Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steve Pettifer

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. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:28, 16 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Steve Pettifer[edit]

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Doubtless this will be seen as controversial, but a Reader is not, de facto, of the standard by which one has a clear pass of WP:ACADEMIC. It is also clear from that guideline that "Having published does not, in itself, make an academic notable, no matter how many publications there are. Notability depends on the impact the work has had on the field of study." Pettifer has published a reasonably large number of papers. We are thus left to judge by by the criteria.

Looking at these in detail:
1: is to be demonstrated. If it can be then the article should remain
2: fail
3: fail
4: is to be demonstrated. If it can be then the article should remain
5: fail
6: fail
7: is to be demonstrated. If it can be then the article should remain
8: fail
9: n/a

At present I can not see Pettifer as being, currently, notable. He is certainly heading that way, and I feel the article is thus too soon. Fiddle Faddle 14:02, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment he has a h-index of 21[1] which seems quite high (not sure how it compares to others in his field). But he doesn't seem to quite meet other notability requirements although he has picked up some references in print and blogs. There's a lot of rather unattractive WP:OVERCITE going on in the article, and the article was evidently written by Duncan Hull, one of Pettifer's collaborators[2] (see WP:COI) - so it doesn't look too promising, but those are not in themselves grounds for deletion. I'll await more expert opinion. --Colapeninsula (talk) 16:28, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Has the subject been covered in any reliable independent sources? Frankly, I'm not seeing any assertion of notability in the article. Candleabracadabra (talk) 17:22, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 17:30, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 17:30, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000^(talk) 17:31, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. h-index of 21 marginal for this highly cited field. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:10, 25 August 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Delete. This is a judgement call, but looking at his google scholar profile I'm not seeing the kind of high citation counts that I'd expect from a rock star academic in this area. That, combined with his current job title, trumps the high h-index. Reasonable people may disagree here, but that's my opinion. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 11:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Prof does not require rock star achievements for inclusion. People sometimes talk about the "average professor test". Xxanthippe (talk) 12:06, 25 August 2013 (UTC).[reply]

Point taken, and I've now reviewed WP:Prof. Thanks for pointing that out, I had completely forgotten it existed. To rephrase my objection: I'm not seeing the broader impact in the field that I would indicate notability. Lesser Cartographies (talk) 16:03, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I say keep based on the above, no need to be a "rock star" scientist to be in wikipedia (we've got plenty of those already) and an h-index of 20-ish is respectable. A recent news article in Nature (magazine) on Altmetrics mentions that Pettifer is the co-author of:

"the most-accessed review ever to be published in any of the seven PLOS journals (more than 53,000 times)"^[1]

I'm a collaborator on that paper, so I should declare a conflict of interest here, but I still vote for keep on the grounds of notability.Duncan.Hull (talk) 11:22, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The Keep arguments seem to basically come down to "cited quite a bit". But pragmatically, the question is - "is there enough about this person that we should and can write an article". It seems his is doing rather well in his academic career, but hasn't (yet) reached public mention in a way where our article could be anything more than bare professional autobiographical facts and a publication list - not enough to come by. Martinp (talk) 17:58, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

^ Kwok, Roberta (2013). "Research impact: Altmetrics make their mark". Nature. 500 (7463): 491–3. doi:10.1038/nj7463-491a. PMID 23977678.

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Tito☸Dutta 19:08, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:38, 7 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. He's not even the director of the project that our article claims as his main claim to fame (that would be, instead, Terri Attwood, who I believe is sufficiently notable for an article). And that project, Utopia Documents, is itself of very marginal notability (our article on it appears to be entirely self-sourced). The Kwok piece is a reliable source of something (that a lot of people have read one of his papers, and that he used that information to bolster a promotion case) but it doesn't actually speak to the impact of his research (why were they all reading his paper?) and the rest of the article is entirely self-sourced. The citation record is not bad, but it's a high-citation area, so I'm not sufficiently convinced that he passes WP:PROF#C1 nor any other criterion of WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:45, 9 September 2013 (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.

[1] Kwok, Roberta (2013). "Research impact: Altmetrics make their mark". Nature. 500 (7463): 491–3. doi:10.1038/nj7463-491a. PMID 23977678.

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