Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Sally


 * 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 of the debate was keep. Mailer Diablo 18:10, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Paul Sally
This person seems to be on the threshhold of notability for Wikipedia. I'm forcing the issue for three reasons: (1) there are several claims made in the article that need citations, including one about the film Proof that should be in IMDb if it's true, but isn't there; (2) Wikiquote now also has an article on this person (which has also been nominated for deletion), using the WP article to support a notability claim; and (3) to get a current "temperature" on the WP community's feelings about professor notability. I'm hoping this review will encourage interested editors to improve both articles in order to convince the respective communities with verifiable, reliable sources for the anecdotes and quotes. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete - no particularly notable achievements in the article. Doesn't meet WP:BIO as I read it. Waggers 16:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per above, fails WP:BIO -- T B C ???   ???   ??? 16:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - eminent in the mathematics community. &mdash; Dan | talk 17:40, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep professors are as notable as, say, retired third-basemen. Especially eminent and award-winning profs at prestigious universities. Bobby P. Smith Sr. Jr. 18:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep as above. Professional awards, involved in influential educational project outside standard teaching role, scores of Google Scholar hits. May not be as notable as Bulbasaur, Ewa Sonnet, or Blue Beetle to some, but hardly an individual whose notability should be denied. And it took me about 4 seconds to verify that he was involved in the film mentioned, which really makes me wonder, half seriously, if somebody got a bad grade in math class. Monicasdude 21:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep - one of the more important professors at the University of Chicago, which is one of the five or six best math schools in the US. He is widely considered an innovator in the teaching of mathematics. He runs (and I believe started) an influential teaching program which trains high school teachers in higher mathematics. Because he is funny and charismatic, some of his former students have added amusing anecdotes to his article, which I believe is what is motivating this move for deletion. That doesn't mean he isn't notable; Richard Feynman is a good example of an eminent scientist who is also an amusing personality. Should we be trying to delete that page because it has a list of funny things that he once said? --SpaceMoose 21:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * No, but Richard Feynman has copious reliable sources from which to cite material, even his anecdotes. So far, Paul Sally has none for these additions. Wikipedia has clear policy on verifiability. It would really help if some of the claims made that should have sources are given sources. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Notable enough for me. Fix don't delete. Paul August &#9742; 05:19, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Math prof at U of Chicago for 40 years? Not even a close call. --Trovatore 05:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think if you look at the discussion on the talk page of the article so far, you will see that I am among the foremost of critics of the article that believe things should be verified and notability established and so forth.  But I can't agree with your motivation for nominating this article for AFD.  AFDs should be kept distinct from content disputes.  If you dispute some assertion, AFD is not supposed to be a battleground for verifying some fact.  Not to mention that the disputed facts are not what I would regard as essential to a claim of notability.  The article claims he is a widely recognized math educator.  This has nothing to do, for example, with whether he was the math consultant for the movie "Proof" or whether some anecdote about him is correct.  It has plenty to do with the achievements and awards noted.  In fact, my research into this has convinced me he is more than notable enough and not anywhere near the "gray" area that you would need to see where to draw the line.  In addition, I suspect his research may be quite significant also, but I have difficulty determining this due to my lack of expertise, which is why I have prodded others on this talk page to supply the info.  --C S (Talk) 07:20, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I apologize for making this nomination sound like it was primarily a content dispute by listing that reason first of the three that I gave, but as I said above, I had two others that led me to make this a general AfD instead of my usual talk page discussions. The possibility of an AfD had been raised twice already on the article's talk page, so I was hardly out of line to make it official. Frankly, I suspected it would pass, and the above votes seem to be confirming this. However, I saw no point in raising the content issue if the article was going to be deleted, so I waited until the consensus was strongly leaning toward "keep" to post the specific content argument on the talk page. Finally, Wikiquote, which rarely has more than 2 or 3 participants in its AfDs (still VfDs there), benefits greatly from Wikipedian input on debatable articles that have been nominated in both projects. I felt that this nomination would clear up doubts already expressed here, help Wikiquote in its efforts, and perhaps incidentally resolve the content issue, one way or another. I believe this was an efficient multiple use of this forum. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Jeff, for explaining the reasons more fully. I agree this has been a beneficial discussion.  --C S (Talk) 20:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep per discussion. linas 21:11, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * strong keep -one of the most notable math profs in the world Surmur 23:47, 21 March 2006 (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.