Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of University of Alberta honorary degree recipients


 * 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. W.marsh 12:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

List of University of Alberta honorary degree recipients

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Like this already nominated page, I don't think this list is suitable for an encyclopedia. It's nothing more than a directory and I would say it's one of dubious importance. Not everything that can be documented merits inclusion on an encyclopedia, and if there's anything significant about their nomination process or their nominees, it can be covered well enough on the university's own page. FrozenPurpleCube 02:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep I am embarrassed by all the eminent Canadians we don't seem to have in WP. While our coverage is still so incomplete, we can't substitute categories. In the absence of information on them, I don't see how the nom. can say they are of dubious importance. (smile) DGG 03:45, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see how this list would help the lack of eminent Canadians. Really just more people making articles would do that trick. I don't see why someone can't just userfy this, or put it on a talk page somewhere. Bulldog123 16:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Quite easily. Nothing in the page establishes the importance or meaning of these degrees in any significant way.  That's how.  If you think you can establish its importance, feel free to make the argument.  If you feel there aren't enough Canadians given coverage on Wikipedia, there is no need for an article-space entry of names.  Put something up on a Wikiproject.  FrozenPurpleCube 04:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Precisely. :) Bulldog123 17:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. The University of Alberta is a long-established research-based university. Receiving an honorary degree from it is an award of the kind that demonstrates notability. The red links in the article are reminders of articles that ought to be written. --Eastmain 07:29, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Nobody is questioning the notability of the University of Alberta in itself. However, not every thing said university has done merits an article.   Can you offer any reason why this list should be kept besides making for some names?  FrozenPurpleCube 14:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete The amount of redlinks shows its notability is in question. Whsitchy 15:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. Red links don't show anything other than the absence of an article. The absence of an article does not demonstrate non-notability. It simply means that there isn't an article yet. Most of the red links are, I think, for notable individuals - otherwise they wouldn't have received an honorary degree from the University of Alberta. --Eastmain 18:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * As far as it goes, I agree, whether or not there's an article on someone is not saying much other than lack of interest. However, I don't believe that receiving an honorary degree from this University is demonstrative of presumptive notability either.  I wouldn't say an honorary degree from anywhere demonstrates anything much.  These things are given out by many universities, and rarely attract much interest.  In any case, so far, I've not seen any indication that these awards for this university are notable in and of themselves.  FrozenPurpleCube 19:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete per precedent for lists of honourary degree recipients. However, many of the redlinks don't denote lack of notability as much as lack of interest among editors in early 20th century Canadian biographies. I've just found a guy who was a member of both the Trilateral Commission and the Northwest Territories Council - an unusual feat to say the least. -- Charlene 16:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete per the precedent of the Dutch list, and per a projection of the WP:Overcategorization by award winners onto lists. Personally I think Overcategorization should also be transformed into Overlistification. The WP:NOT thing is being used abusively to just create tons of lists usually aimed at making some kind of point by the list or category's existence. I don't particularly think THIS list has an aim, but I do agree it fits the criteria of those others. So, delete. Bulldog123 16:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. I believe this is a valuable list, most of those listed there meet the criteria of nobility per se. The amount of red links only points out how many notable people are out there without articles. This list would encourage more articles created for those who were honoured by this university. Moreover, since this is an award, a new category should not be used, but rather a list (see OC:Award winners). I also think that similar lists should be created for all top universities world-wide that award honorary degrees. Yury Petrachenko 16:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * But when you get down to the core, the arguments for WP:Overcategorization really do apply very similarly to lists, even if lists aren't targets. So, lets say we do make lists for all the top universities in the world. Then we have even bigger lists with even more permanent red links. There's no way even 60% of the names will get an article worth having on wikipedia. It feels more like a list for the college's website than for an encyclopedia. Bulldog123 17:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think that the same arguments apply to lists. WP:OC is a Wikipedia guideline, it reflects the consensus. Unless there is another similarly agreed guideline for lists, we shouldn't apply the categories' principles to lists. Especially when the guideline in question actually encourages lists when categories are inappropriate.
 * I agree that this list, if kept, requires a lot of work. Some of the red links point to people who already have an article but lack a correct redirect from full (or less common) spellings of their names. Some people on the list may be "blacklinked" (no link at all) if they are not notable. The list should be rearranged chronologically, brief introductions, photos, etc.... Yury Petrachenko 12:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletions.  -- Pax:Vobiscum 22:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. An honorary doctorate from a top university is a significant award. This is also a good way to identify notable individuals that should have articles written about them. I also agree that lists are far better than categories for these things, both for the red links that encourage new articles, and because they can be sorted in chronological order and include comments. It also avoids too many categories (Nobel laureates, royalty and internationally active politicians get many honorary doctorates.) Pharamond 16:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, usage of these lists to identify individuals is something you can do outside of the article space, and I'd agree that trying to make this a category would be a poor idea. But what's significant about this award?   What makes this a top university anyway?  (I ask, because then we can figure out how many *other* universities need these lists.  FrozenPurpleCube 19:15, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, what is meant by "top university" is super subjective. Using all criterias, there would be at least 100 "top universities" in the USA alone. Bulldog123 20:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
 * There is no question that the University of Alberta is one of the top universities in Canada (top 5 likely). I can't speak for the U.S. but in Canada there is the Group of Thirteen. This may be considered as a first-order established proxy for the list of top universities. I am sure that any such lists should be decided on the corresponding project pages for each country. Also, not every university awards honorary degree (afaik, the MIT is an example). Yury Petrachenko 12:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The ranking list of Shanghai Jiao Tong University puts it among several other at place 59-75 in a list of "Top 100 North & Latin American Universities" (the same level includes Dartmouth College, Emory University, University of Virginia and a few others). I don't see how including lists of honorary doctorates from the top 200-250 universities in the world, or old universities which have been top-tier in the past (these are, after all, historical lists with a few names for each year), would be a problem. It won't require us to start including lists of holders of honorary bachelor's degrees from Truckee Meadows Community College. On the other hand, I agree that lists like this one could perhaps be developed in project pages, where the notability of individuals in the lists can be more clearly identified before the lists are moved into article space. But there shouldn't be a precedent against lists like these. BTW, Google News today shows a number of stories on Bill Gates being awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard. Pharamond 13:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Um, exactly why should we use this list by a Chinese University? Who uses that list?  What coverage does it get?    What is the reasoning and methodology used to construct the list?   Sorry, but I think you should at least stick to something that offers an explanation, not a barelist of names that could have come from anywhere at all.  As for Bill Gates receiving an honorary degree, that's something that goes into his article, and maybe the one on former Harvard non-graduates (there is such an article, whether or not there should be, I don't know).  But I don't see it as justifying a list on its own.  Kermit the Frog's honorary degree has made the news as well.   FrozenPurpleCube 14:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It is fairly widely cited, which was the reason I mentioned it. If you want to know how it is compiled, that information is available elsewhere on the same site. The Times Higher Education Supplement ranking, if you prefer that, ranked the University of Alberta at no 133 in the world in 2006. Pharamond 21:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I note that the second news item is an article talking about these ratings being used in misleading ways. And the description of the list is that it's solely based on research.  Does that mean anything about the value of the honorary degrees granted by the college?  I don't think so.  I doubt they even care about such things.  Thus I can't recommend using this other list to justify articles which are the compilation of unrelated data. FrozenPurpleCube 22:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Which college? So far I have only participated in two of these discussions and they are both about universities. There is obviously no reason to bother with lists of honorary degree recipients from places which grant degrees to muppets (if that was the college you intended), but that has not been the case with either of these two. Pharamond 22:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * College, university, same difference to me. Answer the question, don't focus on choice of words.  FrozenPurpleCube 23:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Your concern is not at all clear to me. Are you saying that it is a bad thing if awards are based mainly on accomplishments in research? Pharamond 05:50, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope. I'm asking:  Does that mean anything about the value of the honorary degrees granted by the college?  So far as I can tell, it doesn't.  Hence my objection to using a list of notability based on one critiera to defend this list which doesn't have anything to do with the other one.  Sometimes notability bleeds over, but I don't see a convincing case here.  FrozenPurpleCube 06:53, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that the reputation of the university does not affect the prestige of the degrees it offers. That seems illogical to me. If the university would be indiscriminate in its awarding honorary doctorates, it would affect the future prestige of these degrees and indirectly that of the university itself. Despite the occasional bad decision, that is not a risk any self-respecting university would normally be prepared to take. Pharamond 07:40, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm saying quite clearly that there is no evidence that the ranking list you have pointed to cares one bit about the honorary degrees a university awards. Thus any assumption about their meaning based on that list is nothing more than intuitive reasoning on our part.  FrozenPurpleCube 13:22, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * But it is no different from saying that e.g. the Royal Society or French Academy or British Parliament are important and prestigious or influential institutions and that it follows from this that membership of these bodies is also an important distinction and an indication of "notability" for the individual in question. In a large proportion of cases the people awarded these honorary doctorates will very likely turn out to be notable for other reasons. In the case of any similar list where the majority of recipients do not have any other signs of notability or turn out to be extremely difficult to even identify, I would agree that we should not have that list. Pharamond 13:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Not at all. Members of the Royal Society or French Academy or British Parliament are actual members of the group.  This list is about folks honored by the university, not about people belonging to this university.  Huge difference there.  (Not that I imagine you'd get a list of university members to last either, but there is a difference).  If the honors awarded by the various groups you mention don't have coverage in their own right, then maybe they shouldn't have articles either describing the awards or listing the winners.  I don't know about the Royal Society or the French Academy, but the British Parliament probably does a lot of things that don't get significant coverage, or whose numbers of awards make comprehensive list articles unfeasible Order of the British Empire  (But at least, the OBE does have coverage on its own).   FrozenPurpleCube 14:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep, list of honorary degrees are likely candidates for new article creation. John Vandenberg 21:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per precedent. Or are we going to have such a list for every university in the world?  NB people get honorary degrees for all sorts of reasons, some of which justify notability, others not.  The fact, for instance, that someone was an honest bürger and generous donor in the 1940s doesn't merit inclusion in Wikepedia today.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 04:57, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions.   -- Pharamond 21:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * comment Major universities do not give honorary degrees for that, as can be seen from the lists.  There will obviously be a level below  where would be unreasonable, but we can find that as we go. I anticipate that two or three hundred such lists would be about right. I know some regard that with horror, but some regard various popular music awards with similar horror, or the thousands of professional athletes and their awards. We are a general encyclopedic with very wide interests.  DGG 05:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, they do. I've been involved in honorary degree nominations at a major university, and there it was explicitly written that similar "contributions to the community" were a valid justification for such a degree.  This may be a good or a bad thing (I'm neutral), but it doesn't establish notability in Wikipedia's terms.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 05:53, 9 June 2007 (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.