Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Bodanis

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 keep. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

David Bodanis[edit]

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This article has been tagged as problematic for a long time and never fixed. It appears to be largely autobiographical, and the sole cited source is a PR biography, which is not independent. Guy (Help!) 16:41, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:39, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

~~weak delete~~ Keep - based on reviews found by Eppstein. I can't find enough about him to meet notability for an author. I did find one Kirkus review, but that only indicates that the book was published and promoted. There is a WP article for his book Passionate_Minds but the only reference to that is the book itself. I note also that his "official website" is a 404. However, he has written more books than are listed here, and they appear to be widely held in libraries (that is >2K libraries, which is a small number but not tiny). LaMona (talk) 03:35, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I found multiple mainstream media reviews of his books [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], an interview on Australian television [6] and an award for one of those books from the Royal Society [7]. As such I think he has a clear pass of WP:AUTHOR. The article should be revised to include these third party sources; currently its sourcing is weak, but that can be improved. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Any coverage of the subject himself? Guy (Help!) 18:10, 28 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The interview [8] has information about him in the textual description, although not a lot. I don't read anything at WP:AUTHOR that requires biographical information in addition to information about the author's works. LaMona (talk) 15:12, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

These subject-specific guidelines are a plague - many of them imply that fulfilling certain criteria guarantees inclusion, but in reality they only indicate people who are likely to be notable, but in the end Wikipedia policy requires that there are non-trivial reliable independent sources about the article subject. It's coverage in reliable independent sources that confers notability, per Wikipedia's policies. Guy (Help!) 23:34, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@JzG: Requiring information about the personal life of the author is seriously misguided. If someone is known for writing books, then in-depth sources about those books provide notbability for that subject, just as if someone is known as an Olympic athlete then in-depth sources about their athletic achievements provide notability. In neither case do we require People magazine exposes about their love life. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:09, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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.