Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timothy K. Blauvelt

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!} 23:30, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Timothy K. Blauvelt[edit]

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The BLP of an academic does not seem to me to meet WP:NPROF. Google Scholar shows 436 citations. Mccapra (talk) 22:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators and Georgia (country). Mccapra (talk) 22:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

this person squarely meets the criterion of "The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." Having hundreds of citations is A LOT, since this is an area of study that only has a few dozen people studying it, and almost no endowed chairs. It would, I cannot find another word, highly discriminatory against smaller countries if this kind of scholarship gets deleted. Please withdraw this. Hundnase (talk) Hundnase (talk) 22:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

have you been involved in contacting Mr. Blauvelt, pretending to be an admin? This is super dodgy. There is some scam. Please respond. Also, there is ZERO justification for deleting articles of people who are widely published in their field. Hundnase (talk) Hundnase (talk) 20:44, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll assume that the question is directed at me as the nominator. No I have not contacted Mr Blauvelt, or pretended to be an admin. I don’t need to be an admin to nominate an article for deletion. As I said to you on my talk page I am happy to follow consensus with my nominations and if the consensus is to keep, that’s fine. Now I will ask - since you seem to know that someone has contacted Mr. Blauvelt, have you been in contact with him yourself, and what is your relationship with him? Thanks Mccapra (talk) 23:12, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is a standard scam. The scammers contact the subjects of Wikipedia biographies, pretending that either they can unilaterally delete the article or that they can save it from deletion, and demanding money. They are generally not the people they claim to be, and have no such power. Ignore them. Because they are not actually Wikipedia editors, we cannot prevent them from making these false claims. At worst they can flood this discussion with opinions that the closing administrator is also likely to ignore. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. The "this is a low-citation field so we have to accept low citations as evidence for notability" argument does not convince me; for one thing, a significant part of his work is in cultural linguistics, which is not actually a low-citation field. Anyway, I do not see the citation record needed to convince me of a pass of WP:PROF#C1. The best shot at notability appears to be through book authorship, published reviews, and WP:AUTHOR. I found and added to the article five reviews of a single authored book, and two reviews of an edited volume. That's barely enough for a weak keep, for me, because there is only one authored book and the edited volume doesn't count for as much. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:12, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
thanks -- agree with the Weak Keep, as an approach. Also, to be clear, his main work is in Georgia Soviet history, including Soviet archives, and specifically Georgia squarely IS a low citation field. (I work in this field also, and have worked to increase coverage on Wikipedia. I think if we want to have good coverage on Wikipedia, we should not knock out fields simply because the countries are small.) Thanks for highlighting that the scam is unconnected to this specific discussion. Hundnase (talk) Hundnase (talk) 09:22, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment As someone else who has worked in this specific, and indeed small, field, I can also attest that Blauvelt is not an unknown scholar but someone who has credibility. I've added some more of his publications to further confirm that, though also must disclose that I do know him somewhat informally. Kaiser matias (talk) 00:11, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as stated above, and here more formally put, having 400 citations for a field of Caucasus & Georgia history is a lot. (The rector of the leading local university has about 25 citations in total, for comparison.) The study of the Caucasus is a fairly small field, with established scholars fitting into a bus. So in this context, his work in my view is notable. I am the article creator, and have worked to bring more of Wikipedia to Georgia, and more of Georgia to Wikipedia, and so obviously have an interest, but also think that Wikipedia should absolutely pay attention to things that are not just mainstream. (Separately on my comments above, it seems that scammers jumped on the discussion, which indeed I should have ignored in this discussion. My apologies for mixing this into it.) The deletion discussion has led to more citations/work being added, so I think this was a good result. Hundnase (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 08:06, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Timothy K. Blauvelt is a well-known expert and a person who contributed immensely to a number of fields. He has more than 400 citations for a field of Caucasus & Georgian history - that's a lot for a field represented so little. --DerFuchs (talk) 14:42, 20 January 2024 (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.