Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Herb Sutter

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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. Liz Read! Talk! 01:14, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Herb Sutter[edit]

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Herb Sutter (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Lack of independent sources, fails notability qualifications for authors. Industrial Insect (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Journalism, Author, and Software. 19:00, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 19:12, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep I've made some significant changes to the article, pairing down parts of it and bringing back a previously excised section. I've found independent sources for most of the statements that remain in the article. The sourcing is still a little weak though - it's difficult to find sources that are truly about him rather than mentioning him in passing or simply quoting what he has to say about something else. I'm also a little hampered by my lack of the necessary background to understand and paraphrase what sources like this one is saying he has done. However, I would consider the last two sections of that article to be significant coverage. Ideally I'd like to see a bit more, but from the way he is discussed in the sources I've found, I do think he is notable. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to quickly point out that at the current moment, almost all of the independent sources in the article mention Sutter solely in the context of his Free Lunch paper:
  • InfoQ: "...despite the advances in CPUs and networks, 'The free lunch is over,' he said, referring to a March 2005 technical article by Herb Sutter, software architect at Microsoft and chair of the ISO C++ Standards Committee..."
  • Verge: "Are you familiar with the highly influential piece for programmers by Herb Sutter called 'The Free Lunch Is Over'? He wrote it in 2004..."
  • Semiconductor Engineering: "Almost 15 years back—in March 2005—Herb Sutter, who was at Microsoft at the time, published his now famous paper, “The Free Lunch Is Over,” predicting nothing less than..."
That plus the paper's 1700+ citations (of which I would be shocked if we couldn't find at least two that discussed the paper and its findings in non-trivial detail) makes me think that the paper probably has enough significant coverage to be notable--but since all of those sources are discussing the paper more than the author, I'm not so sure that is significant enough coverage to justify the author's notability. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:E56D:1D24:B019:A2E (talk) 23:21, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
*Weak delete it seems that this is an instance of the work being notable, but not the author. It's not the most egregious article, but I still think it's lack of significant coverage, as well as little non-primary sources warrants it's deletion.Industrial Insect (talk) 02:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we heard when you when you nominated this. Repeating yourself with words-in-bold doesn't lend your position any additional weight, and gives the appearance of duplicity. —Cryptic 04:14, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The article is weak on biographical information, but the number of citations of his works is enough to give him notability as an author - and in particular someone who has made a fundamental contribution to his field. Lamona (talk) 04:41, 17 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    From what I could tell from Google Scholar, after his The Free Lunch is Over article, his next-most-cited work has less than half the number of citations that that article does. So if the primary indicator of notability here is the number of citations, I would argue that--plus the complete lack of independent sources discussing his life/history personally we've found (as you noted), and the fact that as I noted a good number of sources solely discuss him as "the author of The Free Lunch is Over" (including https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/10/9/developing-military-electronic-systems-calls-for-holistic-strategy if anyone wants to squeeze that into this article as well)--indicates the article he wrote is what is truly notable, not him. 2603:8001:4542:28FB:C917:2D30:4F00:28C9 (talk) 00:33, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The primary article has over 1700 cites, but the next one has over 700. It's true that 700 is less than half of 1700, but an article cited 700 times is significant on its own. Then there are 2 coding books, one cited 230 times and one 145 times. It's not unusual for a writer to have one wildly "best selling" text and that isn't an indication that other highly cited items are not important. If it is argued that the "free lunch" piece deserves its own article, then so be it. But if there is no article for Sutter then there is no place to record his work on C++ and on software concurrency. I do recognize that our policies for IT "inventors" are weak - these are folks who are rarely written about as "human beings". Yet some are the architects of exactly what we are doing right now - engaging in digital culture. Lamona (talk) 16:19, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    We aren't focusing on "recording Sutter's works", we are focusing on writing what reliable sources have to say about him. As it seems that almost all non-primary sources are about his book and not him, I believe that his work is notable and not him. Industrial Insect (talk) 18:20, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Basically, Wikipedia:Right wrongs. Industrial Insect (talk) 22:28, 18 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yet we regularly include articles for academics about whom there are no secondary sources. I propose that we accept him under the same criteria. WP:NACADEMIC Lamona (talk) 17:47, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources" Yeah, independent reliable sources are still required for the only notable academic qualification he would, well, qualify for. Additionally, I don't know if he would even qualify as being an academic in the first place, however that is not something I am not fully sure of and am not knowledgeable in. Industrial Insect (talk) 18:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The nominator does not make a case against WP:SCHOLAR#C1, so this isn't going to be a particularly deep analysis from me. Citation counts are used for C1, so the subject seems to easily meet the criteria on the face of it. The CSB vs RGW merits of PROF itself are out of scope for any individual AfD, so this can be a keep. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:47, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the link to the specific criterion notes, it helped clarify things a little bit for me (I'm cringing reading my previous reply). Reading criteria 1, while I might be taking this too literally, It says that "either several extremely highly cited scholarly publications or a substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates" From what's been previously said in this discussion, Sutter's most two most cited works are 1700+ citations and 700+ citations. While the first one is a large amount of citations, and the other one is still arguably so, I don't believe that 1 unarguably highly cited work would qualify for the first, and the high citations of his Free lunch work are unfortunately not consistent. Industrial Insect (talk) 14:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, signed, Rosguill talk 15:51, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep meets WP:NAUTHOR as above and WP:ANYBIO#1 for his work on the C++ standards, Dr Dobb's column, books, and papers, all of which are pretty widely cited, both formally and informally. There's enough biographical details in fully independent reliable sources to make it so the article can have something to say and given the earlier is met, there's a number of computing-specific sources which I'd say are generally reliable to be able to get a decent article. (For example, right now [1] there's a citation needed for joining Microsoft in 2002. Given this is non-controversial, something like [2] plus [3] (for example) are more than sufficient for that biographical detail. Skynxnex (talk) 20:27, 25 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Skynxnex (talk) 20:40, 25 September 2023 (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.
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