User:RockMagnetist/Drafts/Academic notability: the missing manual

Introduction
Editors can get emotional about deletion debates, particularly if the subject is a person. If an editor thinks that person deserves an article, they can perceive the AfD nomination as an attack on the person and feel angry at the nominator. This is understandable, but not in the spirit of an encyclopedia. The desire to protect biographies has even led to an unbalanced approach to article inclusion criteria in Notability (academics). If the subject of a biography satisfies an academic notability criterion, this is often considered a sufficient argument for keeping the article - even if nothing of any value can be said about the subject. Subject-specific notability guidelines have drifted away from their original intent; and one reason for this is that their purpose is not clearly explained outside of the talk pages. This "missing manual" tries to explain the purpose of subject guidelines (as I understand it) and recommend changes to bring the guidelines more in line with it.

General and subject notability criteria
The main article on notability divides notability criteria into general and subject-specific criteria. The following summary statement places them on an equal footing:

"A topic is presumed to merit an article if:


 * 1) It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right; and
 * 2) It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy."

However, many of the subject guidelines (see ) explicitly state that they are proxies for the general criteria. The thinking behind this is mainly outlined in talk page discussions. Subject criteria were developed because it can be difficult to find the sources to establish notability. Their purpose is to make it easier to identify articles that probably can satisfy the general criteria but the finding of sources may require extra time and resources or the help of an expert.

The general guideline
The general guideline states: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list."

In the section why we have these requirements, each part of that statement is justified by core principles. It requires reliable sources to ensure the article is not passing along random gossip or posting indiscriminate collections of information. The main sources should be independent to comply with the neutral point of view policy and to ensure that an article is not promotional. There should be at least one secondary source so that the article is not original research. Finally, "significant coverage" ensures that there is enough material to warrant an article.

If a subject guideline is considered a true alternative to the general guideline, and not just a collection of rules of thumb for when a subject is likely to satisfy the general guideline, then a rationale should be stated and it should be demonstrated that it ensures articles satisfy the core principles.

Statements of relationship
The following are what the subject notability pages say about their relationship to the general criteria:
 * Academics – "Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable."


 * Astronomical objects – "If an astronomical object meets any of the following criteria, supported through independent reliable sources, it probably qualifies for a stand-alone article."


 * Books – "A book is generally notable if it verifiably meets, through reliable sources, one or more of the following criteria:" (...) "These criteria are presented as rules of thumb for easily identifying books that Wikipedia should probably have articles about. In almost all cases, a thorough search for independent, third-party reliable sources will be successful for a book meeting one or more of these criteria."


 * Events – "This guideline was formed with the intention of guiding editors in interpreting the various pre-existing policies and guidelines that apply to articles about events, including WP:GNG (i.e. "a topic is presumed to have met the criteria for notability if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject") and its relationship to WP:NOT (i.e. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of news material)."


 * Films – "This guideline, specific to the subject of film, explains the general notability guideline as it applies to film and also takes into consideration other core Wikipedia policies and guidelines as they apply to determining stand-alone articles or stand-alone lists for film."


 * People – "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included."


 * Sports – "The guidelines on this page are intended to reflect the fact that sports figures are likely to meet Wikipedia's basic standards of inclusion ..."

The broader consensus
The policy on consensus states that a local consensus should not override a broader consensus. The local consensus is that academic notability should be independent of other notability guidelines. This contradicts the community-wide consensus in a Village Pump discussion on another subject guideline: "no subject-specific guideline is a replacement for or supercedes the General Notability Guideline. Arguments must be more refined than simply citing compliance with a subguideline of WP:NSPORTS in the context of an Articles for Deletion discussion."

There is not a consensus between guides, however. The main notability guide says "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: 1) It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right; and 2) it is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy." That is consistent with the academic guideline but not most of the others. In particular, Notability (people) divides notability criteria into basic and additional. Basic criteria are an elaboration of general criteria; additional criteria include summaries of some separate guidelines such as academics and sports as well as some other special cases. It states: "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included." Note that, by implication, this includes the guidelines on academics.

The wording in the main notability guide may not reflect the intentions of the editors involved. In 2011, the wording introduced in this edit was "A topic is presumed to merit an article if it meets the general notability guideline below and is not excluded by WP:NOT. A topic is also presumed notable if it meets the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right." In the discussion leading up to this, there was a strong consensus that SNG's should not trump the GNG; rather, they should indicate cases where it is likely that GNG will be met eventually. Unfortunately, this was communicated by the subtle distinction between "a topic is presumed to merit an article" and "a topic is also presumed notable". A few years later, with this edit, with a subject line that stated "no changes except to make the grammar work", the criterion became "It meets either the general notability guideline below or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right." However, with this edit, the subtle distinction was eliminated. And this version was quoted by NPROF to justify its wording.

Other thoughts
An article that satisfies subject but not general notability criteria is inherently a low-quality article. It may be a stub, or its contents may be supported by primary sources, unreliable sources, or no sources at all. Alternatives to a stand-alone article should be considered; and if the article is a biography of a living person, great care must be taken to ensure that it is compatible with the relevant policies.

Notability for people
If a person fails the basic criteria, the recommendation in Failing basic criteria but meeting additional criteria is to merge the article into a broader article that provides context, creating the article if necessary. However, there are cases where a merge is not the best solution – for example, if there is no appropriate article to merge into. Another option may be to add the subject to a relevant list (see next section).

Recommendation: Notability (people) should discuss situations where a merge is not appropriate and mention alternatives.

The academic notability guidelines
In a direct contradiction to the statement at the top of Notability (people), the academic notability guidelines state that "Academics/professors meeting any one  of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable." There is no indication that academic notability criteria are not as strong as general notability criteria; and in an AfD it is very difficult to argue that an article with very little content should be deleted. We also get extensive debates about how to handle citation metrics.

Recommendations: The following changes should be made to the academic notability guidelines:
 * Emphasize the distinction between general and subject notability guidelines.
 * Emphasize that even people satisfying the general notability criteria are only presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.
 * Discuss what to do with articles that satisfy only subject guidelines.
 * Contain the academic equivalent of notable only for a single event.
 * Add a version of Failing basic criteria but meeting additional criteria that is tailored to academics.

Also, the academic guidelines should emphasize that all articles must be consistent with the policy on Biographies of living persons.

Significant coverage
The general notability guideline explains "significant coverage" as follows: ""Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, so no original research is needed to extract the content."

How much coverage is "significant"?
Within the main article on notability, Why we have these requirements clarifies the amount of coverage that is considered significant: "We require "significant coverage" in reliable sources so that we can actually write a whole article, rather than half a paragraph or a definition of that topic. If only a few sentences could be written and supported by sources about the subject, that subject does not qualify for a separate page, but should instead be merged into an article about a larger topic or relevant list."

Why we have these requirements says that the requirements are based on major content policies, but they don't say which ones are behind "significant coverage". It would help to identify the policies. Clearly verifiability is one, but what is the basis for saying that an article should be more than half a paragraph?

What kinds of information contribute to this coverage?

 * Many of the specific criteria in Notability (academics) can also be part of the coverage. For example, an article could mention that the person has received a highly prestigious academic award or has held a named chair at a major university. It would be particularly useful to have a description of one or more contributions to their discipline, explaining why they are important.
 * A few criteria are not useful for providing coverage of the academic. In particular, citation rates are generally difficult to establish using reliable, secondary sources. The most common sources are web searches (in Web of Science or Google Scholar, for example); these are links normally to be avoided. However, even if is possible to provide a source, a citation metric provides coverage of dubious merit (a bit like saying someone is famous because they are famous).
 * Since it is a biography, it is desirable to include basic biographical information on birth and death dates, citizenship, place of residence, where they worked, and so on; but it is not required by any policy. This information can be difficult to find for many academics; sometimes it is first published in their obituary.

Reliable secondary sources should be used for the material that is relevant to notability; but the faculty home page or other primary source can be used for uncontroversial biographic details.

People notable for only one event
Much of this policy in Notability (people) emphasizes events that occur in the news. However, the apparent purpose of this section is to discuss cases where it might be better to merge a biography into an article that provides broader context. In this respect, it is closely related to the general guideline "Whether to create standalone pages", which discusses cases where a subject may benefit from being presented in a broader context. It finishes with the statement: "Editors are advised to be cognizant of issues of weight and to avoid the creation of unnecessary pseudo-biographies, especially of living people." If, for example, an academic is notable only for their involvement in a particular scientific discovery, scientific expedition or other academic achievement, a separate article on them may be giving them undue weight.

What if a subject fails the basic criteria but meets additional criteria?

 * If an academic fails the basic criterion, the recommendation in Failing basic criteria but meeting additional criteria is to merge their biography into a broader article that provides context, creating the article if necessary.
 * If it is not clear what the subject of such an article would be, an alternative is to add the name of the academic to a list of academics. Wikipedia has many such lists (see Category:Lists of people by occupation). Each list should have selection criteria for membership, and if the academic satisfies those criteria, they can be added. A common criterion is notability, which should be demonstrated with a citation. For this purpose academic notability criteria are sufficient.
 * Some articles would not be well served by either of the above options. There is no requirement that they be merged or deleted - it is up to editors to develop a consensus on the best approach for each article.
 * It may be appropriate to tag an article to indicate that it does not meet the general criteria. A number of existing templates are relevant, including Notability, Expert-subject, and lots of tags related to sources; but none that makes clear this specific (but common) situation.

Considerations that are not based on policy

 * More coverage is given to celebrities than scientists in Wikipedia.
 * It's not Wikipedia's job to correct an imbalance that exists in the real world. There is no size limit to Wikipedia; excessive coverage of other people does not in any way affect the coverage of scientists.


 * Academic X deserves to have an article written about him/her.
 * An encyclopedia article is not an award for merit; it exists to provide information.


 * It is difficult to find sources for biographies of academics.
 * The verifiability policy does not make any special allowances for difficulty of finding sources. Either content is verifiable or it isn't. However, if an academic satisfies one of the academic notability criteria, there is a presumption that sources can be found with enough effort.

Questions

 * Do subject criteria work as intended? The presumption is that eventually someone will find the sources and write a biography that satisfies the general criteria. Although Wikipedia has no deadlines, this should happen some of the time. Does it?
 * What is the basis in policy for "significant coverage"?

Ideas for change
The discussions on the talk page reveal a view of the NPROF guidelines that seems, at first sight, schizophrenic. On the one hand, they are justified as a way of countering systemic bias against academics by loosening the verifiability criteria. On the other hand, it is claimed that they present a higher bar to notability than the general guidelines, preventing academics from using Wikipedia for self-promotion. In This page in a nutshell, the main rationale is that academics are often not the subject of secondary sources, but they may be considered notable through their impact on their field of study; the purpose of the page is to provide criteria for determining when this is the case. If this is the goal, I think the criteria fail abysmally.

The list of criteria has grown longer and longer, leading to frequent debates over their meaning and relation to general notability guidelines. Worse, much of it addresses whether an academic is important rather than whether their contribution is notable (and most importantly, verifiable). For example, election to a prestigious academy (Criterion 3) generally does not help with verifiability, because the academies do not provide biographical information or any discussion of why they were elected. And look at the lengthy section on citation metrics, not to mention the frequent arguments on the talk page over what an h-index means for different fields. Citation metrics are no guarantee of verifiability; an academic can have thousands of citations without there being an extended discussion of their work. Moreover, even with the most highly cited paper there is no way of telling from the list of authors what a particular academic has contributed.

Proposal: Replace the entire set of guidelines by the following:

"An academic is presumed notable if they meet the general notability guidelines, or if their career or body of work meets those guidelines and the contribution of the academic is verifiable."

Rationale: This is more consistent with the purposes of the guidelines, as stated at the top, than the existing guidelines. It allows editors to establish notability of academics through the impact of their work, thus countering systemic bias while making it difficult for academics to promote themselves with articles that are nothing more than CVs. It is also much simpler while being clear, since general notability is reasonably well understood.

Comments:
 * While, in general, notability is not inherited, the second part of the criterion establishes the notability of "Contributions of Academic X." But that would be an odd title for an article, so in this case it is clearly o.k. to transfer notability to Academic X. Similarly, many of the existing criteria would support an article titled "Recognition of the work of Academic X", which is much less satisfying.
 * Actually, it could be argued that if an academic's body of work is notable through the GNG, then so is the academic. Unlike cases where notability is not inherited, the body of work is actually created by the academic.
 * Criteria #1 has a lot of overlap with WP:CREATIVE.
 * Criteria #2 and #3 will still be with us in the form of WP:ANYBIO ("The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times.").
 * "Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them."
 * Some might argue that the work should simply be covered in a subject article and the academic left out of it. However, it is rare that one academic's body of work would be suitable for an article, even if it is notable. That is because it is hard to clearly define the subject, except as the product of that academic. Also, most academic subjects are the product of many academics and it would be hard to cover one person's work without giving it undue weight.
 * There is also a concern that in certain fields, an academic's product is automatically reviewed and therefore notable. In some fields, academics are required to publish books, and books are almost always reviewed. However, that does not seem to be sufficient for the book to get its own article. Mathematics articles are generally reviewed in MathSciNet. However, articles on academic journal articles are very rare: there are 15 pages in Category:mathematics papers and 11 pages in Category:physics papers.
 * Many bios of living academics make heavy use of their home pages for information. The policy on verifiability allows the use of self-published sources as sources on themselves, as long as: 1) the material is not unduly self-serving, 4) there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity, and 5) the article is not based primarily on such sources (some other criteria don't concern us here). Number 5 can be a big problem with many of the academic bios.

An exploration of links to bios
The idea here is to ask whether the work of some academics is notable enough for it to be mentioned in subject articles.

Random American physicists and links to them
Note: some are spread about using navboxes.

AfD survivors but not orphans
Randomly select from Category:Scientists with Old AfD multi on the talk page, leaving out those in Category:Lists and Category:Orphaned articles. Scientists who are mainly notable for some non-scientific fact are left out. Linking articles where the author is just quoted or cited, or where they are linked in a navbox only, are left out.
 * In a level 2 search, there are 361 articles including orphans, 15 of which were orphans. In the above random sample, 11 out of 20 have no links from articles that describe their contribution to science.