Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Antonio Zamora


 * 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 no consensus. The article obviously needs work. I noted, for example, at least one double entrance in the (too long) list of publications. Randykitty (talk) 12:43, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Antonio Zamora

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Seems to fail WP:PROF and WP:BIO by my reckoning. No prominent recognition by third-party sources that I can tell. jps (talk) 11:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - self-published books, non-notable fringe theories. Obscure consultant with mostly self-references and a few old papers. -- Orange Mike &#124;  Talk  12:48, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions.  94rain  Talk 13:49, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  94rain  Talk 13:49, 3 June 2019 (UTC)


 * keep I started the article on Dr Zamora, if you look at my contributions I have written and contributed on several historical computing topics. The fact that some articles are old does not make them any less significant; Zamoras contributions in the fields of chemical abstracts, automatic spelling correction and other work related to search engines (of which I consider myself an expert) is significant. I am a professional engineer (MIET) with one patent; Dr Zamora holds over a dozen patents that I am aware of, hardly an obscure person.

When I wrote the article I initially knew of his work on automatic spelling correction, see here for example
 * The SPEEDCOP project is rated "Highly Influential" on this site:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Automatic-Spelling-Correction-in-Scientific-and-Pollock-Zamora/9267e23dcc108bfc21b949cd0ea95b7181a82570

I had also come across his work on improving the Paice-Husk stemming algorithm. Zamora is referenced in the article on C D Paice the inventor of that significant algorithm.

I believe your attention to this article has been triggered by the heavy handed way in which on the same day that one person voiced the opinion that Dr Zamora's work on the Carolina Bays was fringe, an administrator removed the whole section. I believe it would have been much fairer to have allowed the section to be edited to offer alternative viewpoints. The Wikipedia article on the Carolina Bays, mentions two main theories but gives the impression that one theory is watertight; this is completely false, and the reason why others, including Dr Zamora have tried to look for other explanations. His paper on the subject was published in a peer reviewed journal. The Carolina Bays article even references Zamora.

There are many references online to his work on Spelling correction alone: 14th Information Retrieval Colloquium: Proceedings of the BCS https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358048&dl=ACM&coll=DL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0306457381900443 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/asi.4630350206 http://www.ijcttjournal.org/Volume4/issue-3/IJCTT-V4I3P134.pdf

His self publishing, apart from his amusing science fiction book, cover his early work investigating the Carolina Bays in his retirement before he wrote the paper for the peer reviewed journal.

I am willing to expand on any of the other sections and put a more balanced section back on his Carolina Bays research, since he is a serious engineer and scientist with a peer reviewed article on that subject. Ray3055 (talk) 21:48, 3 June 2019 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Mostly to give User:PWilkinson's comment greater visibility
 * Delete per nom and OrangeMike. -Roxy, the dog . wooF 12:31, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment: This looks like one of the cases where a rather elderly subject's recent work is so clearly non-notable (in this case, at least until the work receives a far higher level of recognition than it currently seems to have - or, indeed, may ever receive) that the far more likely claims to notability of their early-career work are being rather too readily discounted. GScholar shows the subject to have some highly cited publications from thirty to fifty years ago - with a strong possibility that these citation counts are themselves understated, as the areas in which the subject was working (most significantly, chemical information science and automated spelling correction) have developed so far since that work that was cutting-edge then is now just of historical significance. But notability is not temporary - if the subject's work was notable then, it is notable now. PWilkinson (talk) 18:07, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- RoySmith (talk) 13:25, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment; I have noted the previous Comment and I think that it sums it up accurately. He has several papers with citation counts of 100-300+ with a paper in 2010 citing his work on spelling correction from 30+ years ago. Because his papers were pre-internet it's hard to find the old CompuServe/IBM Forum mentions, but when I get time I will try to flesh the article out. I am going to try to address the original concerns raised which I understand are well founded. (1) I am going to edit the lead section further to more accurately describe the content. (2) I will also remove the Books section since these are all self-published and having a separate section gives undue emphasis to them. (3) I will include his recent work on the Carolina Bays, but append to the bottom of the career section rather than give it a separate section as previously, again to avoid undue emphasis. I will make it clear that the theory is not widely accepted and that many other theories have been proposed. (4) I will add citations to his paper and papers detailing other theories as well as a clear link to the main Carolina bays article. I will also put the books in the refs section, but without links to any site that might sell them. I hope that will make the page more acceptable to all. I have little time (the original article and several others were written in my winter holidays!) but will try to complete this in the next week. Ray3055 (talk) 16:36, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak keep per WP:PROF. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:39, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   17:13, 19 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Draftify: Based on previous comments in this thread – namely from – it seems like the subject is plausibly notable, but this alone doesn't mean a subject's article should be on the mainspace. If draftified, the article would have time to potentially be shored up to establish notability, perhaps through WP:PROF.  TheTechnician27   (Talk page)  23:08, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. There is some evidence of notability. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:23, 21 June 2019 (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.