Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Clarice Phelps

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. I've read over this AfD a few times, and I realize its contentious and likely the subject of an ArbCom case, so I'll explain my reasoning here as best I can:

Despite this being a very long discussion, the consensus is actually pretty clear. Several of the comments advocating keeping the article had no basis in our policies and guidelines. Others, which attempted to appeal to policies and guidelines did so relatively weakly: references to employer profiles can be used in theory to meet WP:NPROF criteria such as being a named chair, but no one is really arguing that here, and there is a consensus that she does not meet it. Employer profiles generally are not accepted as evidence for meeting the GNG. Google Scholar is similar: simple listing in its hits is usually not enough to qualify as an RS, even for the purposes of PROF.

The argument on being on the research team seems to come from PROF1. Unfortunately, it requires significant coverage in independent sources, which have not been produced here.

Then there is the argument from WP:BIO, somehow claiming that the introductory paragraph that tries to explain to new editors the concept of notability exempts living persons from the requirements of the GNG. Nothing could be further from the truth: in practice, our sourcing standards for BLP notability are some of the highest on the project, and even if we go off of the text of WP:BIO itself, it demonstrates that argument not to be the case: WP:BASIC is just a regurgitation of the GNG and is the first guideline mentioned in the actual body of that SNG.

Finally, having gone through the most prominent keep arguments, the delete arguments simply were the strongest: there exists virtually no significant coverage in independent, reliable, secondary sources. The main claim here outside of the local YWCA article is a featured employee profile by her employer. As was pointed out and achieved consensus amongst the voters who addressed it, this is not independent coverage in secondary sourcing.

On the whole, the arguments for deletion were significantly stronger than the arguments to keep, and when combined with the numerical consensus, I think the outcome here is fairly clear, so I am closing it as delete. TonyBallioni (talk) 07:23, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Clarice Phelps

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Clarice Phelps (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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De-prodded. Not close to passing NPROF or GNG. The "2017 YWCA Knoxville Tribute to Women in the Women technology, research, and innovation category" is not a significant award. Sources in the article do not establish notability: (numbering per this version)

ref1+ref13(duplicate) - knoxnews - local source. Single paragraph on her.

ref2 - tnstate alumni newspaper - contains only "Clarice E. Phelps, 2003" - possibly a WP:BLPPRIMARY issue (as one can not be sure this is the same Phelps).

ref3 - tnstate 2003 commencement notice - same issue as ref2.

ref4 - utsports - again a local source. Single line on Phelps.

ref5 - tennesseeaquaticproject - contains only "Clarice Salone, (MLK) Tennessee State University, U.S. Navy Officer" - again - a misuse of a PRIMARYish source for a BLP - we can't know this is the same individual.

ref6 - nuclear.engr.utexas.edu - ditto - single line where a Clarice Phelps is listed as a MS student - no way to ascertain this is the same Phelps.

ref7 - alumnius.net listing - probably self-published, and not in-depth regardless.

ref8 - www.navysite.de - probably self-published - and a single line regardless.

ref9+ref10 (duplicate) - ORNL - not terribly in-depth bio/profile at her employer ORNL. Not independent.

ref11 - her name as a co-author on a conference poster.

ref12 - ORNL - her employer - brief PR release - single paragraph on Phelps following her 2017 Knoxville YWCA Tribute Award.

So - while we do have a bit of a WP:REFBOMB (including two duplicates) - none of the references in the article establish notability. Some are misuse of PRIMARYish references for a BLP. In my BEFORE I was unable to find anything significant on this Phelps (the google-book hits are all for different people with this name with the possible exception of a namedrop in a long thank-you list in the acknowledgements of a 2017 book). Icewhiz (talk) 07:18, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Tennessee-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 07:20, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 07:21, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

• Note to closer - please note WP:CANVASSing on twitter - [1] for this AfD.Icewhiz (talk) 08:55, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  And more canvassing - [2]. Icewhiz (talk) 13:46, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  Hurrah! Yes some of us long term contributors talk about our Wikipedia interests on Twitter. It's part of having a community. Thanks for noticing. --Fæ (talk) 13:53, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

And as a long-term Wikipedia user, Fæ, I'm sure you're familiar with the inappropriate notification guideline, please can you explain how your tweet (archive) can be considered appropriate in terms of message and transparency as defined by the aforementioned guideline? SITH (talk) 14:18, 4 February 2019 (UTC)Comment withdrawn per Fæ's explanation of how Twitter works below. SITH (talk) 11:14, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Not just a long term contributor, I worked on a lot of project policies. The canvassing guideline in no way whatsoever, makes any assertion that stops our contributors tweeting about their interests, or about what they are currently doing on Wikipedia. You are conflating notifications with generally posting off wiki on social media, in addition you are conflating "stealth" canvasing off-wiki with public and clearly open tweeting. I'll presume good faith by concluding that you might not understand exactly how tweets work. It is bad form to misuse Wikipedia policies or guidelines to attempt to censor or intimidate free speech off wiki. So, you know, it's best not to do that. --Fæ (talk) 16:03, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Fæ, I'm not trying to intimidate off wiki, thanks for assuming good faith, I'm not on Twitter myself so I have little clue how it works, I assumed the audience was pre-set and not open and public. My apologies. SITH (talk) 16:18, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Twitter is a semi-public medium - most tweets are public (with some caveats - users you block can't see your tweets when they are logged in + private tweets also exist), but they are seen (mostly - unless you search for them) by your followers. While everyone is entailed for free speech, if a tweet is out there that - "The @Wikipedia page of Dr Clarice Phelps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Phelps …), researcher @ORNL, has been nominated for deletion because the references fail to establish notability. 🙏🏽 Please vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Clarice_Phelps … and help improve the biography. #BHM #womeninSTEM - calling for your followers to vote - then without getting into whether this is sanction-able or not (and I shall note I did not take this to AN/I - though there is a similar thread - Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Clear stealth canvassing by User:Fredrick eagles on twitter canvassing there) - it affects the AfD close - the closer here needs to be aware that the voters are composed not only of users who regularly participate in AfDs (via regular AfD publication methods) but rather also of users who got here following prodding/advertising via tweets. Icewhiz (talk) 16:36, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Put up or shut up. What you are doing by misusing Wikipedia guidelines to grief contributors to this AfD, is direct intimidation against volunteers discussing their Wikimedia activities on Twitter. Projects and user groups like WM-LGBT+ and WomenInRed frequently use these off-wiki public channels, there is nothing stealth, covert or malign about it.

However if you intend mentioning me anywhere else, a friendly tip, you had better double check your facts, as you are making easily avoidable mistakes as to who wrote what and treading very close to the line with regard to outing other contributors by doxxing accounts they have not previously mentioned on Wikipedia. --Fæ (talk) 16:58, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

For the avoidance of any doubt - I merely referenced two public tweets (+quoted one). I did not suggest in any way they were made by any particular Wikipedia user(s).Icewhiz (talk) 17:20, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

My 2¢: WP:CANVASS is a stupid guideline that needs major overhauling anyway. There is a big difference between the ANI canvassing thread and the tweets here: the ANI tweet was directed ("@") various users, and explicitly told users where to go and what to write. There is (and should be) nothing wrong with generally bringing attention to a discussion, either on- or off-wiki. We want more voices, not less. ^Leviv_ich 17:38, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

The problem with more voices is that they are almost always easy manipulable and hardly has any knowledge of policies/guidelines.

I'd disagree, we have seen WP:AFD dominated by outside contributors with no knowledge of wikipedia or how it works. It often gets quite unpleasant when that happens, I can remember several over articles during the "Occupy" movement of a few years ago. AFD were dominated by ill-informed people shouting to keep "their" article. I would also point out the link doesn't out anyone as a wikipedia editor, its only become linked to one as that editor confirmed their identity. In actual fact, I don't see the Twitter comment as that bad, since asks for help to improve the article but I would suggest that if you're making such a request it should be declared. WCM_email 12:45, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

For one, I create an article over the locally famed confectionery shop, which is quite renowned (to me) and attracts people from nearby 2-3 towns during Christmas esp. but 'regretably' has got only two sparse coverages in news-papers (one of them, as a landmark, in a story of gruesome murder!). Once, the article gets inevitably AfD-ed, if I post that link in a semi-closed FB-group of the town-inhabitants, I can assure you that there will be at-least 20 crazy-heads who does think that the shop ought be featured over en-wiki. Some of them will bother to read policies and since, that does not go their way, will sign off with IAR and about how the bureaucratic rules-based inflexibility is affecting confectionary-shops.

For another example, you make a post over a forum:- Hey, our nation's pride is at stake here. Wikipedian nutjobs are saying that we lost the war. But, how can we lose any war? and thus, manifests the ARBIPA drama-fests.

Obviously, there's some systemic bias at play and she ain't any confectionery shop but allowing canvassing is going down a slippery slope.∯WBG^converse 13:03, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Keep – for me she gets over the notability bar, specifically:

1. Her employer (ORNL) is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. where she is a project manager and researcher.
2. This ORNL write-up does not appear to be a source currently in the article, but it's in-depth and has a short video: [3] (the ORNL cites currently are [4] and [5])
3. I think we can know she is the same person as Clarice Salone because that's what her ORCID says [6]
4. A few Goggle Scholar hits [7] [8] [9] [10] ^Leviv_ich 08:05, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@Levivich: - authoring a few papers is not sufficient for NPROF (nor is being a project manager and researcher at ORNL). None of the other sources you presented are independent, in-depth, secondary sources (notably - her employer is not an independent source) - and thus do not establish WP:GNG. Please cite a specific notability guideline or policy she meets. Icewhiz (talk) 08:22, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

@Icewhiz: I don't view AfD notability as being a matter of "checking the boxes" on some policy or guideline. In my view, the sum total of the RSes establish her notability, even if no single RS nails the exact criteria of NPROF or GNG. Having an article on her meets the spirit of community consensus as evidenced by our policies and guidelines, even if it doesn't technically meet the letter of those policies and guidelines. Anyway, as explained elsewhere, it's not OSE to point out systemic bias. Women scientists of color have historically been underrepresented in RSes, so it's natural that we will have a hard time finding RSes on them.

"No firm rules" is a pillar and IAR is a policy. Frankly, I don't even care what the notability guidelines have to say in these cases. It is absolutely not in the keeping of the basic mission of building an encyclopedia to not have an article on nuclear researcher Clarice Phelps, but yet have an article on 22-year-old, 3rd-tier, 2-career-appearances, no-goals-scored football player Cody Claver (which I just AfD'd). There are over 100,000 biographies just in football alone, never mind other sports. Yet biographies of scientists and women are vastly lacking, even with all the efforts in recent years.

At bottom, I vote keep because this article deserves to be in the encyclopedia. And it's looking like snow outside to me. ^Leviv_ich 18:01, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

That the inclusion standards in another area is piss-pathetic and any AfD is subject to common-sense-deviant groupthink, does not entitle to make the inclusion standards in other areas pathetic. It's not a competition to reach the abyss or so I think. FWIW, I would support some draconian reform of NFOOTY.∯WBG^converse 13:03, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Keep The nomination is based on the idea of notability but that is not a policy while WP:ATD, WP:IAR, WP:NOTPAPER and WP:PRESERVE are four separate policies which all indicate that we should not be deleting this page. To consider the overall effect on the encyclopedia, consider an article which currently appears on the front page: Edward Stanley, who is lauded for his short playing career in which he "scored no runs, and took no catches or wickets". That's an entertaining short piece and I was especially impressed by the fine mustache sported by the subject. The article in question is somewhat different but is a worthy addition to the encyclopedia in other ways. To delete one but not the other would be systemic bias and we're better off keeping them both. Andrew D. (talk) 09:50, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  WP:V and WP:NPOV are policy - and can not be met here given the lack of independent reliable sources, which is also a WP:BLP concern. WP:NOTSOAP is policy as well - the only bio possible here (and a very brief one at that) is based on ORNL PR / personal promotion.Icewhiz (talk) 11:19, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  Not seeing any WP:V and WP:NPOV problems – everything seems to be well cited and the language seems reasonably free of hype and peacock. The sources seem just as good as those for the cricketing major. How is that sportsmen and soldiers don't get attacked on the same basis? That's the systemic bias. Andrew D. (talk) 12:49, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  WP:OSE, and poor OSE at that. This page, ignoring her name in a commencement list or a self-written line on navybuddies.com is sourced to ORNL PR - [11][12] - there is not a single in-depth, secondary, reliable source. Our cricketer friend (who was also an army major and the inspector General of the Houssa Force in Lagos, Nigeria) mainly sourced to a book published in 2016 ([13]) - and, I'll note, seems a bit borderline in terms of notability (but at least has an independent secondary source which is possibly also reliable). How about you point to a single WP:INDEPTH, WP:SECONDARY, WP:INDEPENDENT source on this page (or better yet - two)? Icewhiz (talk) 12:59, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  WP:OSE explains that "these comparisons are important as the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes". So sportmen, soldiers and scientists should be treated in a consistent way. Edward Stanley did his bit for the team and gets a place in Wikipedia because he was playing at the highest level. The subject in question did her bit for another team effort and that was at the highest level too. Both pages should stay. Andrew D. (talk) 13:12, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  Andrew, you are lawyering and bludgeoning to the nth degree again. It isn't a good look. - Sitush (talk) 07:14, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Keep She's exactly the sort of STEM role model we need - per, for example, https://www.ornl.gov/news/clarice-phelps-dedicated-service-science-and-community . I see nothing to be gained by the deletion of the article; en.wikipedia will not be improved by such an action. I see significant losses should the article be deleted: it would confirm our de facto commitment to systematic bias and our bureaucratic rules-based inflexibility. Icewhiz, you've made your point. Your time now would be better spent writing another female biog, than wikilawyering in this thread. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:17, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Keep Plenty of encyclopaedic benefit here, so GNG can be rationalized, if anyone wishes to do that. Being overly literal with specific variations of the notability guidelines starts to look like wikilawyering to shore up systemic bias. --Fæ (talk) 13:23, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

• Your argument about lawyering in relation to systemic bias can easily be turned round, and indeed that is evident in comments above. That there are private Wikipedia-centric mailing lists for people interested in gender gap issues also doesn't bode well, given that at least one of those in its previous public form was sometimes used for canvassing. (You'll know which one I am on about because you were a part of it.) And anyone with half a brain and experience of Wikipedia would know it is a bad idea to start Tweeting about this kind of thing because it is likely to backfire. - Sitush (talk)

• Keep Reading arguments above. Agree with them --Kippelboy (talk) 13:35, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Keep: notwithstanding my objection to the Twitter canvassing, I think being on a team which discovers a chemical element is enough to pass GNG or BIO. I agree with the nominator insofar as it needs toning down a bit, but tone is a problem which seems to plague articles about academics. I'd also like to note that I don't agree with the above arguments for inclusion on the basis of Phelps being [a] STEM role model, notability guidelines should be enough of a reason to include her on merits without resorting to identitarianism. SITH (talk) 14:18, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  @StraussInTheHouse: - please look at Tennessine#Discovery to see just how wide this team was (multi-institution, multi-country). Announcements from the time - e.g. this do not mention Phelps. Phelps was involved in some of the pre-cursor chemical work in ONRL (purification of Bk-249) - part of a very large team in ONRL. If we were to confer notability on this basis - then this would extend notability to hundreds, possibly thousands, of junior research workers involved in the wider effort here (and in similar projects). Icewhiz (talk) 14:56, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  @Icewhiz: duly noted, I will look at all of the sources and come back and either reinstate or change my vote. Thanks, SITH (talk) 14:58, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

• Redirect to Tennessine#Discovery: after going through the sources one by one and doing both online and offline searches for more sources, I agree with Icewhiz's initial analysis of the sources. I'd love to vote keep but the only grounds for doing so now are not based on notability but on personal feelings. I'm withdrawing my keep !vote but leaving the comment intact to ensure my objection to the canvassing is noted. SITH (talk) 15:07, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete (changed from keep and then redirect): per my original comments and per the discovery that "on the team which discovered the element" is a reduction. The paper doesn't list her name. SITH (talk) 18:53, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
• Keep - She was part of a small team that helped discover an element - this is not trivial and I believe her contributions deserve a space on Wikipedia. I tried very hard to find references, and since the page was written, a few more can be found, and have been added. I have asked people to help improve the page on Twitter - I wasn't aware this kind of 'canvassing' was frowned upon, but am interested into what's wrong with it. Jesswade88 (talk) 16:33, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

  A very large team - a multinational team.If we were to assume notability being a research scientist on a large multi-national project - then we would be conferring notability on all scientists involved in the Large Hadron Collider (and the discovery of Higgs boson) - over 10,000 in all. Do you have any coverage covering element-117 (as opposed to Phelps herself) that mentions Phelps? I've looked - I've failed to find any - in fact, I failed to find any mention of 117 and Phelps prior to 2016 (the announcement of the discovery being in April 2010) - and what I do see post-2016 is coverage of Phelps (e.g. on ORNL) mentioning she was involved in this very large project (as many others at ORNL were). Icewhiz (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect to Tennessine, as this is a clear BLP1E. ♟♙ (talk) 18:41, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Keep as meeting GNG, per Levivich. Carrite (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Update - during the course of this AfD the PhD and Msc degrees previously in our article were struck (as of 2019, per her LinkedIn page (as well as a list of students at utexas which was used as a source in our article) she is still a msc student) for failing V. As for her role in 117 - 117 was announced in April 2010. Phelps, per her LinkedIn page - [14] joined ORNL in 2009 and held the job title of Nuclear Operations Technician at the time.Icewhiz (talk) 20:23, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete Article relies almost entirely on PRIMARY sources about a bachelor's degree level project administrator at a notable scientific research institution. She has worked on educational outreach projects encouraging young women from minority communities to aspire to STEM careers. Problem is ALL SOURCES are PRIMARY with the exception of a single local news story about 22 local women being honored by the YWCA for making wonderful contributions to the community. Each of the 22 gets a photo and a brief paragraph in the Knoxville paper. She did present a poster at the poster session of a scientific meeting, and has signed publications, including 2 where she is the first author. (Her bio at Oak Ridge Lab here: [15]) She may well be working on an advanced degree. But she is not a notable scientist at present. Perhaps a case of WP:TOOSOON. E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:15, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
• Ping R8R and Double sharp as the primary editors of the FA Tennessine, an article where Phelps doesn't currently appear. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 02:43, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per E.M.Gregory and Icewhiz. Wait until her career develops, then perhaps recreate the page. oncamera 04:17, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete From reading this discussion and the article, I do not exactly understand why this scientist is considered notable. As per the article's lead section, the main reason is that she was on a team that provided a target for the discovery of element 117. To make that entirely clear: she did not discover a chemical element and she wasn't a part of the team that made the discovery. The discoverers were those who conducted the experiment in Russia in 2009--2010 and those who later analyzed the data obtained in that experiment. She was a part of the team that provided necessary equipment for that discovery, nothing less but nothing more. While that was indeed of crucial importance for the discovery (though not a part of it), I don't see how that makes everybody involved in making the target personally notable. She was not even the leader of that group. If there ever was a person of notability gained from that alone, that would be Joseph Hamilton (I will note that he does not have a Wikipedia article for whatever reason). If that is the reason why she has an article at all (and it appears to me it is), then my judgment is that she does not pass WP:GNG. If there is nothing she has done that passes GNG, then the sum of what she has done does not have her pass it either (though it may be the reason for somebody to give her enough coverage that would help pass it).

I plead to everyone not to use Wikipedia as a means to make a sociopolitical statement, however noble your intentions may be. Wikipedia is meant to be neutral, and that it should be. We're not writing a new edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. On this ground, I advise against invocation of WP:IAR.--R8R (talk) 04:23, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• (edit conflict × 1) Delete (summoned by ping above). I'm sorry, but if she's notable, then so must thousands of others who worked on large multinational scientific projects, as Icewhiz wrote. The tennessine article rightly does not mention her, as otherwise it would get bogged down listing hundreds and thousands of names.
• (The above was written before I edit-conflicted; I also agree with R8R's comment.) Double sharp (talk) 04:40, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per the arguments of E. M. Gregory and Icewhiz. I think there are some fundamental flaws in the reasoning of some of the keep !votes above, notably regarding the scale of the scientific research team or the nature of her qualifications. I also think that the YWCA award carries little weight: a notable award recognising scientific achievement made by a peer-led group would mean something but a non-notable one made by a non-specialist organisation that was clearly trying to promote a social cause at the time probably says more about the organisation than the awardees. I also do not agree with the implied suggestion that it is an article worthy of keeping simply because it is about a woman of colour involved in STEM: we reflect the world as it is per reliable sources etc but should leave the social engineering to others. - Sitush (talk) 07:09, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete. Many people were involved in the discovery of Tennessine, including more than 50 at Oak Ridge alone. [16] The YWCA Knoxville story is not sufficient to establish notability either (we don't even seem to have an article about that award). I hope she does become notable as a STEM role model, but Wikipedia should report on her after she has become notable, not be a vehicle that publicises her story. —Kusma (t·c) 12:18, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per all above. TOOSOON. Numerous people were involved in the discovery of Tennesine and we may not be used for righting great wrongs. Fails NPROF as well as GNG, by a mile or so. ∯WBG^converse 12:46, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete and userfy. Per R8R. I am minded that this person belongs to an under-represented group on wikipedia and I can understand those projects desire to remedy that. However, I don't think that creating articles on BLP that do not meet WP:GNG helps. I can see how this person could be notable in the future, I just don't see they are there yet. WCM_email 12:49, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  I oppose userfication, as the article contained gross misrepresentations of the subject. For instance - she was presented as a PhD (Dr.) - while she never presented herself as such. There are other mis-uses of WP:BLPPRIMARY material. A userfied version would still contain this false information in the article's history (as well as other falsehoods possibly un-spotted by us). Such a falsification is harmful to the subject of our article - if anyone were to think she was involved in a such CV misrepresentation (as opposed to Wikipedia editors unconnected to her - which is what appears to be the case here, but for someone unversed with Wikipedia - this isn't obvious) - then this can cause severe professional and academic harm to our BLP subject. Icewhiz (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• WP:SOFIXIT If there were serious BLP considerations here it would have been an uncontroversial speedy delete. WCM_email 18:01, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Delete as subject is not yet notable; obituaries written decades from now might pull her over the line. All the keep !votes I see are ILIKEIT/ IAR arguments from editors who think notability is whatever they want it to be. Wikipedia is not here to pursue social justice. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:03, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  Chris troutman, with due respect, I think obituaries written decades from now is unnecessarily gross. Can you strike that, please? ∯WBG^converse 13:18, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  @Winged Blades of Godric: I think you've read something into my comment that's not there. While we have SNGs (like PROF, MUSICBIO, RODEO, SOLDIER, NPOL) for the living, most people will not pass GNG until after their death, especially since historians won't start writing until well-after the fact. (Obit-based bios like Adrianne Wadewitz and Aaron Swartz come to mind.) Chris Troutman (talk) 15:08, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

• comment This is all getting a bit over excited. It appears that mistakenly calling some "Dr" is a "gross misrepresentation". I also totally misunderstood Jess's tweet as I thought it was encouraging me to improve the article - which I did. Was this wrong? Should I revert? I have made 100K similar edits and people did encourage me to make them. This may take some time. Could we consider having a policy where we do improve articles and we are allowed to encourage others. Victuallers (talk) 13:33, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  Victuallers, overexcited? Nah. She put up a war-cry for people to chime in, they do chime in............. ∯WBG^converse 13:36, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  If I see anyone tweet in future about an AfD when they're a registered user here, I'll ask for them to be banned. Enough is enough with this blatant stuff from special interest groups determined to right great wrongs here. I can kind of understand it if the person is a newcomer but when they've been here a while there is no excuse for it. - Sitush (talk) 13:48, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  What is your problem with "special interest groups", Sitush? Do you want noninterested groups here? Should we notify WikiProject Belgium for this AfD? Nom has correctly, and per strong advise by the AfD instructions, notified "interested projects and editors" such as list of Women-related deletion discussions and of course the article creator [17] (would the creator not have a special interest?). All this is per instruction. Simple: WP:AFD and WP:CANVASS do not prohibit notifying interested groups. And while the guideline is outdated for not covering offwiki forums, you have no ground to extend your non-argument to outside twitter.

Also, worrying is that your attitude may lead to doxing if not by letter then by intention, seeing your contributions here.

Meanwhile, you have not argued (at all) why the notifications on twitter would be CANVASsing (worse: you say If I see anyone tweet ... banned, i.e., irrespective of CANVASSy content or not; that's "banned" not just "blocked"). Canvassing should be determined by these criteria, and none of them is referring to "special interest". Now one might call the two tweets, linked to in top, a bit rigging (for example, one says "vote" not "!vote"), but you have not written a word about such judgement.

And none of your blocking, doxxing, and accusing is helping the XfD it is about. Your actions would not improve the XfD one iota, because all are outside of it. Block a dozen editors, ban them even: the XfD may still be poor and corrupted. The solution is simple: When canvassing or possible canvassing is detected, notify the thread and put {{notavote}} in top — just as was done in this thread. Then have the closing admin make better decisions: for example throw out or downgrade possible canvassed (!)votes and say so in the conclusion; or just read the argumentation for quality (as the closing admin is always supposed to do, but alas). BTW, canvassing is not an argument for/against deletion. One needs to digest the discussion always. (ping StraussInTheHouse SITH).

-DePiep (talk) 07:35, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

If you can't understand what my problem is with campaigning special interest groups (inherent bias, canvass, RGW etc) , and you haven't noticed that umpteen admins are agreeing with my concerns about what you say might be doxxing etc, then I hold no hope. And if you think an admin can spot regular contributors who may have been canvassed in an AfD by such a group then I really do despair. We are being infested by a group of (sometimes professional) campaigners - and it is in addition COI, paid editing etc when it gets to that state but, being WMF acolytes, they're clever and claim merely to be facilitating. You might not be bothered but surely you can see why many people would be? - Sitush (talk) 07:48, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

re. "If you can't understand what my problem is with campaigning special interest groups, and you haven't noticed ...": that is because you did not write that. Don't blame me for not seeing what you did not write. (I note that you added "campaigning" only just now, not in first post). Meanwhile, you did not address a single point or question I made. So I repeat:

You have not pointed out why the twitter posts are trespassing WP:CANVASS lines, you did not mention a single criteria mentioned in there. You did not check the tweets for this. This means that yout judgement is by bias only, or worse. After sneaking in "campaigning" just now, even that's not enough to establish CANVASS, given the consequences you apply singlehandedly (and knowing that that conclusion was opposed already).

re "you think an admin can spot regular contributors who may have been canvassed" No, I wrote the opposite, read my post. And don't use "you think", just speak for yourself. Anyway, the admin could be helped to, right? Like adding notifications to the thread—as was done here. But your proposal does not help the admin nor the thread. Banning or even signalling a CANVASSING (this being by establishing not shouting btw), says nothing about canvassed opinions, duh. Why not spend time on recognising canvassed opinions (hint: test for argument quality)?

re "no hope, despair, not be bothered, you think": please stop introducing the whining, irrational tone. Do you suggest you have no arguments, right while we are talking about improving AfD?

What you did write is: If I see anyone tweet in future about an AfD when they're a registered user here, I'll ask for them to be banned". Clearly, this is without any judgement on the CANVASS indicators. Given the consequences you imply, this is serious matter. And again: banning editors does not help the XfD in any way or sense. You treat every mentioning of an XfD off-wiki as CANVASS. but notifying interest groups including the creator is part of the XfD guideline. How are these that not "special interest groups (inherent bias, canvass, RGW etc)"?

The consequenses are huge, invading, and might get you blocked. First there is the suggestion and stimulation to dox (even if you yourself stop short for under half of an inch short). Then, it is inviting an internet community (say twitter & enwiki) to harrass a twitter thread (timeline) and it contributors -- from your bad judgement. In this thread, after CANVASS accusations/suggestions, two experienced wiki editors already have complained about harrassment: It is bad form to misuse Wikipedia policies or guidelines to attempt to censor or intimidate free speech off wiki. -DePiep (talk) 08:54, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

I add: your whole approach is one big WP:BAD FAITH excercise and punishment. Time to move away from that, before more damage is done. -DePiep (talk) 08:57, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

• Draftify/Userify The content looks unremarkably reasonable, after being checked for flubs, and it's not implausible that the subject could become notable for outreach activities in a year or so. That any errors or misrepresentations buried deep within the page history could bounce back and harm the subject strikes me as implausible, and that could be addressed by revdel'ing anyway. XOR'easter (talk) 16:37, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Stale drafts get deleted before a year is up and the material that is present is easily found again, where it actually matters (eg: the YWCA award is just padding, scrabbling around to find something that might get her "over the line" for GNG). The errors, some of which are quite severe (notably re: qualifications and job status), were present until days ago, so we would need to revdel all the way back to the start. It isn't worth the effort. Just recreate if ever she satisfies whatever the requirements may be at the time. - Sitush (talk) 17:12, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• I don't see a reason to presume the draft would remain "stale". If it does, oh well. And "all the way back to the start" isn't actually very many revisions, for a page this new. XOR'easter (talk) 17:48, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Perhaps but it's not implausible that the subject could become notable for outreach activities in a year or so is more than six months, which is the usual draft cut-off point, IIRC. I do hope she becomes notable for something other than outreach as well as that's something of a poisoned chalice - it is an echo chamber thing and, hopefully, an aside to a successful career. - Sitush (talk) 17:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• The usual time-scale is six months, but edits in that interval reset the clock. XOR'easter (talk) 18:28, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

• Delete Despite the Fae's tweet that she is "part of the team that discovered Tennessine, #element 117", her name is not among the 33 authors of the discovery paper and this statement is an uncritical reduction of what happened. Without that, it's unclear where notability comes from with a lack of in-depth sources and the article does not pass GNG requirements. Nor do I believe the scientists who wrote that paper would be necessarily notable either; synthesizing heavy elements is a scientific joyride that has no clear purpose or implications, with Tennessine discussing the procedural and theoretical. Reywas92^Talk
• Comment – article expanded: The article has been expanded since it was nominated: Clarice Phelps. ^Leviv_ich 22:16, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  And just expanded again a bit. I would encourage editors to take a second look, please. ^Leviv_ich 02:48, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  And, what new is there, that you see as sufficient enough to pass GNG/NACADEMIC? ∯WBG^converse 03:51, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  Nah, I'm not going to lobby. You and any other editor so inclined can read the article and decide for yourself, should this article be in the encyclopedia? If GNG/NACADEMIC or some other text file helps you answer the question, great. I've already stated my views on those guidelines in my first !vote. (TLDR version: GNG/NACADEMIC are not tests that need to be "passed," but guidelines to assist in determining notability.) ^Leviv_ich 04:09, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  Seems to be a lot of overciting (five sources to verify she has a chemistry degree!) and lot of use of primary/non-independent sources. - Sitush (talk) 05:37, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

• Keep. Really? It was an article in need of improvement at its original state. It's been improved. Looks better than about 75% of comparable articles about white male scientists that have passed AFD, or have never been questioned. And for the record, this is probably one of the very few "keeps" I've ever entered at AfD. Risker (talk) 06:05, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  No, it hasn't been improved. Prose had been expanded. But we're still using navy buddies as a source. Along the way we've added sources - e.g. blog at navycs.com, navy.mil, or this ORNL pdf that don't even mention Phelps (a rather clear sign of WP:SYNTH). The article, as presently construed, is one big WP:BLP violation. What this article is still lacking are any independent, reliable, WP:INDEPTH, secondary sources that cover Phelps - and WP:REFBOMBing with references that don't satisfy that criteria (including several references that don't even mention Phelps!) does not establish notability in any way, shape, or form. Icewhiz (talk) 06:17, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

• Last comment @WBG: Changed my mind, gonna lobby. My responses to yours and others' comments above; I hope it convinces you.

1. Forget about WP:NACADEMIC because she is not an academic (For the purposes of this guideline, an academic is someone engaged in scholarly research or higher education, and academic notability refers to being known for such engagement.). She works in government, not higher education, and she is engaged in laboratory research, not scholarly research (she doesn't publish papers about theory, she performs laboratory experiments and operates complicated machinery, and by "complicated machinery" I mean nuclear reactors).
2. The applicable notability guideline is WP:BLPNOTE, which guides us as follows (bold added):

   For people, the person who is the topic of a biographical article should be "worthy of notice" or "note"—that is, "remarkable" or "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded" within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life. "Notable" in the sense of being famous or popular—although not irrelevant—is secondary. ... Many scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars ... are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources.

3. 2004 – 2008: Navy Nuclear Power Program; the "Navy Nukes", who deal with nuclear reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers. "Significant, interesting, or unusual"?
4. 2009 – present: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest government laboratory in the United States, with a billion dollar budget, built as part of the Manhattan Project. If you're a nuclear chemist or engineer, this is just about the top lab you can work. Oak Ridge is on the level of Los Alamos National Laboratory, CERN etc.
5. 2010: part of the team that made one of the two elements that were fused to create tennessine, element 117. (Yes it's a large team of scientists, but it always is a large team of scientists for these sorts of major breakthroughs; nobody is claiming she singlehandedly discovered the element; it's still "significant, interesting, or unusual" that she was on the team.)
6. At Oak Ridge, she is the program manager for nickel-63 and selenium-75 production. She's in charge of their programs that make those isotopes. She's also worked on californium-252, which Oak Ridge produces 70% of the world's supply of, and plutonium-238 which is nuclear rocket fuel for deep space exploration. She specializes in making and working with super-heavy metals (transuranic elements are the heaviest of the heavy). She also works with nuclear engineering in medical applications like cancer treatments (radiation therapy). Is all this work "significant, interesting, or unusual"? More info on this stuff: [18]
7. Oak Ridge has thousands of employees; they only highlight a select few, and she is one of them. Video about her, in-depth write-up (not to be confused with her bio), another video where she's interviewed, and another. Check out these tweets: [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24]. By comparison, a professor at Harvard who got that much promotion from Harvard would be considered notable for it. She is a notable member of a notable organization.
8. Radiochemical engineering is a small world. So, you're not going to find a lot of media coverage about nuclear chemists and the work they do. Even as compared with university academics, who publish a lot, a laboratory scientist just won't have as big of a footprint in the RSes. BLPNOTE recognizes this exact thing: Many scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars ... are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources. By this standard, she has a large RS footprint, especially for a woman of color, one of the most underrepresented groups in science.
9. The YWCA Knoxville award is a "local" award, yes, but it's given to the woman who is the leader in her field in the Knoxville area. Well, when you're a nuclear scientist, being the top nuclear scientist in Knoxville (where Oak Ridge is) is like being the top actress in Hollywood or the top Imam in Mecca. YWCA is kind of a standard for "top woman in..." awards. Granted, this isn't like a Lifetime Achievement award or anything, but it's still a legit award. [25] [26] [27]

Phew! That's why she's notable. She meets WP:BLPNOTE because she is significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention and to be recorded ... without her biography being the subject of secondary sources. ^Leviv_ich 06:30, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

And what's lacking in the long wall of text above is multiple significant, reliable, independent, secondary sources (WP:GNG). Icewhiz (talk) 06:43, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Icewhiz, which is not a requirement. GNG is not a requirement. WP:N says (bold added): A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right ... If you read my wall of text, it explains how this article meets WP:BLPNOTE, one of the subject-specific guideline[s] listed in the box on the right. So argue about BLPNOTE, not GNG, not NACADEMIC. ^Leviv_ich 06:50, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

@Levivich: - BLPNOTE (or Wikipedia:Notability (people)) is not a SNG - it does contain a list of links to several SNGs (e.g. WP:NPOL or WP:NPROF). So does WP:N (on that little box to the right). If you are claiming this articles passes on a SNG - please cite the relevant SNG (please note that many of the SNGs merely create a presumption of notability - but still need to meet GNG). Specific SNG she meets, please ? Icewhiz (talk) 06:54, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Icewhiz, BLPNOTE is one of the links under "Subject-specific guideline" (it's "People") in the Notability box on the right of WP:N. BLPNOTE is listed at WP:SNG. What makes you say it is not a SNG? ^Leviv_ich 06:57, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (multiple) Levivich, your change of tack seems to be to an entirely subjective criteria, whereas the SNGs and GNG at least have some basis in assessment. I'm also concerned that you're suddenly suggesting that the very criteria that are most commonly used at AfD should be abandoned as insignificant or whatever. I'm sorry but this smacks of desperation, as does Risker's comment. This is the sort of thing the habitues of one of the old wikimedia-hosted gender mailing lists sometimes used to do in such circumstances. - Sitush (talk) 06:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Sitush, I don't understand what your comment is about but my big long comment above is about how this article meets WP:N by meeting an SNG called BLPNOTE. Da faq you talking about gender mailing lists? ^Leviv_ich 07:00, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, you've clarified in the edits where we edit-conflicted. However, what you are quoting - significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded - *is* highly subjective and is very much subject to change over time. If she was the first etc then that would be something that is easier to assess subjectively but that she is one among several, and in a cohort that will should grow, means her status as deserving an article will recede over time, if it ever existed. - Sitush (talk) 07:05, 6 February 2019 (UTC) Another edit conflict, perhaps? My mention of the mailing list was because it used to sometimes get canvassing attempts and was a closed-shop. We've had canvassing attempts here, too. And some of the people !voting here were involved with the list. - Sitush (talk) 07:08, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

BLPNOTE is a whole big collection of SNGs - please cite the relevant criteria from within WP:BLPNOTE. Along the way, please also specify how writing an article based essentially entirely on ORNL PR does not fail WP:NOTSOAP. Icewhiz (talk) 07:00, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Icewhiz, BLPNOTE says:

This notability guideline for biographies reflects consensus reached through discussions and reinforced by established practice, and informs decisions on whether an article about a person should be written, merged, deleted, or further developed.

That's the notability guideline I am following. If you want to apply a different notability guideline, go ahead. ^Leviv_ich 07:13, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

You're completely misreading the guideline. I suggest, you scroll on down past the introduction (which discusses generalities), and read WP:BASIC (the first section) - which the present article is a complete fail of (as it is lacking multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject). After you read that - please cite a specific SNG this subject meets, and specify how an article based on ORNL PR on their website (and not all that much of PR at that - hardly in-depth) doesn't fail WP:NOTSOAP.Icewhiz (talk) 07:18, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Icewhiz, 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. I'm not sure what part of "here's how she's notable without being the subject of secondary sources" you're not understanding. Look, it's one thing to be not persuaded by my argument above. I can respect that. But I don't have to keep trying until I've convinced you personally. So kindly stop badgering me and demanding that I "prove this" and "prove that". Stop telling me that because I disagree with you, I "completely misreading the guideline" or basically don't know shit. You gotta learn how to disagree without being a dick about it. I've said all I have to say on this. If you're not convinced by my lengthy walls of text and my expansion of the article, then you're not convinced. It's OK. Really. ^Leviv_ich 07:24, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

The WP:BLP violations in the article are not convincing, no. AfD is based on policy, not opinion. You are citing WP:NPROF (which is actually a SNG). Please specify which of the 9 criteria in Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#Specific criteria notes (an elaboration of WP:NACADEMIC) this subject meets - she isn't even close to meeting any of the 9 criteria set in NACADEMIC.Icewhiz (talk) 07:31, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Once summoned to this discussion, I have been watching it with great interest. It appears to me that you've been misinterpreting a policy you refer to. WP:BIO says, 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. Now I do say that this is nowhere near what you put as "she's notable without being the subject of secondary sources." I have not so far seen a guideline that would allow us an article on a subject that is not reflected in independent sources. What this guideline relieves us from is having to have a biography in a secondary source. Then again, you do say that she is not an academic---so why do you mention a guideline on academics in the first place? The turquoise quote not only mentions that it is about academics, something that you have scrapped in your lengthy argument where you also claimed the guideline on academics is not applicable, but also is listed under subtitle Academics and {{main|Wikipedia:Notability (academics)}}. In the very beginning of the said guideline, WP:NPROF, the "In a nutshell" template again defines that "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 [text boldened in the original -- R8R] of secondary sources." After that, why would NPROF not be applicable is a mystery to me. Also it is clear that we are not entirely relieved from having to have some secondary sources, even if these are not focused on her.

As for your points 3--6: great. Yet how does any of these yield personal notability? It does not matter if the work that the person in question contributed to is "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded"; it must be her own contribution to it that is. (Sentence in whole for reference: For people, the person who is the topic of a biographical article should be "worthy of notice" or "note"—that is, "remarkable" or "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded" within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life. Note it is the person whose remarkability we must establish, not that of "Navy Nukes" or element 117.) This is what we need secondary sources for---not to describe her in detail, not to even be focused on her---to plain confirm that her contribution was important. If there is anything in these sources that could be attributed directly to her, it would be the production of the well-known isotopes. Does it make her cool? As a fan of the elements, I'd say, absolutely. Does it make her notable? I tend to think not. These isotopes are not unique, she did not discover them or a new way to produce them, or anything---at least, you haven't mentioned that.

Equally, I tend to think that being interviewed by her own employer is not much, as cool as the employer is. This is still a primary source (WP:PRIMARY: Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved. They offer an insider's view of an event, a period of history, a work of art, a political decision, and so on.). We are not relieved from need of having to have some secondary sources, even if her bio is not the subject of those. If she worked in, say, Berkeley and had been interviewed by ORNL---that would be much more impressive. If Dubna had issued her a special public thank-you for her berkelium target, that would've been something. If none except the people she works with pay enough attention to cover her at least in some way, then my take is that it speaks against her notability in an encyclopedia. Being in a profession is not enough. She must have had some impact in her profession to be notable. (Another quote from NPROF's "In a nutshell": Having published work does not, in itself, make an academic notable, no matter how many publications there are. Notability depends on the impact 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.) I still don't see what exactly it would be. (A different option would be to become known as a notable activist, which I won't go in detail into because this is not claimed.)

Not a lot of coverage for scientists is a problem. Yet we still must have some coverage. The criterion is already easier to meet for a scientist to reflect that. And for the purposes of Wikipedia, I reject the way you say "especially [text italicized in the original -- R8R] for women of color," as if there were some special criteria for them. Everybody is equal, everybody is judged against the same criteria. It is only natural to me that there are more Wikipedia articles on white male scientists---solely because there are more white male scientists. If you wish to change that, please go ahead---but Wikipedia is not the place to start. If this effort succeeds, Wikipedia should reflect that. If it does not succeed, Wikipedia should reflect that. If the effort succeeds in part but not entirely, Wikipedia should reflect that. Regardless of what happens, Wikipedia should reflect that---and it is there entirely to reflect, not to drive the change.

As for the award: great. That's, along with much of what's been mentioned, a great personal achievement. My admiration shoots through the roof (not in a sarcastic way). But then again, it remains to be seen how does this affect her Wikipedia notability. The previously mentioned NPROF has a list of nine criteria, of which any one should be met. (You could help your case by showing us how any criterion is met.) The relevant criterion is criterion 2: "The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level." But the award in question is not a national or international award.

I'd like to make it clear: I am not against scientists, women of color, or anyone. But by the very design of Wikipedia, we have to rely on external sources and provide equal treatment for all. If there's not enough coverage: well, that's a shame. Nobody is saying she is not notable in her own field of studies; she is only not notable for English Wikipedia for now, something that may change later. Please remember that not having an article in Wikipedia is not the end of the world.

All of the above is a subject to correction if you can identify anything as mistaken.--R8R (talk) 19:55, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

@R8R: Thank you for taking the time to write that thoughtful reply. A few areas where I think there are mistakes that may change your view:

• There are two definitions of "academic" in the relevant guidelines:

1. WP:Notability (people)#Academics (aka WP:BIO): ...scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience)...
2. WP:Notability (academics) (aka WP:NPROF, WP:NACADEMIC, etc.): For the purposes of this guideline, an academic is someone engaged in scholarly research or higher education, and academic notability refers to being known for such engagement. (italics in the original, bold added)

Now this is confusing and should be changed after this AfD closes, but the point is, WP:BIO#Academic has a different, broader definition than WP:NPROF, and under NPROF's definition, NPROF does not apply to her (she's not in higher education, and she doesn't do scholarly research, she does applied research). So that's why I'm at BIO and not NPROF. (That the "in a nutshell" box on NPROF quotes BIO#Academics, in my view, doesn't vitiate the clearer statement in the lead of NPROF saying explicitly what the definition of "academic" is for "this guideline".) In fact, NPROF explicitly says: It is possible for an academic not to be notable under the provisions of this guideline but to be notable in some other way under one of the other subject-specific notability guidelines. In this case, she's not notable under NPROF, but she is under BIO.

• The articles' Ref #1, it's main source, is not a primary source. It is a secondary source, even if you consider it a totally non-independent, self-published source, it's still a secondary self-published source. I say that based on WP:Identifying and using self-published works#Doesn't "self-published" mean "primary"?: When the blog posting provides an analysis of an event that happened decades before, it is a secondary source for its subject matter. Her giving an interview where she is reflecting on her past life is a secondary source, not a primary, because it's not recording events as they happen, but reflecting on events in the past.
• She's a significant, interesting, and unusual person because you're not going to find a lot of women of color with at-risk-inner-city-youth backgrounds who grew up to become nuclear chemists who were a Navy Nuke and are a notable scientist at Oak Ridge and worked on a team that discovered an element and is in Nuclear Security and runs two isotope production lines and does notable research on plutonium, neptunium, californium and does notable research on nuclear medicine. That's interesting and unique! It's certainly not dime a dozen. A person can be significant, interesting, and unusual because of the work they do IMO.
• I absolutely don't think even for a second that you or any other editor here has voted delete because of any kind of feelings against scientists, women, people of color, etc. "Especially for women of color" means recognizing that we are going to find fewer RSes about them, even if they are notable; I didn't mean to imply there is a special rule, but rather a special sensitivity. I do think WP should be sensitive to systemic bias in its policies. (That's not to say that delete voters are biased; of course not.)
• If she is notable in her field of study (which I think some editors are denying), and her field is nuclear chemical engineering, then a notable nuclear chemical engineer is notable enough for Wikipedia IMO. It's definitely not the end of the world if WP doesn't retain an article on her; and reasonable people can disagree about her notability. ^Leviv_ich 22:44, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

• I tend to think your interpretations of the guideline are too specific to think this was what was meant. Here's how so.

• There is Wikipedia:Notability (people), commonly known as WP:BIO. It is certainly applicable here, regardless of whether there are other applicable guidelines (which may, however, override this one).
• Alongside it, there are also special cases for specific kinds of personalities. The one that interests us is Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Academics, which I will refer to as WP:BIO/A. The aforementioned quote of 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. is the entire content of that section. BIO/A deals with a special kind of personalities.
• Finally, BIO/A is only an excerpt of Wikipedia:Notability (academics) (WP:NPROF), which is shown by the {{main}} template at the top of the former. (And you would indeed generally consider a guideline on academics a specific sub-guideline from a guideline on people.)

Now, given all of the above, I tend to think that NPROF is a sub-guideline of BIO, with an excerpt or maybe an incomplete summary of NPROF being inserted into BIO as BIO/A. As such, it seems that it is against the intended effect to separate BIO/A from NPROF. Again, I agree that this will only benefit from further clarification. But for now, I want to specify it was intended that either a person is acceptable for both or neither. Choosing only one (BIO/A or NPROF; BIO in general is applicable anyway) genuinely seems like cherry-picking to me.

As for "scholarly research" vs. "applied research": I don't quite understand this (I am a foreign speaker, after all), but it seems to me that this is a wrong antithesis. A proper antithesis would be fundamental/basic research vs. applied research. My standard reference dictionary, Merriam-Webster, defines "scholarly" as "of, characteristic of, or suitable to learned persons." It does not seem to me that this excludes applied research. Wikidictionary defines "scholarly" as "of or relating to scholars or scholarship" and it defines "scholar" as "1. A student; one who studies at school or college, typically having a scholarship. 2. A specialist in a particular branch of knowledge. 3. A learned person; a bookman." Again, I don't see why applied research does not qualify as scholarly.

• Failing to have notability under NPROF but succeeding in doing so under BIO (minus BIO/A) would be fine, that would warrant us the required notability. But nobody made such a case. Correct me if I'm wrong, but whenever anyone mentioned BIO, they were only talking about lowering the entrance bar but never fixated on how it still was there, how secondary sources were still needed, etc.
• As for this and that: of what you have listed, I think what could be potentially notable is her research on those superheavy elements and nuclear medicine. Until you mentioned this (I see this is also in the article now; is this a recent addition or did I previously overlook it?), I thought she was some kind of a, I don't know... engineer? A person who does not do research into anything and just does what others had invented before. If she does her own research, that would be great to mention in a greater detail. Maybe that would actually help truly establish her notability. It seems to me that if anybody outside of Oak Ridge referred to her for this work in some manner, that actually might be enough to warrant inclusion.
• I don't like the idea that she is notable for discovery of element 117 because, as I mentioned before, she did not discover it. I will remove that from that infobox. She helped do a prep work, not the discovery itself; that work is not something unheard of, or at least it is not presented as such. To discover an element, you must a) synthesize it, and b) unquestionably identify it as a new element. It was those people who did that who are the discoverers. She wasn't involved in either. The rest, for purposes of Wikipedia, are involved tangentially at best, unless a special case could be made for that person specifically (I mentioned Hamilton in my original message. The moment when I did start to consider him closely was when I saw Oganessian, the lead researcher in Dubna, where the synthesis commenced, name him "the father of 117"). Nobody made such a case for Phelps.
• To establish notability, regardless of what exactly will be the source of the said notability, we must have the source verified by these secondary sources. While I am doubtful on whether this source at all counts as secondary (it still comes from ORNL), it doesn't matter because it does not provide an analysis. It barely lists what she had done. Here's a quote: This conscientiousness and meticulous nature are necessary for the type of sensitive work Phelps performs as project manager of ORNL’s nickel-63 and selenium-75 industrial use isotope programs. She is also a researcher in the Medical, Industrial and Research Isotopes Group (MIRIG), where she works on the separation and analysis of elements such as europium, samarium, actinium and lanthanum. // Phelps also has experience with several large, notable research projects. She has collaborated with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory’s Californium Rare Isotope Breeder Upgrade (CARIBU) to electroplate platinum and stainless-steel plates with californium-252 to analyze nuclear fission fragments. She has also contributed work on plutonium and neptunium for NASA’s plutonium-238 project. If there were an analysis of any of these things, we'd probably have something to talk about (I'm not entirely sure, because I'm uneasy without the exact intent of the quote from the rule that you've mentioned, but it would be something and I'd look into it. If it also had come from Berkeley instead, that would've been perfect and certainly enough for inclusion).
• I will restrain myself from comments on systemic bias because I lack the knowledge to what extent this is a thing, and on whether we should at all try to correct the existing biases, and if so, to what extent. I tend to think that discrimination in the United States is low when it comes to the inner society of the intellectual people, in our case, high-level scientists, and therefore this is probably not too much of a problem in our case. But I may not know the whole story. I also tend to think that if the society is unfair, then Wikipedia, a mirror of that society, will also be unfair in its coverage as it relies on input from the said society. This is probably easy to say when you're in all of the "privileged" categories, however. Regardless, we are writing an encyclopedia, one that relies on secondary sources. We couldn't do without those, fair or unfair that is. I also hope I've given you the right impression that due to its own inevitable dependence on secondary sources, Wikipedia shouldn't be seen as something to be disappointed not to end up on despite of all your best efforts.
• I mentioned that before, but I'll say it once more. As I understand the rules, however many cool things she did is irrelevant. We don't have articles on cool people just because they're cool. What matters is that at least one of those things must bring her notability on its own. Without having really looked into this, I don't think this case is lost. But it has not been done either. If nothing what she had done mattered on its own, then it's a bust unless someone (outside of ORNL) gives her enough coverage to bring her the notability.
• I hope the above explains my point explains my point: there must be a particular thing that she did that is cool on its own and is reflected in some secondary sources. I've mentioned my ideas on what those could be.--R8R (talk) 15:53, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

• @R8R: I was trying to distinguish between research at a university for the purpose of scholarship (publishing), and other kinds of research, e.g., a clinical trial by a contract research organization, or government research like the Manhattan Project. A non-university scientist is likely to publish less than a university scientist, and for this and other reasons, will have a harder time meeting NPROF than a scientist employed by a university. This is even more true when the scientist is working somewhere like the Nuclear Security division at Oak Ridge. We will never have many independent RSes diving into that kind of research; our reliable sources will necessarily be non-independent, e.g., from Oak Ridge. Just like our main source for information about astronauts will be NASA.
• Giving presentations at national annual meetings of the American Chemical Society might not meet NPROF but I think it is evidence of her significance.
• The Oak Ridge profile is a secondary source because it analyzes her entire career and makes judgments about what her "notable" research contributions are. A non-independent source, even a self-published source, can still be a secondary source.
• BIO's "worthy of notice", "remarkable", "significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded" language can be summed up in one word: "cool". Everything "cool" is significant, interesting, or unusual. An encyclopedia is a book about everything we know that's cool. Oak Ridge National Laboratory considers her to be one of the 80 most significant, interesting and unusual scientists among its staff of like 1,500 or so (and a non-independent source can still be a reliable source–NASA is a reliable source for information about astronauts). Oak Ridge's significant coverage of her is good enough to convince me that she's one of the most significant and unusual nuclear chemists in the world, just like if NASA profiles one of its astronauts, that's good enough to convince me that this is a notable astronaut.
• It seems to me all the WP:WHYN concerns are met. We can write a whole article and not just a stub. We know the information about the subject isn't gossip or hoaxes because it comes from Oak Ridge, a reliable source. (The suggestion from some quarters that funding from Congress of the Department of Energy will be influenced by the contents of the biography of Clarice Phelps does not persuade me.) It's based on secondary sources, has no original research, no NPOV problems.
• I don't want this to be an encyclopedia that only talks about the 27 most-famous Category:Nuclear chemists in history while having hundreds of thousands of other biographies. It's not lowering our standards to conclude that there's room here for more nuclear chemists, even if they come from outside the university. If the subject of the article meets the significant/interesting/unusual test of BIO and there are no WHYN concerns, I say the article is worthy of being in the encyclopedia. Levivich 20:31, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

• Keep. Arguments being made here for deletion due to a claimed lack of "notability" do not apply because Oak Ridge National Laboratory has decided for us that Phelps is notable enough to be a featured scientist. Such declarations by institutional sources like Oak Ridge are the highest level of reliability and verifiability that Wikipedia can hope for. It is, frankly, arrogant and silly to claim that these profiles of Phelps are not good enough sources for our volunteer encyclopedia writing. jps (talk) 20:04, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  Apart from the question whether her employer should be considered a reliable source, let me just point out they have featured more than 80 people in the last three years. Usually we wait for this kind of things to be noticed by outside-world secondary sources before we write an article. —Kusma (t·c) 21:12, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  In the first place, you imply a possible impeachment of the reliability of Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a source only to switch subjects to a list of their profiles? Fair enough, I suppose! I'll merely opine that having 80 or 800 biographies of scientists in Wikipedia is not problematic at all! It would be a problem if the sourcing was poor, but, then, see point the first. jps (talk) 21:48, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

  Because Oak Ridge is a government laboratory and not a for-profit corporation, I don't have conflict of interest concerns. It's one of the largest and best-funded nuclear research facilities in the world with some of the world's top supercomputers, nuclear reactors, and particle accelerators–a notable scientific research facility. Those 80 scientists they feature are probably among the top laboratory scientists in the world in their respective fields. Unlike athletes or actors or academics, there isn't going to be a lot of media coverage of laboratory scientists, and they don't publish as much as university scholars. Nevertheless, laboratory scientists deserve to be in the encyclopedia like the other folks; we just have a gap in that we don't have an explicit guideline covering them like NPROF or NFOOTY. But we do have the general WP:BIO, and I think she meets it. I wish editors would recognize this guideline gap and see that our pillars, policies and guidelines are flexible enough to account for this situation, e.g., GNG says "presumed" not "required", and the rest are similarly written. ^Leviv_ich 09:57, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  It is news to me that governments and government-related entities do not have conflicts of interest. —Kusma (t·c) 10:37, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  A cynic would dismiss all sources as having a conflict of interest. I guess closing down Wikipedia is another option. Seriously, if you have beef with Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a source have out with it and make your case rather than dancing around the issue. jps (talk) 11:24, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  To me, suggesting that Oak Ridge has a conflict of interest vis-a-vis one of its nuclear chemists is like saying NASA has a conflict of interest vis-a-vis an astronaut. Neither agency is selling anything, nor has a profit motive to lie or exaggerate. It's not like a startup think tank trying to establish its credibility. Look at articles about young astronauts Kayla Barron, Zena Cardman, Raja Chari; they're all sourced like Clarice Phelps: mostly based on a NASA-published profile, with a smattering of press and primary sources to fill out the bio. For fields like astronauts, nuclear scientists, deep-sea explorers, brain surgeons... you won't find independent coverage in RSes. (And that's why WP:BIO specifically says a scientist might be notable even without secondary sources.) ^Leviv_ich 16:25, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  We're drifting way off what matters. We need independent sources and ORNL is not independent of her. But, to address your analogy with NASA, even government departments etc have to compete for budgetary hand-outs: they have to sell themselves, whether they are profit-making or otherwise. - Sitush (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  Surely you're not suggesting that Congress's budget for the Department of Energy is going to be affected based on what ORNL says in the bio of Clarice Phelps? ORNL undoubtedly has many of the world's top scientists; there is no reason why they would make false statements about one of them. They don't have anything to prove or anyone to impress; they already have the $1.5 billion budget; they're already one of the largest, most prestigious nuclear laboratories in the world. It's like suggesting that NASA is publishing profiles of their astronauts just to get more money from Congress. Nonsense, wouldn't you agree? They're doing it because they're astronauts and they're notable and interesting. Same with nuclear scientists. For the same reason I think this article is a keep, I don't think we should delete those astronauts bios, either, even though they also don't have significant independent coverage. Those astronauts also fail GNG and NPROF, but I'm guided by WP:BIO's statement about lack of secondary sources for scientists. I don't see that as way off topic at all; rather, exactly on topic. ^Leviv_ich 16:57, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  Don't know what astronauts have to do with this - WP:OSE etc, at best. But I give up trying to explain to you, sorry. I've better things to do because I don't think you're going to understand, or perhaps want to understand. Maybe it's something to do with the systemic bias issue but we are not a social engineering project and if you want to go down that road you'll have to get consensus to amend WP:N and various other things in a much more central forum that this. - Sitush (talk) 17:06, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  See, I knew someone would bring up OSE just like I knew someone would bring up government budgets as a source of conflict of interest. My point isn't that OSE, it's that in certain highly-specialized, obviously-notable fields, like space exploration and the splitting of atoms, there are so few sources that a self-published source (from NASA or ORNL) is acceptable, and our notability guidelines reflect that, as do our articles. I'm specifically pointing to language in WP:BIO that permits this, and in all your posts, you have not addressed that specific language. (Not that you have to, but I hope the closer considers it.) ^Leviv_ich 17:10, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  You brought up budgets first here, and you invited the OSE comment. And you forget that what you say applies to scientists actually applies just as much to, say, historians. - Sitush (talk) 17:51, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  It certainly could apply to a historian, but not "just as much", because historians publish (and thus have NAUTHOR and NPROF to rely on); laboratory scientists don't. Laboratory scientist is more like astronaut than historian. ^Leviv_ich 17:57, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

  Funding is determined by good PR (and politics). As for publishing - scientists at national labs publish quite a bit (as long as they aren't in very deeply classified stuff). Lab technicians (even with a program manager title) - not so much. Rifle through Category:Oak Ridge National Laboratory people - we have a bunch (55) - and most of them pass GNG and/or NPROF. Icewhiz (talk) 19:32, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

"As long as they aren't in very deeply classified stuff"? The article says: "At Oak Ridge, Phelps works in the Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division..." and she was formerly in the Navy Nuclear Power Program; primary sources not used in the article state she has security clearance. Now what kind of independent secondary sources are we gonna find talking about her work in the Nuclear Security division with plutonium, neptunium, californium, nickel, selenium, etc. isotopes? ^Leviv_ich 22:44, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

• Delete - for all the reasons outlined above by E.M.Gregory and Icewhiz. Not convinced she meets GNG, lack of independent, secondary sources etc. I note the points about under-representation in science but Wikipedia doesn't exist to over-correct for this. Peaky76 (talk) 14:47, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete for failing to pass WP:Prof unless somebody can find citations on GS to her published work. I can find none. The other sources trace to public relations material issued by the subject's employer and are not independent. WP:GNG is not passed. Policy is clear-cut. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:42, 7 February 2019 (UTC).
• Comment. I wish that people who engage in external canvassing would realize the harm they do to the reputation of the person on whose behalf they canvass. Even if a BLP is kept for good cause, people are always going to have reason to say that it was kept only because of the canvassing, and that reflects poorly on the subject of the BLP. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:21, 8 February 2019 (UTC).
• Delete Notability is pat of a team that discovered an element. She was not a substantial part of the team, but a technician. It's not unusual to include long-term technicians as coauthors of a paper on a major project, to show appreciation, but that does not make them scientists or researchers in the usual sense of the word. Therefore, publicity she had is not just PR, but unjustified PR as far as the science is concerned. And yes, budget for US govt science is very much affected by political reasons, and the agencies make sure that there's as much PR about it as they can manage. Some of it is based on calling people by titles or positions or making ambiguous statements that might to the uninformed imply importance. (But even for scientists or executives in the usual sense, it's wise to beware of "involved with" -- I routinely remove such statements from all sort of bios. It's uniformly PR. DGG ( talk ) 05:32, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
• keep. from a very simplistic materials point of view I find it strange that "canvas" has been mentioned but that "notpaper" hasn't. I would like to see en.wp be more than recycled stories from People, the Daily Beast, and Gamasutra. While I'm not necessarily a big fan of nuclear science, it's clear that Oak Ridge & Argonne are not to be sneezed at. onrl.gov is cited on 676 pages at en.wp at the moment, well behind the dead site AllGame, or Kotaku or Gamespot (11,257 pages). I'm not convinced that is a good thing at all. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:43, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

  Do I understand your argument correctly? It seems to be "keep, is connected to ORNL. Other articles cite Gamespot". How is Gamespot relevant to the subject? —Kusma (t·c) 22:37, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

No you do not, but that is not your fault because I did not dot all the eyes and cross all the teas. Wikipedia as it currently exists is (in terms of a good bit of its volume, cf. [28]) a dumping ground of recycled pop-culture & political trivia. The weird world of AfD has made WP:N much harder to reach for people who do science than it is for singers, video game avatars, could-have-been footballers, pornstars, etc. Should en.wp be trying to mold young minds with the twisted visions of notability that have created such double standards for religious gameboys, etc.? Consensus, as you know, can change. Just doing my part to help that along. Thanks for asking. :D SashiRolls ^{t · c} 23:05, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

But Wikipedia is not a social engineering project. That is exactly what people such as the canvassers mentioned above are trying to achieve and it is why an attempt was made last year to lower the notability criteria for "marginal" groups (at the Pump, IIRC). That attempt failed then and doing it by the back door, through individual AfDs, isn't likely to work when the overwhelming consensus has so recently been not to accept it. The situation for individuals will most likely change over time as the "real world" pays more attention to such people but it is not our place to create or force the situation. Women, for example, are achieving much greater recognition in the real world than once they were and it will filter through to here as the sources become available. We have similar issues with many articles that rely on "echo chamber" websites, eg: articles about many Dalit people are being promoted by a project in part funded by the WMF but rely mostly on websites set up for the purposes and on interviews with the article subject themselves. If people want to right great wrongs, they need to find some other outlet, sorry. Ms Phelps is quite probably cringing if she knows of all this attention being foisted on her - it isn't necessarily edifying to have ones role in life and society analysed in this way when, quite possibly, someone just wants to get on with it. - Sitush (talk) 05:00, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

It's very interesting that master wikigame players (i.e. sysops) are getting so involved in trying to delete this page. I very nearly didn't get involved because I did not want to have to associate Ms. Phelps with the junk that populates much of Wikipedia, so your point about "unwanted attention" is a good one. I decided, however, that Ms. Phelps had nothing to be ashamed of, only Wikipedia did. I noticed, in quietly looking through the contrib history of the person that first nominated proposed this page for deletion, that they made an "important" contribution to the page Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer. Would you say it would also be embarrassing to "Stone Blade Entertainment" to suggest that that page be AfD'd as first-world advertising trivia? I see that metacritic (one of two sources for the article) is owned by CBS... so is part of the Redstone family of entertainment products (the other source is boardgamegeek.com).

Just next to the summum of the WMF hierarchy we find a former bigshot at jeux-video.fr (Christophe Henner) who is currently COO of the Blade group (unrelated, except in name, to the game mentioned above). I also don't wish to suggest that those arguing for deletion are all playing a game, I fully recognize that the tradition of wikipedia being a gaming-culture and LCD-culture repository has been firmly established; and that it is entirely possible that within the AfD community echo-chamber, stricter and nobler rules have been developed for truly encyclopedic subjects like nuclear science, YWCA community awards, etc. I will not continue to reply to all those who wish to dispute my right to hold the opinion that this article could be kept to profit, but I would like to ask that I be allowed not to change that opinion or be accused of being some sort of pie-eyed idealist wanting to right great wrongs. I say, "play on!" expressing and justifying (when asked) an opinion about AfD culture is not a foul. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 14:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this AfD has been conducted in an abysmally uncivil way. Those of us that take part in WomenInRed or the diversity projects that WM-LGBT supports, are not meatpuppets, canvassers, or vandals that must be banned. The bad faith systemic attacks against anyone that dares to question the hardline and wikilawyering interpretation of the PROF notability guideline, rather than taking on board that there may be a rationale under GNG, do no credit to Wikipedia. Those of you attacking and defaming others should sit back and reflect on whether you are part of the well documented and researched problem that Wikipedia has, in failing to make minority groups feel welcome and not driven away through being hassled and hounded, when all they are attempting to do is improve articles. --Fæ (talk) 14:27, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

(ec) WP:NPA please. And you are referring the IP address that PRODed this article - not the nominator of the AfD. I will note there may a few different people behind an IP at a research university - in particular when discussing contributions 3 years apart (the video game contrib being in 2016). What is missing is the arguement above is why a lab technician without significant independent coverage passes any notability guideline.Icewhiz (talk) 14:34, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Either provide a current reliable source that asserts that Phelps works as a "lab technician" or strike it. This appears a deliberate and repeated attempt to demean and diminish her position and experience by using a job title a decade old. You may as well be calling her a schoolgirl. --Fæ (talk) 14:47, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

I was refering to her position when 117 was discovered (in which she, as thousands others, played a minor supporting role) - Nuclear Operations Technician. WomenInRed should take a long hard look how this bio with material misrepresentations was created and promoted. We had "is the first African-American woman to identify an element." in our article as well as a PhD (while Phelps holds a b.sc).Icewhiz (talk) 15:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

No, everyone can see what you were doing. By constantly deriding her as a lab technician with no qualification as to when or where that was her title, rather than using her current job title, you are deliberately degrading her. Leave it out, make accurate statements and use her current job title if you must use one. This is a living person as our subject. --Fæ (talk) 15:15, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

What is her current job title? Feel free to add it to the article, although it is really unlikely to make any difference to her notability unless she now holds a named professorship etc. You're pushing an agenda, Fæ, and have been doing for years. Since you're already on the radar for what prima facie appear to be somewhat dodgy practices related to such pushing, it might be wise to step back a little. That's your choice, of course, although I do think that if you're going to continue pursuing this sort of thing then you should pay closer attention to the claims made by the article creator, several of which were seriously inaccurate here. And it is not just here; for example, at the newly-created Nola Hylton as recently as two days ago, that person said At the time, she was one of few black women physicists with a PhD. The claim is not in the source. It's sloppy and it reeks of agenda-based editing, which is also apparent from other things I'm not allowed to detail. - Sitush (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

References

Per the article and the sources cited there, her titles are researcher and project manager. Levivich 20:31, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

@Sitush: Ad hominem attacks against other contributors in a vote or discussion are completely unacceptable.

Please supply diffs for your allegations and explain exactly who is guilty of what.

With regard to You're pushing an agenda, Fæ, and have been doing for years, this seems hard to read as anything other than a personal attack deriding my well known volunteer work with the Wikimedia LGBT+ user group, making a false and disparaging allegation of having a Gay agenda, a clear form of minority discrimination and harassment. You can either apologize for this rubbish, or go ahead and attempt to frame your words as a somehow legitimate complaint about me, and provide verifiable evidence fora your allegations of years of my agenda pushing at ANI or as an Arbcom case, however expect your previous pattern of personal attacks to be examined in detail, and your related history of running a nasty targeted campaign of attack and harassment would be resurrected which resulted in an Editing Restriction from interacting with or even mentioning a woman/feminist contributor, no matter how tedious that is for everyone else. If Wikipedia ever needed to find examples of why women do not feel welcome contributing here, you qualify for that honour and it seems to me that extending your ban to all discussions about BLPs, would immediately benefit the encyclopedia.

Put up or shut up. --Fæ (talk) 04:55, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I do see your point that scientists get less coverage than they deserve, skewing our coverage so we have third-rate footballers but only first-rate scientists here. The case at hand, however, is a scientist/technician with no published papers who is not related enough to her main claim of fame to warrant a mention in that article. —Kusma (t·c) 09:42, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

• Delete: Government organisations provide profiles of employees for promotional/outreach reasons on their websites and in internal publications. Only some of these will have clear or marginal notability; in the latter case WP:IAR and/or WP:NPOINTS might apply, but the profiles themselves do not provide or necessarily even contribute to notability. Here's examples of profiles from the US Department of Energy, US military, US Army, US Environmental Protection Agency, and US Department of the Interior. I'd give more weight to IAR if her article was key to interlinking unconnected articles as supporting pillar 1 (heretical version: "Wikipedia is a hyperlinked encyclopedia"), but until coverage improves this is likely to end up an orphan or close enough if she is given due weight as it's clear now that she should not appear at tennessine. With current sourcing, the only articles which provide — or are likely to provide — incoming links to her article are lists (section or full article), and she really shouldn't appear in any which state that members listed are notable. (One of these days there is going to be someone whose article's AFD is going to achieve clear sigcov.) ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 01:59, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per DGG et al. Also, Notability is not inherited. Also, Fæ, talking about Wikipedia on Twitter? About an AfD? Appears you've outed yourself? Whatever. Looks like canvassing to me. Dlohcierekim (talk) 16:55, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per DGG, Hydronium Hydroxide, and others. The article subject does not meet either GNG or NPROF, as shown above, due to the dearth of independent reliable sources about her. A feature article by her employer is a good source but it isn't independent and so does not establish notability. It appears that some are arguing to keep the article based on IAR because the article subject is a woman POC but I do not think this particular argument is justified in this particular case. If the article subject had been an integral part of the process of discovering Tennessine (ie mentioned in the paper announcing the discovery, for example), then I would agree with IAR. But that's not the case: the article subject's contribution was as part of a team that synthesized an element used by the team that actually discovered the element. It's very possible that the brouhaha surrounding this AfD will result in independent reliable sources writing about the article subject; at that time, the article could be recreated based on those sources in addition to the ones currently in the article. But right now the article subject just doesn't meet GNG and I'm not seeing a strong justification for IAR. Ca2james (talk) 17:32, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
• Delete per DGG et al - No evidence of notability, Fails NPROF as well as GNG, –Davey2010^Talk 19:01, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

• I've removed the last bit of my comment as her tweet states "The problem is not that she’s not notable, or that @Wikipedia editors are a bunch of sexist trolls waiting to jump on the bio of an impressive scientist" (emphasis mine) - I missed the "not" so my sincere apologies for this. –Davey2010^Talk 10:53, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

• Delete There is a lack of significant independent coverage. Getting an award from the local YWCA does not help her meet any notability criteria. As a for notability as a scientist, my search in Google Scholar found a grand total of 1 citation of papers she has authored or co-authored. Just because she works for the government doesn't mean she can't publish papers (and she has), the only restriction is if her work is classified. Her participation in the discovery of element 117 appears to have been very minor. Her name does not appear in the Oak Ridge publication "The Discovery of Element 117". Her Oak Ridge autobio says her part of the discovery of the new element was to "contribute ... to the purification of the Bk-249 used to help discover Z=117". Sounds like a very minor role in an undertaking involving a large number of people. I don't see convincing evidence that she is notable as a scientist or meets WP:GNG. I agree with the others who cited WP:TOOSOON as an issue. Papaursa (talk) 19:37, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.