Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keith Donnellan

Keith Donnellan

No evidence has been provided to show that this person is more notable than your average college professor. Possible vanity article. Delete. Ashenai 21:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE RESCINDED AND UNDONE THIS AFD NOMINATION.

I'm not sure if this is 100% according to accepted process, but since the author of the disputed article and I were the only two people to contribute to this discussion so far, and I now believe the article should be kept, I have decided to be bold and undo the whole thing, in an attempt to save time and effort for everyone.--Ashenai 22:56, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

He is notable. Not a vanity article. A reference: http://www.lps.uci.edu/~johnsonk/Case/dictionaryentries.pdf (unsigned contribution by Thetourist; please use ~~~~ to sign your contributions on Talk pages) --Ashenai 22:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay... that's something, but not too much. I'm on the fence about this one. According to our notability guidelines, a person should be "more well known and more published than an average college professor". This person seems to be on or around that dividing line. I dunno. --Ashenai 22:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm new here, so I apoligize for not following proper etiquette. He is rather well known in Phil of Language circles, at least more so than an "average college professor." See: "Reference and Definite Description" and Definite description. The building I am currently in is about to close; I will add more information as soon as I get to another computer (sometime later today). Is it prefered that I wait to post until I have more detail, or is it OK to post a little bit at a time? --Thetourist (not yet sure how to add time stamp)

No need to apologize, and please forgive me if I seemed brusque. It wasn't intentional. I've already seen the article at JSTOR (I checked out this person on Google, and that was the first link). I'm not convinced that it shows any sort of notability; college professors are expected to have articles published. As for the Wikipedia article; well, obviously we can't use a Wikipedia article as a reference for another one, especially since you were the one who added the section about this person over at Definite description. (As for the time stamp, just use four tildes ~~~~ instead of three.)

Please feel free to take your time, and you can edit the article while the AfD notice is up. This discussion will stay up for about 5 days or so, while the community deliberates the issue here. :)

Finally, if the 5 days are up and the community decides to delete the article, you can still recreate it if you add substantial improvements over the original. So there's really no rush; if, for instance, the article gets deleted and you come back and recreate it a month later with better proof of this person's notability, that's perfectly okay. --Ashenai 22:29, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

"As for the Wikipedia article; well, obviously we can't use a Wikipedia article as a reference for another one, especially since you were the one who added the section about this person over at Definite description" -- This is not the case. I never edited the content of this article--I merely added a link to The Philosophical Review. The section on Donnellan existed long before I was a member of wiki. This is not his only paper, merely his most famous--it is frequently cited (I'll get you a good count soon).--Thetourist 22:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Some further evidence of his notability: The Philosophy of Language

This is a widely used anthology of notable papers in the Philosophy of Language. I believe every other author included has a wiki--I think Donellan is worthy of one as well.--Thetourist 22:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

That's a much better reference, thank you! If you can show us that his paper is well-cited, that would probably clinch it (as far as I'm concerned). --Ashenai 22:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Google Scholar Search Reference and Definite Descriptions has about 371 citations. I'm not sure how accurate Google Scholar is (this is the first time I've used it), but compared to other notable philosophers, 371 seems large enough.Thetourist 22:47, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Neat tool, didn't know about that one. Great, thanks! Since no one has contributed to the discussion yet, I'll just go ahead and undo this AfD. Cheers! --Ashenai 22:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)