Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Roy Geffken


 * 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. Nomination withdrawn. (non-admin closure) Randykitty (talk) 14:31, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Gary Roy Geffken

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Biographical article that bypassed Articles For Creation. Possibly autobiographical: User:Jargenhunter has only made edits relevant to this individual's career. Seems to fail the notability criterion WP:ACADEMIC, in that it is easy to find publications by the article subject but not independent reliable sources about the article subject. MartinPoulter (talk) 15:50, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Withdrawn by nominator I've learnt from this process, but I still don't see how Wikipedia can have an article about someone when there don't seem to be independent reliable sources to base the article on. Apologies to anyone who felt their time was wasted.


 * Comment: One of the things you need to do first is figure out his impact, either via h-index or some other method. It seems to me that his articles are rather heavily cited, with the first page of results all being above 100 except for the last one. But I don't know the relative ratings of his field, so I can't determine if they are indeed high or not. Someone with more experience with such things would have to determine that. Silver  seren C 20:31, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Florida-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 20:46, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Behavioural science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:03, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:03, 9 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. Nine papers with over 100 cites each and an h-index of 38, according to Google scholar. This is a high-citation subject (e.g. top citations on obsessive-compulsive disorders have cites of 4313, 1559, 1363, etc) but I think it's still good enough for WP:PROF. Evidence that he's considered a leader in the field includes the fact that his book is listed as one of five resources on child OCD treatments by the International OCD Foundation: . —David Eppstein (talk) 21:44, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep on basis of citations. Would nom like to explain why he ignored this factor? Xxanthippe (talk) 22:03, 9 March 2014 (UTC).
 * Sure. I don't get the impression from PROF that high citation rates are sufficient in themselves. It mentions "Reviews of the person's work, published in selective academic publications," and I don't see these. A phrase such as "extremely highly cited scholarly publications" is very vague: the article subject is not literally at an extreme, but then maybe there is an implicit criterion: that's the point of starting a discussion. There's a difficulty in writing an article about someone when there seem to be no independent sources about them rather than by them. This is my first AFD nom, so forgive me if I don't get it right first time. MartinPoulter (talk) 22:13, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Some people do find that WP:Prof is a policy that is difficult to understand so academic areas may not be a good place to start off with AfDs. Best wishes Xxanthippe (talk) 22:28, 9 March 2014 (UTC).
 * @MartinP: No worries. WP:PROF c1 is the criterion that most academics pass and it is demonstrated in a variety of ways, one of which is that the person's work is highly cited/used by others (implying the subject has had impact). This is normally taken as any of having (1) more than a few hundred citations, (2) h-index more than 10-15, (3) book(s) held by lots of institutions, (4) major discovery, etc. If a few more !votes come in as "keeps" (and I think this is highly likely), then the disposition becomes fairly certain and sometimes the nominator will then withdraw the AfD to save others' time. Agricola44 (talk) 22:33, 9 March 2014 (UTC).
 * I've taken your hint and withdrawn. Hope this isn't a stupid question, but are your criteria 1) and 2) written down in policy or guidelines anywhere? I didn't notice them in WP:PROF. MartinPoulter (talk) 10:30, 10 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep Actually, the h-index number for notability   depends entirely on the subject field. In his particular case, it's good enough for notability, though not spectacular.  DGG ( talk ) 02:05, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Based on the opinions of others with more knowledge of this field than myself, it seems that he does meet the impact level, more or less, to be considered notable. That's the problem with academics. In general, there would and should be a higher amount of notable people among academics on average than in other fields, but there is a disproportionately small amount of news coverage of academics in comparison to...pretty much any other kind of job, meaning we have to figure out other methods of gauging true notability. H-index is one such method, though there are many others. Silver  seren C 02:33, 10 March 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.