Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arthur Irving Andrews


 * 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.  Sandstein  09:57, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Arthur Irving Andrews

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Just not finding enough to justify having this article (i.e. fails GNG). It current is a list of place she taught and a few publications he contributed to. In Googling, I did find that he has a book credit, An American Professor in Prague but that's about the extent of what I found with my (admittedly cursory) search. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  02:54, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep full professor at multiple institutions, satisfies WP:PROF. In addition, author, scholar, contributor to academic articles. Satisfies need to keep on multiple different criteria. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 17:05, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:12, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment Being a full professor explicitly does not satisfy WP:ACADEMIC. Nor does publishing articles and books in itself make someone notable. Having said so, I realize that it might be difficult to find online sources on somebody who worked almost a century ago. Google is bound to be useless here. So I find myself in disagreement with both the nom and Cirt... Guess that comes down to a  neutral  then... :-) One note to the nom, though: if you performed an "(admittedly cursory) search", you should (re-)read WP:BEFORE... --Randykitty (talk) 19:23, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * - I may be ignorant on this, but in what way does serving as full professor at multiple institutions satisfy WP:PROF? Author/scholar/contributor isn't itself reason to keep, either, as almost all academics satisfy that. As he seems to fail the GNG I'm not sure what else to look for. - cursory as in I didn't pour through many pages of Google Hits. I'm familiar with BEFORE -- did you find something you feel I should have? --&mdash;  Rhododendrites  talk  |  20:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Frankly, didn't even try to find something. It's just that a cursory search is not very much what BEFORE requires of a nom... --Randykitty (talk) 21:02, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Poor choice of words. I guess I'm just thinking in comparison to some of the other extremely thorough digging I've done for other AfDs. Due diligence was done here, but there's more searching that could be done is all I'm saying. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  21:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK! More is indeed always possible :-) --Randykitty (talk) 21:24, 14 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. Minimal cites on GS. WP:Prof not passed. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:17, 14 December 2013 (UTC).
 * NOTE: Please actually examine the sources at . There is a whole collection of papers dedicated to him: here, and here, and here. There are multiple publications listed at Google Scholar. There are multiple other sources as well that are easily found in links, above. Please do your due diligence here before commenting, thanks. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 06:20, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, your first three links are different pages about the same thing -- the Tufts collection. Does two feet of shelf space (~half a shelf) in a library confer notability on its own? Multiple publications -- ok, so he's not a slouch, but where are the sources about him? --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  15:21, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * How about this and this? James500 (talk) 07:50, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Multiple publications are not enough. Multiple citations are needed and they aren't there. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:36, 15 December 2013 (UTC).
 * Those sources are not by him, they are about him. Read them again more closely. James500 (talk) 13:09, 15 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete Publishing is what academics (and authors) do and in and of itself that doesn't make them notable. What we need is evidence that these writings have made an impact. I searched the Web of Science for citations to his work. My access goes back to 1900 and WoS includes many paper-only sources, although its coverage in history/law and before 1950 is only sketchy. I found just 1 (one) citation to AI Andrews. Given when he worked and the fields I worked in, I'd be willing to accept notability at far lower levels than we usually do, but this really is much less than can be expected from somebody who is notable, even for these fields and in that time period. --Randykitty (talk) 11:29, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. Seems to satisfy GNG. He has received significantcoverage in two biographical dictionaries which discuss his life story. That is all that is required. But in addition to that they also respectively describe him as "prominent" and "eminent". James500 (talk) 13:09, 15 December 2013 (UTC) Vote striken because this seems to be a lost cause (though I don't think this article should be deleted) James500 (talk) 03:56, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Where in the block of text below does it discuss his life story? Or do you have better access to this book than I do through the link above: "ANDREWS, Arthur Irving. Cambridge, Mass.; b. Providence, R. I., March 27, 1878; s. Frederick William and Eliabeth Heard Howard. A.; A.B., Brown Univ., 1901; Student Univ. of Wis., 1901-02; Ph.D., Harvard Univ., 1905 (see Vol. II)." --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  15:21, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * In all fairness that is a biography and the words "see Vol. II" imply that there is more. James500 (talk) 16:03, 15 December 2013 (UTC) I should also point out that if there is any reason to suspect that snippet view is witholding relevant text, the onus is on those arguing for deletion to check a physical copy of the book. James500 (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2013 (UTC) Volume 2 is here . It clearly contains more information than the passage you set out above. James500 (talk) 00:11, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I see no mention of him on the second link, and the first is a list of positions he's held. Once again, this is not significant coverage by any definition. --&mdash;  Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  |  03:46, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The second link is the text that immediately follows the first. It is possible to manipulate snippet view so as to extract consecutive portions of text. If you don't believe me, go and look at a physical copy of the book. As regards "not significant ... by any definition", I suggest you google "proper meaning fallacy". James500 (talk) 04:46, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Some more sources you might like to consider: . James500 (talk) 17:13, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * these sources are negligible: they just announce minor appointments. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:30, 15 December 2013 (UTC).
 * How do you define negligible? How do you define minor? Why should anyone else be interested in your subjective opinions about importance? If these appointments are not important, why are mentioned at all? Why are they discussed at any kind of length? James500 (talk) 00:50, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * There is extensive discussion of such matters on the talk page of WP:Prof and its archives. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:10, 16 December 2013 (UTC).
 * (1) If it is not on the talk page for GNG, it is unlikely to be relevant. (2) You can't expect other users to plow through those archives to find something that isn't included in the wording of the guidelines. (3) Is that position one to which an average ordinary person (who I assume to be an intellectual mediocrity to lack connections) could ever dream of being appointed to in that day and age? (4) I don't think this article is more objectionable than the stuff we let in under ATHLETE and some of the articles on celebrities and popular culture. James500 (talk) 01:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Editors are expected to be familiar with the policy guidelines of the area in which they edit. If they are not then they are more likely to make poor edits. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:19, 16 December 2013 (UTC).
 * (1) Talk pages and archives are not policy guidelines. (2) VAGUEWAVE. James500 (talk) 03:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete for lack of evidence of passing WP:PROF. The complete lack of believable references is also a big problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:23, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Why are the four sources that I have identified not believable?James500 (talk) 06:29, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * They are believable. It's just that, like Xxanthippe said, they are just short notices about positions (not awards or something). Nothing special about that. I agree with your ATHLETE remark, but, hey, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS (and that's why I don't edit in that area). As for the Who's Who sources, this is Marquis Who's Who. Before attaching any weight to that, I'd like to know whether at that time it was any more reliable as an indicator of notability than it is nowadays (that is, hardly...) --Randykitty (talk) 07:17, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry, those are perfectly believable but not sufficiently in-depth. The complaint about believability was aimed at the only thing currently in the "references" section of the article, a claim that it was derived from an unspecified article in an edition of an encyclopedia that was published before most of the accomplishments listed in our article. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:57, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that someone should check the 1926 edition of the New International Encyclopedia. I suspect that the author of the WP article meant to refer to that edition and used the wrong template by mistake. I note in particular that that encyclopedia contained a lot of biography and that it was published in the same year as the book by Herringshaw. James500 (talk) 18:59, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As per your request, there is a review of the preceding volume of the book by Robert Cecil Cook on JSTOR here. UnfornatelyI do not have access at the moment, so I can't tell you what it says.
 * Could you explain what the connection between Thomas William Herringshaw, the American Publishers' Association, R C Cook and the Robert C Cook Company (or is it the Robert C Cook Press of the McQuiddy Printing Company) on the one hand, and Marquis on the other, is? And could you tell me what your source is? James500 (talk) 13:03, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is aimed at comparison with articles that exist despite failing notability guidelines.I do not think that reasoning can be applied to comparisonswith articles that clearly pass an SNG such as ATHLETE. I think it is a valid argument to point out that notability guidelines appear to have double standards that do not appear to make sense. If I was to apply the logic of ATHLETE, being a professor at Charles University would presumably be enough, because it was at that time considered to be one of the best universities. James500 (talk) 14:52, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Point taken. But that the jocks have a too low bar for inclusion, does not mean that we have to do the same in the rest of WP. Yes, there's a double standard. But it's not because WP:PROF is too strict, it's because ATHLETE is too permissive. It leads to loads of stub articles on obscure sports people that will never develop and probably never even contain the date that they passed away (because that generally is decades after people were interested in their exploits. Anyway, that is all beside the point at hand here, whether this person meet WP:PROF or, failing that, WP:GNG. --Randykitty (talk) 16:41, 17 December 2013 (UTC)


 * This source appears to contain a biography and bibliography. James500 (talk) 00:29, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete -- I cannot find him in the one work cited in the article. I may not be see all that James is in Google books citations, but I am seeing very little to establish that he was more than a mere lecturer who wrote a few articles that have sunk without trace.  Peterkingiron (talk) 00:17, 24 December 2013 (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.