| Revision as of 07:35, 2 March 2010 editJBsupreme (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Pending changes reviewers30,453 edits Undid revision 347084001 by Tothwolf (talk) unnecessary at this point, we no longer index these pages on Google -- pls stop following my edits← Previous edit |
Revision as of 07:57, 2 March 2010 edit undoMuZemike (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users71,096 edits Undid revision 347255910 by JBsupreme (talk) Just let it go, JBsupreme.Next edit → |
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:''The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a ]). No further edits should be made to this page.'' |
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Note: If you are seeing this page as a result of an attempt to re-nominate an article for deletion, you must manually edit the AfD nomination links in order to create a new discussion page using the name format of ]. When you create the new discussion page, please provide a link to this old discussion in your nomination. --> |
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The result was '''delete'''. Although the majority of editors commenting here favoured retaining the article, I feel confident in stating that there is ] here to delete. When the notability of a topic and the verifiability of an article are legitimately called into question, as was done here, that question must be answered – either by producing evidence of reliably-sourced coverage or a qualification with a sound basis in policy or conventions. In this discussion, the bulk of rationales of the editors who wished the article to be kept either focused on behavioural/procedural issues or were non-existent. The arguments in favour of deletion directly addressed the sourcability of the topic and the applicability of notability guidelines without persuasive rebuttal. Note that in closing this debate no weight has been given to the motivations or interests of any of the participants. ] 05:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC) |
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''The result was '''delete'''. The actual discussion has been ] but can still be accessed by following the "history" link at the top of the page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a ]). <span style="color:red">'''No further edits should be made to this page.'''</span>''. {{NOINDEX}}<!-- inserted using Template:afd-privacy --></div> |
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<div class="infobox" style="width:50%">AfDs for this article:<ul class="listify">{{Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Mertz}}</ul></div> |
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:{{la|David Mertz}} – (<includeonly>]</includeonly><noinclude>]</noinclude>{{•}} {{plainlink|1=http://toolserver.org/~betacommand/cgi-bin/afdparser?afd={{urlencode:Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/David Mertz (3rd nomination)}}|2=AfD statistics}}) |
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:({{findsources|David Mertz}}) |
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*<small class="delsort-notice">'''Note''': This debate has been included in the ]. <!--Template:Delsort--></small><small>—<font color="darkgreen">]</font>×<font color="darkred" size="-2">]</font> 19:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)</small> |
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*<small class="delsort-notice">'''Note''': This debate has been included in the ]. <!--Template:Delsort--></small><small>—<font color="darkgreen">]</font>×<font color="darkred" size="-2">]</font> 19:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)</small> |
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*'''Delete'''. That this began as an ] is neither here nor there, but I do find it peculiar that despite the long list of book contributions there isn't much in the way of non-trivial coverage of the subject from reliable third party publications. <font color="#BA181F">]</font> (<font color="#BA181F">]</font>) 10:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Comment'''. This AfD was lauched solely as a personal attack on me by JBsupreme. We have had disagreements over his {prod}'s and AfD's of software-related topics. In particular, as well as a general belligerence about them, he rarely uses any edit comments when {prod}'ing article (nor other times). This concern has been complained about a dozen times on his own talk page (by various editors I do not otherwise know), and also repeatedly on ANI. Most recently, I placed a polite comment related to this on his talk page also, which he immediately removed, see . Apparently wishing to continue a "war", JBsupreme apparently decided that he could "punish" me by nominating the biography of me on WP (which is, obviously, about things I do other than edit WP). <font color="darkgreen">]</font>×<font color="darkred" size="-2">]</font> 18:58, 2 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep.''' Questionable motivation for AFD by nominator, possible ]. See also . As far as this article itself, I am seeing a good deal of source coverage in , , , and . ''']''' (]) 20:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC) |
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**'''Comment'''. To whst extent have you actually looked at the results turned up by your searches to verify that they're about the subject? For instance, in the Google scholar search, the David Mertz of this article doesn't show up until somewhere around the middle of the second page of search results, with a book cited 16 times and a voting paper cited 13 times; these are anemic numbers for ]. The first-page results are all somebody else with the same name. —] (]) 03:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep''' Per Cirt. <font color="darkgreen">]</font>×<font color="darkred" size="-2">]</font> 20:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep'''. This is exactly the type of bullying by deletionists that is driving content writers away from Misplaced Pages. The Misplaced Pages organization needs to do something NOW to put an end to this. I reviewed the policy on why something should be deleted, and also the policy on using yourself as a source, and this article violates neither policy. As such, it should be kept, and NOT deleted. (BTW, more and more lawsuits are being filed against cyber-bullying, and based on LotLE's comment I would classify JBsupreme's reaction as such. Misplaced Pages needs to get their deletionists under control before the flurry of lawsuits begins.) ] (]) 20:27, 2 February 2010 (UTC) |
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::'''Comment''' Nefarious, you might want to modify your comments. I believe that threatening legal action is one way to get yourself instantly banned on Misplaced Pages. --] (]) 01:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)MelanieN |
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*'''Keep''' per Cirt, and please consider review the nominator's AfD pattern. I do not comment on the current case of possible hounding, but this, and ], among others, make me wonder of the nom judgement in proposing articles for deletion. --]] 21:09, 2 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep'''Looks OK to me. ] (]) 00:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Delete''' Let's skip the name-calling and the worrying about people's motives, can we? Let's evaluate the subject's notability on its merits. On Google searching, there is absolutely nothing in gnews, and little or nothing in Google (books are listed but no outside commentary on them to establish their importance). Unless someone can provide significant third-party sources talking about this man or his work, he fails notability. --] (]) 01:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)MelanieN |
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*'''Comment'''. Unless someone (including himself) can find some interviews with him for ] purposed, the discussion has to be focused on whether he meets ] or ]. I think ] can be ruled out, as I wasn't able to find a significant number of academic citations of his works; there was also a comment along these lines by ] in the first AfD. We don't have separate criteria for businesspeople, so being the CTO of ] or on the board of directors of ] does not seem to grant automatic notability on Misplaced Pages. (For instance ], the president of the OVC doesn't have an article here.) His Python text processing book has 16 citations according to , but it's held in 119 libraries according to ]. ] ] 02:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*<small class="delsort-notice">'''Note''': This debate has been included in the ]. <!--Template:Delsort--></small> <small>-- ] ] 02:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)</small> |
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*<small class="delsort-notice">'''Note''': This debate has been included in the ]. <!--Template:Delsort--></small> <small>-- ] ] 02:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)</small> |
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*'''Delete'''. I'd like to see more argument here based on whether Mertz is notable, and less based on ]. I'm pretty sure Mertz doesn't pass ] for his former academic activities (the D. Mertz with the reasonably well cited philosophy publications is Donald W. Mertz, and from what I see in Google scholar even he is a bit low in impact). So we should go with ]: have enough third parties noted the subject to make a case that he is notable? The sources in the article are fine for the factual information they are used to source but they don't demonstrate notability. I searched Google news and Google books for third-party publications that mention him in a non-trivial way rather than just a passing name-drop, but didn't turn up any. So I don't think he passes ] either, but I'm willing to change my mind if better sources turn up over the course of the AfD. —] (]) 03:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Comment'''. I concur with Pcap, above, that the relevant criteria are under ] or ]. I have some academic publications, but nothing "made significant impact in their scholarly discipline" per ]. I have been interviewed or discussed a moderate number of times by widely read publications, but not a huge number. A few that I can locate of more recent stuff that shows up on URLs: |
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*There were a half-dozen other general-readership interviews I did with press about the voting integrity issues that I cannot locate now, but all of them were a few sentences from me, not a profile of me. In terms of publication history, those published by IBM developerWorks are probably the most read, and this is a (I know some are missing, but it's a good sample). Each of those couple hundred IBM dW articles was read by a few tens of thousands of people, which pretty well meets the "author test".<font color="darkgreen">]</font>×<font color="darkred" size="-2">]</font> 03:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*Oh, here's a reprint of the ''London Sunday Times'' interview I gave in the 1990s. That's a very widely read paper, but my comments for the article were all of two sentences: |
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*'''Comment'''. Sorry to belabor it. Being me, and knowing what I've done, I ''do'' think this warrants a keep, but I suffer no delusion that I am either a prominent academic or a best-selling author. Per David Eppstein though, there ''are'' a moderate number of citations to me in Google Scholar (probably more than "Donald Mertz" the logic guy, but nowhere close to "DB Mertz" the beetle guy. I think "Diane Mertz" the feminist/poly-sci academic does moderately better than I do... I have no relation or personal knowledge of any of them, FWIW, beyond what shows up in searches). |
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**''Text Processing in Python'' (book): 16 citations |
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**''Privacy issues in an electronic voting machine'' (ACM): 13 citations |
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**''The bioethics tabloids: how professional ethicists have fallen for the myth of tertiary...'' (''Bioethics'' journal): 9 citations |
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**''An introduction to neural networks'': 6 citations |
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**''Spam filtering techniques'': 9 citations (to two versions) |
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**''Putting XML in context with hierarchical, relational, and object-oriented ...'': 5 citations |
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**''Understanding ebXML'': 9 citations (to two versions) |
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**'' Christliche Kirchen und AIDS'' (chapter in book): 4 citations |
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**Another 20 or so articles have 2-3 citations each. |
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*The current ] guideline is far more restrictive than in the past (which is for the worse, showing that deletionists have really harmed WP as a source). However, it includes "known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique." It was an article of mine that established the use of coroutines in Python. I pointed out that the technique could be done (in a slightly circuitous manner) using the existing generator mechanism. Based on that work, cited me. That PEP was itself rejected, but the same idea was raised again in . However, the latter only cited PEP288, and no longer me directly. also cites me in a related way, but this was not directly incorporated into the enhancements. Unfortunately, it requires a little bit of ] to show how this evolved (or knowing all the people who did the development personally, as I do). <font color="darkgreen">]</font>×<font color="darkred" size="-2">]</font> 07:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep''' - Notability may be borderline, but it's clearly ''just'' on the right side of the border. ] (]) 04:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep''' - I'm not sure we can simply add up moderate notability in a range of different areas to get an overall notability, but the number of people who would use the article probably does scale that way. ] (]) 04:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep''' - cited author. Notability may be weak, but not so weak as to call for deletion. --] (]) 13:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Weak delete'''. I don't think the current guidelines are met here. Perhaps the guidelines suck, but this is not the place to change them. See ] for comparison. ] ] 14:40, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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** Maybe it is a good place to change them, since discussions about guidelines seem to like to refer to afd outcomes. It's like ], but more so. ] (]) 17:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep''' seems to be somewhat notable. --] (]) 15:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Delete'''. Most of the article either talks about his academic activity in philosophy or lists his academic publications in that subject, but indexing services show practically no impact of this work, e.g. WoS shows an h-index of 2 (being careful to exclude publications of Donald Mertz). He developed a Python package and has done some other comp-related work, which tends to resonate well with those on WP, however, there's no other obviously notable contributions. Note that simple linking to various Google results (as done above) returns lots of false positives for the not-so-unusual name "David Mertz". I guess I echo some of the past observations in cautioning commentators here to try and remain objective when measuring against notability criteria – the subject is a high-profile WP editor and that should not cloud anyone's judgment. In fact, the preceding blocks of "keep" should probably be "weak keep", as they all make somewhat apologetic arguments like "Notability may be weak, but...". Respectfully, ] (]) 16:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC). |
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*'''Keep''' - Although the academic publications may not meet notability requirements, the IBM articles and other contributions to Python scholarship certainly do.] (]) 19:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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:*'''Comment'''. Might you provide some substance by elaborating? Are the IBM articles the "thousands of how-to articles and tutorials, as well as software downloads and code samples, discussion forums, podcasts, blogs, wikis" and other ephemeral resources from ]? What evidence shows his contributions have had impact within the larger prog/CS world? And, what is "Python scholarship"? Is this more than developing a Python package? I think we're all aware that there are oodles of language-related short-time-to-market trade paperbacks with large tracts of overlap in what they cover, e.g . The substantive question is whether any of his work has had a unique and substantial impact and I don't think we've seen confirmation of that. Respectfully, ] (]) 20:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC). |
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::*'''Comment'''. ''Text Processing in Python'' is far from being "a short-time-to-market trade paperback" that overlaps other books; it's actually quite distinctive in its approach. ] (]) 20:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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:::*'''Comment'''. OK, ''how''? And what is the ''significance'' of this difference? From what I can tell by reading , there isn't anything that supports your position. These sources use descriptors that could fit any of the hundreds of other trade paperbacks that deal with text processing, e.g. "provides practical pointers and tips that emphasize efficent, flexible, and maintainable approaches...", "has a unique style and focus...", "covers the Python basics...", "has lots of code examples...", and so on. The truth seems to be that this book does not break new ground, but is rather one of many references on the subject. In fact, Amazon ranks this as #74 in the category Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Python, so in its 7 years on the market it does not appear to even have become one of the "must-have" references within a language-specific community. Respectfully, ] (]) 21:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC). |
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*'''Delete'''. Notability, if any, would be under the ] criteria - outside of his published work this, the article reads like a run-of-the mill academic resume. So, to go though each of the WP:AUTHOR criteria: |
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:''1. The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by their peers or successors.'' - I can't find any evidence of this. Online searches reveal come up with either articles themselves or material written by the subject about his own work. |
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:''2. The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique.'' - Again. no evidence of this. |
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:''3. The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.'' - The body of work is relatively substantial, but I just can't find evidence any commentary, review or response to his work, which probably rules out "well known" works. His work has not been the subject of a film or an independent book. I found one blog book review by one "Danny Yee" (). Noting that a "Danny Yee" is listed as a Facebook friend, I am not sure that this review is altogether independent. |
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:''4. The person's work either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.'' - No evidence of this. |
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:Finally, I am concerned about possible - or even probable - direct conflict of interest in this debate. While the subject of an article has every right to participate in the discussion - and it's commendable that he has identified himself by disclosing his identity - such comments need to be read differently than one would read a completely independent and otherwise uninterested party's contribution to the discussion. The integrity of WP is bigger than any individual, correctly understood. ] (]) 21:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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:*'''Comment'''. The subject has a coordinated effort of self-referencing, even going so far as to . Your observations indicate there may even be an element of ] going on here. Respectfully, ] (]) 21:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC). |
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*'''Keep''' for the time being. Appears to be a bad faith nomination. ] (]) 22:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC). |
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**'''Comment''': Is the nature of the nomination relevant, correctly understood? Discussion of whether the article should stay or go should be based on WP policy, in my opinion. Of course, frivolous and time-wasting nominations should be dealt with (for example by a speedy keep decision), but I (having no previous history with the article in any form) found enough here to support the deletion proposal. ] (]) 22:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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::::This is a policy issue that will no doubt be considered by the closing admin. ] (]) 23:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC). |
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***One could argue that this _is_ time wasting, since the subject survived the last two AfDs. Has the subject become less notable? The guidelines changed? If not what is the point of this? ] (]) 23:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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***'''Comment''': There seems to be a fair bit of personal feeling in this debate, which must make determining consensus difficult. It would be helpful if the discussion were focussed on the merits of article itself - not the possible motives of the original author or the nominator. Why? Because if we get consensus on the basis of WP policy, the issue is resolved and, if kept, further deletion nominations can be nipped in the bud and, if deleted, is done so on the basis of consensus. ] (]) 23:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*** Both previous AfDs were in 2005, when the criteria were vastly different. Having published a book in 5000 copies was enough back then if you read the previous AfD, but as pointed out above by Lulu himself, the guidelines have been tightened significantly over the past 5 years. Perhaps its time to undo that, but this is not the guideline discussion page. ] ] 01:08, 4 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Query'''. Does anybody have any secondary sources on the subject that say, "an expert", "prominent", "well known", "renowned" or any such? <font face="Cambria">] (])</font> 00:41, 4 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Keep'''. By the author test is well enough known. Contributing idea/motivation for coroutines to Python Enhancement Proposals counts as "original contribution to field". Article should be cleaned up to read less like resume though. ] (]) 20:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Delete'''. Our editorial policies have changed significantly over the past 5 years — Mertz does not seem to satisfy ] regardless of whatever tiff is happening here. ] (]) 23:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC) |
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::For the record, can you source the nature of these changes? ] (]) 01:17, 5 February 2010 (UTC). |
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::: See previous AfD, where the argument was that he met ''Published authors, editors, and photographers who have written books with an audience of 5,000 or more or in periodicals with a circulation of 5,000 or more.'' from ], which has been moved to ] in Dec 2005. I don't know when that text was removed though. The WikiMedia software sucks at answering questions like that. But the text is obviously not present in the current guideline, so it was removed at some point after that 2005 AfD. ] ] 08:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC) |
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::: The changes happened in May 2006 or so. See ]. ] ] 08:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC) |
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::::Thanks for thr reply. I wish a kindly admin would put this AfD out of its misery. ] (]) 08:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC). |
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*'''Delete''' not enough sources to meet ] or any other guideline. some !votes, specially sysops, need to assume good faith. ] (]) 04:20, 7 February 2010 (UTC) |
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*'''Delete''' not enough sources to meet ]/] or even ] the content included within the article. —]''']''' 06:40, 9 February 2010 (UTC) |
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:''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a ]). No further edits should be made to this page. <!--Template:Afd bottom--></div> |
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