Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matilda Lăcătușu


 * 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 delete. Jenks24 (talk) 14:41, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Matilda Lăcătușu

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There's nothing to indicate this individual might be notable, as defined by WP:PROF, WP:BASIC, WP:GNG and other relevant policies. - Biruitorul Talk 23:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:46, 30 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep, as I explained when I removed the prod, there is a Wiki article on her in Romanian which contains more information. I added the "expand" template to the top of her page. She is there in Google, but all sources aren't in English. Give the article some time to be worked on, by someone like , who knows several languages. The claim that the subject doesn't pass GNG or other policies is disingenuous, or it shows the nominator didn't bother doing WP:BEFORE. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 00:20, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You begin by pointing out that the subject has an article on ro.wiki, but omit to note that that is largely a failed project, and that the article in question cites no sources, thus failing the most basic test of verifiability.
 * You go on to engage in special pleading - Google hits exist but aren't in English, more time is needed, let's expand from a worthless article, let's bring in polyglot editors who might be able to conjure up sources out of thin air. (I'll note, for the record, that Romanian is my native language, and that I was able to turn up nothing quotable.)
 * You end up by impugning my motives - "disingenuous", and baselessly chiding me - "didn't bother doing WP:BEFORE". Well, I'm sorry, but the subject has not received "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject", and you have done nothing to dispel that assertion. Show us that coverage, and maybe the article can be kept. (And no, an entry on a course syllabus is not tantamount to "significant coverage", no matter how hard one stretches the definition. It's a trivial biographical ephemeron that has no place in an encyclopedic biography.) - Biruitorul Talk 00:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. Whether or not publications are in the English language is a relatively meaningless issue for science bios because we usually check indexing services for numerical results. In this case, the main journal carrying the subject's work seems to be sufficiently obscure so as not even to be indexed by WoS. Taken with other observations made here, this appears to be a relatively uncontroversial case for deletion. Agricola44 (talk) 16:55, 1 December 2015 (UTC).


 * Delete. Like Biruitorul, I have looked at the Romanian article and the Romanian sources immediately accessible via Google. I have to agree that they are weak. As all her publications are in Romanian, I hardly think she would qualify for inclusion as a writer either.--Ipigott (talk) 07:42, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment, it's rare that I disagree with Ian, but in this case, I am finding multiple sources citing her research. As of yet, have not found biographical data, but she was apparently a specialist on pests and published books on aphids, termites and wasps, looking at the role of parasites within an ecosystem . She has also been called an expert in a couple of papers I found, the second one in French indicates that she classified aphids in a 20 year study. She published volumes for the Romanian Academy's series on Flora and Fauna (not likely they would have allowed that were she not notable  This book  has been cited repeatedly in research reports I have reviewed. It may well be that she is one of those scientists who are often cited and rarely written about, so until I can do more research, I am withholding a keep/delete response. (As I was attempting to post  made his comment. I can say with certainty that is an incorrect statement. Having just completed some 30+ bios of scientists in an editathon, foreign language sources are not properly reflected in stats. World Cat has 1 publication listed for a scientist that Russian sources claim wrote over 600 papers, as just one example). SusunW (talk) 17:08, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Some of the things you raise here, like the parasite paper from a symposium, are routine academic fodder and do not contribute to notability. The subject's books all seem to be listed in WorldCat, but, again, the problem is that their holdings are all basically in the single digits. For what you're asserting to be true, there would have to be a systematic exclusion of Romanian-language science publications by WorldCat, but I'm not aware that this is the case. There may be other avenues like GNG that are debatable, but it seems pretty clear using the standard references that the impact of her scientific work is indistinguishable from that of the average researcher. Agricola44 (talk) 18:21, 1 December 2015 (UTC).
 * As I said, until I assess more, am not willing to yay or nay. I don't think it is a systematic exclusion, I think that as with anything, not all sources are on lBishops Stortford Book Awardine and we must recognize that statistics may not accurately reflect non-English usage or offline use. I also did not say she was the subject of the exclusion in WorldCat (point in fact the woman was Latvian, but a similar situation was encountered on a Kyrgyz woman, and others). SusunW (talk) 18:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I just want to make sure we understand each another because your prior wording saying that my analysis is incorrect because "foreign language sources are not properly reflected in stats" seems pretty clear. It is of course true that "statistics may not accurately reflect non-English usage or offline use" (my emphasis), but what matters is whether that is true here. My sense, so far, is that it is not. The basic problem is that notable scientific work tends to "surface", as it were, to be broadly used/acknowledged/cited/etc. (If, by "offline use" you mean checking a book out of the library, this doesn't count.) In the case of Lăcătușu, notability could (for example) take the form of her books being translated into English, implying there is a recognized demand for wider dissemination of her work. If we could find that such is the case, I think that many editors, including myself, would reconsider their position. WorldCat lists her untranslated publications as being held across Europe (Germany, Switzerland, France, England), but again, the problem is that the holdings are in the single digits and that there is no widely-recognized bias in WorldCat against Romanian-language scientific publications. It is therefore difficult to avoid the parsimonious conclusion that her work is simply not that notable. Agricola44 (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2015 (UTC).
 * I'm not disagreeing with your delete vote in the slightest, that is how you called it. I am cautioning the use of statistics as a means of evaluating importance. It also doesn't guarantee that biographical data is available or relevant. (Several people on Thomson Reuters most cited scientists have virtually no biographical information on-line). Point of fact, I have now spent about 3 hours reading documents and while I find lots of use of her research, I find no use (except the one French paper) outside of Romania and no biographical data whatsoever. IMO, it is impossible to evaluate whether she meets notability under Wikipedia guidelines from on-line sources. SusunW (talk) 19:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I understand. May I furnish friendly clarification of some misconceptions though? (1) We do, in fact, use "statistics" all the time as a means of evaluating importance, for example oodles of journal citations to a scientist's scientific work are taken as conclusive proof of impact, and therefore of notability. One can quibble about how much constitutes an "oodle", but the principle itself is not in question. (2) There is no need for biographical data to be available. Regarding again the typical science bio, scientific publications are WP:RS (though primary) and can therefore source basic biographical statements about a person: employment, areas of scientific interest/accomplishment, etc. This info is always sufficient for at least a stub and there's lots of precedent for it. In fact, an enormous fraction of WP science bios are of precisely this form (since most scientists notable by our standards do not have independent biographies). Agricola44 (talk) 17:03, 4 December 2015 (UTC).
 * Thanks for your comments. I don't think that it is a misconception to say that hundreds of years, even thousands in some cases, have existed wherein we have no compiled data on how many times someone's work was used as a citation by another researcher. Having lived in multiple "developing countries" I can state unequivocally that the majority of sources except in the western world are not on-line, nor readily accessible and it is highly doubtful that statistics on usage accurately reflect more than the most recent contributions to our knowledge. Digitization projects are wonderful, but wars and other disasters have destroyed many archival materials. Thus, my cautionary statement. (2) Without a modicum of weighing the impact of someone's work, especially in light of the push to delete on WP, there is absolutely no point in creating a biography which recaps the brief biological information one can glean from their publishings, IMO. Many's the biography I have written where the published record of their work in traditional sources is paltry, but a delve into alternative sources shows multiple awards by their respective countries, recognition by their peers, and high international impact. Women and minorities works were rarely covered in mainstream publications. It doesn't mean they don't exist, it means you have to look in private archives, newspapers, organizations, etc. (3) Unless absolutely unavoidable, I would never create a stub on WP. It is the fastest route to getting a file deleted that I know. SusunW (talk) 17:29, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
 * this is veering too far off-topic. I've answered on your talk page. Agricola44 (talk) 23:28, 4 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. Almost all publications in an obscure journal (language irrelevant) that result in GS h-index of only 8 and WoS h-index of 0 (that journal is evidently not even indexed in WoS). Science bios are relatively easy to assess in the notability context because publications/impact/etc are easy to check and in this case there is an obvious shortfall. Agricola44 (talk) 16:55, 1 December 2015 (UTC).
 * Delete Unable to find any reliable sources pointing to notability under Wikipedia's guidelines. SusunW (talk) 19:38, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete since several editors have evaluated the other page in Ro.wiki and have made a good case, I have to change my vote. was right that I did make a special pleading case, but I was hoping that a non-English search would turn up more info. I was wrong and change my vote. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:41, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment. While I am not seeing enough about the subject to justify a keep !vote, I am seeing enough to worry about (possibly unavoidable) WP:BIAS, for reasons closely related to User:SusunW's arguments above. The subject's active academic career seems to have been entirely in communist-period Romania - which, given that Communist Romania tended to be isolationist in practice, even in period when it was trying to present a picture of openness, makes it far from surprising that she seems to have been published entirely in Romanian journals and at least mostly in Romanian, both of which will have restricted the availability of her work to Western scholars (Romanian journals on subjects like entomology will have had only limited international distribution, and papers being in Romanian will have been a further practical hurdle - and any such journals that ceased publication twenty or more years back are quite likely to have been missed by more recent citation indexes and thus be "obscure" today, no matter how prestigious they were in Romania at the time). As I understand matters, permission to submit to international journals, even in purely scientific subjects, tends to have been restricted to a favoured few. Assuming all this to be the case, I am actually quite impressed with the citation rates she seems to have obtained and is still, very slowly, building up - she seems to have some continuing academic impact, even if it is probably muffled (and limited to very specialised topics - my guess would be the Romanian distributions of certain types of insect) past the point where it is audible to Wikipedia. PWilkinson (talk) 16:19, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I am so sorry PWikinson. Had no intention of reverting your edits, they actually reflect exactly what I was trying to say. Meant to thank you for them. Hopefully I have now restored them. SusunW (talk) 16:53, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete per Agricola44. AddMore der Zweite (talk) 08:34, 8 December 2015 (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.