Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benjamin C. Pierce


 * 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, defaulting to keep. Can&#39;t sleep, clown will eat me 07:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Benjamin C. Pierce
vanity page of non-notable college professor —optikos 16:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep He's the author of at least 3 books (and 3 LFCS report series) - search  on his name (linking isn't working for me).  Compare that with Cherie Priest above whose article was restored on deletion review. Also 180 hits on Google Scholar (includes citations etc).  Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk  22:19, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * comment Perhaps he publishes a few papers per year in academic journals. Perhaps he has published a few books.  But so have 10,000 other college professors over the years. I guess Wikipedia is a list of (rather short and stubby) CVs of all college professors now. Bring on the additional 10,000 articles!  The real question is how well is he known outside his circle of friends, such as to the general public.  Compare Benjamin C. Pierce to Donald Knuth who has won ACM awards, C. A. R. Hoare who is well-known enough to the Queen to be knighted as well as earn an ACM award, Edsger Dijkstra who has a famous graph-theoretic algorithm named after him as well as being the epicenter of the anti-GOTO campaign as well as earning the Turing Award.  Contrast that will Benjamin C. Pierce's article which generally says "I have moved.  I find this list of topics interesting.  (with the implied: Please grant fund my future research on these topics over at the new institution.)"   There is a world of patently obviously difference between notable professors and non-notable professors. —optikos 13:59, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Clearly he's not a Knuth, Hoare or Dijsta, but that is setting the bar way too high (not all writers are Dickens, Joyce or Mahfuz either).  And to be honest, I think that very minor writers of popular fiction are getting articles accepted much more easily than academics, despite both being in the writing business.  WP:Notability (academics) says The person has published a significant and well-known academic work. P.S. If there's anything wrong specifically with the Pierce article it can be edited by anyone. And obviously only a very small proportion of college professors have or will have articles.   Dl yo ns 493   Ta lk  14:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Being full professor at the University of Pennsylvania (which is a university, not a college) and having Google Scholar citation numbers in the hundreds makes him notable enough for me. up+l+and 14:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as per Optikos. Lazybum 07:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as per Optikos. :) Dlohcierekim 14:02, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak keep, per Uppland (quite a record, definitely), but I'm not impressed at claims that the article "can be improved" when it's been marked for cleanup since December 2005. Mango juice talk 16:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete. The subject is on the cusp of WP:BIO, but this article has been a stub for over 18 months.  That doesn't bode well for it ever being properly cited per WP:V. There's not even enough info to evaluate whether he might pass the proposed WP:PROF. -- Satori Son 13:21, 10 September 2006 (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.