Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Benjamin E. Park


 * 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. Only one person wanted to keep; the remainder felt there were insufficient independent sources to sustain an article. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  20:32, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Benjamin E. Park

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Assistant professor with h-index of 3 fails WP:PROF. PRODs denied. Abductive (reasoning) 04:06, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete, WP:TOOSOON. For this area of academia, I would expect book reviews and book holdings to be more important than journal papers and citations, but I can find nothing of significance for either type of scholarly contribution. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:21, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete. No pass of WP:Prof, WP:Too soon. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:31, 2 March 2017 (UTC).
 * Comment - Even with the misreading that any potential bio subject must "pass wp:PROF", Park indeed would pass such a hurdle. I reprint the notability guideline at wp:PROF below:"Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable. Academics/professors meeting none of these conditions may still be notable if they meet the conditions of WP:BIO or other notability criteria, and the merits of an article on the academic/professor will depend largely on the extent to which it is verifiable. Before applying these criteria, see the General notes and Specific criteria notes sections, which follow. 1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. 2. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level. 3. The person is or has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE). 4. The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions. 5. The person holds or has held a named chair appointment or distinguished professor appointment at a major institution of higher education and research (or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon). 6. The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed academic post at a major academic institution or major academic society. 7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity. 8. The person is or has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area. 9. The person is in a field of literature (e.g., writer or poet) or the fine arts (e.g., musician, composer, artist), and meets the standards for notability in that art, such as WP:CREATIVE or WP:MUSIC."To reiterate the above, Park would need pass but one criterion above nonetheless passes for _ i. _ prolific scholarship published at leading publishers in his field; _ ii. _ editing at the only Mormon Studies review journal, Mormon Studies Review; at the oldest Mormon studies journal, Dialogue; and chairing a symposium of the Mormon History Association; _ iii. _ for being awarded the J. Talmage Jones Award of Excellence of the Morm. Hist. Assoc.; _ iv. _ for advocating for a certain understanding of a type of Mormon studies and to be known for this. link--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 00:04, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete Park received recognition from the Mormon History Association for a paper written by a graduate student when a graduate student, but this is not the stuff that academic notability is made of. It is not clear to me he has yet published any books, which for historians is generally considered an important step. Park may one day be among the experts in Mormon history/theology, but right now he is just an emerging scholar, and has not yet reached the level of notability for an academic.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:44, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * He has published book chapters, reviews, etc., to date; see here.--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 00:33, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Just publishing stuff does not contribute to notability. It has to be cited by others, which in this case it isn't. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:36, 9 March 2017 (UTC).
 * Funny you so argue 'cos the _ i.st _ criterion @ wp:AUTH is to be promiscuously cited by peers. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=20&q=%22Benjamin+E.+Park%22&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 --Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 02:08, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete Subject isn't notable. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 20:58, 5 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete - we almost always delete untenured assistant professors. Bearian (talk) 02:57, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - No need to delete article about author simply because he is a non-tenured instructor at a college; alas, even an independent scholar may be notable, per the guidelines. In Park's case he is a well-known author within his discipline, which indeed is a notable one (lest WP subtly discriminates for ideological reasons, a no-go per wp:BIAS. (For relative population of Mormons vis-a-vis Jews--the latter group known for its study remaining somewhat ghettoized from the rest of the academy as recently as the early 20th century--see Harold Bloom link): "[...J]ews form less of a tenth of one percent of the world's population. That is about the proportion of the Mormons..."; Pew Research Center (link): "Mormons make up 1.7% of the American adult population, a proportion that is comparable in size to the U.S. Jewish population.") Park is a renowned author of scholarship within his discipline with plenty of reviews and sourcing otherwise, per wp:BIO, wp:AUTHOR (see Talk:Benjamin_E._Park) and the plain text at wp:PROF says it is but an alternate path designed for, say, a renowned chair in some field of study to merit a WP biography despite a lack of much sourcing about such an individual. See the summary at the bottom PROF's lede: "This guideline is independent from the other subject-specific notability guidelines, such as WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:AUTH etc. and is explicitly listed as an alternative to the General Notability Guideline. It is possible for an academic not to be notable under the provisions of this guideline but to be notable in some other way under one of the other subject-specific notability guidelines. Conversely, if an academic is notable under this guideline, his or her failure to meet either the General Notability Guideline or other subject-specific notability guidelines is irrelevant." --Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 23:09, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
 * weak Keep I have been convinced that his scholarship is at a level that makes the article worth keeping. For what it is worth, a lot of Park's contributions, especially those that are listed as forthcoming in the source provided by Hodgdon's secret garden are not related to Mormon history at all per se, but to early 19th-century American religious/intelectual history.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:28, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment Generally one has to be an editor-in-chief of an academic journal for it to confer notability. Thus J. Spencer Fluhman the editor-in-chief of the Mormon Studies Review is notable. To give another example Jack Welch the editor-in-chief of BYU Studies Quaterly passes notability for that, although he also holds a named professorship at BYU and probably could pass just on an assesment of his scholarship alone. Or say Marie Cornwall is notable for being the editor of the journal of sociology and religion, although an administrator still unilaterally deleted the article on her at one point. Generally heading a roundtable of an academic journal, or being on the editing staff other than the editor-in-chief is not considered to show one is a notable academic. This does make it harder to show people are notable in emerging fields. However I think much of the reaction to this article is driven by the fact it does not give a good sense of the works Park has produced. The fact that his book chapter on Benjamin Franklin is in a book co-edited by Paul Kerry, a person who pushed to get the article on him removed from Wikipedia, may not bode well for this article. A listing of his major scholarly works in the article would probably boost confidence that he might have made a scholarly impact.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:39, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment If I read the google scholar citation list right, his most cited work has been cited 11 times. However with so much work in history appearing in books, this may not cover his work very well. Still, I have to admit it seems on the low side.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:53, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * cmt - Only eleven times? ... Would WP be improved by a filled-out bio of Park? Unequivocally yes, owing to Park's so often being mentioned in print, the basis and definition of being "of note" and likewise of WP article creation under wp:BIO. (See "The Mormon Moment" in the WaPo, google results eg for "'benjamin e park' & (for example) 'site:washingtonpost.com' here, google search 'news' results for "'ben park' & 'mormon'" here, "'benjamin park' & 'site:sltrib.com' here; "'ben park' & 'site:sltrib.com' here, and "'Benjamin e park' & 'site:sltrib.com' here, etc.--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 23:53, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
 * academics whose articles are kept under #C1 usually have multiple works with hundreds or thousands of citations each. Here we have one work with 11 citations. And most of the 11 appear to be either undergraduate theses or self-citations; only three of them are listed in Google scholar as being journal papers by other authors. For evidence that an academic work is making a significant impact, that is indeed a very small number. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:12, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
 * reply - David Eppstein, Quote me ONE LINE within wp:TOOSOON that says Park isn't notable. To quote from it: "WP:BASIC acts to remind editors of the caveats at the general notability guideline, in its restating that an individual is presumed to be notable 'if they have been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject', and expands that 'if depth-of-coverage is not substantial, then multiple less-than-substantial independent sources may be needed to prove notability'. It re-states that coverage 'must be more than trivial and must be reliable'." This guideline says an actor must garner sufficient reliable secondary source mentions. Period. And, in the present case, Park already has these! Since WP's guidelines is its "Supreme Court," the SOLE WAY for a !vote to carry weight is for it to abide by these guidelines meanings. The off-kilter, credentialist criteria your contention stands on doesn't matter per the guidelines and WP's guidelines would need change before such contentions as yours can hold sway. Park, a scholarly reviewer of others scholarship within Mormon studies, akin to a critic, has had his knowledge and opinions quite often related to general readership audiences by journalists as well as their being debated in various venues by his peers. Oi! Even wp:JOURNALIST redirects to wp:AUTH. Is Peggy Stack, bar none the premiere secular reporter on the Mormon beat, not notable because she has only published journalism and not a book?--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 20:28, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * I found this article at Pantheos which mentions a work by Park, although it does not in my view make clear what work is being mentioned.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:59, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   17:48, 10 March 2017 (UTC)
 * rply - It's here: "Dr. Park’s “The Book of Mormon and Early America’s Political and Intellectual Tradition” [Edited: pdf link here - Hodgdn] justly praises the books as important and worthwhile. He’s right, in my judgment, on both counts. Professor Park, who teaches history at the University of Missouri, is also an associate editor of the Maxwell Institute’s massively revamped Mormon Studies Review (the successor to, or replacement of, the FARMS Review, which I edited from 1988 through June 2012). ..." -- Daniel C. Peterson Link "... A particular focus of discussion has been an essay by Benjamin E. Park, “The Book of Mormon and Early America’s Political and Intellectual Tradition,” which reviews two books relating the Book of Mormon to American history. The online discussion has often been exasperatingly hard to follow (jumping back and forth from various blogs to various facebook pages, etc.), and sometimes just plain vexing, dispiriting, even unseemly as the ratio of light to heat has shrunk. ... Terryl Givens and David Holland, who have defended Park’s goals, though not necessarily his phrasing, agree (unlike some voices at the new Maxwell Institute) that “Mormon Apologetics” is a useful and intellectually respectable enterprise." -- Ralph C. Hancock Link  "I suppose I should be happy that no one has undertaken in any substantial way to dispute my reading of Benjamin Park’s review of worthy books by David Holland and Eran Shalev [Ed.: (Results for WP mentions of Shalev are here.) in the recent Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, or my analysis of the significance of this review in relation to interventions by David Holland and by Terryl Givens, and to an attempt at self-clarification by Mr. Park himself. I should be satisfied, no doubt, that the essence of my argument has not only withstood criticism, but in fact that it seems to have been judged to invulnerable by any who might have been inclined to gainsay it.  So color me satisfied… up to a point.  What is disappointing (though I have no right to be surprised by it), is how the arguments concerning “apologetics” as allegedly opposed to “Mormon Studies” (and vice versa) go on just as before, sometimes after the slightest nods in the direction of my article  (for or against it). ..." - Ralph C. Hancock Link Link


 * Delete not yet a notable academic. Uhooep (talk) 13:44, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete -- Just a young academic who deems to have published nothing so far. Peterkingiron (talk) 18:42, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
 * cmt - Park's pair of books in the works (which are not quote done, apparently, with their peer review, etc., prior to publication?) are not concerning Mormon studies but pertain to some more general field of American history. What's the worst that could happen? His books end up so sub-par as to be un-publishable by an academic press and WP ends up with a blp of a crank nevertheless widely quoted in the media? Donald Trump-like, some worry some heathen might slip through WP's gate? wp:PROF clearly not applying, What guideline or guidelines are you arguing from? Wp:Ignore all rules? As it is, Wp:BIO clearly indicates Park is notable; indeed Park would be considered notable were he solely published through his blogging (see wp:WEB), owing to verifiable, many of them main stream media quotes of his commentary within one of his main to0-date sub-discipline of Mormon studies as well as to the heated opinions which go back and forth among Mormon studies scholars and other Latter-day Saint opinion makers with regard to Park's ideas at verifiable self-published blogs (see wp:BLOGS). If Park cannot be seen as a notable commentator within Mormon studies, How could anyone? Certainly not even a media darling such as John Dehlin, known through his social activistism accomplished via his independent scholarship and blogging. The present discussion's anomalousness with WP's foundational principles provides a case history concerning the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia and its crowd sourcing. What else, if not creeping credentialism, should lead otherwise competent contributors to make the non-arguements, "Geez this guy innt no full professor. He ain't writ no book."
 * To quote Wikipedia's "Criticism of Wikipedia": "Nicholson Baker considers the notability standards arbitrary and essentially unsolvable: 'There are quires, reams, bales of controversy over what constitutes notability in Wikipedia: nobody will ever sort it out.' Criticizing the "deletionists", Baker then writes: 'Still, a lot of good work—verifiable, informative, brain-leapingly strange—is being cast out of this paperless, infinitely expandable accordion folder by people who have a narrow, almost grade-schoolish notion of what sort of curiosity an on-line encyclopedia will be able to satisfy in the years to come.'"--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 18:08, 15 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment I think if Park is found notable, it will be not as an academic per se, but as a public intelectual, someone who publishes his intelectual work in public forums such as blogs, who writes articles for the general press, who writes articles for the Washington Post combining his academic expertise with a willingness to comment on current events (at times in ways that leave him seeming uninformed but more just rash when he attacks organizations for not making a statement on an issue that they then make a statement on shortly later). The sourcing for this will have to go through and meet some level of general notability guidelines. I am not sure people have even begun to tease out that issue well. We need sources by others that show following what Park says to pass that threshold.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, John Pack Lambert. There are a few references to Park in books (per "'Benjamin E. Park' & 'Mormon'" at Google Books, including:
 * Non-Mormon Mormon studies luminary John G. Turner references Park's "'Build, Therefore, Your Own World': Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Smith, and American Antebellum Thought," in Turner's 2016 book "The Mormon Jesus," Harvard Univ. Press, link
 * Prominent Mormon speculative lay theologian Terryl Givens gives Park thanks in Given's seminal 'Wrestling the Angel' (Oxford University Press) and cites Park: "...see Benjamin E. Park, “Reasonings Sufficient': Joseph Smith, Thomas Dick, and the Context(s) of Early Mormonism'"here.
 * Givens and Matthew Grow cite Park's "Parley Pratt's Autobiography as Personal Restoration and Redemption" in Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism, Oxford Univ. Press [...Main stream media mentions of Park's opinions--as opposed to the substantial number of general audience articles and essays published by Park--include]:
 * "[Harold] Bloom holds up as the legacy of Joseph Smith 'betrayed' by modern Mormonism is a fantasy glimpse of the moment of the religion’s inception. Mormon historian Ben Park...." Joanna Brooks of Religious Dispatches
 * "'To Whom Shall We Go: From Apologetics to Mormon Studies: The Case of Benjamin Park — with Reference to Dan Peterson, David Holland, and Terryl Givens'," (essay's title) by Ralph Hancock at Patheos
 * Hancock's follow-up essay there.
 * There is a lot of back and forth on this topic, too. E.g., see Patheos piece here
 * " ...such interdenominational alliances, but according to Benjamin Park..." New Humanist, United Kingdom
 * "Some have aimed their reprimands at the choir for accepting the invitation. Benjamin Park, a history professor at Sam Houston State University and an associate editor for an academic journal called the Mormon Studies Review,  wrote a post on his personal blog shortly after the choir’s announcement. 'I am disappointed[... ... ...] To my friends who have been the direct targets of Trump’s attacks: even though the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is a missionary arm for the LDS Church, I hope you know that their appearance at Trump’s inauguration does not reflect my values or interests[...]'" Newsweek
 * "As Mormon historian Benjamin Park explained to me, 'Mormonism’s attachment to the Republican Party has largely been centered on the conservative values of the religious right.'" Slate
 * "...Park, a historian of American religion and a Latter-day Saint, offered an apology..." Slate
 * "In a commentary published in The Washington Post, Sam Houston State University assistant history professor Benjamin E. Park wrote about the church's history of speaking about against religious tyranny." Daily Herald
 * "Walker was a 'watershed in the LDS Church's historical conscience,' wrote Benjamin E. Park" Peggy Stack in the SLTrib
 * Stack reviews Terryl and Fiona Givens's ''The God Who Weeps, quoting Park here
 * "In a blog post, Benjamin Park, an assistant history professor at Sam Houston State University in Texas, tallied a baker's dozen of 'surprising facts' he gleaned from Prince's book...." SLTrib's Peggy Stack
 * "...some LDS researchers are celebrating the new direction. ... 'By following the example of the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City, which engages with broader academic disciplines and communities, the Maxwell Institute will provide a much better service for the average member as well as the academic world' [said Park]" "Shake-up hits BYU's Mormon studies institute," by Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune
 * "Park said Smith’s vision was for a 'new civilisation destined to expand as God’s people multiplied. Gathering and city building were not incidental parts of sanctification, but the goal.'" The National of Scotland
 * "...compact settlements that would go on to influence the planning of hundreds of American towns. 'This farm boy ... dreamed to build a metropolis that rivalled the large seaport cities he had only heard about,' writes the academic Benjamin Park, in a 2013 paper. In the 1830s, Smith laid out a detailed plan called the 'plat of Zion'." The Guardian
 * "Algunas personas piensan que las persecuciones tenían que ver exclusivamente con la práctica de la poligamia entre los miembros de la religión. Pero el historiador Benjamin Park explica que eso no es así. 'La poligamia se convirtió en una controversia nacional recién en 1852', cuando la iglesia anunció públicamente su práctica durante una conferencia en Salt Lake City, Utah. 'Antes fue practicada en secreto por un número limitado de miembros. Muy poca gente lo sabía', según Park." Per Google Translate: "Some people think that the persecutions had to do exclusively with the practice of polygamy among the members of the religion. But historian Benjamin Park explains that this is not so. 'Polygamy became a national controversy only in 1852,' when the church publicly announced its practice during a conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. 'It was once practiced in secret by a limited number of members. Very few people knew,' according to Park" Univision
 * "'It teaches the lay reader that [Mormon] facts, quotes and issues aren’t set in stone, nor are they easily decipherable,' Park writes in an email." The (San Jose) Mercury News
 * Daily (Provo, Utah) Herald
 * (...Plus, no doubt, others.) --Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 22:05, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
 * park's essays--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 20:50, 18 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete. No WP:RS sources. I also assert that his claim to have studied at the University of Cambridge looks spurious. I am a Cambridge graduate, and would have expected to find the name of his college in his resume. No-one studies at Cambridge, they study at X College, Cambridge. The link to cambridge.academia.edu redirects to http://www.shsu.edu/ i.e. to Sam Houston State University. I object to that sort of trickery. Narky Blert (talk) 00:56, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Please redact your last sentence per WP:BLP. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:13, 19 March 2017 (UTC).
 * He's an American, so maybe he doesn't know, or maybe he expects readers of his cv to be other Americans who wouldn't know. That said, I can find no mention of his name anywhere at cam.ac.uk. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:44, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm agnostic as to keeping or deleting the article, but I did find a catalog record for his dissertation: http://ulmss-newton.lib.cam.ac.uk/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=40518 Katya (talk) 16:23, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * cmt -  Strange times, these (what with the nativist, etc., tensions worldwide... ;~) With regard Narky Blert's "I object to that sort of trickery" / David Eppstein's "Maybe he doesn't know": This link, to the graduate program at Cambridge toward the MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History, which Dr. Park said he earned in 2011 (and note that an "Ox-bridge" MPhil or a MSc-by-research are comparable in themselves to Doctors of Philosophy degrees in the U.S.), mentions only "The University of Cambridge"; ditto for this one, to its program toward a PhD in History, which he said he earned in 2014. Park recieved a 2013 award in his subdiscipline for best graduate paper for "Early Mormonism and the Paradoxes of Democratic Religiosity in Jacksonian America," which, according to a newspaper report, was "written[...]at the University of Cambridge." Are such !votes in WP deletion discussions as are based on misreadings of the guidelines or else on conspiratorial intimations counted as legitimate? no they are not(!)--Hodgdon&#39;s secret garden (talk) 19:21, 20 March 2017 (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.