Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Academic genealogy of computer scientists


 * 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 delete. Spartaz Humbug! 15:09, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Academic genealogy of computer scientists

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One big BLP violation sandwich, served up on a plate of WP:NOTDIRECTORY. This doesn't belong on WP but on somebody's personal blog page. (OK it should really be a database somewhere, actually) Enormous labor of WP:OR with all kinds of unsourced statements about the relationships among people, some living some not. Jytdog (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: the sourcing isn't as bad as it may appear. Almost all of academics listed have a Mathematics Genealogy Project page that includes the given information; would be pretty easy to link to the relevant page. BenKuykendall (talk) 21:39, 9 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 10:27, 10 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep -- First of all, WP:NOTDIRECTORY is completely unrelated to anything to do with this discussion. The page in question is obviously not a directory.  Second, this is not any kind of BLP violation.  Give a specific reason, nom, if you disagree.  Finally, this topic is obviously notable.  Computer scientists were mathematicians until about 75 years ago, so mathematics genealogies provide both sourcing and GNG satisfaction.  See  and the mathematics genealogy project for two examples out of very, very many.  Not only that, but genealogies specific to computer science are also pretty common, see e.g., , and so on.  This isn't OR by any means.  This is a well-studied, easily sourceable subject whose article could use some references.  Absolutely not a candidate for deletion. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 13:50, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete as a steaming pile of WP:OR. Show us a source discussing relationships based on thesis advising. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:17, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment as I said above, it's all on Mathematics Genealogy Project. For example: to verify that Roger Needham advised Ross J. Anderson, we have https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=42570. Adding such references would not be very hard, but it might be kind of ugly; I am not sure how to add every single reference without making the article unreadable. Regardless, this is just an issue of adding citations: the information is not unverifiable. BenKuykendall (talk) 00:58, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Verifiability is not the issue. Also delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The project article states that it covers 222,193 scientists. Even if we assume only a tiny fraction of these relationships are significant (and who decides that?), that's still a large number >> NWiki-manageable. Clarityfiend (talk) 10:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you please say explicitly what part of INDISCRIMINATE you think is violated here? Certainly it can't be that there are 222,193 entries.  The sheer number of entries can't possibly make the article an indiscriminate collection of information.  The criteria for being a computer scientist are perfectly clear, so it seems to me that there's absolutely nothing indiscriminate about this.  You ask who decides which of the relationships are significant?  Obviously the RS decide that, like with every single other topic on WP. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 12:35, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, there are >= 222,193 article in the MathGenealogy. However, most of those are not computer scientists. Further, Academic genealogy of computer scientists should only contain computer scientists notable enough to have their own articles. This gives a much smaller number of possible entries. BenKuykendall (talk) 14:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * You're missing the main point. Where are your RS about the significance, not the mere fact of their existence, of these relationships? This doesn't rise to the prominence of the Erdős number, or even the Erdős–Bacon number. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:58, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Now you're moving the goalposts. Typically on WP we look for RS about the subject and use the existence of such sources to argue that the subject is notable and therefore article-worthy.  However, now you want RS that actually discuss the significance?  That's like metasignificance.  A number of people have supplied RS that discuss the genealogy of computer scientists.  While it would be nice to have them, we do not also need RS that discuss the significance of that genealogy. 192.160.216.52 (talk) 13:30, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 09:24, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The goalposts were planted in my second sentence. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:46, 14 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Speedy delete as A11 - Obviously invented. Szzuk (talk) 16:33, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Could you say more on why you think this? A number of real publications discuss the topic, as referenced in the article. BenKuykendall (talk) 01:18, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE and WP:NOR. No clear notability of relationships between listed BLPs. Over half of the listed entries do not have articles and are not needed notable inherently. Ajf773 (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. There seem to be sufficient sources, and sufficient importance . The information in Mathematics Geology Poject is usffieent for verification. It's not indiscriminate, as all the people are sufficiently important to be included there.  DGG ( talk ) 04:29, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
 * What exactly does a mathematical geologist do? Clarityfiend (talk) 09:21, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete (with of course a "refund" possible to someone who wants to migrate it off of en.wp to some other web host). Clearly this has taken lots of work. And clearly, it is Useful Knowledge for someone sometimes. But wikipedia is not an indiscriminate source of information. The discussion of sourcing above has shown that the article will unavoidably struggle between the Scylla and Charybdis of original research on one hand, and merely selection from a subset of the Mathematics Geneology project on the other. Bottom line is this is information that should well be maintained somewhere, but there is no reason it should be in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. 21:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinp (talk • contribs) 21:37, 17 April 2018 (UTC)


 * 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.