for what kind of sourcing is sufficient for notability and what kind isn't, which would presumably be the next step if we follow Seraphimblade's suggestion. That path would leave us only one option: describe a level of sourcing that is equivalent with notability. I just don't think we can do that for academics. If we set the bar high (for instance, requesting sources outside of publications and university documents), we'll be excluding many noteworthy and sourceable academics.. but if we set the bar too low, we would potentially include every academic with publications. Also, I have not seen any examples of debates where people felt that the quality of sources would determine whether or not an article should be allowed (although there have been many where no sources leads to deletion, of course). So, Seraphimblade's approach is neither an organic approach to the problem, nor a good way of tackling it artificially. Mangojuice 18:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, the discussion at WT:N has been leaning pretty strongly that way, as has the general tone that I've been seeing, and many sub-guidelines to N already have this change. (Personally, while we're doing this, I'd like to get away from the term "notability" altogether too, but that's a separate issue.) I don't think we should require any specific kind of sources, per se, beyond the normal guidelines for being reliable and independent. Documents from an academic's university would be written by their employer, so those would be primary/potentially biased, but certainly peer-reviewed papers are always acceptable. We should also look for a breadth and depth of sourcing (enough that we'd be able to write much more than a stub, probably at least a potential GA someday, and cover the subject comprehensively enough for that). David misrepresented my positions slightly above-we wouldn't necessarily need to have a ton of information on the academic about the person, since generally it's not their personal life they'll be noted for anyway, and that's something we could use a primary source (such as a university bio) for a bit of supplemental information on. Certainly, we couldn't expect academics to often be written up in the newspaper (unfortunately), and to do so would be unreasonable. Basically, though, there's a couple of core policies, NOR and NPOV, which very explicitly make clear that we don't "correct" sources, or give undue weight. If several sources think some academic that doesn't pass these guidelines is important enough to write a ton of material about, we mirror that. If they think another one that does pass these guidelines is unimportant, we mirror that. If we really can have good, comprehensive articles on a bunch of academics, why not? If we can do so on very few, better that we do that. In either case, "who's important" isn't a decision we should be making. That's as much original research as would be placing "I don't think this guy's very good" in a musician's article. We don't editorialize, by omission or commission, and this guideline encourages editorializing. Seraphimblade 20:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Can we please stop stating how things at WP:N have been leaning improperly? Thanks. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I would really appreciate it if you would do that, yes. Seraphimblade 20:16, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
        • I believe I have been - there is nothing in the discussion at WP:N to suggest such a thing. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• • • (Responding to substantive comment) WP:N is sort of backwards: it used to mean that topics, generally, had to be notable/important for us to have an article on them. That was not really a great idea, because different topics needed to be handled differently -- some categories of things are always notable (eg. continents), others are almost never notable (eg. high school teachers). Because that notion wasn't sensible and was too open to personal opinion, the sourcing requirement replaced it. But that misses out on what the concept of notability, where it was really applicable, was meant to do: to give us a level of selectivity in topics, so that we don't necessary cover everything we can cover. I always viewed this as expansion and clarification of WP:NOT#IINFO. There are some areas where that concept still makes sense. One of them is for musical groups, another one is for academics. You asked why not: because academics are also well-known as self-promoters, and a lot of articles on them end up on Misplaced Pages by self-posting or oter vanity situations. But this creates some difficulty because academics are often notable enough to at least be borderline. So, a common approach is to disallow articles on people that aren't important enough to make it clear we really should have an article on them. But more importantly, that is the way things have gone in deletion debates. People in those debates seem to understand that academics write and are written about extensively, but don't make the argument that notability of those academics is established by the existence of some sources. Mangojuice 01:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I can see your point there. I think that would be solved by taking a greater look at the quantity and quality of sourcing, and of the potential article, though. No, of course we shouldn't write about everything there's any source material on. (I can find you a little source material on me, but I don't belong in an article here.) What about saying "Enough source material must be available to one day write an article that meets the GA or FA comprehensiveness standards"? Seems to me that would restrict things to important topics, while not setting any artificial bars of "Well we think a prof/band/etc. is important when...". Ironically enough, those bars result in overinclusion and overexclusion at the same time-a lot of very marginal things are kept because they technically pass part 5 subparagraph J of some sub-guideline (and I've seen it happen with this one, though not near to the same extent as MUSIC or WEB), and some on which it's demonstrated that a very good article is possible are excluded because they technically don't. Seraphimblade 15:30, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment: I'm jumping in at the end and addressing the summaries of positions above. I generally agree with Seraphimblade: notability is not directly based on real-life importance - it's based on availability of high-quality independent sources. Often, but not always, the two correlate. The reason for the focus on sources is that without them, it's impossible to build a neutral, encyclopedic article. Self-promotion is a major issue with academics on Misplaced Pages, and the more marginal the academic, the more self-promotion seems to be involved. Setting the bar at GA/FA class potential might be a little much - some topics are important but will never amount to more than a decent B-class article - but we need to require some amount of reliable, third-party, intellectually independent sources in order to be able to write something beyond a simple resumé. Hope my comment is not completely out of context here. MastCell 22:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• I don't think anyone disagrees that some amount of sourcing is required: we can't have an acceptable article without sources, and we can differ on how unstubby it needs to be to count as "acceptable". But I think that avoids the real question, which is whether questions of significance should also be settled by existence of sources. For instance, we are (all of us on both sides of this debate, I think) likely to treat the existence of a story in the New York Times as very significant for deciding whether an article on an academic is kept, but to treat a similar story in the Palo Alto Weekly as not especially significant (for those not familiar with that, substitute your own local-news-only free newspaper). See e.g. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Stephen M. Smith for a case where I made almost exactly this argument and none of the other commenters seemed to think it unusual. Why is that? Is it because the stories in the Times are more likely to be true than the stories in the Weekly, or is the Times more unbiased and neutral than the Weekly? I don't think so. It's because the Times is much more selective about the stories they print, so to be selected as the subject of such a story by the Times editors is a sign of importance or significance of the story's subject. I think we need to be honest about what kind of reasoning goes on in these debates: the existence of large numbers of sources, all of which lend color to the story but do not show that it is important, is not enough. And conversely, a few sources, if they are sources we believe correspond highly with significance (like, say, the front page of the Times) can be enough to keep even a fairly short article. If we do state honestly that we are trying to measure not just our ability to write a reliable article but the importance to WP of including that article, then we should not try to warp our methods for measuring importance to fit a Procrustean bed of reliability. —David Eppstein 22:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Although I and David sometimes do not agree about individual academics, I completely endorse his statement of the principle here. I'd add that the importance of the source will vary with the subject, given the possibilities. If all there is is a local newspaper about something which should have been in the Times, then that clipping is not justification for an article. But if we decide to have local subjects at all, then we can't expect the NYTimes. In our context, in not all subjects is it practical to publish in Nature. (Not that everyone who has ever had an article there is Notable.) To the extent we agree about the general things to consider, we can then more usefully discuss where individuals are positioned. DGG 05:08, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, in that case, you're examining the non-triviality of the source. And that's great! A front page cover story on the Times is most certainly non-trivial, whereas one in your local free paper (or mine) is much more trivial. (Though I'd disagree with DGG, trivial is trivial, with local stuff we should just merge it into the locality article.) It's fine to look at the quality of sources! However, we also do have to consider quality, comprehensiveness, and length. If something is name-dropped five times on the front page of the Times, well, somebody figures it's important! But still not a damn thing we can say about it without more sources, other than "X was name-dropped five times on the front page of the NYT." It is important to look at quality of sources. We're not Wikinews (actually, we could probably solve that whole issue by adding that to NOT), we don't need everything that appears on Page 5 of the Podunk Times. At the same time, we're also not Who's Who in Academia. Yes, we should obviously still judge source quality. If Science or Nature publishes a feature piece on an academic's work, obviously that means more than a page 203 blurb in Bob's Big Book O' Science. But by the time they get those feature pieces, we can write a good, long, comprehensive article on them. What we need to get away from is permastubs, articles that basically stall out at a few paragraphs worth of text, maybe even a page or two, and can't be further improved-because nothing is there to improve them with. Now, obviously, academics that pass these guidelines are less likely to have an article about them become a permastub, and academics who clearly fail them much more so. But it's still something we should evaluate case-by-case. If someone passes these, but there's just very little to say about the person, we shouldn't have the article. If someone fails them, but we can find reliable material coming out our ears, we should. That would easily be solved by making this advisory rather than prescriptive, and directing people to in the end look at the sources available and what we can do with them. Seraphimblade 05:48, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not at all what I think non-triviality means for sources. From WP:N: "Non-trivial" means the source addresses the subject directly, and no original research is needed to extract the content. To me, a source is trivial if it's not really about the subject: his or her name appears in a longer list of other names, without more information about it, or he or she is given a one-line quotation in a much longer article. A source is nontrivial if it has something to say about the subject: maybe it's an interview with the subject, an article or letter about the subject, an obituary, etc, or at least maybe there's a whole paragraph about the subject in it. It's about what the source is about and how well it covers the subject and has nothing to do with whether the source is important. To me, if the same article appeared word-for-word in the local paper or in the Times it would be equally trivial or nontrivial: it doesn't matter where it was published, only what it says. —David Eppstein 06:19, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Call it "quality of sourcing", then, if there's already some other definition for "trivial". It doesn't necessarily specifically implicate reliability, the Podunk Times may be perfectly reliable (or may not be). Regardless, I do believe it to be an important consideration. Of course, to some degree it doesn't matter too much-something that makes the NYT front page has probably already had a significant amount of coverage, and if not, is likely to inspire a lot of "me too" coverage anyway. Seraphimblade 06:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this discussion is a little premature, because it's very hard to try to nail down the relationship WP:PROF should have to WP:N when WP:N is a moving target. There are too many possibilities for what WP:N will be at this point to decide. Consider the following versions:

1. "A notable topic has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works that are reliable and independent of the subject." (current version.) This version reads pretty clearly: this is describing a necessary condition, but it is not saying that it is sufficient.
2. "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of non-trivial coverage by multiple published works." (this version.) It's not even explicit whether this presents the criterion as necessary, sufficient, or both. Technically speaking, the sentence says "X if Y" which means the same as "if Y then X", which would imply that the condition is sufficient but doesn't say that it's necessary. However, the sentence could also be read "X means Y" which would imply necessary and sufficient.
3. "A topic is notable if (but not only if) it has been the subject of non-trivial coverage by two or more works." (this shows the diff of the removal of this wording.) Here, the wording is explicit that this is a suficient condition. Rossami felt that the second wording meant the same thing, so he removed the "but not only if" clause.

My feelings: (1) Any sufficient and necessary (ie exact) condition will just be wrong: topics are not all made the same, and the community does (based on my experience at AfD) treat different topics with different levels of scrutiny. A clearly noteworthy subject will be given lots of slack on things like WP:V and even WP:NPOV, whereas an unnoteworthy subject or a vanity article will not get that level of scrutiny. There is no one-size-fits all criterion, based on how debates actually go (which is really crucial to talk about, BTW, because something can only be a guideline if it's describing how the community actually works). (2) Any condition presented as sufficient but not necessary had better be clear that it is only sufficient and not necessary, and also be substantial: here, I would really expect multiple reliable independent sources that are both significant and that cover the subject in significant depth. We have to go far, because we want the level of coverage to establish importance on the basis of the sources' existence. This criterion could be included here as a catch-all for notability not covered by the criteria here. (3) Any condition presented as necessary but not sufficient had better be very flexible about quality and quantity of sources... which probably isn't a good idea, because what it comes down to is saying that an article topic can only stand if it can be sufficiently sourced, which is a duplication of WP:V. A consensual necessary condition could be included here as a reminder, but as I say, I think this would really come down to reminding the reader that WP:V must be satisfied regardless. Mangojuice 14:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:pnc nominated for deletion

See Misplaced Pages:Templates for deletion/Template:pnc for the debate. --Kevin Murray 18:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed policy change at Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons

A modification to the deletion policy regarding biographies of living persons has been proposed. The proposal seeks to reverse the default retention of biographical articles that attain "no consensus" results at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion. That is, it seeks to make deletion the default action for AfD discussions of biographical articles that do not reach consensus. Comments regarding the proposal are welcome and may be made here. -- Black Falcon 19:40, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

More notable than Average gone from WP:BIO?

I might be the only person who was surprised to see that the "More notable than the average (U.S.) college professor" line disappeared from WP:BIO on 27 February. I know that this standard is controversial within the community, but given how often it is referenced in AfD, I think that it should be mentioned on the Notability (academics) page as one test which has commonly been used, even if it's not as comprehensive as the points given elsewhere in the page. --Myke Cuthbert 05:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the history, I do not think it was deliberately omitted, and I've suggested on the talk page there that it should be included. In any event, I think we should have it here, perhaps in a fuller form. DGG 07:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Added it back here. I don't think it undermines any of the more detailed criteria listed here, and I think putting it on this page instead of WP:BIO gives it the type of context needed to apply properly. I also added a caveat that academics can be notable for non-academic reasons. This misunderstanding (I think people would agree it's a misunderstanding) has crept up on AfDs for popular writers who were also academics and lack of such a caveat was mentioned in one hotly contested debate recently. --Myke Cuthbert 00:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with both changes: this is the right context for such a rule, rather than having seemingly one rule in WP:BIO and a different set of rules here, and in addition your added caveat (though seemingly obvious) is a welcome clarification. —David Eppstein 00:55, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Heads of Oxbridge colleges

I wondered whether there would be any apetite for a consensus that all heads of Oxbridge colleges are ipso facto notable people worthy of an article about them.--Oxonian2006 01:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to single out Oxbridge here, at least for heads in modern times. It seems to be generally agreed that heads of major research universities (including Oxbridge) are notable, but deans of schools and heads of colleges within those universities, though very likely notable, should I think be handled individually rather than by fiat. —David Eppstein 01:48, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed--I don't think there's much chance that one of the heads of these colleges will not be notable, and these positions definitely add to the notability, but there should still be an expression of notability beyond this position. They tend to all be near the top of their careers and important researchers. I think putting specific exceptions into the list of qualities increases the number of rules in Misplaced Pages that hinders sensible people from making sensible choices. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:23, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Re, "heads in modern times", I was assuming that the head of any university (the vice-chancellor or equivalent) would be regarded as a notable person. I was reacting to somebody querying whether the Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, Richard Turnbull, was a notable person. He is notable in his personal capacity, but I also thought it unlikely that the Principal of Wycliffe Hall could fail to be a notable person: by virtue of his office he is not only a moderately important figure in the university but also one of the most prominent people in the Church of England (and very likely to become a bishop if he doesn't carry on upsetting people). I suppose the heads of Oxford colleges have lost a little of their prestige now that they are not immediately in the line of succession to become vice chancellor. I was not suggesting a cast-iron rule, so much as an acknowledgement that heads of Oxbridge colleges are very likely to be notable people, rather as we might suggest that members of the Privy Council are likely to be notable people.--Oxonian2006 11:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

It was my understanding that technically Wycliffe Hall is not an Oxford College, so even if your suggestion was added, it wouldn't help with this particular article. He seems notable, but the article is written with a lot of "weasel words": "Between a third and half of the college's academic staff is said to have resigned" (who has said? Can't this number be confirmed?) But there a ton of sources, so I think you're fine. There was an article called Richard Turnbull which was deleted a year ago, but it had a completely different content (about a different person?). According to the logs, its content began "Richard Turnbull is an english teacher from the South Coast of England and currently work on a school called British Study Centres. He use Misplaced Pages..." -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Wycliffe Hall is not a college. It is a Permanent Private Hall. It is possibly fair to say that the heads of the permanent private halls are more important within their denominations of the Christian religion than they are within the university. The Principal of Regent's Park College, Paul S. Fiddes, and the former Master of St Benet's Hall, Henry Wansbrough, are great scholars and figures of considerable celebrity within, respectively, the Baptist denomination and Roman Catholicism. It does not appear that Richard Turnbull is a great scholar. However, he is an important figure in the Church of England, and there is quite an established tradition now of heads of theological colleges becoming bishops.--Oxonian2006 21:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If we regard the heads of (presumably, only accredited) universities and colleges to be notable then that should be noted in this guideline. There's at least one active AfD in which this is the central issue. It will almost certainly be closed as keep but if we're going to act as if this is part of the guideline then let's make it part of the guideline. --ElKevbo 17:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It's crowded in here

In fact, it's so crowded, there's barely any room to kick the dead horse. Would anyone mind if I set up this page for automatic archiving so the discussion can continue? Having read through this page, the number of errors, misunderstandings, and odd comments struck me as staggering. I don't think the final word on this topic has yet to be uttered. --User:RandomHumanoid 04:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if automatic archiving is needed but I certainly wouldn't object to it. In the meantime, I created an archive of the pre-May 2007 discussions. It appears as if this page has never been archived and dates back to 2005. Shameful that we've let it grow this long for so long without archiving! --ElKevbo 16:58, 17 June 2007 (UTC)