Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colin P Flynn


 * 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.   A rbitrarily 0   ( talk ) 00:25, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Colin P Flynn

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Subject may be somewhat notable, but this isn't immediately confirmed via google search. In addition, there are very few incoming links and the primary editor and creator of the page seems to be the article's topic. Further, some of the edit notes appear to imply WP:OR. (On a lesser note, shouldn't it be "Colin P. Flynn", if this is really to remain?) &mdash; Timneu22 · talk 17:30, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  -- --Darkwind (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete h-index about 30 (cited under "CP Flynn", google scholar) This seems high, but he has had a long career so it's not too unusual.  The main issue is a lack of secondary source coverage.  I could not locate any biographical coverage. Without biographical coverage, this article can never meet WP:V and should be deleted, regardless of whether it meets WP:ACADEMIC which is a fundamentally flawed guideline. Gigs (talk) 13:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. WoS query "Author=(Flynn CP) Refined by: Institutions=(UNIV ILLINOIS) Timespan=All Years. Databases=SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI" shows at least 213 publications having an enormous citation base: 161, 153, 139, ... (h-index > 30). This is a slam dunk – citations to this body of work are indeed independent (of the subject), verifiable, and proof of impact (in this case, quite enormous impact). Evidently also an APS fellow. Any issues with the content of the article can be handled with edits. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2010 (UTC).
 * Citations can't provide source material to write a biographical article. Gigs (talk) 17:03, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * They conclusively prove impact and thus notability, which is the only reason we're here. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a "snow" motion pretty soon because even this cursory examination shows that this person is in the top tier of scientists. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 18:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC).
 * WP:V is a policy. Impact without coverage is irrelevant. Gigs (talk) 19:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I believe we're all aware of that, thanks. Your line of argument seems to be that the body of his published science lit that, at the very least, attests that he's a professor at a university and has contributed results in a particular area is not WP:RS because he wrote it. I think that's a dead-end because these publications are vetted in a peer-reviewed forum and published in mainstream venues rather than being something like a blog or vanity piece. Pretty sure this will end in "keep" – all the time I can afford to devote to this one. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 19:55, 28 April 2010 (UTC).
 * Keep per Agricola. Ray  Talk 15:42, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep   citation prove notability under the basic WP:PROF criterion, of having a major impact on the field. Citations quite specifically measure impact--people whose work is not important do not get cited. There is a wide grey area where it can be argued  whether the citations are sufficient, but this is totally above that. The one's work becomes less notable if one has a long career  is a novel argument--non notable people tend to do just the opposite, produce a few papers early on and are never heard from subsequently. Nor in a field like his do most articles go on accumulated citations for decades--only a very few do, and  that would generally be for what is considered a classic article; some of his papers seem to be in that  category.  DGG ( talk ) 22:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a well documented flaw in h-index that people who have had longer careers will have higher scores, and those who made an impact in a short amount of time will have lower scores. My argument to delete is not based on h-index though, it's based on the complete lack of reliable biographical sources independent of the subject thus far. Gigs (talk) 00:11, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. What am I missing here? I find nothing relevant when I google search this. What are you "keep"ers using as search terms to find relevance? &mdash; Timneu22 · talk 23:08, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It appears that Gigs is using Google scholar, while Agricola44 is using Web of Science. WoS is subscription-only, while GS is free, and different subjects are served better by one or the other of them, but both are more suitable than plain old Google for finding citations by academics to the works of other academics. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:50, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Weak delete. I reduced the article down to a stub because it was almost entirely copied from Flynn's web site. I did some searches to try to expand it back out again, but had difficulty finding much to say about him. For instance, he claims to be a fellow of the American Physical Society, but I looked at the APS's archive of fellowships 1995-present and didn't see his name. Maybe it means there's a false claim somewhere, maybe it means only that his fellowship was pre-1995, but regardless it also means that we have no independent verification to source that material. I'm convinced from the citation record that he passes WP:PROF, but we also need to have some verifiable content with reliable third-party sources. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This might not be a reliable source, but it does say that Flynn is a "fellow of the American Physical Society". Justin W Smith talk/stalk 21:11, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The political science department at UI also has a page for him that makes the same claim. Justin W Smith talk/stalk 21:20, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Per David Eppstein. MiRroar (talk) 20:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. It appears he also goes by C. Peter Flynn. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justin W Smith (talk • contribs) (Whoops. thx: Justin W Smith talk/stalk 01:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC))
 * Yes, and also Pete Flynn. I tried a lot of permutations of his name in my searches. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:57, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did several searches and could find no source for his claim to be a Fellow with APS. Each place I saw the claim made was a source for which he was likely the provider of content. I'm fairly sure the claim is true, but there seems to be no way to independently verify it. Justin W Smith talk/stalk 01:23, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Per citation record. And I think Justin W Smith's sources are sufficiently reliable to support the APS fellowship claim. Whether or not he provided the content is immaterial, that is standard for many biographical claims. What counts is the independent reliable publication.John Z (talk) 09:01, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * University bios are hardly "independent". Gigs (talk) 18:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They've been taken to be sufficiently so before. Justin Smith's first ref is part of the  "Materials and Man's Needs Collection : Historically ground-breaking publications from the National Academies regarding Materials Science" - an online version of this book published by the National Academy Press in 1987.John Z (talk) 20:33, 3 May 2010 (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.