Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Murphy (computer scientist)

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. Although I appreciate Piotrus' concern about where to draw the line, the article's subject seems to just meet WP:NACADEMIC. Miniapolis 00:44, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Daniel Murphy (computer scientist)[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

It would be nice to save this (here's a cool tagline: "co-inventor of email"). Except that the sourcing is terrible and my BEFORE didn't help. Most of the sources in the article are articles written by the subject; BEFORE reveals a few mentions in passing, but nothing that clearly states he was a major influence on the field of computing; I can't locate as much a short paragraph summarizing his life and significance. As I wrote in my PROD "The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing Wikipedia:General notability guideline and the more detailed Wikipedia:Notability (biographies) requirement. WP:BEFORE did not reveal any significant coverage on Gnews, Gbooks or Gscholar." and despite the dePROD by User:Psychonaut, I still stand by this assessment (I did a second BEFORE right now too, using his shorten name "Dan" rather than "Daniel", still seeing nothing). By all means, let's rescue this if possible, but I failed at doing so. PS. I thought about redirecting to History of email, but that (pretty crappy) article doesn't even mention him currently, and the claim of being a co-creator of email is not clearly referenced in the current article, neither. The lead also claims is was involved in creating TOPS-20 (no mention in that article) and TENEX (operating system) (this one does mention him but without a reference...). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I did not seem him mentioned in any books on the history of computing, or in any other books at all. I searched his name with each of the software packages mentioned in the article and found no WP:RS at all.--- Possibly (talk) 08:26, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I've added another couple references by third parties. While these contain short mentions of his work rather than lengthy biographies, all three independent references now in the article are together, IMHO, sufficient to establish notability per WP:GNG. Besides this, he likely meets criteria 1 and/or 7 of WP:NACADEMIC, as evidenced by his edited and presumably invited contribution to Dave Walden's "Anecdotes" column in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing and the many hundreds of citations in scholarly literature to his technical papers on TENEX. (Unfortunately, citation indexes such as Scopus and Google Scholar either don't maintain dedicated author profiles for him, or else list only a subset of his publications, though by searching for his papers by title and making note of the citation counts, it's possible to verify my claim.) —Psychonaut (talk) 08:42, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Psychonaut, Where can I see those "many hundreds of citations in scholarly literature to his technical papers"? And sadly, all the mentions of him are very short and therefore fail WP:SIGCOV. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:49, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - I gave two examples in my contribution above: Scopus and Google Scholar. Search for his name and/or for his paper titles, and you'll see citation counts for the papers, which should be hyperlinked to lists of those citing papers. Most likely the same thing can be done with other citation indexes, such as Microsoft Academic and Web of Science, though keep in mind that all these indexes have disjoint coverage of papers and citations. —Psychonaut (talk) 13:11, 31 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 18:50, 7 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. We always have problems finding sources for scientists and engineers who make significant contributions while working in industry rather than academia. However Murphy created TECO and was a major developer of other notable software. In this case we have an author of notable products which are well covered by sources. If TECO were the only one I would say merge to that article as we do with authors of only a single notable book; with multiple well-reviewed books they have their own articles. Murphy was also a major force in TENEX, TOPS-10, and TOPS-20 (project lead). Citation counts aren't the issue here. This isn't scholarly research; this is company research reported in its corresponding association publications and in this case important in the history of computer science. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. StarryGrandma (talk) 05:39, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 09:24, 8 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. TECO, TENEX, and TOPS-20 are three significant accomplishments, all well known systems in computer science at the time (though I guess memory is fading now...one of my colleagues still has a PDP-10 front panel in his office). His role in the earliest email system may be bigger than that. All are adequately documented now. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:21, 10 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per David Eppstein, there are three contributions so an article is warranted. --hroest 18:06, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Despite the assertions above, there is still no WP:SIGCOV. All the arguments are simple variations of WP:ITSIMPORTANT, with no sources to assert this. If he is important in the history of computer sciences, we need sources saying that and showing his life and achievements have been subject to more than a passing sentence here and there. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:52, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- You are completely disregarding the arguments based on WP:NACADEMIC. See in particular the section of that guideline on citation metrics. Scopus is known to have pretty poor coverage of scientific fields, particularly before 1996, but even it shows 153 citations for Murphy's articles, including 86 for his original TENEX paper (no mean feat for a computer science publication in 1972). Google Scholar shows 236 citations for the same paper, plus scores more for his other papers. —Psychonaut (talk) 10:35, 13 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  - Psychonaut, I don't like dissing NACADEMIC, as I generlally think we need to be more inclusive for scholars, but in theory, specialized notability guidelines just supplement, don't overrule, GNG. I always have a hard time believing that we should have an article for someone that nobody out there has ever considered important enough to write even a short biographical paragraph for... Wikipedia should not be the first place to publish it. OR, etc. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:20, 14 April 2021 (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.