Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John R. Williams (historian)


 * 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 delete until additional sourcing comes forward.  Arbitrarily0  ( talk ) 17:30, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

John R. Williams (historian)

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This clearly does not meet GNG. Our one source is a publication from his employer, so it is not indepdent. I was able to find an article on Godfrey of Rheims by Williams, and what looks like a whole magazine that was his coverage of Godfrey, but I was not able to find any more secondary sources on him. Clearly he does not meet GNG. I do not see any way that he meets academic notability. I do not think we have enough to show that his impac as a historian was to the level called for by prong one, and just being on the faculty of Dartmouth is not enough to meet any of the other criteria. John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:27, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Keep. Appears notable due to the coverage in these sources:
 * 1) I wasn't able to access it, but as he's mentioned in the short title, I think it is safe to assume it talks about his work: EDWARD K. KAPLAN. Jules Michelet: Historian as Critic of French Literature by John R. Williams. L’Esprit Créateur, [s. l.], v. 30, p. 112–113, 2017. DOI 10.1353/esp.1990.0009. Disponível em: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsair&AN=edsair.doi...........cd4cbb5f9ef8e50dacf9035f7d80725d&site=eds-live&scope=site. Acesso em: 29 jun. 2022. (struck by me, probably about a different author) CT55555 (talk) 18:44, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * 2) This is an academic paper that reviews his book: Matthew Bell. (2001). [Review of The Life of Goethe: A Critical Biography; Das Genie und sein Fürst. Die Geschichte der Lebensgemeinschaft Goethes mit dem Herzog Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach. Ein Beitrag zum Spätfeudalismus und zu einem vernachlässigten Thema der Goetheforschung; Goethes klassische Lyrik; Metzler-Goethe-Lexikon: Alles über Personen, Werke, Orte, Sachen, Begriffe, Alltag und Kurioses. Mit 2200 Artikeln, by John R. Williams, Friedrich Sengle, Reiner Wild, Benedikt Jessing, Bernd Lutz, & Inge Wild]. The Modern Language Review, 96(2), 568–571. https://doi.org/10.2307/3737455
 * 3) Note, this is by the same author as above. But also significant coverage: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust. A Tragedy in Two Parts, with the unpublished scenarios for the Walpurgisnacht and the Urfaust John R. Williams Review By: Bell, Matthew. In: . 20(1):117-121 Language: English, Database: JSTOR Journals
 * Note: two are by the same author and one I was unable to read, can only see the title, but as it mentions him, I have assumed significant coverage. CT55555 (talk) 17:39, 29 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 17:32, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Are we sure the above are by the same John R. Williams? It is a common name, and writing on 18th-century Germans seems a bit outside the expected scope of a medievalist.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:03, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I discarded sources that were clearly about serial killer with the same name. Noting that he is famous for writing about Godfrey of Rheims, it was his name and "Godfrey of Rheims" that I searched for in Wikipedia library that got me these results, so that makes me be fairly confidence about the first one. The second two are explicitly about his writing about Godfrey of Rheims, so I am very confident about that. Noting you have doubts, I guess that means you are not using the wikipedia library, and yet it is free to wikipedia users. I would recommend it as an essential tool for verifying notability, and finding sources, it's much better than google scholar. CT55555 (talk) 18:09, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Update, the comment below makes me less confident about the first source, in fact I think it means the first one is probably not about him. I'll strike it out. CT55555 (talk) 18:43, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment The author of Jules Michelet: Historian as Critic of French Literature was a John Raymond Williams (1935–2015), who received a doctorate from the University of Colorado in 1967 or 1968. I believe that the German scholar is John Rosser Williams (born 1940), who received a doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1968. gnu 57 18:42, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I'm starting to understand your question differently. Background: the article said he wrote about Godfrey of Rheims, a Humanist of the Eleventh Century on Godfrey of Rheims before I edited it. So all my analysis above is base on the assumption that is accurate.  Assuming it to be accurate, I searched for him on google scholar using the terms "Williams" and "Godfrey of Rheims", to get the above sources. If it is a different John R Williams who wrote about Godfrey of Rheims, then everything I've said above is based on a flawed starting hypothesis, and therefore the article contains errors before Mr Labert question it's notability. So the question in my mine now is: are you saying it was someone else who wrote Godfrey of Rheims? CT55555 (talk) 19:23, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @CT55555 I think it's very likely he wrote about Godfrey of Rheims. Download the finding aid here: . -- asilvering (talk) 21:05, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Which is to say, he did not write about Goethe. He's a medievalist who worked on French intellectual history. -- asilvering (talk) 21:07, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've struck my keep. I'm going to think if I'll remain with no !vote or vote delete. I'll see what others say before maybe commenting again. CT55555 (talk) 21:35, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @CT55555 If you manage to find anything on him that we can link through Template:Authority control, let me know and I'll have another look. I was hoping I could piggyback from an ISBN and try to solve the name disambiguation problem that way. -- asilvering (talk) 21:42, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete: I can't actually find that he has written any books at all. The Godfrey "book" appears to be an article (here: ). This is an article in the most prestigious journal in the field of medieval history, so he wasn't no one, but the usual WP:NAUTHOR path to notability doesn't appear to be available for him. Here's another one of his, and a second article in Speculum here . Google scholar gives the citation figures for these as 22, 29, and 45, respectively. I don't really have a good comparison for what historians' citation figures in the 1950s ought to be, but I don't think we have WP:NPROF here. -- asilvering (talk) 21:17, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment I thought I had posted this note about the time involved. It seems to have been shown above that there are multiple academics by this name. This John R. Williams died in 1988, at age 91 or maybe still 90. The Goethe book was published in 1998. While there are writers and academics who have works published posthumously that does not seem to be the case here. In fact from what is said above it looks like there are at least three academics named John R. Williams who had published works. I do not think we have someone meeting our inclusion criteria for academics here.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:22, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I just realized I had made an edit along these same lines earlier, but had gotten distracted with other things and then gone to other tabs and never actually saved it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:28, 30 June 2022 (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.