Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charles Edward Lincoln III


 * 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. The BLP problems cataloged by the Delete votes are persuasive. Also those opining Keep have alleged the existence of sources, but have not produced usable biographical ones. This deletion should be considered without prejudice towards a neutral, sourced biography if one can be written, but this is not usable or acceptable as it stands. Eluchil404 (talk) 06:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Charles Edward Lincoln III

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Autobiography, non-notable, fails WP:BIO Tan   &#124;   39  14:13, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete not notable. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Notability is questionable. Possibly COI, per WP:COI and autobiography per WP:YOURSELF as author's username (CEALIV) greatly looks like Charles Edward LIncoln III. Jolenine  ( Talk  -  My Contribs ) 21:05, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, albeit with a complete rewrite needed. Certainly, as a wikipedia article it is poorly written & contains overblown and unduly promotional claims, and since it is pretty much a direct lift from a (presumably) autobiographical piece from a blog the text as-is has no business here. But article tone and COI concerns aside, there are plausible claims of notability on account of his publications & fieldwork in Mesoamerican archaeology. His publications have been notably and reasonably broadly cited and commented upon in the Mesoamericanist/Mayanist literature, and he did direct digs at Chichen Itza in the 1980s (though only for a season or two I think, not the whole decade). In particular, he might be considered notable for contributions to three proposals: 1)that key Puuc ceramic & architectural styles were cotemporaneous with Chichen Itza's, 2)that the "Mexicanised" or "Toltec-style" architectural phases at Chichen were entirely an indigenous Yucatecan development, and not a product of any external contact with Tula, and 3)that Chichen Itza had a dyadic rulership system, not a multepal or monarchial one. Even though these proposals may have remained minority views they have been part of a significant ongoing debate about the nature and composition of Chichen Itza's political and architectural history. His eventual PhD dissertation proposal was less well received, it seems, and can't comment if there's anything of particular note from his subsequent legal career. His political views & commentary do not seem noteworthy. If it's kept, the article would need rewrite to focus on the Mayanist archaeological contribs, as a few independent 3rd party WP:RS's can readily be found that discuss these. But not I think for any of the other aspects. --cjllw ʘ  TALK 03:45, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, I think that Charles Lincoln's appearance on the Washington Post is very notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CEALIV (talk • contribs) 23:06, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note. The above user has made contributions only to CEL III pages. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC).


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —Cunard (talk) 00:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Does not seem to pass notability requirements under WP:PROF or WP:BIO. Fairly limited coverage on GNews; not enough for WP:BIO. As for WP:PROF, an HPoP citation analysis using "Charles E Lincoln" suggests a grant total of 62 citations, a low h-index of 4, and the most widely cited publication with only 20 citations. WorldCat gives a low 17 holdings for most widely held book.--Eric Yurken (talk) 01:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. GS gives cites of 20, 14, 10, 3, 2, 2. That's all. There is a web site at: http://charleslincoln.spiritualpatriot.com/bio.html that references the subject but appears to add little to notability. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:42, 7 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Delete. The claims for notability from the article seem to focus on his thesis (in the lead-in) and on another article he's mentioned in that actually focuses on someone else ("an article based on Orly Taitz"). The substance of this article seems to put it within the jurisdiction of WP:PROF, but GS analysis suggests an h-index of only about 3, which is vastly less than the minimum of roughly 10 that has become the consensus here. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 14:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC).
 * Keep, Charles Lincoln has made very significant contributions to the Mayan field study and in particular to Harvard University and should be hailed as one of the greatest Meso-American Anthropologists of the 20th and possibly 21th centuries if he continues his work at Peabody Museum, I believe that he is one of the great men of the Harvard community and should be put in Britannica. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mzenderiasan (talk • contribs) 03:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note. The above user has made contributions only to CEL III pages. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. I really don't think that any safe conclusions about notablility can be drawn, based on GS counts, raw h-index calcs, or other bibliometric methods alone. There are very many well-known and evident deficiencies in each of these approaches (documented even in our wiki articles on them). At best, uncalibrated search counts & citation metrics like these are rough indications to be used as a starting point, not a final determination on their own. Like Harzing's Publish or Perish website doco says (paraphrasing), "low" citation metrics do not necessarily indicate lack of impact or notability in a field, as there are numerous other factors that skew the results. For example, GS does not do a good job of finding citations in books or contributed book chapters. The great majority of hits in this targeted GoogleBooks search are mentions that discuss or reference his work on Chichen Itza; allowing for false positives and duplicates there'd easily be 400+. And if you skim through the two-line extracts given, you'll see a lot are actively discussing his work, more than just trivial or passing mentions. but Citation metric searches are also quite sensitive on the search terms/methodology used. For eg, even if a GS/PoP search on "Charles E Lincoln" turns up only 62 citations total, if instead you search on the title of what PoP says is his most-cited work (the contributed chapter "Chronology of Chichen Itza: a review of the literature") PoP finds 49 mentions for this work alone. Similarly a search for the title of his dissertation "ethnicity and social organization at chichen itza" pulls in 43 mentions.  Harzing's other caveats apply here too&mdash;'small' field size (there are only so many publs. per year on Mesoamerican archaeology, and even fewer on specific sites); under-representation of non-english sources (a great deal of mesoam. archaeology is written in spanish, as are about half of Lincoln's works); publishing mainly in books not journals (half of his publs.)  Really, the better approach is to investigate and read up on the content and assess context in the literature sources that discuss the scholar and his works. That's what I had tried to do in my earlier 'keep' comment, above. In that I identify three particular contributions to significant and ongoing questions in the research field, that Lincoln has made and which have been reasonably widely discussed and commented upon in the literature. To be more specific, I would suggest that these satisfy WP:PROF criterion 1, and also note 2 ("person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea"). Consider this selection of excerpts from the relevant literature: "as early as 1980...archaeological work had begun to revise our understanding of the Toltecs and their role in Mesoamerica. The work at Tula and Chichen Itza (Lincoln), has enhanced our ability to make such a revision.." --Society for Latin American Anthropology (1983) "At once the most thoroughgoing and radical discussant of this problem, Charles Lincoln challenges the conventional assessment [of Chichen's chronology].." --Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales (1995)  "The work of Charles Lincoln (1986, 1990), however, challenged the traditional sequential view of Chichen Itza..." --Jessica Christie, Maya Palaces and Elite Residences (2003)  "Por una parte, nos parece interesante la teoría de la contemporaneidad de los vestigios "mayas" y "toltecas" que sostiene el arqueólogo Ch. E. Lincoln..." Piedad Peniche Rivero,  Sacerdotes y comerciantes (1990) Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting Lincoln was a giant of the field by any strech of the imagination, but neither were his contributions merely workaday ones. His work and proposals did attract a fair amount of interest, commentary and debate, & he's been much more widely cited and mentioned than those H-index scores & GS data indicate. The more I've looked into it the more I can find multiple notable RS's devoting some decent space to his ideas, that could be used to construct a reasonable & informative article. The current text would need to be scrapped in the process, and written afresh. But I think as a wikipedia article's subject, WP:PROF threshhold would be satisfied.--cjllw  ʘ  TALK 06:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ps. Just for the record, I personally have no association whatsoever with the article's subject, nor with the several single-purpose accounts (SPA) that seem to have recently sprung up commenting here and further adding to the article. The person or persons operating those accounts would be well advised to stop, it is disappointing and only ever going to be counterproductive&mdash;those comments and the SOCK-like actions should (properly) be disregarded and focus retained on WP:N eligibility. Those other SPA accounts would also be well advised to read and fully comprehend WP:COI, WP:NPOV, WP:AUTOBIO, WP:V and WP:RS. And to make my position even more clear, the text of the article as it stands right now should be scrapped. It would be feasible however, to replace it with some much more balanced and reliably sourced text that fairly describes his works & proposals in archaeology (including documented criticisms thereof), as meriting inclusion under WP:PROF. Not that I am particularly inclined at the moment to rewrite the article myself; if it's deleted then can I suggest that the closing admin does so without prejudice for re-creation in future, but only under terms that a future re-write not involve CE Lincoln himself, or anyone directly or apparently associated with him. They should not be contributing to the article themselves, for what I hope would be obvious reasons.  The other concern as to whether or not it's legitimate to assess WP:N on basis of raw h-index calcs alone, still stands but can be taken elsewhere.--cjllw  ʘ  TALK 07:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete Not notable at all. The only thing about him that has ever been notable is the fact that he was referenced in one Washington Post article about his work with the birthers. Despite that, this article spends 95% of its time discussing his research on the Mayans and his love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's patently obvious that he wrote the entire thing and is no more notable than your average nut. Leuchars (talk) 07:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * weak keep -- I think CJLLW has nailed it: this guy's published work on Chichen is widely cited. My own targeted search, using "Lincoln, Charles" as a search term to raise confidence that there are actually cites to this Lincoln, gets 150 hits (240 is the predicted figure, but if you raise "results per page" to 100 and then go to the second page, the actual total is 150).  I agree with CJLLW that the current version should be scrapped; I don't have the interest or competence to re-write it.  But I think he satisfies PROF#1 and it's reasonable for us to have an article on him. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 10:44, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable and should be kept —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caroluslind (talk • contribs) 01:41, 11 October 2009 (UTC)  — Caroluslind (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete not notable and autobiography (WP:BLP contravention removed) Muldrake (talk) 03:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete not notable. -- This article appears to have been written by Mr. Lincoln himself. And Mr. Lincoln "forgot" to mention his two disbarments -- in California and Florida -- http://members.calbar.ca.gov/search/member_detail.aspx?x=171793 -- and that he was also disbarred by a U.S. District Court in the W.D. Texas.  He resigned with prejudice from the Texas Bar before that Bar Association could also disbar him.  The article is unreliable, fails to meet Wikipedia standards, and was written by the subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scottjtepper (talk • contribs) 2009-10-12
 * Delete From the article: "Lincoln worked for less than a full year at the oldest law-firm in the United States, Cadwalader, Wickersham, & Taft, with home offices (at that time) at 100 Maiden Lane behind Wall Street, but he rapidly found himself too much of an iconoclast, too much of an anarchist, and above all too concerned about intellectual substance rather than politically correct form and pretense, to remain or prosper at a large law firm." Translation; he was fired. This whole article is a giagantic puff piece on non-notable person. Abductive  (reasoning) 03:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Question Where in the Washington Post is he at? I search their archives but don't find his name.  How often is this lawyer asked by major sources for comment on something?  He did take the crazy seatbelt case to the Supreme Court.  But a lot of cases go there, so their lawyers probably don't count as automatically notable.   D r e a m Focus  04:01, 12 October 2009 (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.