Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John Lindow


 * 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. Full professor at a University of California, Berkeley (a top-rated research university), wrote a text that is held in major libraries, widely cited, good enough sources, etc., is sufficient to meet notability both generally and specifically. Listed at AfD for 11 days. Bearian (talk) 17:36, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

John Lindow

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Academic who does not meet WP:PROF according to what sources I can find Yngvadottir (talk) 01:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete This person has hardly revolutionized the field and does not meet Wikipedia standards of notability. Pucamann (talk) 01:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep: Looking on our encyclopedia we seem to be using him an awful lot as a source on a whole range of Scandanavian mythology articles and the like (see Special:WhatLinksHere/John_Lindow. This seems largely thanks to the extremely productive efforts of one of our major and highly productive editors User:Bloodofox in this area. He is also the author of this page on Prof Lindow.
 * Lindow's Handbook of Norse mythology according to | Worldcat seems very widely held (if I have done this correctly) and appears to me a standard work. His books and their holdings, coupled with our use, appear enough to be indicative of notability. Perhaps we need more publications of his and their reviews on his page and this may help. (Msrasnw (talk) 21:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC))
 * Comment I appreciate your efforts to improve the article, but Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Rituals, and Beliefs is a new edition of A Handbook of Norse Mythology, the one you added. See his departmental page, where his other publications are listed. I agree he is cited a lot here; I think that may be a bit of recentism, or American localism. Rudolf Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology (translated) is an equally good resource, and Gabriel Turville-Petre's Myth and Religion of the North is also good and probably still more widely cited across the Atlantic, though it's a bit old now. But in any case the standards for academics do not include "widely cited on Wikipedia". I'm hoping someone can come up with evidence that his other books - listed on that departmental page - have been very influential. Or that his dissertation was (as in the case of Claus Krag). I just can't find any such evidence, and although the department just got its first named chair, he isn't the inaugural holder, so he doesn't meet that criterion either. I also found no evidence that he is well known as a spokesman by people outside the field - the Google hits on him just don't meet that high threshhold. I can think of a couple of better known academics in the field on whom I can't find enough and therefore have held off on writing articles. Hence the nomination. That particular book may be useful in referencing articles, but that isn't enough for him to have his own article.Yngvadottir (talk) 22:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Prestigious lectures: Do you think the "Western States Folklore Society"'s "important event in the Society’s Meetings is the invitational Archer Taylor Lecture Series, given by a folklorist of note." And I think our Prof Lindow gave this is in 2007 - might meet wp:prof 1 (via "invited lectures at meetings of national or international scholarly societies, where giving such an invited lecture is considered considerably more prestigious than giving an invited lecture at typical national and international conferences in that discipline; named lectures or named lecture series;") ?
 * Or perhaps even better this The 1997 Triebel Lecture organised by The Australian Academy of the Humanities: The Triebel Lecture: ?


 * Also "Elected Corresponding Member, Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy (Uppsala, Sweden), 1977" (Msrasnw (talk) 22:55, 7 January 2011 (UTC))


 * Keep. GS h index of 9 for a little cited field suffices WP:Prof. Appears to be an acknowledged authority in the field. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:27, 8 January 2011 (UTC).
 * Weak keep per the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy and WP:PROF. But sourcing is slim. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment Indeed it is, and I'm afraid the reviews of his books merely establish that they exist, unless Jacqueline Simpson said something useful about him in one. I see you found his cv, thanks! I was hoping that would turn up. But I still don't see his dissertation topic identified. The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy election is at the lowest level, so I, not one of the levels that are limited in number, so I don't agree that it meets that criterion. The one thing that looks as if it might is the Triebel Lecture, but that's on folklore and he has apparently never been invited to give the Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture by the Viking Society for Northern Research. So perhaps he can squeak by as a folklorist, which appears to have been his initial field? That is a larger field, but maybe someone has said something usable about his folklore dictionary? By the way, while I appreciate Xxanthippe's point, I am not sure of the utility of citation indices in the field of Norse; so much of the work is non-English-speaking, and there is a further bias towards US publications in Google Scholar, for one. His Norse work is overwhelmingly survey works, which is a problem with citation indices anyway, but academia and therefore our inclusion criteria give more points for original work. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:53, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NW ( Talk ) 03:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Since it is pretty clearly established that he meets WP:PROF, I think some explanation of my relist might be warranted. The specialized notability guidelines exist for a reason. As WP:ATH puts it: "the meeting of any of these criteria does not mean that an article must be kept. These are merely rules of thumb which some editors choose to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to keep an article that is on articles for deletion, along with relevant guidelines such as Verifiability and Reliable sources." Meeting WP:PROF suggests that there are likely reliable sources that we can use in writing his article. Because searches have indicated the opposite, I think it is worth exploring if those sources actually exist. NW ( Talk ) 03:11, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not agree with the comment above. All of the cites in Google Scholar are from reliable sources. With an h index of 9 there are at least 81 of them (9 squared) and a detailed count gives a lot more. The claim of a lack of sources is without foundation. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:37, 13 January 2011 (UTC).


 * Strong keep. I've found reviews of his books by Guy Tassin, Jacqueline Simpson, Rochelle Wright, William Hansen, Frank Hugus, Michael Barnes, Joseph Harris, Paul Schach, Stephen A. Mitchell, Anatoly Liberman, Henry Ansgar Kelly and W. Edson Richmond in reliable, peer reviewed journals; many appear to be the standard works for this field, which covers Criteria 1 for WP:ACADEMIC. This, along with coverage in the Albuquerque Journal, his membership of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy (which surely passes Criteria 3) should demonstrate notability. He has published standard works, and it is ludicrous and counterintuitive to have a situation where I could write an article on say, Murder Vengeance among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology with a dozen sources, have that accepted as notable (obviously), do the same thing with every other book he's published, and then see consensus form that the author of said works is not notable. Guidelines are "generally accepted standards that editors should attempt to follow", though "best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply". If C1 and C3 are not enough, this should certainly constitute an exception. Ironholds (talk) 05:49, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The thing is, his works are not the standards in the field - they are the latest American entries in the field and Hilda Ellis Davidson's and Rudolf Simek's - and to some extent Gabriel Turville Petre's - are all still commonly cited. Unlike those 3 scholars, he does not appear to have any other distinctions in the field of Norse mythology or the wider field of Old Norse studies. If the reviews say he is the foremost scholar in the field today or something else useful, that can be put in the article. Those with better library access than me, please look and see. (I would name Ursula Dronke and Margaret Clunies Ross as both having better claim to distinction in the field - and of course there are also scholars publishing primarily in languages other than English, in particular Gro Steinsland.) He may be distinguished enough in folklore - again, if anyone can lay hands on references to support such a claim in addition to the fact he was chosen to give that lecture in Australia, that would work for me. But I can't see any such things, and it is after all not surprising that his works get reviewed by others of the few people still working in Scandinavian folklore, mythology, and medieval lit. Especially since they have been mostly aimed at the general reader. (But so were Ellis Davidson's works, Simek's Dictionary, and Turville-Petre's Myth and Religion of the North.) Yngvadottir (talk) 16:09, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the above editor has some specialist axe to grind. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC).
 * No, I just know the field (unless that's what you mean by specialist!). Someone has now very kindly created articles on the 3 scholars I named above, and I've begun improving them, but we can have articles on all major scholars in any field - WP:NOTPAPER. As I mentioned, in my view we might be able to justify keeping the article on Lindow if either someone with better library access than me can find useful material in those reviews and/or the citations you have tabulated; or a further piece of data on his folklore scholarship can be found indicating his prominence in that field. I just do not see the evidence that he is in the first rank in Norse mythology; as I say, I suspect the fact he is based in the US has led to his being cited here disproportionately often (and likely biases Google results too), and I don't see evidence that that corresponds with his influence in the field. I still disagree that he meets WP:PROF in fact. But his dissertation has now been found, the article is better than it was - and I had searched for stuff about him - and I'd be delighted if it winds up meriting being kept. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Dear Yngvadottir, I'm glad you liked the three little articles and thanks for tidying them up and your work on Icelandic things. But I am not sure that Lindow's thesis - that you wanted and I added - made much of a splash. I had hoped to change your mind to a keep but anyway. The US bias is inevitable when many editors are based there and the sourcing and many international things are so US centered. I think the best way to go is to try to save so many of the non-US notables that struggle in the Afd's rather than by deleting any marginal US ones. Best wishes (Msrasnw (talk) 22:42, 13 January 2011 (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.