Talk:Adam Pease

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Hi, I must say I do not get the argument "I have failed to understand what this person does, therefore he is not notable, and I will delete him". I'd expect a bit of explanation (based on a bit of research), or perhaps a question to those who considered this person notable enough, before such action is taken. I don't blame anyone for not understanding what Suggested Upper Merged Ontology is (as well as I don't blame anyone for not understanding what Theory of Relativity is). But you should not be deleting authors of works that you do not understand. Can we agree on this? There are 502 citations about SUMo at Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=link:fmCEoG88l7IJ:scholar.google.com/), I'd say that it qualifies the SUMO's author for the first bullet point at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Creative_professionals. I am lazy to argue that he qualifies also under some other points there, but he does. Unless I get a negative reply to this, I'll take down the deletion tag in a couple of hours. JosefUrban (talk) 18:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have deprodded the article. However, the article still does not establish notability for its subject, you will have to write that into it, else somebody else might take it to AfD (articles for deletion) and that would be a waste of time. The Google Scholar link you give, does not really show anything about the subject of this article, as far as I can see, but this does. As you suggest, I agree that 502 citations for one article (plus several other well-cited articles) satisfies WP:PROF (which applies here, rather than WP:Notability (people)). However, it is not enough that the subject satisfies the notability guidelines, the article will have to show that. This has nothing to do with understanding a certain field or not, 502 citations is something everybody can understand... Let me know (on my talk page) if you need any other advice. --Crusio (talk) 18:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for "deproding". I agree that "502 citations" can be more accessible than "author of SUMO" for laymen, and I may try to put it into the page (your Google Scholar link should rather be for "Adam Pease" (the quotes make a huge difference)). Question is, whether this page will be more used by laymen or by people/students who (want to) have some knowledge of the field (I would expect the latter). For me (and I guess quite a few other people), "author of SUMO" is much more relevant and "establishing notability" than "502 citations", and I think it falls under the second bullet point in the WP:N I cited (though this is obviously harder to explain to laymen). So I am still not persuaded that admins should delete (without further research) pages about things they don't understand, just because their superficial search failed to find a superficial notability. As for WP:PROF vs. WP:N, Academic says that: "An academic is a person who works as a researcher (and usually teacher) at a university or similar institution in post-secondary (or tertiary) education." Adam Pease is not that case, therefore it is a bit unclear if WP:PROF applies to him. He certainly is a scientist, so WP:Notability (people)#Creative professionals applies. Additionally, WP:PROF says: "it is possible for an academic not to be notable under the provisions of this guideline but to be notable in some other way under one of the other notability guidelines". That's why I think WP:Notability (people)#Creative professionals is better in this case. JosefUrban (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm impressed that someone who has only been n WP for a few days has already mastered "wikilawyering" so well.... The point is, of course, that your colleages will look up this guy in Google Scholar, Web of Science, or other such databases, not necessarily in WP. WP is for everybody and article in WP should be understandable for everybody. If you want to try and change that, I wish you good luck, but I'm afraid your chances aren't very good.... --Crusio (talk) 20:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I have not been in WP only for a few days. No, I don't think that trying to research the rules that apply here, and to make sense of them, is "lawyering". No, scientists use WP very much, very likely much more than "everybody", and much more than Web of Science. No, String theory will never be understandable by everybody, yet an article about it belongs to WP, and should not be deleted by people who not necessarily understand why it is notable, and neither should be deleted scientists who are important in that field for reasons that may not be accessible to everybody. Luckily, in majority of cases (and Adam Pease belongs there) it is possible to make things (to various extent) notable/accessible also for laymen (who might be required to do various amount of research for that). I am just a bit scared that (not only) you seem to take that for granted, and delete stubs that don't immediately satisfy that. Is that so much trouble to first ask someone established on WP, who is knowledgable about the field? JosefUrban (talk) 21:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Is it so much trouble to adhere to the guidelines and include information establishing notability beyond any doubt from the very beginning? Especially if you're not new to WP and knew all this from the very start? If you want to change the way WP is working, don't talk to me, I have no influence on that. --Crusio (talk) 22:17, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I did not know all this from very start. Please stop generating sentences that ar not true, there are already quite a few above. Yes, for someone who has decided to start his first couple of new WP articles, it might take a while to digest the guidelines (coming interpreted in various ways by WP users, sometimes in actions that are a bit hard to perceive as gentle) - this discussion just documents it. You certainly had the influence to suggest a deletion of the article, and to cancel that suggestion, and certainly are a sentient being intepreting the various rules that all WP users are trying to agree upon, not a robot without any influence. Let me repeat the basic thing one more time: I think there are more productive ways of dealing with a new stub related to not-necessarily-immediatelly-accessible science field that you may perceive as hard to decipher and hard to rate for notability than immediatelly suggesting it for deletion. I really don't know the guidelines so well, and there are limits to the time I can devote to their study, but I seriously doubt that in a case like this they clearly say that the article should be deleted without further research. JosefUrban (talk) 23:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)