Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher Winship

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 of the debate was keep. Flowerparty☀ 23:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Christopher Winship

Prodded on grounds This article lacks information on the notability of the subject, as per WP:BIO. Deprodded on grounds that subject teaches at Harvard so bringing to AfD. Eusebeus 11:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment Google Scholar brings back 987 hits for 'Christopher Winship +sociology'. How does this compare with the Prof Test?  (aeropagitica)  (talk)  12:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, the criteria for academics not met. It is:

1. The person is regarded as an significant expert in their area by independent sources.
2. The person is regarded as an important figure by those in the same field.
3. The person has published a large quantity of academic work (of at least reasonable quality).
4. The person has published a well-known or high quality academic work.
5. The person is known for originating an important new concept, theory or idea.
6. The person is known for their involvement in significant events relating to their academic achievements.
7. The person is known for being the advisor of an especially notable student.
8. The person has received a notable award or honor, or has been often nominated for them.

Any Harvard or other Ivy League professor should have a large amount of published work, leading to a high hit count on Google, so a high Ghit is not in and of itself notable. San Saba 13:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You really should read that page more carefully. It is quite clear that meeting any one of the listed criteria is sufficient to establish notability, but that the list is not exclusive or exhaustive. The guideline also states, quite explicitly, that "Receiving full professorship at a prestigious university, or receiving a named professorship at a reputable university" can be considered a notable award or honor. Since there is no dispute, I hope, that Harvard is generally regarded as "prestigious," it should be clear that the article clearly asserted, and gave presumptive evidence of, notability. Monicasdude 18:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Monicasdude is correct here, but it's totally irrelevant as this guy definitely meets the standards. 987 hits on Google scholar means that there were 987 publications that either were written by him or refer to him by name/cite his work. That is a lot. By comparison, Andrew Wiles (remember him? proved Fermat's last theorem) only gets 753 hits on Google scholar. Mangojuice 19:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete; as above, currently fails WP:PROF. However, if the assumed 'large amount of published (academic) work' was referenced, then per above I would change my vote to keep. Colonel Tom 13:39, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per San Saba. Kuzaar 14:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
• Speedy Keep, bad faith nomination with dishonest rationale. Apparently Eusebeus would have us believe that identifying a subject as the chair of a major academic department at Harvard University is not providing "information on the notability of the subject." An AfD nomination which so clearly misrepresents the contents of the article in question is impossible to take in good faith. Monicasdude 15:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
  • On what basis do you allege this is a bad faith nomination? Fagstein 23:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Answered to Fagstein's talk page. Let's keep things calm, eh? Thatcher131 23:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. While, unsurprisingly, Monicadude is taking the contents of the article on faith -- Winship's own bio on the Harvard website [1] doesn't reference any such chairmanship, oddly enough, and just as unsurprisingly, characterizing disagreements with his position as dishonesty and bad faith, Winship holds an academic chair at Harvard, and a cursory look at those G-hits show that he has published quite literally dozens of articles, monographs and other such works. RGTraynor 15:48, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  Comment. Please read my statements a bit more carefully; the nominator stated that the article didn't include any "information on the notability of the subject"; your point is that it did include information of that sort, but that the information may not be sufficiently verified or may be inaccurate. Those are two different issues. I was quite careful to note that Eusebeus misrepresented the contents of the article, a point that you don't seem to disagree on. And, besides, the second and third Google primary entries for this search document his status as having chaired the department [2] Monicasdude 16:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  • • Comment - I do disagree on it, strongly; I am quite capable of saying what I really mean, and am in no need of (generally inaccurate) inferences of what others think I mean. As it is, Eusebeus' views on why he does not find a department chairmanship notable in of itself are not only defensible, but not subject to a referendum; he belives what he believes, and I doubt he's asking anyone's permission to do so. RGTraynor 19:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  I was not the one who initially prodded the article, User:Scientizzle did; I am simply restating the reasons given by the initial prod. However, asserting that being chairman of a university department (even Harvard) is immediate and indisputable grounds for notability is simply ingenu. Chairmanships are served on a rotating basis by faculty and are often avoided assiduously as being a burdensome administrative and political position. There is a standard for inclusion of professors on WP, and while you could perhaps be excused for overlooking this, the fact that San Saba has specifically outlined it above makes your angry demand to speedy keep and your gratuitous accusation of bad faith and dishonesty seem simply absurd. Eusebeus 16:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  You might consider telling the truth. I did not say that chairing a Harvard department was "indisputable grounds for notability." I said it was information relating to notability. You posted a claim that the article contained no such information. Were you deliberately misprepresenting the contents of the article, or are you claiming that an obviously inaccurate claim in a prod nomination is a good faith reason to propose deleting on article on an otherwise notable subject? And, despite your snide, uncivil and almost entirely uninformed comments on the notability standards for professors, it will be clear to anyone who actually reads the page involved that San Saba's analysis was undeniably incorrect. Perhaps you should read the page before you propose any further deletions of notable academics. Monicasdude 17:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  Yes, I'm sorry for all my wanton lying. Look, there are perfectly valid reasons to vote to keep. But you state that I misrepresent the article, which notes he was Chair of Harvard's sociology department and Director of the Program in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences at Northwestern. I don't believe that presumptively confers notability, my snide, uncivil and almost entirely uninformed comments notwithstanding. You can certainly disagree with that - adamently if you like. But it is a leap to arrive at an AfD nomination which so clearly misrepresents the contents of the article in question (that) it is impossible to take in good faith. Eusebeus 18:39, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per WP:BIO, doesn't meet the criteria therein and Wikipedia:Notability (academics) is proposed, not accepted guideline. Even if you choose to apply it, he only meets "Receiving full professorship at a prestigious university, or receiving a named professorship at a reputable university, may be considered an award or honor under criterion 8..."--Isotope23 19:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keep. I have to say, I'm ashamed at the shoddiness of people's due diligence here. This guy has over 70 publications and has written/cowritten 3 books [3]. He's a full professor at Harvard with a named chair (not the same as chair of the department -- a named professorship is a professorship that comes with its own funding and is considered prestigious to get... though at a well-funded school like Harvard, it may be more the rule than the exception). He was the chair of the department from 1998-2001. He was also the chair of the Sociology department at Northwestern from 1988-1992. This guy is an accomplished academic, nowhere near run-of-the-mill. He meets criteria 3 and 4 of WP:PROFTEST easily, and arguably criteria 2 and 8 as well. Mangojuice 19:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Is there any evidence his 3 books meet WP:BIO readership criteria? IMO, WP:PROFTEST isn't valid as it isn't an accepted guideline.--Isotope23 21:01, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Then I suppose you prefer "more well-known and more published than the average professor" from WP:BIO, which this guy still vastly surpasses. But you would do well to pay attention to WP:PROFTEST; it actually does have a lot of support, and furthermore, it's there to be informative about academia's own standards for success. It's easy for us all to understand that being in a major motion picture qualifies an actor, but similar concepts in academia are much more difficult to define. Mangojuice 22:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment "more well-known and more published than the average professor" isn't an accepted guideline either... It would be nice if there were accepted guidelines for professors, but at this time there are not... it's basically a judgement call.--Isotope23 00:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
        • Comment From WP:BIO, "This is not meant to be an exclusionary list." Are you saying that since there isn't an "accepted guideline" for professors, we might as well just delete all of them because they're not part of the main list on WP:BIO? Mangojuice 02:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
          • At least two of his peer-reviewed articles have more than 100 citations from other peer-reviewed publications, which is darn impressive (IIRC the median number of citations is around 5). Tomorrow I can check the library for a count of how many academic libraries own his books. What over/under would convince you?Thatcher131 03:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I placed the prod tag on this and a few other similar pages because, simply, while this professor may be a fine researcher does it merit an encyclopedia article? No solid notability was claimed in this article, just a very brief biography. I don't appreciate insinuations by User:Monicasdude that any of this was "bad faith"--I used the prod tag on only a small number of these type of articles in an effort to be "good" faith. James D. Montgomery, Lucy Suchman, Christopher Winship and Scott Boorman were only a few article creations by User:TSeeker that were each simply small biographies of academics with no strong assertions of notability. In retrospect I should have contacted User:TSeeker about these edits.

I am an academic myself, so I fully recognize how these researchers may be important, but generally non-notable. I personally think WP:PROFTEST may be too lenient (8 criteria seem ~equally weighted, but I think they're inherently unequal: there are a lot of mediocre scientists with a large volume of published data, for example, and many awards sound important but mean little to anyone outside of a particular field). I gladly open this up for debate because, as a community, the larger desires of the Wikipedia community should determine academic notability. I just don't think every principal scientist at every institution ever needs an article... -- Scientizzle 21:04, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• del and average professor doing good job like many people do. `'mikka (t) 21:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Three books and a chair at the world's most prestigious university makes him notable enough for mine. Capitalistroadster 23:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep: Per Mangojuice. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. He is clearly more notable than the average professor, having been a department chair at both Harvard and Northwestern. In addition, he is the editor (not an editor, the editor) of a scholarly journal, Sociological Methods & Research. [4] --Metropolitan90 02:37, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I'm really getting sick of this. What is so all-fired urgent about deleting an article that may insufficiently assert notability that it has to be done without contacting the author, without tagging it for references or cleanup, and without giving it a little time? I'm not talking about Joe Blow's garage band or some sexual slang two ninth graders made up in study hall, but when the article says the man is a full professor and former department chairman, aren't there a few steps we could take before throwing it on the junk pile? Thatcher131 03:07, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I'm sure I'll regret asking but is there a policy saying that we need to contact the author before nominating for Afd? There's an etiquette line in WP:AFD saying you might want to let the author know that you have nominated their article for Afd, but I don't see one saying you should notify when you are going to nominate for Afd. While I agree that there's a difference between good articles re: academic folks and trashy articles about garage bands and vanity nonsense, I don't know that there's an official place recommending what you're suggesting. Sounds like a nice-to-have. —Wknight94 (talk) 13:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It is considered polite to do so but there is no requirement (see for example Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol#Suggestions for patrollers) Likewise there is no requirement that articles which fail to assert notability must be deleted as quickly as possible. From looking at his publications (takes 5 minutes but I can only do it at work) he has written about social inequality, the problem of getting black youth into the labor force, and the bell curve controversy; his authored books are maybe not so prominent but he has written chapters for a dozen significant books in the field. But I am not a sociologist, and the time it would take me to become familiar enough with the topic to write a decent stub that clearly meets BIO and V could be much better spent on articles that I actually know something about. Unfortunately wikipedia has many more editors who are steeped in various aspects of pop culture than it has sociologists. Here is a partial list of articles that were nominated for deletion because they didn't properly prove notability when first written; all were kept, and I'm sure there are more cases that have fallen under my radar. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] All I want to know is, why is it so urgent to delete articles of borderline notability?

Agreed. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• Comment His books as main author, Organizations and institutions (1988) 122 libraries; Changes in the relative labor force status of Black and white youths (1980) 50 libraries; he has also contributed chapters to The Urban underclass (1991), 1222 libraries, and Securing our children's future (2002) 729 libraries and Intelligence, genes, and success (1997) 594 libraries, among other books he has written chapters for. Thatcher131 13:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The fact that he holds a real professorship at a prestigious university means that academia, and more specifically academic sociologists, regard him as notable. Some random wikipedians do not, but I think I'll rather trust the people who know something about Winship and the field in which he is working. u p p l a n d 17:08, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
• Keep All Harvard Professors are notable. JeffBurdges 13:00, 28 April 2006 (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.