Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Kamrath


 * 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. There is some merit to the argument that Mr. Kamrath passes criterion 3 of WP:NAUTHOR since evidence has been provided that The historicism of Charles Brockden Brown : radical history and the early republic has been the subject of multiple reviews.

I still have reservations, based on the original versions of the article being an WP:AUTOBIOGRAPHY. This is strongly discouraged according to the guideline, but does not mandate automatic deletion either. I am also concerned about the lack of coverage about the author rather than his book.

But my role here is not to inject my opinion but to assess consensus, and if there is merit to the arguments. The argument that the reviews of his book confer notability does have merit, and significant support, so no consensus for deletion can be found here. Sjakkalle (Check!)  12:30, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Mark Kamrath

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

Probable autobiography. Fails WP:NACADEMIC. Meets none of the 8 criteria listed there.
 * 1) "The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.
 * 2) "The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.
 * 3) "The person has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society which reserves fellow status as a highly selective honor (e.g., Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).
 * 4) "The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.
 * 5) "The person has held a named chair appointment or distinguished professor appointment at a major institution of higher education and research, or an equivalent position in countries where named chairs are uncommon.
 * 6) "The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed administrative post at a major academic institution or major academic society.
 * 7) "The person has had a substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity.
 * 8) "The person has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area." — rsjaffe 🗣️ 20:56, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators, Literature,  and Florida. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 20:56, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi,
 * Thanks for the quick feedback.
 * I can understand, according to this criteria, why you would or will delete the article. Fine, no problem.
 * I would point out though that I have seen other academic profiles that contain less in terms of research publications--and impact.
 * Few American scholars have been awarded 3 NEH grants.
 * Cheers Mkamrath (talk) 21:16, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Please be aware of WP:OTHERSTUFF. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:47, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete puffery, little to no reliable sources. Almost like a resume. Oaktree b (talk) 23:59, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see your point about the resume. Maybe look at Christopher Looby, Sharon M. Harris, and Michael Warner entries for comparison? Mark Kamrath (talk) 21:52, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment: arguably meets WP:NPROF #1 as the general editor of an edition (two, actually) of Charles Brockden Brown. I'll try to come back to this later with a firmer !vote. -- asilvering (talk) 00:08, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, to clarify, I am the General Editor of 4 published volumes and a volume editor of 2 of those volumes. All volumes were awarded the Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions (MLA-CSE) Seal, the highest recognition in the field. Mark Kamrath (talk) 21:56, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Low citation record shows that this BLP is WP:Too soon to pass WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:26, 18 June 2022 (UTC).
 * Yes, the citation record will appear to be low, especially if measured against citations in the sciences. Mark Kamrath (talk) 21:58, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Citations are compared against those of other US scholars in the humanities. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:12, 18 June 2022 (UTC).
 * Such as Edmund Wilson, Barbara Tuchman, George Steiner, Harry Levin. I will leave editors to check the many thousands of citations to their works that these scholars have acquired. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:01, 19 June 2022 (UTC).
 * Fair enough, no comparison there. I was comparing myself to the other literature professors I mentioned earlier (above). Mark Kamrath (talk) 01:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete as WP:TOOSOON unless some significant independant sources (e.g. reviews) are found which discuss his work. -Kj cheetham (talk) 20:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, reviews can be found in the MLA International Bibliography, generally, and my field's lead journal, Early American Literature, specifically. See, for example, Bryan Waterman's "Charles Brockden Brown Revised and Expanded" 2005 EAL 40 (1), pp.173-191, and Hilary Emmet's "Brownian Motion: Directions in CBB Scholarship" EAL 2015 50 (1), pp 205-221.
 * Oxford University Press, arguably the world's leading academic presses for literary scholars, will have the most recent assessment of my work in *The Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown* (2019). Please see essays by Elizabeth Jane Wall Hinds and Hannah Lauren Murray.
 * Anyway, if "too soon" according to existing criteria, no problem. I understand.
 * Thanks for your consideration. Mark Kamrath (talk) 22:26, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 *  Weak Keep Changing my !vote as is probably a pass of WP:NAUTHOR rather than WP:NPROF. For the benefit of others, links to some of the reviews mentioned: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25057386, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24476619 and https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Oxford_Handbook_of_Charles_Brockden/8iCWDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 . I don't have access to read the reviews, but the fact multiple reviews exist convinces me. The article does need work, but WP:DINC. -Kj cheetham (talk) 22:57, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * They are just jointly edited books. There appears to be no original writing here. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:07, 18 June 2022 (UTC).
 * I have access to the reviews; as you'd expect, the first makes little mention of Mr. Kamrath as one of several editors, while the second and third refer to him extensively. 2601:188:180:B8E0:0:0:0:D869 (talk) 00:56, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, like multi-authored articles in the sciences. But there are, of course, different levels and kinds of "edited" volumes. The MLA CSE volumes undergo a rigorous evaluation by peers. Please see:
 * https://www.mla.org/Resources/Guidelines-and-Data/Reports-and-Professional-Guidelines/Publishing-and-Scholarship/Guidelines-for-Editors-of-Scholarly-Editions Mark Kamrath (talk) 01:42, 20 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete. This is a lot of puffery for very little strong evidence of notability as per WP:SCHOLAR. The publication record doesn't even play the same sport as highly notable individuals in the humanities, never mind the ballpark. Ari T. Benchaim (talk) 23:58, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, please forgive me if it appears that I am making extravagant claims of any kind; I am simply trying, in a respectful manner, to answer your questions since you appear to have backgrounds in the sciences, etc. When we review tenure and promotion files at the university level, professors often defer
 * to a committee member from the applicant's area, e.g., physics, to help explain the meaning of this or that accomplishment; we don't presume to fully understand or know a field that is different from our own. Is there someone with a Ph.D. in literature on this thread? Also, the metric you are applying here is print "publication record," which is fine. But that metric is changing at universities, and things like "database" creation in the digital humanities are also highly valued. So I ask how many NEH grants have the other notable individuals or authors you are comparing my record against been awarded? If you can look at my research or publication record in that light, it might look stronger. Mark Kamrath (talk) 01:38, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This might be helpful in understanding the digital humanities aspect of my researc: https://www.archivejournal.net/essays/the-charles-brockden-brown-electronic-archive-mapping-archival-access-and-metadata/ Mark Kamrath (talk) 02:06, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * It is regrettable the the subject did not heed the advice on his talk pages about the inadvisability of editors using Wikipedia to promote themselves or their interests under WP:COI and WP:AUTO. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:41, 20 June 2022 (UTC).
 * Yes, I understand this position and the need for this review board to follow established criteria or protocols closely. So that I don't waste any more of your time, we should discontinue the discussion. On the other hand, if Wikipedia is open to being more of a "Who is Who?" reference" on certain fronts, I wonder if self-nomination can be useful in identifying individuals who have or who are making some kind of impact. This is done in other areas of endeavor, e.g., politics. I also ask this question in the context, as I mentioned earlier, of seeing academic profiles on Wikipedia which my peers or I might not necessarily deem the strongest.
 * Anyway, thank you for your review commentary and allowing me to undergo this process. I respect and accept your decision. Mark Kamrath (talk) 13:36, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * , amen. 2601:188:180:B8E0:0:0:0:D869 (talk) 18:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Weak delete and weak keep can result in a No consensus. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 00:45, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete. Dr. Kamrath has a GS h-index of 6, which is a little lower than the customary cutoff around 10 to 15, but he does appear to be a full professor and his Periodical literature in eighteenth-century America is held by almost 300 libraries (WorldCat). Also comes from a solid department, which incidentally has some promising young female and minority faculty members, who probably should have articles here. Could change my mind, if further support comes to light. 128.252.172.31 (talk) 16:52, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment The Historicism of Charles Brockden Brown: Radical History and the Early Republic was a solo-author work that appears to have drawn a significant number of scholarly reviews . That is usually enough for us to warrant having an article on the book, if not the author. In the humanities, we tend to look for book reviews rather than citations to journal publications as the more meaningful indicator of influence, but we also tend to require multiple reviews of multiple books each, with co-edited volumes counting for significantly less. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:34, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. Oh boy do I ever love to see the "but is editing/DH worth as much as authoring/print, when it comes to publications?" debate every digital editor is familiar with play out in an AfD. (This is sarcasm: I do not love this.) Here's my take: we routinely keep articles for authors, including academic authors, whose monographs have received 2+ in-depth reviews, judging their work to have received enough notice to count as "notable" for wikipedia's purposes; to not consider scholarly editing to be roughly on par with authoring in this context is to focus on a narrow, specific guideline (eg, authors are notable if they have multiple notable works) while ignoring the purpose behind that guideline (to give editors a rule of thumb to show what kinds of work is "notable"). Is every twice-reviewed academic book making a significant contribution to a scholarly field? Maybe not. Is a complete collected works? You bet it is. This article doesn't do a good job of expressing that, probably at least partly because of the autobio author's desire to appear neutral. I'll fill the article out a bit to make it look a bit less resume-like, but I would say that we have effectively a WP:NAUTHOR pass here, based on the reviews of the sole-author book and the reviews of the works for which he is a general/volume editor. -- asilvering (talk) 22:42, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I could be convinced that producing a definitive edition, complete collected works, etc., would be the sort of achievement we look for, much more so than co-editing an anthology of new papers by multiple authors. There's editing, and then there's editing, one might say. I'll wait for your modifications before I weigh in further. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
 * @XOR'easter He's done both, and my argument is primarily about the former, though I did link some reviews for the essay collections as well. I'd say I've finished making the article look less resume-like, but mostly what I've done is add references and reword things as I moved them around - I haven't yet had a go at more carefully reading through the reviews to write anything actually new. So you may find this helpful or you might not. Time for me to take a break for now, though. -- asilvering (talk) 01:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Clarification comment: I want to be clear that my argument about editorial work being notable is that it is a notable thing to be the general editor for a Collected Writings of a major author, not that the subject of the article is notable for having edited multiple collections of scholarly essays (though if someone wants to make that argument, they're welcome to). For those unfamiliar with the primary importance of this kind of work plays in literary studies, here's Hilary Emmett reviewing both Kamrath's The historicism of Charles Brockden Brown and the first volume of the Collected Works (for which he is both a volume editor and the general editor): Thus, while I want to make a strong case for valuing the vast bibliographic labor that went into the production of this volume [ie, vol 1 of the Collected Works] [...] I particularly commend it in terms of the new understandings of early American print and epistolary culture that it will generate. It is out of projects such as this that field-changing scholarship and dynamic pedagogy happen, as evidenced by the intimate connections between Kamrath's work as general editor of the Collected Writings volumes and the critical work that it has enabled. (pp.219-220 of "Brownian Motion"). This is a strong endorsement of the importance of Kamrath and his work from a scholar in his field. -- asilvering (talk) 00:15, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Very weak keep; also note sensible redirect target as alternative to deletion. The citations are respectable in a low-citation field, but I think that we still need _something_ for WP:NPROF.  Grants do not directly contribute to notability, although they make it more likely that the subject will be notable later.  Looking to WP:NAUTHOR, we have one authored volume with several reviews, and two edited volumes with reviews.  Another authored volume would definitely make the case clearer, and I think this is verging on WP:TOOSOON.  However, in combination with the reasonable citations, I'm brought over to a (very weak) keep.  Note that The historicism of Charles Brockden Brown: radical history and the early republic definitely passes WP:NBOOK, so a sensible alternative to deletion would be to redirect to a short stub on the book. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 07:45, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 *  Weak keep As noted above, the solo-author book definitely counts, and we'd be justified in having an article on it. The question then becomes, do we cover the author as well as the book? The co-edited essay collections wouldn't themselves be enough on top of that to avoid the "only known for one thing" issue that we try to avoid, but having the lead role in producing a definitive work on a historically significant author also counts in favor of wiki-notability. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:37, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * I hope that the closer will give attention to the arguments offered as well as to the vote count. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:51, 26 June 2022 (UTC).


 * Delete He hasn't won any major awards and the whole article reads like a CV. Citations shouldn't be a factor if someone is notable, you can get a bunch of citations for something silly and still not be notable.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 09:20, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Can you give an example of somebody getting a bunch (how many?) of citations for something silly? Xxanthippe (talk) 09:38, 25 June 2022 (UTC).
 * Being like a CV isn't inherently grounds for deletion as WP:DINC. Also citations are most certainly a factor for WP:NPROF C1 for instance. -Kj cheetham (talk) 11:50, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hey @Kj cheetham I absolutely agree that citations are important for establishing notability and my comment on that the article read like a CV was more to address the state of the article. When I take a look at the whole picture of the subject here I'm still not sure that they are notable. For example the subject of this article was only cited 5 times last year, every year since 2017 his citation count has gotten smaller. In the humanities you'll find that most scholars have a smaller citation count then their peers in STEM so when looking to see if the subject is notable we can look at other factors such as books published. The subjects last published book was in 2013, the other entries are book chapters which are normally less impactful. If the subject had a really impactful piece of work at some point, multiple books published in their field, a history of interdisciplinary works, or a long active record of presenting at conferences then I could easily say they were notable. But after evaluating the information available to us and online I can't firmly say the article is notable.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 19:03, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't expect this will impact your !vote in any way since you appear to be discounting the collected works entirely, but fyi that his last published book was 2020, not 2013 (vol 4 of the Collected Works). -- asilvering (talk) 04:42, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Hey @Xxanthippe I've included some examples of silly articles getting a lot of citations. Just to be clear I'm not saying that the subject of this article is publishing silly articles or anything like that. When looking at the importance of someone's work I think a more holistic process of the should be taken when evaluating their impact. For example in the humanities citation counts are often lower.
 * Cited 524 times Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction
 * Cited 112 times Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial
 *  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 18:55, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you for responding. Some publications get lots of citations because they are silly or funny: hence the Ignobel prizes. However, contributors to academic Afds are expected to be able to make the distinction between the silly and the significant. Citations in the humanities can be very high as I have shown above on this page, and if they are low, as in this case, it shows that the work has not had much impact. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:34, 25 June 2022 (UTC).
 * Yeah we're both on the same page about this.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 23:33, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

It is sometimes claimed that citations in the humanities are lower than those in the sciences, but no statistical evidence is produced to support that claim. As I have illustrated above, some humanities scholars have many thousands or even tens of thousands of citations to their work. Another factor is that humanities scholars often publish solely or in small groups whereas science scholars may publish in large groups. These issues have to be factored in. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:35, 27 June 2022 (UTC). The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Keep Passes criteria 3 of WP:NAUTHOR with the existence of multiple critical reviews of Kamrath's published works.4meter4 (talk) 02:45, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Passes WP:NAUTHOR by a country mile. I checked the first two books and they're are multiple reviews. Two minutes work. Strong keep for extra strength.    scope_creep Talk  01:30, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep content of article has no bearing on notability; everyone is free to do cleanup at any time. Extent of reviewed work satisfies WP:NAUTHOR #3. Regards, --Goldsztajn (talk) 11:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)