Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Government Scientist


 * 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.  MBisanz  talk 02:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Government Scientist

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Not a recognized term. Unsourced OR.  Graymornings (talk) 10:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete as NN or redirect to suitable article about government sponsored reaseach. Usrnme h8er (talk) 11:29, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Changing suggestion to Move to Government sponsored research and expand on article in that location. An objective description of that topic (including examples) seems reasonable enough as encyclopaedic content. Usrnme h8er (talk) 12:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Opinion changed to Keep based on heavily rewritten article. Usrnme h8er (talk) 14:09, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There is this term in the movie Borat. preceeding unsigned comment was posted by User:SocialGhost (contribs
 * Delete as unsatisfiable list, OR, Not a Dictionary...take your pick. ju66l3r (talk) 11:36, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * For a supposedly "unrecognized term", it occurs 27 times in the past month alone in newspaper articles. Even the U.K.'s Food Standards Agency seems happy to use this term when describing the employment of its chief scientist. Uncle G (talk) 12:06, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * All of these people seem to agree that government scientists exist, too. They are discussing how they should be paid. Uncle G (talk) 12:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The question becomes whether the term has notability above and beyond the two words which comprise it or whether it's a pure dictionary definition of those two words. In any case I'm changing my opinion since I certainly feel that government research as a wider topic is encyclopaedic. Usrnme h8er (talk) 12:30, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems pretty clear from the article (q.v.) that there's discussion of government scientists to be had. Note that government scientists are not employed solely for research.  Uncle G (talk) 13:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Conceeded. The rewritten article is a whole different story. Usrnme h8er (talk) 14:09, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Try going to google and search for the term "Government Scientist" and you will see how recognizable it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SocialGhost (talk • contribs) 2009-01-02 12:55:03
 * Keep . Term is called out in US federal regulations here [] and here []. Gerardw (talk) 13:51, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Good start, references available, needs to be expanded to other countries. DGG (talk) 17:17, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment only at this stage. This is a difficult one. The term "Chief Scientist" is used in some countries, including Australia. There is in many countries something like the UK Scientific Civil Service. Whether this comes together to make a reasonable article on this term of "Government Scientist" is less clear. I am inclined to think it should be handled differently but I am not yet clear on how. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  11:13, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia articles aren't on terms. They are on the concepts, people, places, events, and things that the terms denote.  So this article is about government scientists.  As such, discussion of government scientists in Australia seems not only feasible but apposite for this article.  Be bold in combatting systemic bias! Uncle G (talk) 01:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete - The meaning of the term is a trivial dicdef (some scientists are employed by governments, duh). All that the article adds to that is volatile und unencyclopedic information about employment conditions and salary hierarchies in various countries. --Latebird (talk) 20:34, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Verifiable information is not unencyclopaedic. Indeed, it is the very definition of encyclopaedic information.  And information that is documented by a source published in 1967 cannot honestly be called volatile.  Uncle G (talk) 01:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete: no indication that a discrete topic exists -- as opposed to a trivial intersection of the topics of 'scientists' and 'government employees'. Will we also have articles on 'government drivers', 'government engineers', etc? HrafnTalkStalk 13:07, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You didn't read the discussion hyperlinked-to above, did you? Other people in the world at large seem quite convinced that there's a concept of a government scientist.  They were happy to debate the pay of government scientists in at least one country's legislature.  As such, your denial of the existence of the concept can only reflect a lack of knowledge in this area, rather than a legitimate reason for deletion that is based in Deletion policy.  Wikipedia isn't supposed to contain only the stuff that you personally know. Uncle G (talk) 01:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that condescending lecture. I dare say you'll also find 'government drivers', 'government engineers', or similar whose pay has been debated at some stage. What you have failed to achieve is to present is any evidence that this article presents any information that could not easily be slotted into either scientist or civil service. HrafnTalkStalk 02:52, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Well this is the second time in a single day that you've contributed to an AFD discussion without taking into account what has already been said, and without even looking at the things that are cited by other editors to be looked at. Your arguments are not based in policy, and your contributions to the discussion, which ignore sources, ignore policy, and operate purely upon subjective evaluations (and straw men discussions of nonexistent articles, I note), don't actually help either AFD or Wikipedia. Uncle G (talk) 23:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * No! This is simple badgering, and now WP:HARASS, (here and on Articles for deletion/Big Science of an editor for disagreeing with your thesis that mere usage of a two-word combination in sources in some way "explicitly documents the subject". I disagree with this interpretation -- live with it and stop badgering me! HrafnTalkStalk 06:42, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. I quite understand Uncle G's arguments, but I am still inclined to think that this topic can be handled differently. For example, Her Majesty's Civil Service could have a section on the UK Scientific Civil Service. A section on Government Scientists in Australia would have a massive overlap with Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation which employs the majority of them and, I think, dictates pay and conditions for some of the others in much smaller government organisations. The article has improved, but if it improves further it may be OK. -- Bduke   (Discussion)  02:03, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Overlap is why we have main, further, and the like. &#9786;  And, as I said above, remember that not all government scientists are researchers.  There are government scientists employed at FSANZ, for example. Uncle G (talk) 23:48, 5 January 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.