Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wendy Lou

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. Catfish Jim and the soapdish 20:24, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wendy Lou

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Subject of article does not desire to be part of the project and is of very minimal notability Medmyco (talk) 19:36, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as article creator. Subject is notable in multiple ways (book authorship and reviews, Canada Research Chair, Fellow Am. Stat. Assoc.). This article was created as part of a project (still incomplete) to improve coverage of women in statistics on Wikipedia by adding articles for all female ASA Fellows. Deletion would be a setback to that project. The Strickland affair should be a lesson on the danger to the reputation of the whole encyclopedia when we overzealously delete articles on notable female scientists. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:41, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 19:57, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 19:58, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:59, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:59, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Subject seems notable enough to me given the info in the article. But if she has requested her article deleted, WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE is relevant though not conclusive. Tacyarg (talk) 20:12, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. She’s a full professor and research chair. No question she’s notable. Mccapra (talk) 20:14, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The Strickland case is a red herring. That BLP was strangled at birth by one editor who failed to follow Wikipedia guidelines. It never got to AfD, and would certainly have been kept by consensus if it had. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:45, 17 March 2019 (UTC).[reply]
Keep per WP:PROF#3. Lou is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Thsmi002 (talk) 23:55, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The article subject's own wishes are not controlling on whether Wikipedia is allowed to maintain content about them or not — our rules dictate what stays and what goes, and the people our articles are about get no special veto rights. Yes, there are sometimes edge cases where we do respect the subject's wishes, if their notability claim is soft and not particularly well-referenced, but strictly speaking that still has more to do with whether the article conforms to our rules or not, rather than whether the subject wants an article or not. A person who has a strong and well-referenced notability claim gets kept regardless of their personal wishes, and a person who has a weak and poorly-referenced one gets deleted even if they want to be kept. So the fact that she "does not desire to be part of the project" carries no weight; the only thing that's relevant here at all is whether her notability is objectively "minimal" or not. And no, a full professor and Canada Research Chair is not of "minimal" notability. Bearcat (talk) 13:17, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Bearcat. Also, is the deletion request by the article subject public anywhere? For example, if the request alleges serious BLP violations or mistakes, those should be addressed before just closing this as keep on purely notability grounds. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 15:57, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I generally agree with the trend of the discussion, and it roughly summarizes my counsel to the subject, Wendy Lou. However given her distress about the matter I promised to make an effort. My request was predicated on:

Where the subject of a BLP has requested deletion, the deletion policy says: "Discussions concerning biographical articles of relatively unknown, non-public figures, where the subject has requested deletion and there is no rough consensus, may be closed as delete.”

I concede that at least minimal notability is achieved simply by being a full professor at a university (although speaking as a similarly credentialed professor myself, I find that de facto less compelling). Even so I promised my friend Wendy I’d give it a try. Medmyco (talk) 16:04, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If she is distressed about the article, are you at liberty to disclose any specific concerns about the article content? If there's anything we can do to address her concerns short of deletion, I'm sure we would be more than happy to do that. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:08, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Prof. Lou definitely passes the academic notability guideline, so ordinarily, there wouldn't be an issue at all. Furthermore, looking over the page content, I'm having a hard time finding anything objectionable; with the possible exception of her birth year, all of the information reads like a department profile or a conference speaker's bio blurb. Perhaps, as suggested just above, knowing more specific concerns would be helpful (if the nominator is at liberty to disclose them). For example, I would support protecting the page if Prof. Lou is concerned that it will be vandalized. Regards, XOR'easter (talk) 17:40, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete according to (claimed) wishes of subject. Notability is not overwhelming enough for keep. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:34, 18 March 2019 (UTC).[reply]
Delete, especially if the subject wants the article on her gone. (Is this true?) While it is true that we reserve the right to dismiss a person's request for a Wikipedia page if that person fails to meet our notability guidelines, we should respect a person's right to remain unknown or be forgotten if they are not linked to any major events or persons. Furthermore, while she basically meets notability guidelines, readership has thus far been minimal. (I added the "annual readership" template to the article's talk page.) Recent spikes are likely due in no small part to this very discussion. Nerd271 (talk) 01:06, 19 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I've removed the birth year, which to my thinking could possibly cause distress or perceived ageism to a female professional as it is not something "widely published by reliable sources" and no longer appears in the source that was referenced anyway, per WP:DOB. I'm frankly torn - my personal desire would be to have her request fulfilled, as I am completely sympathetic to having privacy, yet a neutral article about someone recognized for "remarkable collaborations in the biomedical and healthcare sciences" in an esteemed position, particularly for women, is arguably something inspirational and of value to select Wikipedia readers. Perhaps she could give a statement privately to an admin as to her reasoning. LovelyLillith (talk) 01:23, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. She definitely meets WP:NPROF and therefore is a WP BLP; we can debate the degree of notability, but her qualification is not in doubt (which I think is the consensus view of this AfD). No problem with removing specific details from a BLP if it causes distress (as we did on Dhammika Dharmapala), but we would be creating a dangerous precedent (e.g. a WP:WENDYLOU), if a publically known and photographed figure (she is a Prof in a major university [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]; even her salary is public knowledge [9]), could have a bland BLP of public information deleted because she does not like it, or it causes her distress? She has her own LinkedIn page? [10] How do we progress after such a point? We have many "controversial" BLPs on WP whose subjects would also prefer it deleted if given the option - how would we respond to their future requests post WP:WENDYLOU? Britishfinance (talk) 17:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Note also the reply of the volunteer response team (WP:OTRS) on the Dhammika Dharmapala Talk Page in response to that subject's desire to delete their BLP; they basically told him that if the material was publically available, then there was nothing they could do. I think if Wendy Lou has other issues with the BLP (versus all her other public bios per above) that we are not able to assess, then AfD is not the right process for her, it should be via the volunteer response team. Britishfinance (talk) 15:30, 24 March 2019 (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.