Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Leonard H. Tower, Jr.


 * 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. –MuZemike 20:26, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Leonard H. Tower, Jr.
Previous AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log )

Lacks reliable independent secondary sources WP:RS to establish notability as required by WP:GNG. Googling suggests there aren't any. From the opening paragraph at WP:N: "Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article."  It's appropriate to mention Tower in the article on gcc, a product he worked on, based on primary sources, including, that describe his role. But without secondary sources, a separate article on the subject himself is contraindicated by policy and guidelines. Previous AfDs in 2006 deleted, then kept the article, but as was common at the time, very little of the discussion was policy-based. Msnicki (talk) 14:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Msnicki (talk) 15:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Msnicki (talk) 15:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  — • Gene93k (talk) 15:35, 19 September 2011 (UTC)


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


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:02, 25 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong keep There are now ten inline citations, documenting who this man is. I just added a citation showing his founding director membership in the Free Software Foundation, and important institution in the movement to create, maintain, and share without charge software important to the computing community. The article was considered for GA status in the past, so it is hard to understand how it now does not have reliable secondary sources. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:51, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not a single one of the sources is independent. Not one.  None of that is useful in establishing notability under the guidelines.   Msnicki (talk) 03:29, 29 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep The accomplishments he has achieved listed in the article already, prove he is notable. WP:BURO WP:IAR and WP:SENSE are things you should be aware of.   D r e a m Focus  17:40, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * It would be more helpful if any of that proof included an actual reliable independent secondary source or perhaps a citation to any part of the guidelines confirming that his accomplishments may be accepted in lieu of sources. Common sense is not common, which is why we have guidelines with specifics rather than deciding things just based on the number of WP:ILIKEIT !votes. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Tower, but you raise the question of his accomplishments and I think the article seems to inflate them, perhaps due to the subject's WP:AUTO involvement in creating the article and to his relationship to the sources at FSF in the citations.  Tower definitely did contribute to gcc but from, page 7, it's clear that that the principal author was Stallman.  Tower's contribution is listed 4th and described as implementing ideas contributed by Davidson and Fraser.  This is kind of an entry-level assignment.  Being one of 5 contributors to an implementation of diff, a roughly 2000-line problem, also based on a published algorithm by someone else, is even less impressive.  Nowhere in the guidelines do I find support for this as sufficient to establish per se or presumed notability. The article needs WP:RS sources, it doesn't have them and I don't think they exist.  The subject doesn't WP:INHERIT notability just from having worked with Stallman or on gcc.  This is why the appropriate editorial treatment would be a mention in the article on gcc, not a separate article.  Msnicki (talk) 18:11, 29 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong keep I read this article (having followed Len's notable and long-standing contributions to FSF) and agree with the "rescue" tag on it. The details in it aren't detailed enough, the sources aren't at as far a distance from the subject that you'd like them to be, and the lede is weak. The subject would be a good topic for an IEEE Annals of the History of Computing article, or an interview at the Charles Babbage Institute, and then from that a better article could be written. But keep, to be sure; Edward Vielmetti (talk) 05:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you have a policy-based reason, e.g., any sources or a section of the guidelines you rely on to establish notability? It doesn't appear so.  I agree that if only the IEEE or the Charles Babbage Institute wrote articles about him, that could make him notable.  Then again, if they wrote articles about you or me, we could be notable, too.  But they haven't written about any of us, so far as I know.  Surely you aren't proposing we keep the article just because you hope someday, someone may write about the subject, are you?  Msnicki (talk) 06:53, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:KEEPCOOL. Let's assume, for a moment, that the subject of this article is not notable; that would contradict my personal experience, in that I've known of him since I first knew of the League for Programming Freedom in 1991. So then the conclusion that I draw is that the subject of the article is notable but has not yet been adequately noted in the (limited) literature that Wikipedia is good at citing, and that corresponds well with the "rescue" tag on the article. Perhaps indeed I am notable as well, it's just that no one has cared sufficiently to bother. Edward Vielmetti (talk) 14:49, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Notability has a more technical meaning here than in common usage. It's not sufficient that a subject seems notable.  It's all and only about whether other people not connected to the subject thought it was notable and said so in reliable independent secondary sources, though the guidelines do allow us to accept certain kinds of evidence as sufficient to establish per se or presumed notability in lieu of sources.  For example, WP:SCHOLAR allows us to accept an individual as notable if "[t]he person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." or if "[t]he person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level." So far as I can see, there are no WP:RS sources and none of the various alternate criteria are satisfied. Our individual personal experiences are off the table WP:OR and irrelevant unless we happen to have had them published in reliable sources.  The rescue tag is there to request that if anyone knows of a source, now's the time to cite it because we're trying to decide an AfD, where sources matter.  I don't think there are any reliable independent secondary sources, no matter how hard anyone looks.  Speculation that maybe they're out there but we don't know how to find them isn't good enough.  Under the guidelines, without sources we can't give this subject a separate article.  It's black letter.  Msnicki (talk) 15:07, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:SNOW. This article has not been deleted twice, and there is only one voice (using WP:JARGON) arguing the technical merits. Please be deletionist somewhere else; I offer you Joanna Sakowicz as an acceptable alternative. Edward Vielmetti (talk) 18:12, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. Msnicki (talk) 18:19, 1 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Requesting relisting. This AfD has been listed for two weeks.  I've diligently tried to find editors willing to help form a consensus by listing this on 3 different deletion lists; Gene93k added it to a fourth.  Not one of the keep !votes has been able to identify a single WP:RS for this topic nor has any one of them been able to cite any part of the guidelines they believe would support a presumption of notability in lieu of sources.  Instead, what's been offered has been a series of WP:ATA arguments, a wonderful mix of WP:UNRELIABLE, WP:INHERIT, WP:POSITION, WP:IKNOWIT, WP:SUPPORT, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS and WP:NOTAGAIN, mixed with some unhelpful opinions about me, personally. In closing an AfD, the closing admin is required to consider the arguments, not just count the number of !votes.  This article has no reliable independent secondary sources even after 3 AfDs and the contributions of the subject himself.  I assert that they do not exist.  I also assert that there is no other provision in that  guidelines that allows us to presume notability.  I believe policy is clear, including clear from the discussion:  The article should be deleted, keeping (or even, possibly, elaborating) the mentions elsewhere.  But I'd still like to get an actual policy-based discussion, please.  Msnicki (talk) 19:41, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Despite your many long arguments, you haven't convinced a single person to agree with you. Everyone else says keep.  The previous AFD had a much larger number of people appearing, and almost all of them said keep.   Accept consensus and don't keep dragging this out.   D r e a m Focus  20:16, 2 October 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.