Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dmitri Borgmann


 * 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. j⚛e deckertalk 16:40, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Dmitri Borgmann

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Only source cited to try to establish notability for this person is a scan from Word Ways, a publication this person created himself DreamGuy (talk) 00:16, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions.  Jinkinson   talk to me  00:53, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  Jinkinson   talk to me  00:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:57, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. No shortage of in-depth coverage in independent reliable sources, including full-length biographical articles in Newsweek and The Spokesman-Review, plus book reviews in TIME and Scientific American.  (Even some of the Word Ways articles are independent enough, having been written up to 45 years after Borgmann left the magazine and 28 years after his death.)  Easily passes the first three criteria of WP:AUTHOR, not to mention WP:GNG. —Psychonaut (talk) 10:11, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. If we deleted this, we would logically have to delete Recreational linguistics and other related articles as well. And where would it all end? Wahrmund (talk) 17:46, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a classic example of an argument to avoid in deletion discussions. See WP:ALLORNOTHING. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:45, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep. But for what it's worth, so was the nominator's -- reliable sources establishing notability took only about a minute to find, which makes me wonder if they'd read WP:BEFORE. -Psychonaut (talk) 21:09, 22 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment The references in the article need serious cleaning up. Some link only to the Wikipedia article for the journal (not at all useful - give a full citation to the article instead, including author). Others are not reliable sources (e.g. Kirkus Reviews - which review EVERYTHING and therefore are unrelated to notability). After such a cleanup it should be easier to gauge notability on this article. LaMona (talk) 13:57, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Not all references are available online. For those which are available online, the title of the article (not the title of the journal) is a hyperlink to the article on the publisher's website or some other authorized archive.  This is the intended behaviour of the cite templates. Regarding the lack of authors, in many cases this is because the articles were penned by uncredited staff writers; again, this is in accordance with the instructions of our citation templates.  If there's a particular reference you think is incomplete or misformatted, please bring up the matter on the article's talk page and we can work on correcting it.  —Psychonaut (talk) 14:02, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but we're discussing deletion, so I will continue here. #4 lacks a title. The Kirkus reviews (#12, #22) do not contribute to notability, since Kirkus reviews all books offered for a fee . Those references should be deleted. Numbers 25-27 are not third-party resources, but should be considered primary resources WP:WPNOTRS Those are only appropriate in limited circumstances; I'll let others weigh in on whether they consider them valid in this instance. And the statement: "Nineteen folders of Borgmann's correspondence with Martin Gardner, dating from 1956 to the 1980s, were collected and are preserved in the Special Collections and University Archives of the Stanford University Libraries" is not what is found at the link. The link is to folders of Gardner correspondence of which some number (I'll accept 19) contain correspondence with Borgmann (among others) of some nature. For example, a typical folder looks like:

Box 68, Folder 8

Presidential Elections 1959-2000

Scope and Content Note Notes, letters, articles, etc. on President facts "History Computed", by Arthur Finnessey, 1983, 24pp, 3 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches (pamphlet) Correspondents: Kruskal, William Lindon, J.A. Card, L.E. Borgmann, Dmitri
 * LaMona (talk) 19:10, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching the problem with the Newsweek article; I'll get that fixed. Regarding Kirkus, I believe you are mistaken. You've linked to the rates for the modern Kirkus Indie, an online service for self-published books, not the print journal Kirkus Reviews which was published from 1933 to 2009.  The print edition, so far as I know, never charged for reviews.  Regarding the Stanford statement, I'm afraid I don't understand your objection; the article claims that 19 folders of Borgmann's correspondence are archived at the library, and the reference is an official guide to these collections which lists these 19 folders (among several others).  Simple counting is not original research. —Psychonaut (talk) 20:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You're right, that's the indie Kirkus. But even without payment, Kirkus reviews everything (even complete crap), so being reviewed in Kirkus does nothing for notability. As for the "19 folders", if you are referring to the Martin Gardner archive finding aid, which is what is listed there, nowhere does it say that there were 19 folders of Dmitri Borgmann material. It isn't 19 folders of Borgmann material, it's folders created by Gardner of which some (19?) include correspondence or notes from Borgmann. We don't know how many Borgmann items are in each folder, because the archive hasn't itemized them. (Note that the collection is measured at "60 Linear feet"!). Perhaps it's just a question of prepositions: there are 19 folders in the Gardner archive with or that contain Borgmann material, not of Borgmann material. Of implies that the folder includes Borgmann material exclusively. LaMona (talk) 21:57, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Kirkus Reviews is one of the most-cited journals on Wikipedia (and probably the most cited literary review journal). That said, opinion of Kirkus in past AfDs does seem to be sharply divided—in some cases editors have enthusiastically and successfully argued that is reliable and  confers notability, leading to the article being kept, and in other cases editors have enthusiastically and successfully argued that it isn't and doesn't, leading to the article being deleted.  The best place to resolve the general question, then, is at Reliable sources/Noticeboard, not here.  However, you'll note that all claims in the article supported by Kirkus references are also supported by several other references to indisputably reliable sources, such as TIME and Scientific American.
 * Regarding the archive material, I see that the statement is ambiguous and have changed the preposition as per your suggestion. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:41, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 02:36, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep - I agree with Psychonaut's arguments. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:42, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep, the first three references alone are significant coverage and there seem to be many more. For full disclosure, I was asked by Psychonaut to participate in this AFD, but the opinion is my own. --Jakob (talk)  11:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep. Obviously notable, with extensive sourcing as shown here.  With reference to the discussion above, Kirkus is certainly reliable; one may debate whether a book that was reviewed only in Kirkus is notable, but there is no basis for demanding that content based on a Kirkus review be deleted. --Arxiloxos (talk) 17:23, 30 October 2014 (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.