Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Austrian Operations Research Society


 * 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 Association of European Operational Research Societies. Davewild (talk) 14:11, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Austrian Operations Research Society

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Tiny society, no evidence at all that this may even approach notability. No independent sources (only source is homepage). Does not meet WP:ORG or WP:GNG. Randykitty (talk) 17:04, 8 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Can we avoid to have this discussion over and over again each time a new national Operations Research Society is added? See Articles for deletion/Croatian Operational Research Society and in particular the last comment (Keep all). Bfortz (talk) 17:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment That AfD was closed "no consensus" with very little participation. This society has (according to their own website) 115 members. There are no sources. Pray tell me why this is notable and why we should have articles on all these tiny societies. --Randykitty (talk) 17:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete - no references at all, let alone any reliable sources.  Even if it did, the subject is unlikely to meet WP:ORG notability criteria.--Rpclod (talk) 23:09, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are references. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:13, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * redirect to parent Association of European Operational Research Societies. The organization does decent job it its area. 115 members is not a drawback. We have punk bands of 3 and less with articles. It is notable because it coordinates research and does other things in a major field of science on a national scale. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:13, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment I can certainly live with a redirect. As for the other comments, I gingerly suggest that being a member of a band is not the same thing as being a member of a society, the difference seems obvious to me. And I don't really know of any scientific society that "coordinates research". All that such societies do is organize meetings where members exchange ideas and report on their work and, sometimes, publish a newsletter of scientific journal. --Randykitty (talk) 10:32, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you think meetings and idea exchange are for? If you think they are for idle curiosity, while I think they are for coordinating the research. "Coordinating" does not necessarily mean rigid centralized planning. Also, it seems that you did not read the article you voted for deletion: "working groups have been formed" is definitely coordination in my limited understanding of English language. So is publishing overviews, roadmaps etc. BTW, you surely noticed that I am not voting for a separate page; I am voting against deletion. I do agree that all these activities are routine, and I don't see WP:GNG satisfied. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:03, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Society meetings are absolutely not for "coordinating research". You go to a scientific meeting to keep informed about the state of your field and what is currently being done. "Working groups" is just more of the same, but on a more focussed subject. That's not "coordinating", unless you really have a definition of coordinating that is much larger than the rest of humanity has... Believe me, I have participated in many scientific meetings (including of "working groups") and quite a few meetings designed to coordinate research (in the sense of hammering out collaborative projects or deciding which projects should get funded or not) and those are very different kinds of meetings. --Randykitty (talk) 19:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I admit that "research coordination" may have a technical meaning I am not aware of. Still, the AORS does carry out some useful activities. Or not? Ca it be I am conflating the terms 'coordination' and 'collaboration'? "Working groups": is this collaboration ? In general, you start making me wonder whether the scientific societies are of any use at all? Say, what does ACM do that AORS does not (even in smaller scale)? What are the criteria to look for when judging scientific societies besides WP:GNG? Staszek Lem (talk) 21:08, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The criteria are WP:ORG and WP:GNG. "Useful" or "worthy" has nothing to do with it. I haven't looked, but I'd be amazed if there are no sources on the Association for Computing Machinery. Yes, in principle the types of activities that the two societies engage in are similar, but as I said, that has nothing to do with notability. And working groups in such societies are not even "collaboration". Collaboration is if you and I decide to jointly carry out a research project, or if you provide help with some aspects of my project or the other way around. Scientific societies (and working groups) really are all about information exchange. Some of the largest societies may also have the means and cloud to lobby government agencies and some even do, but if they do, that would with certainty result in coverage in reliable sources. --Randykitty (talk) 21:32, 11 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - Exactly for the reasons given by David Eppstein in the previous debate, EURO and IFORS are umbrella for independent national societies in an important academic field, namely:
 * "Each of these is recognized by the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (the umbrella international organization for this discipline) as the major national society for their country — see the IFORS list of national societies (and in the case of Italy, see the Wikipedia article for the mismatch between what IFORS calls the society and what we call it — it's the same society under a different name). I don't want to suggest that any academic society that calls itself a national-level society is notable, but I think the ones in major disciplines (e.g. the topic of entire university departments) that are internationally recognized by their peer societies as the main society for their country are notable. As for the invocations of WP:BRANCH above: I think it would be a mistake to merge these into the "parent" organization. They are not branches of IFORS (the way AEORS seems to be). They are independent societies that happen to hold memberships in IFORS, in the same way that people and corporations might happen to hold memberships in these societies. In particular, I think that recognition by IFORS should count towards notability as being independent of the subject, because these societies are separate entities rather than being part of IFORS. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 24 February 2015 (UTC)"
 * Bfortz (talk) 07:23, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment At this point, the AEORS article contains a list of its members (kind of going against the spirit -or even the letter- of WP:NOTADIRECTORY). Expanding that list with a one-line description of each society's particulars would augment the AEORS article. Just look at the different articles on the national societies, they are basically identical, repeating the same information, just changing a date here and there and the organization's name. Much better to condense that into a list in the AEORS article. Or, if you invoke BRANCH, move all of it to the IFORS article. --Randykitty (talk) 10:32, 9 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Italy has about 60 million inhabitants, and the Italian Operations Research Society has 200 members, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Operations_Research_Society. Austria has about 9 million inhabitants, so 110 members is not a tiny value. Additionally observe that the Italian academics in Operations Research are (Source: Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, http://hubmiur.pubblica.istruzione.it/web/universita/home ): 44 full professors, 43 associate professors and 50 assistant professors (137 in total), which shows the representativeness of the Italian society. (Silvano Martello, full professor of Operations Research, University of Bologna, http://www.or.deis.unibo.it/staff_pages/martello/cvitae.html ) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.170.82.103 (talk) 13:51, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment So do you feel that a society from Liechtenstein only needs two members to be notable? And it would be really weird if a learned society would not have members that are professors and such. Even if each and every one of those professors would be notable, that still would not make the society notable. All you are showing is that the Italian society is as lacking in notability as the Austrian one. (And please note that notability in the WP sense has nothing to do with "worthy", "deserving", or "important"). --Randykitty (talk) 14:00, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Austria-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  19:40, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  19:41, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. &#8213;  Padenton &#124;&#9993;  19:41, 10 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Redirect to AEOR. I still believe that national-level organizations for major academic disciplines such as this one should be notable, but in this case I can't find any sources giving enough nontrivial detail about the organization and its history to support an article. It doesn't appear to be in the Wiley Encyclopedia (as many of its sister organizations are) and even its own web site doesn't have much. We can source its membership in IFORS to the IFORS web site, but that's only a directory listing and doesn't tell us much about how the society operates. With no sources, what can we use to build a properly-sourced article? —David Eppstein (talk) 23:28, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
 * There is some recognition but it is not notable enough. Support redirect to Association of European Operational Research Societies.  Occult Zone  (Talk • Contributions • Log) 03:07, 11 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.