Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andreas Raab (2nd nomination)


 * 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 redirect to Squeak. The detailed demolishment of sourcing here hasn't been well refuted and I cannot see a consensus based on argument that this person passed GNG. That said, Redirect/merge is a better outcome for marginally non-notable content then delete and that argument best fits community expectations as well as reflecting the groundswell that this subject has some merit. Spartaz Humbug! 15:09, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Andreas Raab
AfDs for this article: 
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Fails WP:GNG (specifically seeing no WP:INDEPENDENT WP:RSs), WP:NACADEMICS (no evidence of meeting any of these criteria), WP:NOTMEMORIAL. Of current sources (at time of nom), the few that actually relate to him are his dissertation and blog posts, community wiki articles, mailing list messages, and other sites allowing self-published content. Google scholar shows some papers, though very few where he was the lead author on. He shares his name with a few other scientists in other fields so look out for those when you look at google scholar. &#8213; Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:26, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  20:26, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete.  Keep.   Delete.  I tagged this in March for notability and for primary, self-published and unreliable sources.  Lacks reliable independent secondary sources to establish notability as required by WP:GNG and fails to state a reason the subject is notable in lieu of sources under WP:ANYBIO.  Googling turned up nothing useful.  Msnicki (talk) 21:00, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I still insist the reliable independent secondary sources simply don't exist to support notability under WP:GNG. However, this Google scholar search shows a total citation count (also used in academia) of 979, which I will accept as  do not think is sufficient for WP:ACADEMIC.  Msnicki (talk) 22:24, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'm switching back to delete. I've been struggling with this and on reflection, I just honestly do not believe this individual is notable under our definition.   has made the discussion so personal that it's been hard for me focus purely on the evidence over my desire to get as far away from this unpleasant person as as fast I can.  He's taken both  and me to ANI and he's still insisting he was justified and still complaining that we're the ones who are overzealous, even after it's became clear he was completely wrong on the facts of whether this Raab AfD could possibly have been retaliation.  (I tagged it before nominating Nim to AfD and long before I had ever hear of Itsmeront.)


 * When people raise questions about my decisions or about whether I've been fair, my natural inclination is a lot different today than it would have been in my 20s. Then, I'd have gotten defensive and it would have been hard to admit I was wrong.  At 64, I know I'm wrong all the time.  It's part of being human.  But I also know that if I am wrong, the best thing to do is correct the error as quickly as possible.  The only mistakes people really remember are the ones you refuse to admit.  So I tend to bend over backwards trying to see it their way.  This is also why anyone who looks at my contribution history will see a fair number of !vote changes at AfD when new arguments and new evidence is offered.  I try very hard never to hold onto an opinion just because that's what I used to think.


 * In the case at hand, I tagged the article but did not nominate it, in contrast to nominating Nim an hour later, because I thought it was borderline. The sourcing was completely insufficient.  But unlike Nim, for which I could see there were clearly no acceptable sources, it looked like proper sources might exist for this subject.  In determining notability, we consider only whether sources exist, not whether they've been cited.  So while I didn't find any at the time, it seemed possible, given his accomplishments, that if I kept looking, maybe they were out there.  All it take is two good sources, which is not asking a lot.  Now I know, pretty much as a matter of plain fact, that multiple reliable independent sources actually about the subject do not exist.  They just don't.  Interviews do not count, especially from the organization you work with.  Just getting your name into one sentence of an article does not count.  Blogs and other WP:SPS sources do not count.  None of that stuff counts and when you take away all that unhelpful stuff, there is just plain nothing left.


 * So why the switch and switch back? Well, fundamentally, I felt pressured, even a bit bullied.  This whole discussion (actually any discussion involving Itsmeront) has become so unpleasant that I really want out.  I enjoy AfDs because we have a crisp set of guidelines that I think are quite cleverly constructed to support our WP:Five Pillars, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia: ... Wikipedia is not a soapbox, an advertising platform, a vanity press, an experiment in anarchy or democracy, an indiscriminate collection of information, or a web directory. It is not a dictionary, a newspaper, or a collection of source documents.  I enjoy dissecting the evidence to see if we've cleared the hurdle.  It's usually a fun, intellectual exercise.


 * But this one has not been that. When things become so personal and I find myself accused of being wrong and carrying out vendettas, it's hard for me now, at 64, not to consider maybe I am wrong.  Can I look at the evidence from their point of view?  By now I know that if you are wrong, it's really, really helpful to concede as quickly as you can.  When  !voted keep, I took that seriously because I respect his opinion and, frankly, I just wanted a reason to change my !vote and get the heck out of here.


 * I just can't do it. (Sorry, Mark, though I still respect your opinion.) Our guidelines in WP:ACADEMIC suggest considering citation counts in the way a research university might consider them in tenure decisions.  Tenure comes with the associate professor title and if you have the PhD to go along with it, I think 1000 citations cumulative would be enough to make associate professor and tenure at most places.  But (a) there are LOTS of associate professors for every full professor, (b) we have an "Average Professor Test" that asks that the subject stand out from average and (c) I put those together to conclude that we consider the kinds of citations that would be considered in tenure decision but should insist on more than it takes merely for tenure. I think you could get tenure with 1000 citations spread across a pile of papers.  But I don't think a 1000 citations cumulatively is at all remarkable.  I still think a significant paper or book is one with over 1000 citations.  It just is.  And this subject hasn't got one of those and his cumulative citation count just isn't good enough.


 * The problem here is one that's common in technical fields. Notability is WP:NOTINHERITED.  Our work is often much better known than we are.  People write about our work.  They do not write about us.  This is just the way it is.  If getting people to write about you is an important life goal, perhaps a career as a porn star or an athlete might be a better choice.  Unfortunately, this subject is not a porn star or an athlete and while I'm satisfied his work may be notable, I am convinced he is not.


 * At this point, I've said everything I'm going to. I am very weary of this debate and very definitely of the way Itsmeront has made something that should be a fun intellectual discussion into something so personal.  Msnicki (talk) 15:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you Msnicki for your comments. It seems clear that many people believe that Raab was notable, more than his association to famous people.  Those famous people themselves thought very highly of Raab and his accomplishments, introducing him in prestigious events, giving him credit, listing him as a primary creator to famous journalists.  Raab was not an academic, he was a brilliant programmer, that made a significant contribution to the field of computer science.  Arguing his paper count or his citations would have given him a chuckle.  He was not a professor, nor did he want to be one.  He was hired by one of the greats and spent his life working with others that were equally accomplished spectacular developers.  When he went back to Germany to get married and have children he was immediately hired by the SAP global innovation team because, unlike you, they could see his contributions to programming.  Croquet is not just a paper.  It is a revolutionary idea thought up by one of the inventors of the internet.  It was championed by Kay and developed into a working model by Raab and Smith.  I mentioned before that I could go into the details about why it has not yet become the significant contribution that it will become in the future, but I'm not sure you are interested in the actual content, as opposed to the numbers.  My biggest complaint is the refusal to read the content and understand it, not just in published papers but in expert blogs.  Notice that Mark Bernstein also said "Significant contributions to the research literature and to development of a very significant system.".  I could go on and try to make nice and tell you that I'm not 20, and that my attempts to de-escalate this have been met by you basically calling me an idiot.  I didn't even respond to that comment of yours, figuring I was wasting my time, but now I think I will at least do that, simply by saying that, I'm glad you at least read the articles you pointed me to on your talk page.  Itsmeront (talk) 16:15, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I've said I find you unpleasant but then again, after someone takes you to ANI, I think it's okay to say that. I did not call you an idiot.  What I actually said, was You've consistently questioned my good faith based on absolutely nothing except your own baseless paranoia and wildly over-optimistic assessment of your own competence in an AfD.  If you ever decide to buy into the guidelines, stop personalizing everything, improve your writing and adherence to simple guidelines requests (like don't edit your comments after they've been responded to without using and tags) and stopped your infernal filibustering, you might become someone I wouldn't mind encountering.  Right now is a different story.  Msnicki (talk) 17:33, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Exactly, as I said you basically called me an idiot inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude. I'm not complaining, you are welcome to your opinion, it just tells me I'm wasting my time. I will take the suggestion about and . I used it in the past but wasn't aware of it's importance to editors. Thank you for pointing it out.  Itsmeront (talk) 17:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. Using the search methods provided here ( news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR), brings up a tremendous amount of content about this man, some self-published, some not completely reliable and some I couldn't understand, as it was in German; but there was a substantial amount of content, especially on scholar.google.com, much of which is not self-published, that indicates that Andreas Raab was a bit of a celebrity in his industry.    Ormr2014 | Talk
 * All those sources on scholar for which the subject is an author are WP:PRIMARY, making them unhelpful in establishing notability even if they were published in reliable publications. If the subject's papers were widely cited, we might be able to make an argument for notability under WP:ACADEMIC but unfortunately, they are not widely cited.  In computer science, a widely-cited paper is generally considered to be one with over 1000 citations but the most-cited paper by this author has only 150 citations.  I don't think that's enough to establish notability.  Msnicki (talk) 00:07, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * He's also the third author in that paper. In Computer Science, authors are typically ordered by the size of their contribution, so there's little suggesting that his contribution to that paper was significant. That was the highest citation count I saw. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  04:48, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong, but I think that VPRI and its predecessor Squeak Central research groups did not follow the CompSci convention of author order, and in any case, the main Croquet and Squeak papers with four or five authors seem to have had equal contributions. Also Kay et al publish a disproportionately small number of peer-reviewed papers compared to their importance: they seem happy to self-publish, which I think is the only requirement of their NSF funding. Could someone please confirm, or refute, or even better, back this up with a citation? --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * So what order do you think they did use? It wasn't alphabetic on any of those papers that come up on scholar.  Do you think it was age or beauty?  I think it's most likely they followed the same convention followed everywhere else, in order of contribution.  Anyway, the point was that we might have tried to establish notability as an WP:ACADEMIC based on citations but I don't the evidence is there for us to do that.  Msnicki (talk) 15:43, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * As for VPRI and Squeak Central research groups not using the author order convention for computer science, do you have anywhere I could look at this? The paper I looked at did not seem to indicate Raab had a significant role in the work. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  15:49, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * VPRI is the research arm of Kay. They exist still and are doing amazing work in the field of the reinvention of programming.  Squeak and Squeak Central started at Disney and was an outgrowth of the invention of Object-Oriented programming invented by Kay.  Raab worked for both Disney and for VPRI directly under Kay.  In general you will probably find Raab listed after Smith and Kay and Reed listed in that order.  Kay is obviously the most notable, but the least involved.  He likes to say, "I invent and then move on to other issues".  Reed was little involved but consulted frequently in these papers.  It was his dissertation that was the original inspiration for Croquet.  The work was done primarily by Smith and Raab.  The contributions were probably equal when it comes to Smith and Raab but Smith was more notable and he tended to take the lead in business, funding, and articles.  This article [] lists Raab second, as I would expect, not sure what article is showing him third.  I would expect him to be either second or fourth, but not because of his participation, more a matter of deference to who came to the problem space first. Itsmeront (talk) 20:12, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep There are a lot of reliable independent secondary sources that have been cited. Andreas Raab was one of the original authors, and a leader of a large community around the Smalltalk Squeak community, started by Alan Kay, the father of Object Oriented Programming and one of the original creators of the personal computer.  He was a major contributor to the field of computer graphics, virtual worlds, new methods for computer synchronization (Croquet, or Tea Time).  I have updated the article to add additional third party references which should be considered before deleting this article.  Notice the number of books that have been added as references where Andreas contributed, was thanked for his work or had his worked reviewed by others.  Hew was recently eulogized by the head of SAP global innovation group.  I have added notes from a eulogy from David Smith, and also included Andreas' work with Alan Kay on the Reinventing of Programming. All of these are reliable third party sources. Itsmeront (talk) 22:56, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I have added a number of additional Thrid-party reliable sources. Itsmeront (talk) 20:33, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I have added information about when Barak Obama was shown the software which Andreas Raab was a primary author. Itsmeront (talk) 16:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Re: your claim, There are a lot of reliable independent secondary sources that have been cited, can you kindly identify at least two of them that satisfy our guidelines' definition of reliable, independent and secondary? That excludes anything written by the subject as primary or published by the Squeak project where he worked as not independent and any blogs or other self-published sources as not reliable.  I understand that you disagree with our guidelines, and you are entitled to your opinion.  So I'm not asking that you agree with our guidelines' definitions nor do I wish to debate them with you.  I am merely asking if you can identify any sources you believe satisfy those definitions.  I don't believe there are any.  Msnicki (talk) 15:35, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment. Please be advised that AFD is not a place to discuss motives or unrelated opinions. It's simply a place to discuss whether or not you believe the article warrants deletion and why.    Ormr2014 | Talk
 * Sorry for the noise I have moved my comments to here Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents Itsmeront (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment This could be a keep if the material eulogizing this individual is removed. Profiles of people are not meant to be tributes to them, however influential they might be, they are supposed to be encyclopedic entries outlining their work. Liz  Read! Talk! 00:16, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Liz  Read! Talk! Thank you for your comments.  I have removed the Eulogies. Itsmeront (talk) 01:25, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep Although I think that there is still some room for improvement to have a fully fleshed out article, I think that this page meets the notability standard and the extraneous information, more suitable for a memorial page, has been removed. Liz  <b style="color:#006400;">Read!</b> <b style="color:#006400;">Talk!</b> 10:34, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * keep the rewritten article has reasonable sourcing for notability. -M.Altenmann >t 14:42, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps I've overlooked something that you've spotted. Which of the sources do you rely on as reliable, independent and secondary as required by WP:GNG?  I did not find any.  Msnicki (talk) 15:03, 13 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment. There's this article at Heise.de.  I tried checking de.wiki, but their article seems to be on a politician.  Don't really know know where to look for info on a German programmer except Heise.de. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 21:01, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks NinjaRobotPirate (talk) [article translated] I saw that article but it's really just a memorial on his death. Andreas was german and was educated in Germany but he spent most of his life in the USA, working with Alan Kay, and David A. Smith.  He did return to Germany and met his wife and decided to stay there only about a year or so before his death.  When he moved back to Germany he joined the SAP global innovation team.  Calling him a German programmer is not quite accurate.  He was more a German - Programmer in the USA. Itsmeront (talk) 21:39, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Msnicki (talk) claims: In computer science, a widely-cited paper is generally considered to be one with over 1000 citations
Msnicki (talk) can you please cite Wikipedia editorial policy that backs up your assertion that papers require 1000 citations to be notable. And to be clear here you are not arguing Reliability since Andreas has been mentioned in a number of reliable sources including books and was the author on peer-reviewed published journal articles, is that correct? Itsmeront (talk) 15:06, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * First, this is not a policy question. We only have a small number of policies.  Everything else is a guideline.  (C.f., WP:POLICYLIST) And our guidelines do not specify an exact threshold, they offer only guidance, so I'm offering you my opinion, based on the guidelines.  From WP:ACADEMIC:


 * The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work – either several extremely highly cited scholarly publications or a substantial number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates. Reviews of the person's work, published in selective academic publications, can be considered together with ordinary citations here. Differences in typical citation and publication rates and in publication conventions between different academic disciplines should be taken into account.
 * To count towards satisfying Criterion 1, citations need to occur in peer-reviewed scholarly publications such as journals or academic books.




 * ... The meaning of "substantial number of publications" and "high citation rates" is to be interpreted in line with the interpretations used by major research institutions in the awarding of tenure.


 * We can get some guidance from the yearly citation thresholds it took make it into the top 1% of most cited paper Archive.org's snapshot of the Science Watch thresholds as of 2009. (They've since removed this information from their public website; they want you to pay for it.)  They explained their methodology here but basically, what you see there is that for a CS paper to make it into the top 1% at, say, the 5 year mark, takes 39 citations.  By the 10 year mark, it should have 70 citations.  But this is only to make into the top 1%.  There are THOUSANDS of papers published every year and 1% of those is still thousands.  As you move up in rarity to the top .1% or top .01%, the citation counts become staggering.  For example, Martin Hellman's New Directions paper on public key encryption has over 13,000 citations.


 * In real life, I'm on the faculty in the EE department at a local university so I also have some first-hand knowledge how academics regard citations. In my informal, completely unscientific experience, 1000 seems to be threshold where academics begin to take notice.  But even 1000 is not that big.  I have a paper of my own with over 1100 citations and I don't think anyone (certainly not me!) would seriously argue that should make me notable.  (If you're concerned to verify the claim, send me email and I'll privately disclose my identity and give you the reference.)  150 citations is just nothing.


 * Separately, I notice you have been adding more sources. Most seem to be more of the same WP:SPS and WP:PRIMARY junk as in the past and I'm not interested and don't have the time to follow a zillion links to check every one of them.  But it only takes two good sources to get me to change my !vote to keep.  I follow the guidelines.  I do not carry out vendettas.  If somewhere in that pile you have two that really do meet the guidelines definition of reliable, independent and secondary (not your preferred definition) and they're actually about the subject, please identify them.  If you've got two good sources, I promise to change my !vote.  Msnicki (talk) 19:01, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your comments, they are very helpful. This means that Raab papers by your numbers make it into the top 1%.  Additionally by the numbers it seems that the most relevant articles don't necessary get the most citations. [Google Scholar ECC] I work in cryptography so I thought I'd verify your numbers with something I know something about.  Notice that the most relevant articles the original research are only cited a total of 40 times.  There are other articles about the work with references much higher as you point out.  I would say that in this particular field of synchronization protocol the overall impact of the new protocol is not fully understood yet.  I can go into the reasons for this with you if you like.  To understand why Croquet is notable, you have to understand what Croquet is.  Please note that even President Obama has seen the software.  That seems notable.


 * To answer your question [Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia] is a book about Squeak not written by Raab, but about his work. He was a major part of that community writing a majority of the software himself.  [INFOQ] is a third party publication covering his work on the Squeak VM for Android.  [Boston University Croquet workshop demonstrates revolutionary computer software] is a third-party review. [ECOOP 2003 - Object-Oriented Programming: 17th European ..., Volume 17] is a third-party acknowledgment on his work on traits which is a multiple inheritance implementation for Object Oriented programming. Itsmeront (talk) 20:15, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for wasting my time. I honestly can't tell if you don't understand our guidelines or just choose not to.  I looked at each of these sources and not one of them qualifies.  If you had read and understood our guidelines (even if you don't agree with them) you should have known that.  Not one does more than mention the subject's name.  That is the essence of a trivial mention and it is nowhere near enough to establish notability.  Msnicki (talk) 01:49, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I have already given you references in peer-reviewed journals about his work in computer graphics, software for the blind, etoys, tweak, Traits and Croquet which you say is not notable but that I belive qualify under " a number of scholarly publications with significant citation rates.". I have shown you a number of books that have referenced him.  In this case, I was trying to follow up with additional third-party sources that mention him.  We have already provided proof that Andreas was a major part of the Squeak Community, he was hired by Kay, was a the leader of the community and majority creator of the Squeak Software itself.  The published book on Squeak shows notability of the subject that he was so intimately connected with.  The other references were Third party coverage of him specifically.  It seems that what we disagree with is the number of citations.  By your own count, the citations on his papers put him in the 1% of published papers.  Hopefully, the other keeps and opinions on the necessity of over 1000 citations will be enough to vote you down because you are correct I certainly disagree with you.  Itsmeront (talk) 02:48, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Notability_(academics) (Specifically the first one) and further down the page at Notability_(academics).
 * As for books:
 * Books are not automatically reliable sources and only credible and authoritative books give evidence supporting notability. "Sources of evidence include recognized peer reviewed publications, credible and authoritative books, reputable media sources, and other reliable sources generally."
 * Any source being used to support a notability claim via WP:GNG needs to be WP:INDEPENDENT of the subject. That means books he contributed to, wrote, or thanked, do not count towards his notability through WP:GNG.  That being said, it can be used to support a notability claim via WP:Notability (academics), but then he needs to meet different criteria, any of those listed at WP:Notability (academics).
 * Some of these sources in the article are mis-characterized. For example, "Andreas Raab's work was extensively reviewed in Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres edited by Tracey Bowen, Carl Whithaus"  Unless he's mentioned under another name here, the book in question has a single mention of Andreas Raab, in the bibliography for one of the chapters where a paper on Croquet that he was one of the authors for was cited.
 * Peer-reviewed published journal articles aren't enough by themselves. There needs to be a considerable number of peer-reviewed journal publications, and enough citations on them overall to indicate the person has had a notable impact on their field. To give you an idea, the vast majority of people with PhDs are not notable, even though PhD programs require a novel contribution to their field.  A large number of college/university professors fail notability as well, even at research universities.  &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  19:15, 15 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. I am personally convinced that Raab's life is notable in the world of immersive/3D computing, but much of the evidence is not of a form which often carries much weight at AfD discussions. Two which I do find compelling, in that they provide sufficient facts to write a verifiable bio, are:
 * the Weekly Squeak interview with Raab. This is independent because it was done at a time when Raab did not have an official role at Squeak. His contributions to Squeak at that time were voluntary, he didn't have a seat on the board, and his full time job was Croquet.
 * the c't magazine obituary, from reputable German magazine publisher Heise. (machine translation to English )
 * If the article fails to be kept, there is plenty of new material that can be merged into the articles on Croquet, and to start a new article about Teleplace, not to mention posting a bio on the C2 wiki.
 * --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 09:04, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Interviews are almost always WP:PRIMARY and do not contribute to notability. This one is no exception.  Please see WP:Interviews for more.  It is also not independent.  This is the Squeak project interviewing one of their own contributors, even if it's true he didn't have an official role at the time.  Sample quote:  "You are one of the  most active Squeak developer [sic] out there."  It's not even a reliable source.  The Squeak project does not have a reputation for fact-checking and editorial control as we understand those terms here on WP.  Msnicki (talk) 09:58, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

With the greatest respect to my colleagues, the 1000-citation threshold is very difficult to defend. Looking at the ACM Digital Library, most cited paper by Dame Wendy Hall (past president ACM, knighted for her computer science research) appears to have 224 citations. That’s The Semantic Web Revisited, a fairly well-known paper. The most cited work by Andy van Dam has a citation count of 335: that’s the famous Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics. I get similar results in the ACM Digital Library for people like Andreas diSessa (Boxer) an Oliver Selfridge (Pandemonium). A bar that excludes these people is a bar set far, far too high.

In other fields, our standard is significant independent secondary coverage. That standard can be met with a very modest number of citations if those citations are substantial.

Keep: Significant contributions to the research literature and to development of a very significant system. MarkBernstein (talk) 17:26, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * It's not hard at all to defend the 1000 citations number. Our guidelines ask that the number be related to what is typically considered in tenure decisions and also that we're looking for more just the average professor.  Universities don't publish specific criteria for tenure.  But it's certainly possible to find out what it appears to take and that it's about 1000 citations.  For example, "The successful professors’ most cited papers from this period received, on average, over 1000 references. For the non-successful professors, the number was closer to 60." and "academics aspiring to be a Professor should aim to have their work cited 1000 times and or a H-index average for their discipline.".  Msnicki (talk) 18:59, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I hear you, but again -- look at the examples I gave. Hall's past-president of BCS and ACM, full professor, head of her faculty, FRS, etc etc. Van Dam pretty much founded computer graphics and has had tenure at Brown since their CS department became a department. Leslie Lamport (Turing Prize) has only one paper over 1000 citations in the ACM DL. Ben Shneiderman (dean of HCI) seems not to have a paper with 1000 citations, or even 500 citations, in the ACM DL. We must be applying different standards here -- these are among the most notable computer scientists of all time. MarkBernstein (talk) 19:36, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Another test that suggests we're on different wavelengths: I've been chiefly involved in ACM Hypertext/SIGWEB, but I've also been program chair for ACM Wikisym and ACM Web Science. These may be odd corners of computer science, but they're not completely esoteric -- especially not as we're all here on the web, writing links, on a wiki! In the 25-year history of ACM Hypertext, I don't think any paper has been cited 1000 times. I'm quite certain nothing in Wikisym has 1000 citations, and very much doubt anything from Web Science has made it that far. We're not just talking excluding the average tenured professor, we're excluding nearly everyone. By comparison, our standard for actors and actresses is quite modest, and our standard for porn stars and athletes is very modest. MarkBernstein (talk) 19:44, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know where you're getting your numbers. Wendy Hall's most-cited paper has 1522 citations, Andries van Dam's book has 2865 citations, Andreas diSessa's top paper has 1488 citations, Oliver Selfridge's top paper has 965 citations (pretty darn close to 1000).  I'll stick by the 1000 number as what it takes.  20:04, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * That's why I queried: I'm getting citation counts (as I said) from the ACM Digital Library. MarkBernstein (talk) 20:07, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, but you can now see that none of the people you were worried would be excluded if all we considered was citation counts would in fact be excluded. And that's before we consider whether notability might be established for some of these individuals the old-fashioned way, with multiple reliable independent secondary sources.    As for the "low bar" for porn stars and athletes, you're wrong.  The bar is the same:  multiple reliable independent secondary sources.  Msnicki (talk) 20:18, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete unless someone can show 2 strong RS. I went through most of the sources, and did not find any. Refs 3 2-4, 6, 9-12, 24-25 are from Squeak foundation or similar; 13, 14, 17, 18 do not mention him; 16, 22 are his own writings; 20 is just a mention in an article about someone else; 21 is not a reliable source (blog). I may have missed something, so if there are reliable sources, please point them out. And if found, the article should be reduced to what is available in those sources, with a few factual exceptions. As it is, most of the content of the article should be considered unsourced. LaMona (talk) 15:05, 17 May 2015 (UTC)


 * LaMona (talk) Thank you for your comments. Can you explain your reasoning for dismissing papers from Squeak Foundation.  References like 5 and [Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia] show clearly the importance of Squeak, and the other references by experts in the field, support the even larger later contributions to the field that Andreas Raab made to Squeak itself.  Surely you can accept these expert references as collaborating evidence for his contribution in the field.  Ref 13 is clear in the text.  Tweak was used extensively in version 1.0 of the Sophie Andreas was the primary author of Tweak.  Tweak was the primary platform of Sophie. Ref 14, is the original thesis, that is the basis of Kay, Reed, Smith, Raab work called Croquet.  That this is the original source is mentioned many times throughout the books, articles, and references.  Ref 17 does clearly mention Raab on the last line.  The workshop was to discuss Croquet at Boston University Croquet workshop demonstrates revolutionary computer software.  Ref 18 does clearly mention Raab as on of the principle architects of Croquet, it is Reeds thesis that became Croquet, the fact that Reed gives credit to Raab is certainly a valuable reference.  Ref 16 is his own writings but published in a peer reviewed journal.  Ref 22 demonstrates his close work with Alan Kay and Viewpoints institute (corroborated in other references) in a funded NSF proposal.  Ref 20 is a meeting of Boston Museum of Science Computing Revolutionaries event where Alan introduced Andreas Raab of the University of Magdeburg, Germany. Andreas is part of the Open Croquet project which show that both Alan considered his work on Croquet with Reed (one of the original coordinators of the UDP protocol, he do not like to be called the inventor of UDP, but that is what others call him, that is an integral part of the internet), Smith (the creator of the first first-person 3D simulator), and Raab, Revolutionary.  Ref 21 is an Expert Blog by a very distinguished scientist in his own right.  He is one of the main architects of eToys, and the One Laptop Per Child system for educating third world children.  [Etoys for One Laptop Per Child].  I think that it is clear based on your categorization of the references that you missed everything.  Itsmeront (talk) 17:45, 17 May 2015 (UTC)


 * You wrote "please point them out". As I wrote above, there is c't magazine and Weekly Squeak . The 2nd relies on my opinion (questioned above) that Squeak Foundation or similar is a reliable source (for reporting what Raab said.) --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 17:47, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment Answering both: Even if Squeak foundation were considered a neutral source, listings of wikis, individual emails, newsletters, etc. do not rise to RS level. So the email eulogies aren't considered RS (e.g., and nor are entries in the Squeak wiki -- user-contributed sources, like wikis, blogs, email, etc., are not RS. I wasn't able to determine the editorial policy of the German computer magazine, but the article is not enough on its own to confer notability. I have no doubt that Squeak is an important language, but this isn't an article about Squeak, it's an article about Raab, and the sources that support this have to be about Raab and show the notability of Raab. Mentioning him in articles about other notable people also is not enough for notability. You can state his accomplishments over and over, but you need reliable sources with substantial text about him to complete the article, and I just don't see that. Oddly enough, he isn't even named in the article on Squeak as a developer, and that would be easy to document and uncontroversial. LaMona (talk) 01:37, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi LaMona, thank you for your comments. To me the articles are supporting evidence of accomplishments for someone that worked hard on developing Squeak from the community of Squeak.  Raab is mentioned twice on the Squeak article you mentioned in the developers table block, and he was mentioned as the developer of Tweak as an addition to Squeak.  Understand that Tweak was not a different program, it was an interface option in Squeak.  The two are not different platforms, they are the same platform but different ways to build applications in Squeak.  Note that in Ref 2 on the Squeak page listed here as Ref 5, Raab is listed as the main contributor of Squeak for Windows.  He is the guy that made Squeak run on Windows.  This is evidence that he was hired early on by Kay to make Squeak a viable platform for people to use.  There is a ton of information that also connects Raab to Squeak, I can find more if you like.  He was a major developer on Squeak, the community credits him with writing more then 1/2 the code, that citation was done by looking at the code itself which is signed, by another expert source Goran Krampe.  I'd be happy to share more information about his credentials also.  The people that knew about his work that were listed as corroboration are not just bloggers or someone that can add to some site, they are all extremely well respected members of the community, and experts in their fields.  There is a lot of information that clearly connects him with Croquet, Tweak, Sophie using Tweak, eToys, interfaces for the blind and computer graphics, which makes him quite notable.  If your vote comes down to proving he was a major contributor to Squeak, and the the leader of the community, I can go find that for you.  It is certainly true so the truth should win out if you are discussing reliability.  Also note that Msnicki comment: in reference to insufficient RS she states "However, this Google scholar search shows a total citation count (also used in academia) of 979, which I will accept as sufficient for WP:ACADEMIC."  Just found another reference

"Squeak was created by a team that includes Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, John Maloney, Andreas Raab, Kim Rose, Scott Wallace. The hackers' site is http://www.squeak.org. The children, parents and teachers site is http://www.squeakland.org""[]. As I said there are probably more and I'll look for them if that will help. Itsmeront (talk) 03:42, 18 May 2015 (UTC)"
 * Comment: Possibly comparable bios The stub article for programmer Ian Bell was in this state when it survived its AfD discussion in 2010. As you can see, a passing mention in a broadsheet, and a magazine that carried 5 paragraphs of a talk by the programmer (certainly a primary source) might not have passed general notability guidelines, but the consensus was to keep (though consensus can change.) I think that a year or two's work on an influential game is as valuable as 10 to 15 years work on influential open source research. I think the of flexibility with the rules that was shown with the Bell bio might be in order here. While the Raab interview was published on the Squeak wiki, and we don't as a rule consider wikis to be reliable, there is no dispute about the authenticity of the interview. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 12:53, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. That is not a reason to keep.  Msnicki (talk) 15:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment. Okay, one final remark.  is absolutely correct re: our WP:BLP guidelines, which also apply to the recently deceased, Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources.  From further down the page at WP:BLPSPS, Never use self-published sources – including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets – as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject.  As LaMona points out, even if the article is kept, most the content would have to go anyway.  Msnicki (talk) 16:21, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 *  as sources of material about a living person Andreas Raab is not living Itsmeront (talk) 16:38, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * It says Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased), the material is not contentious, the only argument is about the quality of the source, not of it's accuracy. I have not seen a single argument that the material submitted in support of Raab notability is FALSE, the argument is that it's not properly sourced.  This policy does not apply to Raab. Itsmeront (talk) 17:09, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * With regard to: WP:Five Pillars, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia: ... Wikipedia is not a soapbox, an advertising platform, a vanity press, an experiment in anarchy or democracy, an indiscriminate collection of information, or a web directory. It is not a dictionary, a newspaper, or a collection of source documents. This article does not espouse some unpopular theory or make claims for social change or to support the status quo, it's not political and therefor not a soapbox article.  It is unlikely that a deceased person will benefit from an article about them, therefore; it is not advertising, it can not be vanity since Raab is not capable of being vain, it is not political so not espousing anarchy or democracy, this is not an article that display indiscriminate collection of information, nor a listing of content on the web.  It doesn't define a word, or is reporting on current events.  And this is not a collection a documents.  I see nothing in the Five Pillars that prevent the inclusion of this article in Wikipedia.  Itsmeront (talk) 17:19, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:NOTMEMORIAL &#8213; Padenton &#124;&#9993;  21:34, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * If you ignore all of Raab's accomplishments, his contribution to computer science, in graphics processing and ui development, including his work on UIs for the blind, his leading a community devoted to education and children, his participation in the development of Smalltalk and Object Oriented Technology, his participation in the creation of Croquet, developing a new protocol that will change how systems are synchronized, and his work to get funding for new advancements in the redevelopment of programming then maybe you could call this a memorial. Please note that Liz stated in a much more helpful way how to convert this document.  I listened and changed it.  She responded with a Keep above and said: "Although I think that there is still some room for improvement to have a fully fleshed out article, I think that this page meets the notability standard and the extraneous information, more suitable for a memorial page, has been removed." Itsmeront (talk) 21:58, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
 * This is all promotional spin, by you, who created an article for his friend 2 days after his death with the clear intention of memorializing him. Forgive me if I don't take you at your word when describing your friend's impact on computer science in such promotional language. &#8213; Padenton &#124;&#9993;  13:37, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Nobody is asking you to take my word for it. Do you have an argument against anything I have said?  Could you try to actually stick to the subject and be specific.  I will try to find whatever additional information you are looking for. Itsmeront (talk) 13:55, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Merge to Squeak. He is known for that and it is in sources obituary in German but I can't honestly say anything else he's done has been picked up in high-quality sources we should use for biographies. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  09:54, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Ritchie333, Thank you for your comments. I agree that Raab is mostly known for his work on Squeak / Tweak and Etoys, in the Squeak and Squeakland communities.  His work on Croquet is equally notable.  Notice it was picked up by [Lisa Rein] Lisa Rein is a co-founder of Creative Commons, a video blogger at On Lisa Rein's Radar, and a singer-songwriter-musician at lisarein.com. She is also a freelance journalist, writing for publications such as OpenP2P.com, XML.com, Wired News, CNET, Web Review, Web Techniques and many others.  She now works at the Washington Post.  Notice the in-depth coverage of Croquet in her article, also see the Boston University and Boston Museum articles which call Croquet Revolutionary.  Itsmeront (talk) 13:55, 19 May 2015 (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.