Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ajit Iqbal Singh

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. I almost closed this as delete, but I keep coming back to the statement (as part of an argument to delete), it is not known here whether INSA is legitimately equivalent to National Academy of Sciences or Royal Society, so it is unknown whether she satisfies WP:NACADEMICS criterion #3.. The core question here seems to be whether INSA is a scholarly society of the level required by WP:NACADEMICS #3. I don't see consensus on that point, so I'm going with NC for this entire debate. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:52, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ajit Iqbal Singh[edit]

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Not a notable figure in Indian Science. Just being FNAS could not meet WP:ACADEMIC criteria. All the sources cited are primary sources. Educationtemple (talk) 09:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Do not delete. Thanks Educationtemple, for informing me of your nomination for the deletion of the Ajit Iqbal Singh article. As I said about the AfD for Gaiti Hasan, I find it rather disturbing that as Wikipedia and Wikimedians do their best to recognise that quality includes greater diversity in information (both gender and geography), this and other such articles about women scientists from India are being considered for deletion. As a datapoint, only 20-30% of WP articles currently come from the Global South (which comprises over 80% of the world's population) and our coverage of female-related content is poor (with only 1 in 10 of our contributors projected to be women).

In fact, this particular article was part of the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon in Bangalore last year, held in order to improve writing about women scientists from India. The list of women scientists that needed enWP articles was created by a group of Indian scientists from a highly reputed Indian science research institution, and I would suggest that their understanding of notability and their expertise in this domain is to be relied upon.

Sadly, notability is an issue I face repeatedly as I work on women of note from the Global South in multiple spheres - notability cannot only be established by the publishing of scholarship _about_ people, when there is a systemic bias to publishing that exists both about notable people in the Global South and about women; and of course, doubly so for a woman from the Global South. :-( Notability, of course, is also contextual; for example, not everyone in the world recognises Oreos to be notable when many of us may never have seen or eaten one in our lives! As a Wikipedian, I do, of course, understand that the way we have defined notability has its own constraints; however, in a space of scholarship that is clearly educational - i.e. about women scientists - I would suggest we be bold, rather than be limited in our view of inclusion. I invite the convenor of this edit-a-thon, Shyamal and other contributors like Netha to comment on this nomination for deletion as well.

As I've said before, I'd be greatly appreciative Educationtemple, if we were allies in fulfilling the Wikimedia mission: we cannot achieve the 'sum of human knowledge' if we do not recognise the institutional biases inherent in knowledge systems, and do our best not to make Wikipedia fallible to them. thanks, Anasuyas (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I personally respect your views about women. But one has to prove notability (irrespective of gender) if the bio of living person has to be on WP. Let other learned editors comments and/or add more reliable sources/citations to the article to show some national contributions at least, if not international to pass the WP:ACADEMIC criteria by the subject. Educationtemple (talk) 18:35, 13 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment : Another article of the similar standard, created by same user - got several Keeps in afd discussion. I am sure this article will have same fate. No problem, and I would be more than happy to withdraw this nomination before editors do further exercise on it - IFF the creator/other editors please add some secondary sources on the article to support various claims within the article. I am sure, none of the claim is incorrect/overstatement but biographies of living people on WP do not look nice/appropriate without reliable sources as per WP definition of standards. A reader sitting in other part of the world will only judge the article by its citations and not by some facts that the subject was selected by a group of talented Indian Scientists who created a "list of women scientists that needed enWP articles". By the way, can you (Anasuyas) quote it within the body of the article? I am sure, you can't, since it will look so odd to convince the readers on the notability of a person by such reasons!! Furthermore, while we complain that there is a "systemic bias to publishing that exists both about notable people in the Global South and about women" and when we take responsibilities of creating the profiles/articles on Wiki after grand "Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon" meet to improve writing about women scientists from India, we should also take some responsibility of doing search for proper citations that could support the claims as per the WP standards. This afd nomination just thrust for either complete improvement or complete deletion since lots of stub type article from India (specially of genuinely notable people) leave a real bad impression in the world; and that is one of the reasons of under-representation of articles from India and so on. Cheers! Educationtemple (talk) 13:26, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I was asked to comment on this AfD. Unfortunately I do not know enough about the subject in question to contribute with a keep or delete. My only input is that the rules for notability are equal for men and women on the WP even if this sometimes poses a problem since men tend to write about male scientists in books, websites and magazines. This makes it harder to find reliable sources for many noted women and consequently for us to provide enough proof of their notability. But this is a discussion for another forum, and for the moment we have to rely on the facts at hand. So please find more sources about this scientist's notability so that it warrants a keep for the article, otherwise delete it. I have seen articles about men with more coverage being deleted, so right now it is not a question of gender. Best w.carter-Talk 14:01, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. On the contrary, FNAS seems to entirely meet the criteria of WP:NACADEMICS #3. About fifty fellows seem to be elected annually. For a country the size of India, that makes it pretty selective. Given only three of the fellows elected last year, for instance, were women, that makes it an even rarer honour for a woman. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:07, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Reply and query from all Editors here and Admins: All right. IAS was established in 1934. Since than tii date there are approx 5000 Fellows of this society. National Academy of Science, India has approx 2500 fellows. NASI has equal number probably. Indian Science Congress may have even more. All together, it comes to apprx 10 thousand Fellows. Will it be OK if I create the article about all these 10 thousand fellows on WP, since they all automatically meet the criteria of notability on WP as per above discussions. And I will only provide a single citation on all the articles, the link to the websites or the directory where its is stated that the person is a Fellow. Some times, I will not provide even that (as in this article), which has got several Keeps in ongoing afd, without a single reference whatsoever in place for any of the claim. My question is: Will all the editors here support me to do this. If any of these 10 thousand articles are sent in afd in future, I will give reference to this afd discussion Please let me know (specially the one who has given a keep here). Thanks. Educationtemple (talk) 14:51, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- The Royal Society has had far more fellows. We wouldn't dream of deleting articles on any of them! -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - I will appreciate a direct reply of my question above. We are not talking about Royal Society here. We are talking about IAS, NAS, NASI, ISCA, NAAS and other similar societies and academies of India. More than 10 thousand Fellows and I dream to create article for all of them, just a single line article and one reference (May be nice Photo too). I am going to use this reply as a reference in future afds. I would consider your indirect reply or 'Silence' on this as your disagreement and then your 'keep' on this article will not have any meaning, I am humble. Educationtemple (talk) 15:22, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Ah! A user just posted me this article. She is also FNAS. A notability tag was added on this last month. I will selectively remove such tags from this, and all such articles if this article sustain in this afd. I am sure users such as @Anasuyas: would well receive this! Cheers! Educationtemple (talk) 14:23, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to hear this, Educationtemple! Appreciation to everyone who participated in this conversation and others like it, Anasuyas (talk) 20:04, 18 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - any other reliance sources that is in Hindi? - Mailer Diablo 17:07, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Because of her low citation record, she would unfortunately not meet WP:PROF except for the NAS membership,. Otherwise, as I understand it, the criterion for WP:PROF is fundamentally international, a single standard across the world, in the sciences interpreted in practice as a citation record in internationally recognized peer-reviewed sources (though recognizing some fields where the publishing is intrinsically only in national journals). This does show a Euroamerican bias, but that accurately reflects the current situation of scientific research, tho I expect it will in future decades be much wider. I have always advocated taking account of that to some extent also, in applying the standards less stringently for countries where the academic world, though it may be extensive, is lesser developed. Sometimes but not always this argument has been accepted, but applying it here would be stretching it too far on the basis of the evidence presented (this may not be the case for some of the other nominated articles).

The question is whether the Indian academies are similar in international prestige to the national academies of the US or UK. It is not. I also don't think it has the same prestige within India, and perhaps it may have even less prestige there than warranted, for as I understand it this is a nation which for historic reason has always laid very great prestige upon foreign (and especially British) qualifications. Leaving India, for the moment, the relative lack of prestige will affect even more the national academies of some much smaller countries). I think the statement in WP:PROF needs to be revised, and the first step in doing this is discussions such as the one here,to see if people are willing to interpret this differently--the effective guidelines at deletion have always been what actually does and does not get deleted. But the basic criterion is the establishment of the personas an expert in their field, and the other possibilities are really just shortcuts. DGG ( talk ) 04:22, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Per DGG's excellent analysis and needs further reliable sources it fails WP:GNG and WP:PROF except for a claim of being a member of a national society. Now not all the members of every national society or association in the world can be deemed notable merely being a member of a society.Now members of Royal Society or National Academy of Sciences are considered notable that does not mean that every member of every scientific society all over the world can be considered of the same standard and that every member be considered notable. Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 20:57, 22 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Black Kite (talk) 08:59, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2015 April 26. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 09:48, 26 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I think, FNA (Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy) meet the criteria of WP:NACADEMICS #3 [as mentioned above by Necrothesp ] -- Badger M. (talk) 20:01, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete. The argument from WP:PROF#C3 seems rather weak to me. The inclusionary guidelines at WP:PROF are usually meant to be used in case there is something of scholarly notability to be said about the subject and their work, which might otherwise fall on the wrong side of WP:GNG. One should usually expect to see some reasonably high citations on the subject's work or, at least, something on which to base an encyclopedia article other than membership in a society (WP:NOTDIRECTORY). In this case, however, the poor citation numbers fail to bear this out. (Also, the sources in the article are rather poor. One of which, discussing her research, says this: "The s include peredbation theory for line operators [sic]" which is obvious nonsense.) Indeed, the subject appears only to be notable as a member of a scientific body. Sławomir Biały (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Agree with Sławomir Biały that mere membership of INSA is not sufficient .WP:PROF states This guideline, sometimes referred to as the professor test, is meant to reflect consensus about the notability of academics as measured by their academic achievements. For the purposes of this guideline, an academic is someone engaged in scholarly research or higher education, and academic notability refers to being known for such engagement. WP:PROF#C3 is to be taken in conjugation with this not in isolation of mere membership of a scientific body.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 09:58, 4 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep meets criteria #3 for notability of academics.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:09, 6 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The votes which do not address the issue of notability should be discarded. What is left are three deletes (add mine, it will be four - she does not meet WP:PROF), and two users believe that she meets WP:PROF by being elected a fellow of the national Academy. This one was in my opinion excellently addressed by DGG above.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:42, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Delete per everything DGG said. She is a fellow of INSA, but it is not known here whether INSA is legitimately equivalent to National Academy of Sciences or Royal Society, so it is unknown whether she satisfies WP:NACADEMICS criterion #3. While that determination might be linked to systemic bias, I have never felt that systemic bias should be used as a keep reason. What matters is the academic's notability, and citation counts appear too low to support a keep at this time. In academia, citation counts determine your notability and google scholar is showing almost all single digit citations. Only one paper (where Singh is not the lead author) has above single digit citation counts and that only has 20. ― Padenton|✉ 16:39, 10 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Passes GNG. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 23:52, 10 May 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.