Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Renato M. E. Sabbatini (2nd nomination)


 * 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, default to "keep". Jayjg (talk) 03:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Renato M. E. Sabbatini
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

before nominating this article I noted that User:Upsala did a phenomenal job reviewing the citations for accuracy and tagging the text where questions still exist. The article has significant violations of WP:COI that make it difficult to wade through; in addition, most of the sources are in Portuguese, complicating matters. I removed the most detailed citation in English, which was to a past version of the subject's Wikipedia userpage. He may indeed be notable in Portuguese, but based on my review and Upsala's work I can find no evidence of sufficient notability for inclusion in the English Wikipedia. otherlleft 17:09, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Brazil-related deletion discussions.  —otherlleft 17:12, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —Eastmain (talk) 17:45, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Weak keep - a bit too flattering and one sided, but of some interest.--MacRusgail (talk) 17:56, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. There may be sourcing and COI issues, but those are solvable without deletion; but gross overtagging of the article by an apparent sockpuppet with no significant edit history is certainly a signal that there's another agenda playing out here -- especially since many of the sourcing defects appear to reflect the structure rather than the content of the referenced pages (eg, framing disguising actual URLs of specific sources). Nominator's suggestion that language of sources impairs notability is also rather odd. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:30, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's an acknowledgement that I can't independently verify them. If an editor without a conflict of interest confirms that they confer notability I certainly wouldn't have a problem - but COI issues make it particularly important to know what the sources actually say.--otherlleft 18:34, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep I agree with much of what Hullaballoo Wolfowitz says - there seems to be something unhelpful about the recent editing of this article.   Will Beback    talk    20:21, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment. As a matter of principle if a topic is notable in sources of one language it is suitable to write about in any language edition of Wikipedia. We have Portuguese-speaking editors and machine-translation is another possibility. So the question is not "should this be in the Portuguese Wikipedia instead", but rather "does he meet WP:PROF?" From Google Scholar, citations to his work are not high (h-index ~6), but there are other criteria. Fences  &amp;  Windows  20:29, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Now arguing for Keep. I believe that Sabbatini does pass notability guidelines for his involvement in various organisations, and his awards for this. He is often quoted in the press as a scientist, e.g. and was interviewed by a French educational magazine:.
 * Note to closing admin: an avid 'alternative account' like Upsala who is succeeding in driving an editor off Wikipedia should be given little or no weight in this decision. I do not believe that this behaviour falls under WP:SOCK, as it seems to be done to avoid scrutiny. Fences  &amp;  Windows  02:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * First, re "sockpuppetry": Yes, I have edited under another account and continue to do so. That account has a "clean record" and this has nothing to do with deceiving anyone. It's simply a matter of privacy, since my real-world identity is increasingly obvious in association with my other account. I did this after concluding my situation fell under the "Privacy" exception of WP:Multiple_Accounts. The articles I edit under this account are far removed from my work under my other account.  There's no "agenda."


 * Re my extensive tagging: After Sabbatini removed "Like resume" "More footnotes" and "Primary sources" tags from the article without addressing the problems, I responding by tagging the individual statements needed sources to demonstrate how serious the problems are. Please see my exchange with Sabbatini on Talk:Renato_M._E._Sabbatini in which I explained this and suggested that he start adding cites for material he would like to see remain in the article. Since the article's about him, and he wrote it, you'd think he'd have no problem doing that, but it's been almost a week and Sabbatini hasn't done anything (though he's been active on other articles) so I'm going ahead and removing all the uncited material.  If Sabbatini insists on continuing to edit his own bio (which he really shouldn't) he can add material back if and when he can provide cites.


 * I personally was not planning to nominate the article for deletion, at least until seeing what was still in the article after cites were added and uncited material removed. But since Sabbatini's been on notice for some time now, I think the discussion should proceed on the article with uncited material removed.


 * I think it's significant that the Port. Wikipedia (whose editors would have no trouble making use of original sources) has only a two-line article on Sabbatini -- perhaps an illustration of WP:AUTO's warning that "Many people exaggerate their own significance or notability above what third parties would think."


 * Upsala (talk) 22:12, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —David Eppstein (talk) 06:11, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete or stub down to two lines as notability is not demonstrated manifestly. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC).
 * Weak keep - barely passes as notable per WP:PROF. Bearian (talk) 02:00, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think everyone should take a look at WP:PROF, as Bearian suggests, before expressing an opinion. Upsala (talk) 04:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Definitely Delete: I'd like everyone who has already commented to take a fresh look and either confirm or reconsider their prior evaluation. I have removed, step by step, all the material which was unsourced or sourced only by self-published material. This turns out to be almost the entire article, because the blunt fact is that the only person who has written anything about Sabbatini is S himself, or his family ("S.H. Cardoso" is his wife).  The only exceptions are the sources for (1) his "Chamption of Innovation" listing, (2) his writing award, and (3) a cite, which I added, to a powerpoint presentation mentioning S's participation in forming the Brazilian Society for Health Informatics.  While S seems like a good guy who has done some creative things, he doesn't even come close to notability under WP:PROF, and even if he did it would be impossible to write an independently sourced article on him, because there are no independent sources (and S has had plenty of time to add them even while this discussion, of which he was notified, has been going on).  Unless someone can show where this logic is wrong, the article is a clear delete. Upsala (talk) 06:01, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The fact that one of the six citations remaining is to the subject's own Wikipedia userpage hurts my brain. Isn't that the very essence of self-publication?  Other than that, I was hoping that your culling would make it easier to evaluate the non-English sources for those of us constrained to that language, and it has.  I still stand by the nomination.--otherlleft 13:33, 15 January 2010 (UTC)  I'm taking the liberty of summarizing your comments as a Delete vote.  We need your brain, so I'll remove that quote.  BTW why are there two L's in otherlleft? Are you a llama? Upsala (talk) 13:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment I was asked to look at the article again. It's now shorter but the notability factors remain. Particularly, the receipt of an award and the inclusion in a list "50 Champions of Innovation".    Will Beback    talk    21:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Question - Does anyone have access to a database to test this one against WP:PROF? Bearian (talk) 23:56, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Answer - Web of Science lists 33 articles authored or coauthored by Sabbatini as being cited at least once. (Most of the "Selected Publications" S. listed in the WP article have never been cited, according to both W. of S. and Google Scholar.) Of these 33, 22 have been cited exactly once (in some cases, by S himself), 6 were cited 2-3 times, and the rest were cited 7, 10, 24, 28, and 28 times. On none of these 5 was S the sole or even lead author. (In fact with a sigle exception every paper, on which S was the sole or lead author, has been cited exactly zero or one time; the exception: 3 times.)

As to "Champions" and popular-science writing award, these don't come anywhere near the guidelines of WP:PROF: "...major academic awards, such as the Nobel Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, the Fields Medal, the Bancroft Prize, the Pulitzer Prize for History, etc, always qualify [or] lesser significant academic honors and awards that confer a high level of academic prestige [such as] certain awards, honors and prizes of notable academic societies, of notable foundations and trusts e.g. the Guggenheim Fellowship, Linguapax Prize, etc." "Receipt of an award" and "inclusion in a list" don't pass muster. Upsala (talk) 04:39, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That would give an h index of 5. Is that correct? Usually an h index of 10 is the bare minimum at which notability is likely under WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:13, 17 January 2010 (UTC).

Well, I'm not a big fan of cold metrics in isolation, but it's obvious that no one has taken enough notice of anything Sabbatini's done to write about it. ''This doesn't mean he hasn't done interesting and useful things. He has. But they're not notable if no one's noted them.'' Actually, things are even worse than my summary above suggests: on one of the two papers with 28 cites, S. was one of a dozen coauthors! Upsala (talk) 19:10, 18 January 2010 (UTC)  Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Cirt (talk) 23:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * My comments stand, and since there was some back and forth above, let me recap: Sabbatini seems like a good man, but nothing he has done has been commented on by anyone else that I can find (nor apparently that he himself can find, since he was invited to add cites to his own autobiography, certainly knew that this deletion discussion was going on, yet he's done nothing along those lines). His published work has been cited by almost no one, except in 5 cases where he was neither the sole nor lead author (usually he was one of many authors; papers he wrote on his own, or with his wife, sometimes get one cite but usually zero). The writing award, and inclusion in a popular magazines list of "Champions of Innovation for 2007" hardly count as "significant academic honors."  Statements (above) that "other criteria" might confer notability don't help the discussion without specifying which other criteria might apply and what S. has done to satisfy them. Neither do unsubstantiated accusations against me of sockpuppety have any bearing on Sabbatini's notability.  Even if notability is present, there's still another problem: there's absolutely nothing written about Sabbatini at all, except by Sabbatini, so there are no sources that could be used as the basis for an article.  I'd like to hear someone tell me where I'm wrong about all this, otherwise Delete seems to be the only conclusion. Upsala (talk) 15:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - notability seems fairly clear to me. From the article: "Sabbatini received the 1992 Prêmio José Reis de Divulgação Científica award for popular science writing,[3] and was named one of Info Exame Magazine's "50 Champions of Innovation" for 2007.[4] He is currently president of the Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health, a "not-for-profit educational, research and development institution."[5]" Any of those claims by themselves would be a reasonable claim to notability; taken together, they make a pretty strong one. Robofish (talk) 02:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep - Per Robofish reasonings. Why isnt there a Afd tag placed on the article I wonder too?--BabbaQ (talk) 19:55, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Since I am the person under scrutiny, I will not manifest myself over keeping or not this article. I have tried to contribute to Wikipedia because I believed in the concept. Now I know that what is notoriety for Wikipedia can be better illustrated by obscure football players, videogame characters or, more interestingly, a List of pornographic actresses by decade.
 * Opinion of the biographed

I will now retire as a contributing editor to Wikipedia, with more than 150 articles started by me.

Do what you want regarding the article, there are hundreds of copies of it in Wikipedia copycats.

Upsala, who started all this, shows a worrying feature of Wikipedia, which is that unknown, anonymous contributors like him, have more credibility than an indentified, bona-fine, author. He has systematically and obsessively destroyed a lot of my contributions to Wikipedia, which makes me think whether he is some personal enemy of mine. The universal nature of English Wikipedia is threatened by arguments like the above, that I am a native of a Portuguese-speaking country. If a person who has hundreds of published articles in Portuguese and several books in this language, and whose credentials cannot be verified just because they are in Portuguese, then we cannot expect much about Wikipedia'a vaunted neutral and unbiased stand. In regard to notoriety, this is a more serious issue. If a person who has been (properly docomented) a founder, president, vice-president, secretary and director of informatics and director of education of three large national learned societies, including the Brazilian Medical Association (140,000 members) received awards and nominations who put him among the 50 best known authors and scientists in the country, then you all should revise what constitutes notoriety. Now I understand the reason why 99,9% of Brazilian scientists I have contacted to propose a systematic list of biographies in Wikipedia have refused: they think that it is not serious, academically speaking, and that they don't give a damn if they are listed or not.

I am now moving to be an author of Medpedia, which is supported by Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Californa at Berkeley and Wisconsin University, and which forbids ignorant non-entities, anonymous contributors, like Upsala to write anything, and which recognizes and shows the leadind editors to each article. Lost my time here. R.Sabbatini (talk) 16:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

You all may notice by the list of Upsala contributions that he entered Wikipedia as an anonymous contributor on January 3rd 2010 exclusively to target the destruction and smearing of Dr. Sabbatini's valuable contributions to Wikipedia. He asked for a reference every two or three words of the bio article, which is patently an exaggeration, otherwise 90% of all bios in Wikipedia would have to be deleted. Upsala's only goal seems to be to delete Dr. Sabbatini' biography and as many as his contributions as possible. I suggest that a more responsible editor restores the entire article, deleting only obvious self-propaganda, and block User Upsala. The Philosopher of Sao Paulo (talk) 04:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What phenomenal job?? Smearing campaign
 * Comment: I can appreciate that Dr. Sabbatini is frustrated by the process by which we determine notability with reliable sources (that is, those that he didn't write himself).  I further note that no sockpuppet investigation of Upsala has been opened, much less drawn any conclusion.  I must conclude that discussions regarding Dr. Sabbatini's feelings (assuming that the article about him doesn't contain factual errors, for which he would certainly have redress) and Upsala's contributions must be set aside to focus on this deletion debate.  Upsala has raised some very specific issues regarding the usefulness of several sources, and further discussion has completely dismissed those claims.  Are there any specific refutations of Upsala's assertions regarding sources?--otherlleft 01:40, 26 January 2010 (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.

Note: An editor appears to have inadvertantly reopened this debate. I'm reverting to the close and advising them to start another AFD if they wish. FYI. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 14:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)