Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Reynold Xin (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 Ritchie333 (talk)  (cont)  15:05, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Reynold Xin
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

no reliable sources for notability. The previous afd had some keep opinions based on his work on Spark, but he was just one of the people employed on that notable project--his highest position seems to have been release manager for one of the releases. The other possible notability is his role in Databricks. Unfortunately, all the evidence for this comes from Databricks own blog,or from others sources simply quoting him on its importance, such as the wired.com reference (no.8)  DGG ( talk ) 18:56, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:30, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:30, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reynold Xin's official title at Databricks is Chief Architect Michaelmalak (talk) 00:47, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Weak delete. He's not really an academic, but looking at his citation record he has some highly cited papers, but a relatively low h-index. I think this is an indication more that this is an especially high-citation area within CS, and less something that could be used to pass WP:PROF. His current position in industry makes WP:GNG a more appropriate notability criterion but the case there is also weak. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:42, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 03:58, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. Normally, it takes 20-30 years for technology to transition from academia to industry: Simula in the 1960s vs. C++ in the 1990s; Engelbart's mouse in 1968 vs. Macintosh in 1984; Engelbart's hypertext in 1968 vs. WWW in 1994. Spark breaks this pattern. It went straight from academia to industry; actually in an overlapped fashion as the researchers such as Reynold Xin had to finish their PhDs while Databricks was being launched. Therefore, in the case of the Spark developers, either looking at academic work in isolation or industry work in isolation does not portray notability. The combination must be considered. Reynold is the lead author on papers that constitute half the technologies in Spark, and Spark is one of the most important technologies in industry today. Therefore, I think it's appropriate to consider the industry dollars as validation of Reynold's academic work. Michaelmalak (talk) 15:52, 15 September 2016 (UTC) Update 2016-09-21: I've edited the article to include WP:SECONDARY sources and work on new major components of Apache Spark. Michaelmalak (talk) 19:45, 21 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete as I concur with the deletion analysis, the concerns are listed here, and then there's nothing for WP:AUTHOR or WP:PROF. SwisterTwister   talk  22:59, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Reynold here. First of all, thanks for being considered. I am not going to comment on anything else because as I understand that is not the protocol. However, I would like to address one comment of David Eppstein's: "this is an indication more that this is an especially high-citation area within CS, and less something that could be used to pass". The reason I had a relatively high citation count (compared with the number of papers) is because three of the papers I wrote were some the most cited papers in their respected areas. My SIGMOD 2011 paper on CrowdDB was the paper with the highest number of citations in SIGMOD in 2011, and my SIGMOD 2013 paper on Shark was the highest in SIGMOD 2013, and my SIGMOD 2015 paper on Spark SQL was the highest cited in 2015. And the reasons why these papers have been highly cited are mostly due to my work on Spark -- it is the most popular data engine and all researchers working on these areas need to cite these and compare against it. Y10k (talk) 05:49, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment I withdraw the nomination as sufficient has been presented to show his role. low h index is no bar, if what is published is important and much cited. As there's been another delete comment, I can't close it.  DGG ( talk ) 18:26, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete (although a weak one) I still see it as a WP:TOOSOON.
 * The papers in SIGMOD are good, but I note that (1). There's just a couple of highly cited ones and (2). The citations rates in Computer Science are quite high and the values needs to be looked at in perspective. In addition Google scholar over estimates citation counts. For example, Scopus gives an h-index of 8 with the 159 citations for the best paper. This is much lesser than the Google scholar rates. I don't think this passes WP:PROF
 * The coverage in reliable secondary sources (independent of the subject) is sparse and considerably less than what is required.
 * The subject might be notable soon, but as of now this is a delete. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 09:48, 23 September 2016 (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.