Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Martin Pickford


 * 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. Mark Arsten (talk) 16:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Martin Pickford

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I actually think this article would normally warrant a prod/csd as there are no provided sources which are actually on Martin Pickford, however I decided to err on the side of conservative deletion/more discussion. So, my claim is this BLP is not sufficiently notable and is currently not verifiable. There are three external links, one is an aggregation of Martin's papers and the other two concern his discovery of Orrorin tugenensis, however none of these articles are actually about him. They're all about his discovery of tugenensis (which certainly meets notability and verifiability requirements - which is probably why it has its own article) and though very interesting, in its current state, I don't think it meets Wikipedia's standard for notability/verifiability. -- Carbon Rodney 15:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. 17:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)  • Gene93k (talk) 17:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. 17:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)  • Gene93k (talk) 17:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep with a GS h-index of 27 in an average cited field passes WP:Prof by miles. I find it hard to understand the rationale for this nomination. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC).
 * That's an interesting metric, how well does it apply to non-physicists? -- Carbon Rodney 23:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * These matters are discussed in policy guideline WP:Prof and its talk page. It is a good idea to familiarize oneself with the Wiki policy on a topic before jumping in with edits, particularly an AfD, that demand the attention of other editors. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC).
 * Ah, I was working under the assumption that a BLP with no citations was a worthy candidate for AfD discussion. -- Carbon Rodney 02:16, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
 * According to WP:Before a nominator is expected to search for sources before bringing an article to AfD. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:20, 19 August 2012 (UTC).


 * Keep: Very well known paleontologist. Needs improved referencing but no reason to delete.There seem sources available in the google news, books and scholar links above. (Msrasnw (talk) 23:26, 15 August 2012 (UTC))
 * Eg Brian Regal's book Human Evolution: A Guide to the Debates (see here seems to have plenty on Pickford (Msrasnw (talk) 23:39, 15 August 2012 (UTC))
 * Some other little sources to help establish notability Daily Mail, PBS, Spiegel, The Guardian (Msrasnw (talk) 15:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC))
 * Ah ok, well if you can insert reliable sources for some of the article's claims that would be a good reason not to delete it. Currently my issue with the article is not so much whether he is a sufficiently well known palaeontologist or whether there are enough links in the article to papers he's written and more the fact that the article consists of six paragraphs of text with zero citations and only one of those paragraphs isn't about tugenensis (so the article indicates to me, that he has done one very famous thing - if he is famous for more, I'd love to see a paragraph about it but at the moment it looks like the only reason this article exists is because his tugenensis find is so notable that some of its notability has spilt onto him). -- Carbon Rodney 00:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:PROF, after Msrasnw's improvements make this look more like a biography, and less like a "controversy" content-fork of Orrorin. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:40, 16 August 2012 (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.