Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M. A. Ramlu (2nd nomination)

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 No consensus; (default keep). Jerry delusional ¤ kangaroo 05:17, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

M. A. Ramlu[edit]

This article has been tagged for notability since June 2007. The article includes some coverage in third party sources, the subject has published at least two books, and there is a chance of meeting the spirit of WP:PROF as the head of department in a major university. This is a procedural nomination and I have no strong opinion on the outcome. Skomorokh 16:02, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. —Salih (talk) 16:51, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —John Z (talk) 22:58, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Head of a major department in one of the most prestigious technological universities in the world; author of two books on his subject. this = authority in his subject per WP:PROF. DGG (talk) 03:31, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

comment I am a little concerned about the use of "procedural nomination:". I understand that to mean when one sends an article to afd on behalf of someone, or the like technical step. Having a notability tag for any length of time whatever is not reason for nomination--the proper "procedure" at that point is an attempt at sourcing, not passing it to afd as if it were routine. and if one thinks it more likely than not to be notable oneself, there's certainly no reason to nominate it. We have enough work with the articles that one thinks should be deleted.DGG (talk) 03:34, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A procedural nomination is one which is submitted according to a procedure; the procedure here was to send to AfD all articles tagged for notability from this month which were not clearly notable, uncontroversially deletable or merge/redirect candidates. As a nod to the loaded definition of "procedural nomination" to which you allude, I as nominator was not endorsing a delete outcome. As for the reasoning behind the procedure, despite being an eventualist I think it is unsustainbly bad practice not to address within a month or two tags relating to the existential viability of articles. I hope this clarifies the nomination a little. Skomorokh 19:58, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Being a unit head at IIT does not meet WP:PROF criterion #6 (highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution or major academic society). Negligible citation impact, based on this search. His book “Mine disasters and mine rescue” yields only 36 entries in Worldcat; this is the most widely held book by this author.--Eric Yurken (talk) 18:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

this is an Indian engineer; the work will probably have primary reference to India. WorldCat covers almost no Indian libraries, and very few libraries in the US and Canada buy books relating to India. The citation indexes--every one of them--do not appreciably cover Indian journals. There is currently no central catalog of books held in Indian libraries, or a citation index to Indian journals. This produces an enormous cultural bias.

As for the status of the position, i would not have claimed the importance of being the head of department for any other Indian university but IIT. The quality of the school makes a difference, and such factors are the reasons for guidelines being flexible. DGG (talk) 16:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The subject does not appear to meet WP:PROF and the publication record is weak. --Stormbay (talk) 03:47, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Per DGG. Also, being born in 1927, most of his work should predate the internet, increasing the systematic bias from usual search methods.John Z (talk) 19:52, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete, basically per Eric Yurken. The citability results[1] are small (even taking into account that most of his work would have probably be done in the 1970s) and WorldCat library holdings results for both of his books[2][3] are small as well. I am not prepared to read too much into his position as a department head at IIT in the absence of some more tangible evidence of the impact of his research. It may simply be that he had greater interests and talents in the administrative area compared to research, which is partly indicated by the fact that he was also Dean of Sponsored Research at IIT. For establishing notability on the basis of administrative accomplishments, WP:PROF is asking for higher level posts than department head or Dean. Nsk92 (talk) 20:20, 4 January 2009 (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.