Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scott Thornbury

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. -- Cirt (talk) 04:41, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scott Thornbury[edit]

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Delete No evidence of notability. No sources, despite being tagged for a year and eight months, and the author of the article having been alerted to the lack of sources 10 months ago. Nothing in the article suggests anything other than a run-of the-mill academic.The article was previously proposed for deletion, with the reason "Non-notable academic. No suggestion of meeting WP:PROF". The PROD was removed with the edit summary "apparently a major figure in his field. Necessary to look for reviews." However, no evidence was given to support the statement that he is "apparently" a major figure, nor was there any indication that reviews had been looked for. I have searched, and found Thornbury's own site, Twitter, Wikipedia, an autobiography submitted by Thornbury himself, etc etc, but very little in the way of independent coverage; much less, in fact, than I would expect for an average academic. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC) JamesBWatson (talk) 11:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

KeepProbably notable under PROF as produce of widely used textbooks. I infer the widely use from that fact that OUP & CUP publish many of them. Notable as AUTHOR from writing multiple book published by major publishers.(at least one of the translated into other languages). But getting some exact refs that to supplement our common sense may take a while on this one, at least for me, for these are books designed mostly for a UK audience some are outside the scope of the review sources I generally use. Even so, three of his books have over 200 holdings each in the US-centric WorldCat. His website omitted a number of his books, and did not mention that one was traslated in Chinese and another one co-written (or translated with a different title) in Japanese--such translations are major factors in notability of an author. His website did include, however, mentions of numerous published reviews, so I do not know why the nominator did not notice them; I added only the one I could identify exactly elsewhere. The reviews and the publication of books as verified by standard reference sources such as WorldCat are the references from 3rd party independent published reliable sources. Speaking generally, and not necessarily respect to this particular AfD, I have observed over the years a tendency at Wikipedia to be very reluctant to accept notability for anyone involved in education of school-teachers. We've rejected professors of education , or people in solid subjects like math whose specialty has been teacher education, .where we would not have done so if they had been involved in other fields. Does this indicate the conventional social bias, or perhaps the more specific bias of those who have recently been recipients of the educational system, and may therefore reasonably feel a certain amount of skepticism? DGG ( talk ) 16:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment: IThere's a related AfD that I just placed, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dogme language teaching. This is his trade name for his version of teaching a language. I don't think it's notable, since almost all the articles about it are written by him or his coworkers. It seems on of one of the less important elements in his own notability and the mention in the present article is sufficient. I am not uncritical on material like this. DGG ( talk ) 17:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- It's probably a bias in the world at large. Human knowledge is notoriously unfair and uneven. If the world at large doesn't document someone's life and works, we aren't in a position to rectify that here at Wikipedia. Uncle G (talk) 01:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. -- Jclemens-public (talk) 16:18, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Per DGG's analysis. The wide holdings of his books in major libraries per Worldcat and the multiple translations of his books into other languages suggest that his work is influential. If someone had the patience, the interesting material in Dogme language teaching might be merged into this article, and the other article converted into a redirect. The present article is rather terse, and unless you go and look up the references you won't learn very much about what his teaching method consists of. EdJohnston (talk) 19:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. In addition to the sound arguments above subject has a GS h index of 12 so is heading for pass of WP:Prof#C1. I am puzzled by the nominator's inability to find independent sources since I have been able to find around 1000 of them by clicking on the scholar link. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:51, 9 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]
- Perhaps the nominator has actually read them where you have not. Looking at the first page of results that I see, I see things written by the subject, not things written about the subject. Only things written about the subject are sources for an encyclopaedia biography … that is about the subject. Please demonstrate that your Google Scholar search really did involve reading the things found, by citing two such sources that you found that document this person's life and works, independently of the subject xyrself, from which a verifiable and neutral encyclopaedia article can be written. So far we have, and continue to have despite your Google Scholar search (and indeed mine, although I didn't go beyond the first page), no sources at all as JamesBWatson (who also searched, making three people) observed. Uncle G (talk) 01:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Click on the "cited by" tags to find them. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:37, 10 November 2010 (UTC).[reply]
    - You claim to have already found them. Please demonstrate this by telling us what you found. We're still at zero sources. Zero sources means zero article, per Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Why are you avoiding citing two of the biographical sources about this person's life and works that you say you found? That would be fairly incontrovertible evidence for a keep argument. So why is it like pulling teeth to get you to provide just two out of the thousand things that you say you have found? Uncle G (talk) 02:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - "The lead pioneer of the industry is Stephen Krashen with his principles that emanated from the 1980s. Following suit, Rod Ellis, Paul Nation, Scott Thornbury and David Nunan, inter alia have lead the way with critical theories, insights and principles." from [1]. Abductive (reasoning) 09:28, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        If that's the level of sourcing, then that's pretty much clutching at straws. Think about it. How can you build a biography from that? It's a passing mention in a discussion of Teaching English as a foreign language. We're still awaiting a mere two out of the thousands of sources that Xxanthippe stated above xe had found, though. Perhaps they are substantive. Uncle G (talk) 13:05, 10 November 2010 (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.