Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability

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 best arguments for deletion here point out that the coverage seems to be fairly routine for an academic paper, taking a narrow interpretation of WP:GNG. The closest guideline seems to be in the "Academic and technical books" section of WP:BKCRIT, which includes "how influential the [work] is considered to be in its specialty area" as a possible criteria. I think the consensus in this discussion was that it was not a particularly influential study. Mark Arsten (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability

Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)

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Article fails WP:GNG aprock (talk) 16:43, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Google returns only links to the article itself, wikipedia articles mentioning the article, blog posts, and forum posts. Google scholar only returns papers by the authors, papers which cite the paper, but no reviews or rebuttals which deal with the paper specifically.

Of the sources listed in the wikipedia article, six of them (including the article topic) were published together in the same journal issue. As for the independent sources, two deal with the broad topic of race and intelligence research using the review as a reference point. The rest refer to the subject only in the citations with a couple inline citations which briefly mention the authors and/or paper.

content review of article sources
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Articles published in same journal issue, including article topic: Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R (2005a). "Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 235–294. Gottfredson, Linda (2005). "What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true?". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 311–319. Nisbett, Richard (2005). "Heredity, environment, and race differences in IQ: A commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005)". Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 11 (2): 302–310. Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R (2005b). "Wanted: More race realism, less moralistic fallacy". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 328–336. Suzuki, Lisa; Aronson, Joshua (2005). "The cultural malleability of intelligence and its impact on the racial/ethnic hierarchy". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 320–327. Sternberg, Robert (2005). "There are no public-policy implications: A reply to Rushton and Jensen (2005)". Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 11 (2): 295–301. Article by the same authors: Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R (2010). "Race and IQ: A theory-based review of the research in Richard Nisbett's Intelligence and How to Get It". The Open Psychology Journal 3: 9–35. Sources independent of subject: Au, Wayne (2009). Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality. Routledge. ISBN 0-203-89204-6.: single sentence Fetzer, James (2005). The Evolution of Intelligence. Carus Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8126-9459-7.: single sentence Furnham, Adrian (2009). Personality and Intelligence at Work: Exploring and Explaining Individual Differences at Work. Routledge. ISBN 0-203-89204-6.: citation only Minkov, Michael (2011). Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World. Emerald Group Publishing. ISBN 0857246135.: citation only Murray, Charles (2005). "The Inequality Taboo". Commentary.: discussed Nisbett, Richard (2009). Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-06505-7.: discussion in appendix Rouvroy, Antoinette (2008). Human Genes and Neoliberal Governance: A Foucauldian Critique. Routledge-Cavendish. ISBN 0-415-44433-0.: brief mention

This article appears to be an attempt to insert an WP:UNDUE promotional article relating to the paper's authors contrary to the WP:SPAM guideline. The editor Yfever (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) created a similar promotional article previously: How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?. aprock (talk) 16:48, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:04, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:05, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

• Delete I would say that the notability threshold for a single paper has to be set very high; reference in other papers in the field is not high enough. I don't see the evidence that this paper meets any such standard. Mangoe (talk) 17:52, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree that "reference in other papers in the field" would not meet WP:GNG. But several of the sources provide extensive coverage. Have you checked them? Unfortunately, aprock's initial summary of the source coverage was incorrect. We are in the process of fixing that. If these sources provide many pages of detailed review and commentary, would your delete turn into a keep? Yfever (talk) 06:29, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment – Note that this paper is briefly mentioned on History of the race and intelligence controversy. Otherwise I'm indifferent to the fate of this page just because the topic is distasteful. Shrug. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:52, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
• Delete Fails WP:GNG nine ways from Sunday. Two non-geneticists making the same old genetic argument without a clue. Fail. — ArtifexMayhem (talk) 08:37, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could specify precisely which parts of WP:GNG this article fails. For example, can we all agree that all the sources used in the article are reliable? Once we establish that, we can move on to other aspects of WP:GNG. Yfever (talk) 13:54, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment Aprock: Is your summary of the sources fair? For example, you claim that Suzuki and Aronson (2005) is "citation only." Untrue! All of Suzuki and Aronson is devoted to disputing the conclusions of Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. Would you please revise your descriptions above to make them more accurate? Yfever (talk) 14:01, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I've updated the summary. aprock (talk) 14:51, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I appreciate the correction. But there are several other sources with similar extensive discussions. (I am not asking you to review all the sources, but please don't provide inaccurate summaries that other editors will find confusing.) For example, Nesbitt (2009) devotes almost an entire appendix to Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. If anything, his discussion is more extensive than Suzuki and Aronson (2005). Yfever (talk) 15:01, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

I did not have a copy of Nesbitt when I reviewed all sources, but a google search of the book only finds the phrase "Thirty years of research" in the references. I've checked out a copy, and as best I can tell what you describe as "devotes almost an entire appendix to Thirty Years of Research ..." is actually an appendix devoted to rebutting the conclusions of several authors over a large body of work. By my count over 30 sources are referred to in Appendix B. That appendix is certainly a good source which establishes notability the articles Race and Intelligence and History of the Race and Intelligence debate. It does not however treat the 2005 paper as a singular apart from the wide body of work cited, but rather as a part of a larger body of work. aprock (talk) 16:07, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Your descriptions are still wrong. I was referring to Nesbitt (2009), not Nesbitt (2005). Would it be OK if I just fixed the descriptions myself rather than badgering you for each one? I do not think we have a substantive disagreement. Yfever (talk) 06:17, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I was referring to Nesbitt (2009) as well. Nesbitt (2005) does not have an Appendix B. aprock (talk) 07:49, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Aprock -- Thanks much for the summary. Minor correction: The Charles Murray cite is more extensive than noted in your summary. There's a brief cite by title, but by author more; Murray used the article quite a bit as a touchstone in his own musings / responses to the subject. --Lquilter (talk) 19:04, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "use the article ... as a touchstone" means. If you review the supplied footnotes, you can see that four footnotes refer to the work (50, 51, 53, 56) covering about six sentences. Maybe that's more than a brief mention. Murray certain cites other works by R/J as well as citing works cited in the review. aprock (talk) 19:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

• Delete as nominator. aprock (talk) 14:53, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

As with most secondary works of authors, the best place to include the content is in the author's own article. aprock (talk) 16:17, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Could you please specify precisely which parts of WP:GNG this article fails? Consider your claim that "no reviews or rebuttals which deal with the paper specifically." This is clearly false, as you acknowledge in the case of Suzuki and Aronson (2005). But, unless you correct these mistakes, new participants to this discussion will be misled. Yfever (talk) 06:22, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Outside of the articles published in the exact same journal issue, there are no sources which deal with the paper as a standalone topic. The only independent source which deals with the topic non-trivially is Nesbitt (2009) which was mentioned above[1]. You are free to make the case for notability. aprock (talk) 07:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I am going to add back your description of "extensive discussion" to Suzuki and Aronson (2005). Why remove it? I will apply a similar description to those sources that merit it. If it is relevant to this AfD that some sources feature a single sentence (and I agree that it is), then it is also relevant which sources feature extensive discussion. Yfever (talk) 08:46, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Please do not edit my comments. aprock (talk) 15:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I assumed that your were trying to provide a listing of the sources that was neutral. Instead, you seem to have structured the listing to support your delete position, which is fine. So, I will provide an alternate listing below. Yfever (talk) 19:23, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

alternate content review of article sources
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Independent reliable sources with extensive coverage: Gottfredson, Linda (2005). "What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true?". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 311–319. Murray, Charles (2005). "The Inequality Taboo". Commentary. Nisbett, Richard (2005). "Heredity, environment, and race differences in IQ: A commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005)". Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 11 (2): 302–310. Nisbett, Richard (2009). Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-06505-7. Suzuki, Lisa; Aronson, Joshua (2005). "The cultural malleability of intelligence and its impact on the racial/ethnic hierarchy". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 320–327. Sternberg, Robert (2005). "There are no public-policy implications: A reply to Rushton and Jensen (2005)". Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 11 (2): 295–301. Independent reliable sources with brief coverage: Au, Wayne (2009). Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality. Routledge. ISBN 0-203-89204-6.: single sentence Fetzer, James (2005). The Evolution of Intelligence. Carus Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8126-9459-7.: single sentence Furnham, Adrian (2009). Personality and Intelligence at Work: Exploring and Explaining Individual Differences at Work. Routledge. ISBN 0-203-89204-6.: citation only Minkov, Michael (2011). Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World. Emerald Group Publishing. ISBN 0857246135.: citation only Rouvroy, Antoinette (2008). Human Genes and Neoliberal Governance: A Foucauldian Critique. Routledge-Cavendish. ISBN 0-415-44433-0.: brief mention Non-independent sources: Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R (2005a). "Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 235–294. Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R (2005b). "Wanted: More race realism, less moralistic fallacy". Psychology, Public Policy and Law 11 (2): 328–336. Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R (2010). "Race and IQ: A theory-based review of the research in Richard Nisbett's Intelligence and How to Get It". The Open Psychology Journal 3: 9–35.

• Keep as author. Several editors have cited WP:GNG but no one has specified how it applies. To quote:

If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list.

There seems (to me) little doubt that the dozen or so sources are all "reliable." There seems (to me) little doubt that the coverage provided is "significant" since it covers 20+ pages of dense academic prose. Once we can agree that there is significant coverage in reliable sources, then we can move on to other possible complaints. But it would be useful to the discussion to establish these basic facts first. Yfever (talk) 09:00, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Articles published in the same journal issue are not independent of the subject and cannot denote notability in any way. aprock (talk) 15:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course they are. WP:GNG provides a clear description of the meaning of independent of the subject. Here it is:

"Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject or its creator. For example, self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, the subject's website, autobiographies, and press releases are not considered independent.

Consider Suzuki and Aronson (2005). Does that look like self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, the subject's website, autobiographies, and press releases? Of course not. The fact that Suzuki and Aronson (2005) was published in volume 11, number 2 of Psychology, Public Policy and Law instead of volume 11, number 3 of Psychology, Public Policy and Law or instead of another journal has no bearing on whether or not it is independent of Thirty Years. Yfever (talk) 19:33, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• Delete as insufficiently notable. For a stand-alone academic paper to be notable it has to be, by itself, field-changing. This review article -- which by definition does not present new evidence but surveys and summarizes existing research with the authors' own interpretation on it -- may have received some controversy and response but that doesn't make it notable per se; simply part of the ebb and flow of academic discourse around an admittedly notable and controversial topic.
  As for the sources listed under "references" -- am I to take it that these are intended to be cites to the paper? Or references for this Wikipedia article (which is what usually goes under "References"? Either way, three are by the authors; four additional ones are contemporaneous papers in the same journal -- so part of a response dialog, and not "independent". That's half of the fourteen. An additional seven discussions, even if lengthy (as, e.g., the Charles Murray piece was) does not appear, to me, to be "field-changing". If highly cited, however, the paper should certainly be noted on the Wikipedia articles about the authors (J. Philippe Rushton and Arthur Jensen). --Lquilter (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

You place "field-changing" in quotation marks. Is this an actual Wikipedia standard? If so, please provide a link. You also seem to have your own definition of "independent." Consider what WP:GNG says:

"Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject or its creator. For example, self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, the subject's website, autobiographies, and press releases are not considered independent.

Clearly, an article by different authors, whether it is in the same journal (or issue) or in a different journal (or issue) qualifies as "independent." But leaving those two disagreement aside, would you agree that we have significant coverage from reliable sources? I am looking to establish consensus on those two points. Yfever (talk) 19:25, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

(1) I'm quoting myself when I say "field-changing".

(2) As far as "independent", I'm using a common sense definition. Multiple articles published in a thematic issue of a journal, all responding to each other and citing each other, are really part of the same publication.

(3) You are looking to establish consensus on whether these are reliable sources. They are reliable for establishing facts or opinions about the article or issues discussed within the article. However, these alone will not suffice to establish notability. Notability isn't just about applying mechanically criteria of having 2+ "reliable sources". If it were, then 95% of all academic papers would be individually notable. Instead, notability is about being notable within the class. So a single academic paper has to be notable within its class. Consider the possible classes: (a) all academic papers; (b) academic papers in sociology; (c) writings on race and intelligence; (d) review articles and meta-analyses. I fail to see how this article is notable within any of these possible classes.

From last to first, review articles and meta-analyses might very often have quite high cite counts, because it's convenient to cite to the review rather than dig out the source -- they are in that sense secondary (not primary) literature. This article has 200+ in google scholar, which would be a good number for an individual paper presenting primary research. But it's less impressive (in my view) for a review article, and in any case, I agree with User:Aprock that the standard for a paper has to be very high -- hence my use of the term "field-changing".

Consider another class: Writings on race and intelligence -- a contentious area that has without doubt generated some very notable scholarship and popular books; see, e.g., Murray's The Bell Curve and Gould's The Mismeasure of Man among them. This paper does not fare very well when considered with these much more notable works in the same general class (secondary scholarship on the topic of race and intelligence), which have each received 5000+ citations in google scholar. Acknowledging that I'm comparing books with a paper, still, the 200+ for this paper does not really stack up well.

Those were the two classes that seemed most likely to produce "notability" for this article. "Academic papers within sociology" -- again, you're going to have to compare the article with articles that have defined entire fields, transformed analyses, provided stunning new insights, and have thousands of cites. And even more so with the class of "academic papers" broadly.

So, yeah. You have cited a half-dozen reliable, independent sources, which are indeed reliable for discussions of the article in the context of the writers or the field of study generally. But that's not going to get this editor to agree that they confer notability on this one individual paper.

--Lquilter (talk) 02:22, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• Delete, but ... I was asked to take a look at this afd. We have no fixed standards for journal articles. What has been established over the years is that we interpret the criteria for notability rather strictly and carefully. Here's why: Very roughly, About 1/2 of all articles published are cited 2 or more times by people other than the authors. Most of such citation will amount to mentions, but some will be substantial. If we used the GNG in the most inclusive possible sense, probably hundreds of thousands of journal articles a year would qualify. Now, we're not paper, and if we wanted to include these 5 or 10 million articles so far published, the database would accommodate it, though we'd have a very hard time getting people to write the articles here in other than the most formulaic manner. But no scientist thinks these many papers are notable in any realistic sense. So what are the standards: first of all, the one Lquilter mentioned, "field-changing"--that's not the term I would use, what I would use would be, much more simply, "famous". Famous in the sense that it's one of the key papers people would cite in the subject, that it has become a classic (Garfield's accounts of what he calls "Citation Classics" are probably all worth articles, especially because Garfield includes an analysis of just why they're important), that it is widely taught, that it is the usual source. In other words, that it is much more than routine.

Citations is another measure, but Lquilter is again correct that review articles have very high numbers of citations because people typically start of the "Introduction" section of a scientific paper by listing all significant recent reviews of the subject. But yet, review papers can sometimes be the classic statement of the field.

I consider it very important that we do not use the opportunity provided by such papers to make multiple articles on the same subject. Jensen is famous; Rushton, highly notable. Jensen's most important work is notable in its own right, and properly has an article: the true classic paper representing his POV, How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?; we also have an article here on The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (book), which does meet the (very loose) standards for NBOOK, and can probably be justified as being his fullest presentation-- we might be able to have one on Bias in Mental Testing, which WorldCat shows as his most widely held book. . There is some discussion over whether we should in fact cover every significantly reviewed academic book from high quality publishers--personally I do not think we should, despite the way NBOOK is worded, but it is a reasonable position. If there were consensus for it otherwise, I would not strongly oppose it. To do the same for journal articles would in my opinion be ridiculous.

For this particular review paper, I see no evidence that it is the classic review statement of his work, To write an article on it, I would want at least one or two such statements from recognized authoritative works. We really shouldn't be making such judgments ourselves. But what might possibly be notable is the special issue of the journal-- because such special issues, with papers by people of various views, can indeed serve as the best summary of the state of knowledge. I invite Yfever to write this, so we can evaluate it. ` DGG ( talk ) 03:23, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

DGG: Thanks for these comments. Let me focus for now on your constructive suggestion that we have an article devoted to the entire special issue. I would be ready to write such an article if we could reach consensus ahead of time that such an article would not be deleted. I suspect, however, that editors (other than you) who want to delete this article would also want to delete that article, for all the same reasons they offer above. Or am I being too cynical? Yfever (talk) 06:56, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, a special-topic journal issue is going to be a lot more like a book in my view and has an easier shot at being notable than a journal article. But you're not going to get a guarantee from editors, because it's going to depend on the specific sources available, and the specific editors who look at any AfD. --Lquilter (talk) 11:38, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

• Comment on Similar Wikipedia Articles: I thought it might be useful to gather other examples of Wikipedia articles that, like this one, focus on a single academic article. My sense is that, as Wikipedia continues to grow, there are, each month, more such articles. Indeed, I would hope that, eventually, we would have Wikipedia articles about every article with significant coverage --- meaning much more than just a citation or two --- from reliable sources. My preferred analogy would be to Wikipedia's increase in coverage of soccer players. Many years ago, only "notable" soccer players had pages. Now, everyone that plays in at least one professional game has an article. I think that this increase in coverage is a good thing. Anyway, here are some similar articles: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, No Silver Bullet, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, The Use of Knowledge in Society, Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems, On Physical Lines of Force, How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?, Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines, Obedience to authority, The Market for Lemons, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat which is Excited by Friction, On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, Methodology of Positive Economics, On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, Modigliani–Miller theorem, Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen, Language identification in the limit, Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages and The next 700 programming languages. Obviously, these articles cover a wide range, some being much more about a concept introduced by a single article than about the article itself. But, broadly, I think they represent current Wikipedia practice. If a single academic article has significant coverage in reliable sources (and someone is willing to put in the time to make it a good article), then why would we want to delete it? Yfever (talk) 07:41, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
  • You lost me at every soccer player in at least one professional game, which is a decision that is absurd. But it's less absurd than "every scholarly article" that has the level of coverage that this one does. --Lquilter (talk) 14:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

    Please replace "you" with "Wikipedia" in this comment. Deciding to cover every single professional soccer player (who has played in at least one professional game) was not a decision that I made. It was a decision that the Wikipedia community made. Wouldn't everyone agree that the consistent trend in Wikipedia over the last decade has been in this direction, to provide more coverage of more topics? I think it has. I predict that we will see the same thing happening in regards to academic articles that we have seen in regard to soccer players. You may think that Wikipedia is heading in the wrong direction, but I doubt that you can come up with a single example in which there are fewer individual articles about items in class X --- whether it be soccer players, academic articles or anything else --- today than there were 5 years ago. Yfever (talk) 18:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm just saying that you're not going to persuade me with the all-major-league-soccer-players argument. Perhaps that argument will provide others though. --Lquilter (talk) 19:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

• • After a fairly quick review, your list of papers in wikipedia makes me even more convinced that this paper ("Thirty Years of Research") is not appropriate. All of the papers that are actually articles in Wikipedia actually present theories or data; not simply review / meta-analysis articles. They are all much more famous than the one you're strongly defending, many of them foundational or transformative in their particular fields. (A few of them are not actually articles on the papers but redirect to articles discussing the underlying theory/data/research/idea.)

other articles compared
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two -- Starts out with its strong claim to notability as being one of the most highly cited papers in psychology; google scholar returns 15,000+ hits. No Silver Bullet -- 3000+ hits. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? -- -- Redirects to the article on the underlying phenomena, which is completely appropriate. The article has 1600 cites in google scholar. The Use of Knowledge in Society -- Hayek paper, 8500+ cites. Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems -- 3800+ cites in google scholar. On Physical Lines of Force -- is one of the most famous papers of the 19th century. How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? -- One of the original papers by Jensen, and with 3000+ hits. Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines -- 21,000 cites. Obedience to authority -- Please note, this is not on the paper of the same title; it redirects to the article on Milgram's extremely famous experiments. ALSO different from this paper in that it is original research and not a review article. The Market for Lemons -- has 15,000+ hits in google scholar, and its author won a nobel prize for this work. Computing Machinery and Intelligence -- introduced the Turing test. 5000+ cites. An Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Source of the Heat which is Excited by Friction -- This 19th century paper is listed in "List of important publications in physics" in Nature On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances -- described in the article as "one of the founding papers in thermodynamics" Methodology of Positive Economics -- The wikipedia article is really about the theory, although it's kind of a mess with the redirect from this title (also the title of friedman's essay) to the book title Essays in Positive Economics. Needs work but it's not really about the paper so not relevant to your point. On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems -- This 1930 Gödel paper has only 1900+ cites but that's probably because it's before formal citation and the translation problem since it was originally published in german. Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals -- Turing's dissertation. Probably notable for that fact alone. Modigliani–Miller theorem -- Not a paper but a theorem. Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen - Einstein's Brownian motion paper. Language identification in the limit -- Really about the underlying theory, not the paper. Described in the paper of the same title. Two Dogmas of Empiricism -- Quine. "one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth century philosophy in the analytic tradition" according to the wikipedia article. Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages -- "Fundamental Concepts in Programming Languages were an influential set of lecture notes written by Christopher Strachey for the International Summer School in Computer Programming at Copenhagen in August, 1967. " The next 700 programming languages. -- Redirects to the article about the underlying theory: "ISWIM is an abstract computer programming language (or a family of programming languages) devised by Peter J. Landin and first described in his article The Next 700 Programming Languages, published in the Communications of the ACM in 1966."

Seriously, I think you missed Newton's Principia. I was going to say you missed Einstein but then you got him. Give me a break! Are you really going to compare this meta-analysis/review article with all of these foundational papers? --Lquilter (talk) 14:36, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Lquilter: Thanks for taking the time to review these articles. I think your summary is a fair one. In particular, I am happy to grant that the clearest comparisons I found --- things like Two Dogmas of Empiricism, The Use of Knowledge in Society or No Silver Bullet --- are all much more notable than Thirty Years. My goal in listing these articles was to demonstrate that Wikipedia does have articles about individual academic articles, a point I assume everyone will grant. So, I guess your position is that this article is not "field-changing" or "classic" enough to merit an article on Wikipedia. My position is that such criteria are irrelevant. Any article with significant coverage from reliable sources --- and I think we agree that Thirty Years has that --- can become a Wikipedia article, if someone is willing to write it.

Apologies if I have misconstrued your views. This discussion has been helpful to me (at least) because it has brought the source of our disagreement into sharp relief. If Wikipedia only had room for 100 (or 1,000 or . . .) academic articles, than Thirty Years would not make the cut. But anyone, like me, who thinks that there is plenty of room in Wikipedia, as long as we have significant coverage in reliable sources, will not worry about where in any Platonic ranking of notability this article lies. With luck, others will chime in on this central point. Yfever (talk) 18:46, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not about not having "room for" articles. No editor makes that argument. It is about maintaining a balanced encyclopedia that is not idiosyncratic and biased in favor of people's personal agendas. We would never be able to get enough editors interested in writing articles about all the papers that have similar qualifications as the "Thirty Years" paper. We should set the bar high enough so that we can hope to achieve comprehensive coverage of everything above the bar; and articles of interest to a broader readership. If we set the bar too low we will never hope to have comprehensive coverage, and instead have idiosyncratic coverage based on agendas and POVs and particular passions. .... The bar can gradually lower or raise depending on editor availability, interest, audience interest, new articles, etc. But "Thirty Years" is way, way below the bar currently established for individual papers. --Lquilter (talk) 20:02, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

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.