Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neil Marchington

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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 redirect to Trogloraptor. The overall opinion seems to be that Marchington the person is not quite notable enough for an article. I'm doing this as a straight redirect, keeping the history intact, so if someone thinks there's information not currently in the target that should be merged, feel free to do so in the course of normal editing. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:42, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Neil Marchington[edit]

Neil Marchington (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)
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notability - only secondary mention in a couple of references Widefox (talk) 14:12, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Slight modification - agree with Ryan Vesey, a redirect would be apropriate. Widefox (talk) 09:01, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment leaning keep I'll not be making a specific notability statement for a while, but I'll start collecting some references here to see what we have. I'm leaning towards keep just on the basis that the species was named after him. Wikipedia avoids determining notability, instead it bases notability on whether others have considered the subject notable. If the scientific community has named a species after him, I believe the scientific community has determined him to be notable. I also think he might satisfy criterion 1 of Wikipedia:Notability (academics) which states "Criterion 1 can also be satisfied if the person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea, made a significant discovery or solved a major problem in their academic discipline. In this case it is necessary to explicitly demonstrate, by a substantial number of references to academic publications of researchers other than the person in question, that this contribution is indeed widely considered to be significant and is widely attributed to the person in question." in one of the explanations. This would be the significant discovery aspect; however, this is problematic because the discovery is so recent that journals won't be referring to it soon. The international sources might be enough to state that it was a significant discovery. I'll end this with the statement that straight deletion would be a mistake since this should be redirected if it is not kept. Here are some sources I've found. Ryan Vesey 14:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment species are sometimes named after organisations that donate money, children's cartoon characters, celebrities etc. I doubt that is a robust way of discerning notability per se. Out of the references so far, I don't see one with him as the subject, rather than the species. I refer you again to WP:ONEEVENT "major role in a minor event" - that of discovery of a specimen of a new species. Although yes if I'm wrong, this is a major event and there are bios of him and his role. Widefox (talk) 23:06, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: I replied to WP:ONEEVENT on the article's talk page. The German-language source focuses on the name. Wakari07 (talk) 05:00, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
He is the discoverer for which the species is named, by my reasoning this is WP:ONEEVENT but ok, we can differ... The German source doesn't give me anything more (either translated or in German - and the photo caption confuses the discover with the second expedition members which includes the scientific describer). But this source gives the etymology - "in gratitude for his help and kindness". That seems weak for a BLP. Another example of a similar weak BLP article would be "Christine" in a rat named after girlfriend. Widefox (talk) 08:44, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Care to reason per WP:VOTE? Widefox (talk) 10:39, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. His actions to help the discovery can be described in the article on Trogloraptor itself. The article on Marchington is certainly short enough for a merge to be possible (within reason of course). Having an organism named after you is not something that automatically makes you notable. I agree that there are interesting stories behind most scientific names of organisms but these ideally go under the Taxonomy or Etymology sections in their articles, not split off to a new article. Organisms being named after people, both famous and ordinary folk is a very common practice in biology, so Criteria 1 of WP:Notability (academics) does not apply. Zoology even goes further than that by quite frequently giving joke names to organisms. Notice, for example, how the scientists themselves aren't automatically notable just because they described a new species. How much more a layman? This !vote does not preclude recreation if/when any of these people achieve true notability in the future per our criteria. Nor am I saying that people can't achieve notability with only one event. But this, as it stands, is still a WP:ONEEVENT. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 11:07, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, anyone proposing that having a species being named after someone is a notability criterion per se should take that up at the relevant BLP notability criterion. I agree Criteria 1 of WP:Notability (academics) is not relevant as spelt out in the etymology source above - it is named not for his scientific work but for his "help and kindness". This seems in-line with not having BLPs in other unrelated discovery fields like the Staffordshire Hoard (although I tread carefully with WP:OTHERSTUFF!) Widefox (talk) 13:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Although in this case, Marchington could be a borderline case, as he is an amateur biologist (which is more or less, equivalent to being a naturalist). But yes, though his contributions are significant, he did not formally take part in the description of the species and has published no academic work (yet?). Thus his notability must stand on other criteria. The discovery of the organism itself is highly notable, but notability is not inherited and the discovery can safely be described within the context of the organism's article. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 13:37, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and redirect to Trogloraptor - He's mentioned in [1] and then articles about the spider he discovered:[2], [3], etc. The coverage might be in a variety of countries, but its mostly from the days around August 17, 2012 and the articles mostly have similar content. There's not enough info per WP:GNG for a Wikipedia biographical article on Marchington, but there's enought for a redirect to the Trogloraptor marchingtoni article and mention of his efforts in that Trogloraptor article. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 04:55, 27 August 2012 (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.
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