Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christopher D'Elia


 * 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 keep. Consensus is that the gentleman in question passes WP:PROF. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 00:10, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Christopher D'Elia

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I cannot find any indication that D'Elia meets GNG. There are a few odd quotes attributed to him surrounding the Gulf oil spill, but nothing else. He's a professor and researcher who is simply doing his job. Good for him, not really good for demonstrating notability. Primefac (talk) 21:51, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete, there's no indication of significant coverage in reliable independent sources. Google Scholar isn't that, and what media coverage D'Elia has received is just short quotes that provide no information about D'Elia himself. Huon (talk) 21:53, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep as by the relevant guideline WP:PROF which says "this is an independent guidelines". The sources are clearly, as stated by there and WP:Primary acceptable for verifying firsthand knowledge exactly how we would in anything of this field.  SwisterTwister   talk  22:24, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - There's no actual account of WP:BEFORE here at all, and especially when GoogleScholar is clearly an independent published website. This therefore is exactly what WP:PROF for establishing "significance in the field of academia and science". How else would GNG be relevant if it's not specifically about the subject, whereas PROF is. For as long as we've accepted education articles, we established primary sources can only be accepted, whereas anything else would not be trustworthy in its information. "He's a professor and researcher who is simply doing his job" is not a Deletion argument and WP:PROF makes clear "satisfying any of these criteria is Notability" and "Elected to a science society" is one of them. SwisterTwister   talk  22:32, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry that I did not spell out how I searched under multiple versions of "Christopher D'Elia" and "AAAS fellow" and a few other search terms; I didn't realize that I needed to publish my entire search history to prove BEFORE; I was under the impression that simply stating that I only found three news outlets that even printed his name would be sufficient. Primefac (talk) 00:39, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep - Satisfies requirements on WP:PROF Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ Talk 22:45, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - Google Scholar is independent, but is it a reliable source for biographical information? Is it subject to editorial oversight? Can a Google Scholar entry be considered "significant coverage"? I doubt all of that. However, assuming all of that for the sake of argument, this specific Google Scholar entry confirms no claims to notability and does not distinguish D'Elia from the average professor. WP:PROF has a very low bar of notability, but it also clarifies that meeting that low bar is not enough: "once the facts establishing the passage of one or more of the notability criteria above have been verified through independent sources" - they have not, meaning that WP:PROF does not support the existence of this article. Regarding BEFORE, I expect I have spent more time researching notability than went into the creation of the article in the first place. Huon (talk) 22:49, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * "Verified through independent" sources is exactly what makes GoogleScholar satisfy WP:V. If we're going to argue whether Google is somehow affiliated to the subject, there's no grounds for that at all. What PROF says is that we need significance in the field, and his citations there show it. How else can that be argued if it's not pertinently relevant? Suggesting it be anything else, is bias and it's exactly what we work to prevent here. SwisterTwister   talk  22:55, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Google Scholar is not significant coverage. It's pulling facts and putting them into a table. It's the educational equivalent of a stats table for a baseball or football player. We use them for verifiability, sure, but not for demonstrating notability. Primefac (talk) 00:39, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed. In addition to inflated citation counts, it is not independent either. I sometimes manually add non-peer reviewed fact sheets, etc. to my Google Scholar account. In terms of "true" citation counts, Google Scholar isn't really considered reliable among scientists for assessing impact of a paper or research aside from a really quick and dirty look. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:45, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep - this isn't even really close. Citations counts of 569, 262, 247, 201, and 150 on the first 5 listings on Scholar. Clearly passes WP:NSCHOLAR. And he also held the rank of vice-chancellor at USF-St. Pete, and the additional entries which can be found from a cursory search on Books, clearly show he passes.  Onel 5969  TT me 03:17, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep - Passes Notability_(academics), point 3, as an elected fellow of AAAS. Carrite (talk) 04:25, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment Carrite, can you please provide an independent source confirming that D'Elia's AAAS fellowship represents a membership in a "highly selective and prestigious scholarly society"? They take more than 300 fellows every year; is that "highly selective"? If no independent source confirms that it is; it does not meet the standards of WP:PROF. If I were to write one-line stubs on all the AAAS fellows of 2016, with no sources but the AAAS list of new felloes, would you argue those too should be kept?
 * Onel5969, can you please provide an independent source confirming that those citation figures make D'Elia a highly-cited scholar? The Tampa Bay Magazine is a reliable secondary source, but it's local celebrity "buzz" (their word, not mine), hardly enough to bestow notability. Huon (talk) 10:54, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * While Google Scholar is not a good source to show that they pass WP:GNG, they are pretty much the standard regarding citability. And how often a scholar is cited is a clear indication of their impact in their field, thereby passing NP:SCHOLAR. My understanding is that this is one of the reasons google scholar is included in the tools box to check on a person's notability.  Onel 5969  TT me 12:41, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * , my main concern with the citation numbers is the age of the papers. His most-cited papers were written in the '70s. If you check going back to 2000, his most-cited paper where he's the primary author has about 60 citations, and the vast majority are less than 10. Something written forty years ago is obviously going to be cited more heavily than something written in the last decade or so, but the "since 2012" numbers provided on Google Scholar show a very different picture to the "all-time" stats. Primefac (talk) 13:14, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I hear you - but my understanding is that notability isn't temporary. Just because the New York Hippodrome is no longer extant, doesn't make it not notable. I think the same principle applies here, just because this academic's influence was most prevalent in the 1970s does not lessen his notability, it simply lessens his modern day relevance.  Onel 5969  TT me 13:18, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I wasn't referring to the temporal nature of notability, I was referring simply to the passage of time. To make up an arbitrary example - if every paper receives 2 citations per year, a ten-year-old paper will have 20 citations while a forty-year-old paper will have 80. The author of the forty-year-old paper isn't "more notable" or "better cited" than the ten-year author, they've just had their paper around long enough. It is, I imagine, why GScholar includes a "since 2012" metric. Unfortunately, I don't know if there's any fast/easy way to see when a paper has been cited, which could possibly demonstrate notability (if one paper was cited 400 times in a year, that's pretty good, as opposed to 400 times over 10 years). Primefac (talk) 13:32, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * @ - I would hope that you would do a better job than writing one-line stubs. In theory, every AAAS fellow having a biographical page would be a good thing, not a bad thing. NOTPAPER. Carrite (talk) 14:23, 11 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep meets WP:PROF. There is no need to pass GNG is there is a pass of WP:PROF. Huon, you are challenging a firmly accepting guideline here, and I can not figure out why. Fellow of AAAS-- not just member -- has always been accepted as a sufficient professional society, and there is no need to prove it at an individual AfD any more than it is necessary to prove that the NYTimes is a RS when the question is the GNG. If you want to challenge this, please raise the question at the talk page for WP:PROF or at the RS Noticeboard. Please see the history of the last 2000 afds on this subject for the last ten years. Every single person who met that guideline has been accepted except where it is a question of someone working in a field people here do not take seriously, such as fields traditionally dominated by females, such as home economics, or or where an otherwise respected scientist gets involved in something questionable like climate change denial. There have been previous discussions on the use of GS citation data--see WP:RSN archives. There are published papers showing it's as reliable for the purpose as Web of Science, the gold standard. (I will admit that an ex-student of mine wrote one of the first such papers, but there have been others. Garfield, who invented citation indexing in science, published the judgement that the level of significance for a major scientist is 100 citations.  This individual has papers with 569, 262, 247, 218, 201.  The 569 is a methods paper, and these get unusually high citations,  he has 9 other papers with over 100. One does not have to find RSs to back statements at AfD, afd is not article content. If you neededed them, wwe'd never settle anything here. That's why we have guidelines, and we interpret those guidelines by what we consistently do. Primefac, GS is not significant overage, but the reliable facts in GS provide the evidence--not that one needs significant coverage at WP:PROF.And notability is permanent.    DGG ( talk ) 13:27, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - as I said above, meeting one of the notability criteria of WP:PROF without an independent source backing up the claim is not enough to meet WP:PROF. So if you are saying that he meets WP:PROF, you're welcome to point out the independent sources that confirm any of those claims. Since you asked about my reasons, PROF in my opinion is an abomination because unlike any other notability guideline I'm aware of, it makes notability independent of coverage in secondary sources and tacks the requirement of independent sources on as an afterthought, which leads to many people (including every single "keep" !vote in this discussion that argues PROF) forgetting about that part and claiming that an article with no reliable secondary sources whatsoever beyond a database free of interpretation can establish that the subject is notable and is appropriate for Wikipedia. Google Scholar's citation count will not allow us to write an encyclopedia article. I have not seen anybody beyond Onel5969 provide an independent source that discusses the subject, and that one is local gossip, basically. So in short, I do not think sufficient secondary sources exist to write a meaningful article about this person, and Wikipedia articles should not just be a summary of primary sources. That's WP:PRIMARY, part of WP:NOR, which is policy and trumps notability guidelines. The article does not meet one of our core content policies, and I have seen no indication that it's salvageable. Huon (talk) 18:19, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The WP:NOR policy cited actually explicitly says: A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge therefore that's not a limitation on using them at all, and instead an allowance in relevancy. Also, even if there was a requirement of independent sources, this same section says Secondary sources are not necessarily independent or third-party sources. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them; so even if we had independence, that still wouldn't resolve anything therefore the argument is moot here. SwisterTwister   talk  02:37, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment - another policy gets quotemined. "Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them." (Emphasis in original.) Every single claim to notability is based on primary, non-independent sources. And yes, there is an explicit requirement of independent sources for claims of notability in WP:PROF which isn't met. Just imagine if I tried to base a company article entirely on primary or non-independent sources; you'd be the first to AfD as spam. Why the double standard? Huon (talk) 07:53, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * As has been shown above, GoogleScholar is not a primary source since it's the employer nor affiliate of the subject himself; if we discredited the usability of any source simply because the website has "Google" in its name, we would never get anything accepted. This perspective would never help the encyclopedia at all and it shouldn't be the case here either. Because there's nothing in that policy that explicitly says anything hosted by Google, whether it's the subject's name on there or not is unacceptable, we can't start drawing such conclusions at all. SwisterTwister   talk  16:05, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 09:27, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 09:27, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Louisiana-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 09:27, 12 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete - I don't see anything to indicate notability in the article's current content. Just being a university employee, holding the qualifications required for that position, and presumably doing the usual things required for those in that position, is not in itself notable - neither is being a member of a trade organisation or professional society an indication of notability - if membership is a reward or recognition for career achievements, there should be sources citing those achievements. Is the American Association for the Advancement of Science a "highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association" under criteria 3. It has 120,000 members, its "membership is open to anyone" (according to its website) and membership is a requirement for becoming an elected member (of which there are many new ones made each year - over 700 for 2013 for example ). This does not appear to fit the "highly selective" requirement. Its whole website stresses the high number of members, the wide range of its interests, the great number of affiliated organisations, etc. For criteria 5 or 6, is Louisiana State University's College of the Coast and Environment a "major institution of higher education and research" or a "major academic institution"? I see no evidence of it being that. Louisiana State University itself is only ranked 135th in US universities. No evidence has been presented that fits any of the other criteria. GoogleScholar isn't an "independent published website"; it is not a "source" at all, it is a search engine to find or analyse sources - and its raw results always require examination, not automatic acceptance. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:29, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep, obviously. Passes multiple WP:PROF criteria. I think he does happen to also pass WP:GNG but that should not be necessary; both are notability guidelines at an equal level, applicable to different cases, rather than one taking precedence over the other. Most of the comments here seem to be focusing on the poor state of the article as nominated rather than on the actual notability of the subject; that is a mistake. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:34, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the subject passes none of the 9 criteria, and I have not seen convincing arguments from any keep position that he does (a more substantive reasoning than just saying "obviously" is required here). If there are sources that indicate notability, why have none been presented? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 19:12, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * He clearly passes #C1 (11 publications with over 100 citations each) and his pass of #C3 (AAAS fellow) is completely unambiguous. He also has a plausible but weak case for #C6 for his leadership of Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation. And your insistance on "sources that indicate notability" indicates that your head is still stuck in the wrong notability criterion, GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:39, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Wrong on both points: raw citation counts are not "completely unambiguous" at all - they are actually very ambiguous regarding the determining of notability, and AAAS elected membership is not notable - their paid-for-membership is open to anyone, regardless of academic field or status, and is essentially a magazine subscription with the possibility of attaining elected status an incentive to continue with the subscription. There are tens of thousands of AAAS elected members - there is nothing "highly selective" about getting that status so it cannot count for the notability criteria. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 22:07, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You appear to have misread my comment. The "completely unambiguous" was for #C3. And if you don't understand the difference between a fellow and a regular member, as your comment indicates that you clearly don't, you should try reading more about that subject before you contribute your misunderstandings to more academics AfDs. My experience in seeing colleagues elected as AAAS fellows (I am not one myself) and in editing other articles on their fellows here is that their standard for selection is calibrated at pretty much the same level as the fellows of major academic societies (not counting NAS/NAE and the other AAAS, which are quite a bit more selective even than that), typically well above that needed for a full professorship at a good research university, and matching what #C3 describes. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:28, 14 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Pass of WP:Prof with high GS cites, even in a highly cited field. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:20, 12 August 2017 (UTC).
 * Keep I agree with comments above. It meets WP:PROF. I added some additional content and some references for verifiability. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 18:55, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I usually think some of the critera in WP:PROF on their own are not stringent enough (i.e., having a bunch of citations is extremely arbitrary for determining notability for generating content), but there's enough of a mixture to just make it past WP:PROF. Just a note that Google Scholar is not reliable for citation counts as the citation counts can sometimes vastly overinflated by included non-peer reviewed sources, sometimes websites, etc. Web of Science and Scopus show a decent publication history though. Nothing that would immediately make me think it would be worthwhile to write an article, but enough that I wouldn't argue against keeping it either. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:40, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:PROF and per recent article improvements; an acceptable stub at this point. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:08, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep per David Eppstein and WP:N: even if one contests whether or not each of the individual claims to passing PROF are correct, there is clearly enough here combined that you get to a PROF pass. As DGG notes, that is independent of the GNG, and regardless, it wouldn't matter if it wasn't in the text of the guideline: WP:N makes it clear that SNGs are equal to the GNG: It [is presumed notable if it] meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right. We need to start remembering that the GNG is only one part of the larger notability guideline. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:42, 14 August 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.