Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Gottlieb Agnethler


 * 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The result was   withdrawn by nom. –  iride scent  22:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Michael Gottlieb Agnethler

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

A minor academic in the early 18th century is still a minor academic. There is nothing offered here to establish notability other than he was included in Allgemeine (along with 26,000 other people). Were he alive today, nothing listed here would warrant his being including in Wikipedia. I don't see how this tiny article comes close to satisfying ACADEMIC. R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 05:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep, being included in a major biographical dictionary is sufficient for notability, and in any case this fellow is included in several, of several languages. There was already a Hungarian-Wikipedia article on him before I created this one, and he has an entry in a Hungarian-language biographical encyclopedia. I suspect that if he were a British academic, included in a comparable English-language encyclopedia, such as EB1911 or the Dictionary of National Biography, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. --Delirium (talk) 06:11, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If the 1911 Britannica had 56 volumes covering 26,000 people, we very likely would be having this discussion under similar circumstances. Your response seems to assume some type of anti-German bias.  Please assume WP:GOODFAITH. R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 06:06, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * When it comes to nominations of foreign-related articles on AfD, there is a long-recognized systemic bias in which non-Anglosphere subjects are nominated for deletion much more frequently than equivalent Anglosphere subjects, by editors who are not familiar with the non-English literature in the area. --Delirium (talk) 06:10, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no such "long-recognized systemic bias." I am nominating him as a non-notable minor academic based solely on the content of this article.  If an article like this were written about my brother, I would nominate it for deletion as well. R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 06:15, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.   -- • Gene93k (talk) 06:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions.   -- • Gene93k (talk) 06:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep-- Why should I believe he is a minor academic when a lot of effort when to the digilitalization of his work? --Jmundo (talk) 07:31, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * None of his work has been digitized. That is simply a listing of publications.  Where did you get the idea any effort went into that?  We see he wrote a 60 page dissertation and several pamphlets.  Try clicking on some of the links...  R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 07:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Books.google.com is pretty much irrelevant; they scan everything. Note, however, from my understanding of Google's book scanning process that they have in fact scanned all those books, and just haven't got around to putting them online.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep He's apparently notable enough for there to be nonzero interest in his scientific work 200+ years after his death, gscholar search turns up "Das wissenschaftliche Werk des transsylvanischen Arztes und Altertumsforschers Michael Gottlieb Agnethler (1719-1752). " by Wolfram Kaiser in Comm. Hist. Art. Med, v 81, p 73--87, (1977}. (see also  ) and some mention in the same author's and .  That gbooks list above contains some things about him, not just by him..John Z (talk) 11:55, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Did you actually read the Google Books entry? The mention of him in a third-party book indicates he attended a medical conference.  It is an attendance list.  None of his works, all of which appear to be in Latin, have been translated, and they certainly have not been scanned.  R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 16:57, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, just because they are currently not available doesn't mean they haven't been scanned.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep he's got the reliable sources about him. While we've got good reasons to be cautious about modern people for BLP reasons, for vanity reasons, etc, once someone is dead and gone, most of those reasons go away; given the the notability of entry in a major general biographical dictionary, I see no reason not to include them, and that goes for all 26,000 people in the Allgemeine and 50,000 people in the Dictionary of National Biography.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "that goes for all 26,000 people in the Allgemeine and 50,000 people in the Dictionary of National Biography" -- opinions like this will turn Wikipedia into the equivalent of a telephone book. Harold Pinter would have found this amusing.  Perhaps it's fitting to have this discussion in his memory.  R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 16:57, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * We have two million articles; how are 76,000 more going to fundamentally change anything?--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete. According to Worldcat, his most widely held book is in only 22 libraries worldwide, including several German libraries. Apparently his scholarly contributions were mostly commentaries on the work of Carl Linnaeus, a notable contemporary scholar. By comparison, Carl Linnaeus’s book holdings in libraries worldwide today are in the several hundreds.--Eric Yurken (talk) 16:11, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * less notable than Carl Linaeus is not the same as not notable at all.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wronglostboy (talk • contribs) 18:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Obviously notable at his own lifetime (If Wikipedia had existed then he would have been included as an author) Obviously notable 200 years after his death as already pointed out. Notability does not vanish with time. Agathoclea (talk) 18:09, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment I'd appreciate if some modern academics would comment here. I must be missing something.  All things being equal, I would have nominated him for deletion 250+ years ago too.  R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 18:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Biographical dictionaries already sort and select notable people to include. So inclusion in such a work or an encyclopedia makes a person notable. The idea that including all those entries would turn Wikipedia into a phonebook doesn't hold water. We already have far more biographies than that. Also, phonebooks only lists names. This entry actually contains biographical details (which sets it apart from phonebooks). Besides, Wikipedia is not paper and as long as something useful can be said about the people, we don't have any space issues to worry about that limit inclusion. - Mgm|(talk) 20:56, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This argument is a red herring. It doesn't change the fact the he is a non-notable academic.  I have a feeling people are enamored that he lived 250+ years ago, but that is irrelevant to me.  He is remembered because he is listed in an archaic source that demonstrated little discretion in its editorial inclusion policy.  Will people be claiming 100 years from now that everyone listed in Who's Who in America is worthy of encyclopedic mention?-- R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 21:11, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "archaic source that demonstrated little discretion in its editorial inclusion policy" How did you come to this conclusion? Any officially published dictionary and encyclopedia has rigorous inclusion guidelines, the same was the case 250 years ago. - Mgm|(talk) 18:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I simply don't worship the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. It was all inclusive, written during a highly jingoist period in German history, cited almost entirely German scholars, and there is no reason to believe its standards for inclusion even remotely coincide with Wikipedia's or any other encyclopedia.-- R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 20:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The standards for inclusion for Wikipedia say that if someone is included in the ADB, they pass our standards for inclusion. Before posting again about who you think should deserve an article, please respond to what policy says.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing that out. I was unaware of it.  Anyway, I've withdrawn this AfD (see below), so an admin can feel free to close it.  And you are right, this is a policy issue and this is not the right forum to debate it.  -- R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 20:37, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * An AFD nominator who is constantly haggling every keep comment is becoming tiring. In the end everything boils down to one question: Who benefits more by the inclusion - the subject or the public. This subject is long dead and the benefit any of his descendants might gain from a wp-article is less than negligible. The benefits for the public? Another piece of sourced information about a person who was a notable person of his time. Hey, not as notable as King Charlie the 500th but then not many person can rattle down their countries current university professors like they can do the far less smart politicians who pretend they are running the countries today. Agathoclea (talk) 22:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Your comments are rude and uncivil, e.g., "An AFD nominator who is constantly haggling every keep comment is becoming tiring." I feel some obligation as the nominator to participate in the discussion process and respond to comments.  If you don't like my comments, feel free to ignore them. -- R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 22:12, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The goal of Wikipedia's notability rules is not to subject articles to individual "I think he's important/I think he's unimportant" opinions; it's to make an objective WP:NPOV distinction possible. The general notability guideline is "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article." It passes.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Sources obviously exist, clearly notable. Edward321 (talk) 00:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hu:Michael Gottlieb Agnethler lists an extensive bibliography, at a time when getting published wasn't trivial. Couple that with the fact that he was considered notable by "one of the most important and most comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language" and I'd say that there's plenty of grounds to consider him notable.  So Keep.  Guettarda (talk) 01:55, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Scientific publications at that time were largely in the form of non-peer reviewed, self-financed small pamphlets. Let's not make up facts such as "at a time when getting published wasn't trivial."  If he had something published by the Royal Academy or the like (which he did not), that would certainly catch my attention. -- R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 04:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Yes, all 26,000 people in AFB are notable. It's the same standard we use elsewhere. I rely on its judgments more than my own, for the people it covers. DGG (talk) 05:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Snowball keep. Inclusion in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie ensures notability at his own lifetime, by definition. Inclusion there would at the very least reverse the burden of proof, that it should somehow be demonstrated that the individual was not notable.  I cannot imagine that such an effort would be commensurate with the added benefit to Wikipedia and I believe other tasks are more urgent.  The sheer thought of reviewing every entry from Allgemeine (and other old encyclopedias) checking for notability from a modern viewpoint (and reaching consensus, also with the other language projects, here the Hungarian) is breathtaking. Prosfilaes and Mgm said the rest.  I suggest Snowball keep. - Power.corrupts (talk) 12:38, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Lonely being a deletionist. :)  I give up and hereby withdraw this AfD.  -- R andom H umanoid ( &rArr; ) 17:39, 28 December 2008 (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.