Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gil Sylva

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. The consensus is to Delete this article. If an editor would like to work on it in Draft space and submit it to WP:AFC for review, contact me. But a direct move back to main space will likely result in CSD G4 speedy deletion. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gil Sylva

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No evidence found of any notability. He is quoted in a press release[1], the second source is a Linkedin page, and nothing better was found online[2], nothing in Gnews, an extremely passing mention here and a publication here. Fram (talk) 15:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: People, Engineering, and United States of America. Fram (talk) 15:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. No in-depth coverage; nothing in the article to suggest this person did anything that would attract such coverage. Wikipedia documents people and things that have been written about elsewhere; unfortunately, that means we have far more articles about sportspeople than engineers but that doesn't mean we can have articles about engineers who aren't written about elsewhere. I had intended to make this nomination myself once the AfD for another creation by the same editor was concluded. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:02, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I proposed deletion of this article a few days ago, but my request was denied. The article, as it stands, was mostly cited from the individual's LinkedIn page, and I removed that reference and added citations needed. No sources seem to reference the individual's notability beyond one patent and the PR above has but a passing mention that he was on a team that pioneered a technique. At this point, I don't see any significant coverage showcasing the individual's notability, and I, personally, don't see a defense for notability here. --Engineerchange (talk) 01:08, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Please search for Gil Sylva's publications on friction stir welding, if you do not know them. Wikpedia is focussing too much on sportlers and celebrities, but should also cover science and engineering. NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:40, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I think you'll find that science is well covered on enwiki. However, could you perhaps indicate which publications make him notable? Just pointing to a search is not helpful to establish notability, and the best I can find is them being a coauthor of "Friction stir welding system development for thin gauge aerospace structures", cited 26 times. Are there more important publications I missed? Fram (talk) 09:12, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  Thanks for the motivation. I subsequently added a literature section into the article. NearEMPTiness (talk) 09:44, 2 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@NearEMPTiness: If this is your argument, please indicate how this person passes WP:NPROF. --hroest 15:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. While I agree with the sentiment that academics and engineers need more representation, this is not such a case. The impact in these fields is generally measured by publications and awards as described in WP:NACADEMIC and this person clearly doesnt pass these criteria. I could only find 5 publications on Google Scholar of which the one with the most citations had 26 citations. Just as a comparison, another person in the field Brian T. Gibson has 17 publications with over 17 citations and one with over 500 citations -- and doesnt have a WP article. --hroest 15:38, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The friction stir welding process was only invented in 1991, and Gil Sylva as a pioneer working for industrial companies has obviously published less than a gouvernment funded researcher 10 years later. The pioneers planted the seed, which are now harvested during commercialisation. Please keep by assessing the content and not the number of the publications. Feel free to publish an article about Brian T. Gibson, if you want. NearEMPTiness (talk) 16:58, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@NearEMPTiness: Perhaps publications in the future will help defend that point, but the content of one's own publications defending their own notability, as you reason, is not valuable in an encyclopedia, we value independent (and reliable) sources. See Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#Specific criteria notes, you are arguing point (f) and perhaps point (g) (by posting more and more publications) of Criterion 1. The phrase "sufficiently broadly construed" is important here for point (f), and this individual does not have sufficient independent reliable sources describing their "significant impact", a qualifier of Criterion 1. --Engineerchange (talk) 17:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@NearEMPTiness: I would love to have articles honoring pioneers in such a process, however in order to do this we need reliable sources that actually substantiate this. This does not seem to be case here. As Engineerchange points out, maybe this will be the case in the future if a book or review on the history of the process gets written that we can cite. Currently there is simply no reliable source for the claim that he is a "pioneer" and has contributed important concepts to the field -- neither in written literature nor by the number of citations of his work. --hroest 19:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. hroest 15:40, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The argument that he is notable as a pioneer of friction stir welding does not fly. Friction stir welding was invented in the UK in 1991 (our article says); he worked in the US and the earliest documentation we have on him using this technique is dated 1996. His publications in Google Scholar on the topic have citation counts 29 ("A Feasibility study for self Reacting Pine Tool Welding"), 26 ("Friction stir welding system development for thin gauge aerospace structures"), 14 ("A Feasibility study for self Reacting Pine Tool Welding"), 10 ("Friction stir welding development for aerospace applications"), and then tailing off rapidly. Friction stir welding as a general topic has publications with high citations: 8882 (Mishra & Ma 2005), 776 (Rai, De, Bhadeshia, et al 2011), 481 (Zhang, Cao, Larose et al 2012), 481 (He, Gu, & Ball 2014), 382 (Cam & Mistikoglu 2014), 356 (Lohwasser & Chen 2009), etc. So his work does not stand out in any way in this area. I see no basis for WP:NPROF notability, nor any other claim of notability in the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I found some evidence that he was involved in the invention: said Gil Sylva, a senior engineer in Materials and Processes who was part of the team that developed the technique at TWI in Cambridge. [3] but no further evidence and this seems to be a press release / puff piece. A patent search also does not substantiate this claim, with him being on a single patent from 2008 about a calibration of the process but not the process itself. This review article cites 2 articles with regards to the invention of the process:

W.M. Thomas, E.D. Nicholas, J.C. Needham, M.G. Murch, P. Templesmith, C.J. Dawes, G.B. Patent Application No. 9125978.8 (December 1991).
C. Dawes, W. Thomas, TWI Bulletin 6, November/December 1995, p. 124.

neither of which mentions Sylva and I cannot find any other evidence to substantiate this claim. So it does seem like he was involved but not involved enough to be on the patent or initial publications. --hroest 19:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gyl Sylva was one of the pioneers, who helped industrialising the process in the US aerospace industry, after it had been invented and demonstrated in the UK. His publications are certainly sufficient to substantiate notability. It might be worth reading them, before you decide about deleting the article. NearEMPTiness (talk) 08:52, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please familiarize yourself with WP:NPROF and WP:RS - what I or other editors think about the articles he published does not really matter but what does matter is what other subject experts think of his productivity. Your task is not to convince me or other editors of the fact that he was indeed a pioneer and given all your evidence I am happy to believe you. However if you would like to keep the article, then you need to show secondary sources that acknowledge him as such a pioneer - so other established, reputable sources (like peer reviewed journals or established people in the field) that make such a statement. Unfortunately, if Wikipedia editors decide to call him a pioneer without a source saying so (even if true) is considered WP:OR and will not hold up. --hroest 03:12, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. There is a lack of WP:SIGCOV to establish WP:NOTABILITY. The article subject doesn’t meet WP:GNG, WP:NACADEMIC or WP:NPROF. Shawn Teller (talk) 04:19, 8 March 2023 (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.