Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Adler (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 keep. (non-admin closure) DavidLeighEllis (talk) 01:32, 5 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Adler

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Article makes no claims whatsoever that would satisfy WP: NOTE or WP:BIO; all citations appear to be self-published. Rnickel (talk) 19:05, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, worth noting that in the previous AFD discussion, it basically turned into a "votes for deletion" with a bunch of "me too" comments that "he is so notable". Nobody made any persuasive arguments as to his notability other than offering their personal opinions, nobody produced any actual references to support the notability claim, and nobody has made any efforts to improve the article in the intervening 3 years. --Rnickel (talk) 19:10, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I think it is clear that Adler is a notable person in both the field and history of data compression (I doubt there is a computer that does not in some way use zlib or gzip, and PNG has pretty much become the default lossless image compression standard) as well as space exploration (misson manager for Spirit rover). I've added some third party sources describing his contributions which should serve to ameliorate the first-person nature of the sources. Avi (talk) 20:35, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just added STUG awardee; donating FLOSS compression algorithms certainly changed the way we all use the internet if not all computers. A quote from USENIX:

Some corporations, such as IBM and Unisys, considered data compression so important that they patented certain algorithms useful for the task, and by the mid to late 1980s they began to look at those algorithms as technology that needed to be licensed or to be locked away and made available only to their customers. All of that changed on July 11, 1991, when the first version of a data compression algorithm developed by Jean-loup Gailly was made publicly available. Shortly thereafter he was joined by Mark Adler, who was interested in "zip style" utilities for use on his UNIX-based systems. Mark describes their collaboration as "one thing led to another." These simple but generous actions by Mark and Jean-loup mean that the industry now uses their code and algorithm—as we noted, more often than not without even knowing they're being used.

--Avi (talk) 20:44, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Thank you for responding to the nomination, and for your efforts to improve the article. You make the point that his technologies are widespread, but that only makes the case that the technologies are notable, not that Mr. Adler himself is. I am a computer programmer and have written software that is probably embedded in devices you own and use daily too, but that does not make me notable. His technologies can be notable without conferring notability on him. Instead, what will demonstrate his notability is if you can show that he meets Wikipedia notability criteria. This does not mean that he is mentioned in multiple articles; it means he is the subject of multiple articles. My mom is on the town council and gets quoted in the local paper all the time; it doesn't make her notable because the articles are not about her. It also doesn't mean that he has written multiple articles; otherwise every newspaper reporter in the country would be "notable". Here is what I mean specifically; any of the following claims in the article, if backed up by reliable source citations, could show that he meets the test of notability:
- "If he has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of him. 'Significant coverage' addresses the topic or individual directly and in detail." I was not able to find any significant coverage of Mr. Adler himself, only passing mentions in articles that are actually about the various standards/protocols. (You will notice I didn't submit the article Adler-32 for deletion, because a lot has been written about that algorithm: it meets notability.) (See WP:GNG)
- "If he has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times." The STUG award you mentioned is a good start, but I am not sure if it is enough to convey notability all by itself the way that a Oscar, a Nobel prize, a Pulitzer, or a Fields medal would be. (See WP:ANYBIO)
- "If he has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." Here we may be getting warmer, but again the devil is in the details: "Generally, a person who is 'part of the enduring historical record' will have been written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books on that field, by historians." I could not find any books, or even significant magazine/journal/newspaper articles, that were about Mr. Adler himself, in depth. (Again, see WP:ANYBIO)
- Your best bet may be to treat him as a academic "whose research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." Again, here you would need multiple independent sources meeting WP:RS that specifically state Mr. Adler has made a significant or profound impact on the field of computer science, and how. We cannot simply infer that from the fact that he invented technologies now widespread; we need multiple independent sources that say so, otherwise we are performing a novel synthesis, which Wikipedia classifies as original research.

The most important thing is, the article right now doesn't contain any language that even makes one of these claims. It mentions in the lede that he is best known for Alder-32 and GZIP, but then the rest of the article is basically just his resume. If the notability claim is that the field of computer science would not be the same without his contributions, then the article (a) needs to be about that, and (b) needs to back it up with independent sources that say so. Compare and contrast the article on, say Steve Wozniak, which unambiguously lays out his notability in the first two sentences: "...is an American pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s, who single-handedly developed the 1976 Apple I, the computer that launched Apple."

Hope that helps. If you are not able to establish notability for Mr. Adler himself, then maybe a fallback would be to merge the article into one of the articles about one of his technologies?

Keep plenty notable. Being the lead mission engineering for Cassini-Huygens would be enough on its own, but combined with the rest this is a clear keep. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:21, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment This is not a reliable source (self-published) but I like the opening sentences: "Mark Adler just might have the distinction of having his code running on more computers than anyone else on earth. This is because Mark (in conjunction with Jean-loup Gailly and many more volunteers) wrote zlib - the free library that reads and writes streams compressed with the deflate algorithm." -- Avi (talk) 18:51, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I think the lede of the article sufficiently establishes notability. —Ruud 10:18, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment We keep running into this situation with software developers. It seems to me that a statement of policy is needed. I would generally use: "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field" Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Any_biography, but it would be nice to have a clarification that having invented and/or created key software fits this criterion. LaMona (talk) 17:44, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep If he had only contributed *one* thing to one field, I could understand some people wanting to merge the material about him into the article on that thing (though I still wouldn't want to do that), but as it stands, he's done much more than that, and we would need the article for the lead alone. —SamB (talk) 20:49, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:21, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:21, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:21, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:21, 4 July 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.