Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of awards and honors received by Gordon Rausser


 * 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 merge to Gordon Rausser. Consensus is to do a partial merge of only the notable awards back to the main article on Rausser. ‑Scottywong | [verbalize] || 05:12, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

List of awards and honors received by Gordon Rausser

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Attempt to bypass draft space with promotional overcoverage. It was previously contributed, and I moved it to draft as Draft:List of awards and honors received by Gordon Rausser with the comment "Overextensive list. The major awards belong in the article on him/. The minor ones don't belong in WP at all. The ones from his own university don't belong in WP at all This seems to be a promotional attempt to give the same overextended treatment we give performers." Perhaps I should just have merged back the ones worth merging and redirected in the first place.  DGG ( talk ) 22:34, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 22:43, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete Promotional, WP:UNDUE list of largely non-notable awards. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 23:14, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Partial merge Obviously we shouldn't have a list of awards longer than the subject's biography itself. Wikipedia is not the place to paste in Mr. Rausser's CV (which can be found here) and only a small selection of the most significant awards should be listed. Reywas92Talk 19:23, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

If DDG's only contention that Gordon Rausser's awards are considered promotional and over coverage solely for the reason the recipient works there, this is completely invalid and should not prompt deletion of the page for the following reason:

1. The Citation Award, Builders of Berkeley, and Fellowship awards are not given simply because of an UC Berkeley affiliation, but given to less than five individuals at a given year who have distinguished themselves through their work and experience. It is unclear why DDG believes the "ones from his own university don't belong in WP." This seems to imply Gordon Rausser owns UC Berkeley, when in fact, he is a professor there. If DDG can clarify this with more than a condescending statement, it would be more constructive to provide evidence. Over the course of history, there are thousands of faculty members and supporters of UC Berkeley. Only 100 of these people are named Berkeley Fellows. With respect to the Citation Award, this is given to one person per year for which everyone who is ever been associated with the CNR either as a student, faculty, alumni, or friend, can be selected. The selection committee is totally blind and does not take any favors. The Career Achievement Award is for one faculty or graduate student member for scientific contributions. The selection committee is also totally blind and does not take any favors.

2. DDG does not understand the prestige of receiving this award simply because DDG does not understand the honor process in academia. In other words, DDG does not have any expertise nor the competency to determine which awards are minor. It is worth noting that DDG has attended UC Berkeley and should understand how major these awards are. There might be a conflict of interest due to DDG's affiliation with UC Berkeley's CNR, whether he has a negative intention towards Rausser and CNR. If DDG can pinpoint which awards he considers "minor awards," I will be more than happy to explain why it is not. Furthermore, this is an insult to the UC Berkeley institution as well as to Gordon Rausser. In the future, DDG should provide reasoning and evidence before making such outlandish statements and a request for the deletion of a Wikipedia page with all the necessary sources and citations.

Choielliotjwa (talk) 00:40, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I have spent most of my life in academia, including some of it in Berkeley. Significant awards are those given by an outside organization for a major body of work. In-house awards are basically an exercise in public relations, and therefore of low significance in general. I agree that perhaps the very highest ones from Berkeley might have some importance. (I'm not about to deny the quality of the university that gave me my own doctorate), but its not the degree of significance that would demonstrate notability. But they are much less significant than awards from major outside professional societies, and Rauscher has enough of them to prove his great importance. Of the awards from Berkeley:
 * "Builder of Berkeley" is an award for giving them money.
 * In 2004, Rausser was awarded the Citation Award from UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources  this is not their top level award (he did win their top level award, in addition, so why mention this?)
 * a member of UC Berkeley's Board of Trustees. -- we don't now include such memberships in any article for anyone; (many articles still have them from our earlier days when we were less careful)
 * chair of UC Berkeley's Department of Economics and All Economic Programs Evaluation Committee. -- this is academic service, but not an award

But it's not just the awards from Berkeley. Awards for being the best article in a wide subject field  are significant.

...

But awards for being the best article in a particular journal in a particular year are relatively trivial. ....
 * In 2014, Rausser was awarded the “Best Private Enforcement Academic Article” from the American Antitrust Institute[12][13].

Being on the editorial board of a journal is trivial. Being the editor in cheif is significant. Rauscher was indeed editor in chief of a major journal, which is part of what proves him notable ,

but the list also includes ones where he was just one of an editor borard or "an editor". ....

There are three reasons for including minor honors:
 * 1) There's not enough major -- this doesn't appply here. There are plenty of major distinctions
 * 2) One is writing a CV -- for an official academic CV in the US the current required practice is to include everything, down to individual lectures and classes. But Wikipedia does not publish CVs/.
 * 3) One is resorting to puffery, to make someone appear even more important than they are. -- But Rauscher is quite important, and all such a list does is detract from focussing on the really major distinction he has earned. Writing an academic bio and making this error is characteristic of PR people, who are used to being expansive as they can get away with, to people writing or directing the writing of their autobiography, or to newcomers here who copy the promotionalism  they see, which we acceptedi n earlier days and are still in the process of removing. What we certainly don't need is more of it!

unfinished--to be continued tomorrow but it's too late in the night to keep working on it now.  DGG ( talk ) 05:48, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

oddly, the paragraph in the main article left out which by our standards -- and most people in the academic world-- is the highest honour of everything in the long list., and most of the ones in the para are described very vaguely: "twenty boards of directors". Looking a little more broadly at the article, it mentions his honors, but not his science. I notice they're in Draft:List of selected works by Gordon Rausser, where they seem to be listed by broad subject, ignoring whether they're a book (there are 6 of them), a peer-reviewed journal article, or just a published report--or even an unpublished "position paper" (some of them "confidential") The main article needs complete rewriting. He's an economist, not a natural scientist, but I could do it if no other established volunteer editor does. There seems to be COI, tho I can not determine its nature. There's an interesting version by the curret ed. at    DGG ( talk ) 17:35, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to Gordon Rausser. Why wasn't this just a merge discussion?  Notable awards should be listed, others removed.   D r e a m Focus  08:40, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to Gordon Rausser. I note this target already includes a paragraph summarising his awards, so it may be that there is nothing to merge if every single thing on this list is deemed insignificant. That is a content decision for editors of the main article though.Pontificalibus 10:38, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "In 1993, Rausser was selected as a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science"

I have taken DDG’s point of the Builder of Berkeley award and the Board of Trustees award and deleted them from the list. Objectively, it does seem like a promotional award for no merit except a flair of wealth, and to comply with Wikipedia’s guidelines, the Trustee position has also been deleted. I have also changed the College of Natural Resources award to the highest Career Achievement Award.

With the comments from Pontificalibus and DreamFocus, I also propose the awards and honor list be moved to the main article. I assure Pontificalibus that the whole list is not insignificant; on the contrary, the majority if not all, are significant and noteworthy.

However, with the other awards, there is one crucial point: it is not up to DDG to judge whether an award is trivial or minor.

An editorship of an academic journal is not something academia gives away to everyone. The American Antitrust Institute, in which DDG calls their awards “trivial,” is an extremely important non-profit think-tank that is at the forefront of antitrust enforcement for big companies. To call such a prestigious institution is extremely worrying. If this was a “trivial” journal with no impact factors, objectively, this would be minor.

In a comparison, an editor-in-chief is more prestigious than an associate editor. Another comparison shows that an associate editor is more prestigious than a guest editor. Another comparison shows that a guest editor is more prestigious than a writer. Another comparison shows that a writer is more prestigious than a non-writer. RELATIVELY and OBJECTIVELY, an editorship at a renowned academic journal is indeed a honor.

The proposed three reasons DDG states for the justification of minor awards seem somewhat redundant, as DDG rules out two of the reasons and the aforementioned Wikipedia page is not an official CV as it does not include individual lectures or classes. This is not a CV, and this contention seems like an irrelevant red herring to fallaciously strengthen DDG’s point.

As to “completely revising” the main article, the reason simply does not make sense. Because he’s an economist and not a scientist the article has to be revised? What’s the difference between an economist’s Wikipedia page and a scientist’s Wikipedia’s page? The Draft:List of selected works by Gordon Rausser should be disregarded. Why does DDG want to completely revise the main article after it had passed the neutrality guidelines? With a ridiculous contention and irrelevant and even more ridiculous reason, DDG’s COI as well as his past work should be audited and reviewed. Choielliotjwa (talk) 09:04, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge to Gordon Rausser. Not an independently notable topic. Stifle (talk) 15:18, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - Do not merge. See Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.  If this list were in the article, it would be appropriate to remove it as undue emphasis.  The above arguments may be ironically appropriate to illustrate this point, because they are indiscriminate pilings on of English words.  Robert McClenon (talk) 22:14, 14 October 2020 (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.