Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert A. Olson


 * 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The result was Withdrawn. (non-admin closure) – Levivich 22:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Robert A. Olson

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Contested PROD. Article subject does not appear to meet WP:GNG or WP:NPROF. Source discussion below. – Levivich 17:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. – Levivich  17:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. – Levivich  17:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Nebraska-related deletion discussions. – Levivich  17:51, 14 January 2020 (UTC)


 * This is what I'm finding:
 * Local news reports about his work, such as this 1979 article (scroll down to the "Farm Page" about halfway through the PDF, or search for "nitrogen" or "Olson")
 * 1987 death notice appears to be a paid death notice and not a journalist-bylined obituary
 * 1989 book uses Olson as a source, but only discusses Olson in the dedication, and the dedication is written a couple years after Olson's death, by the Dean and Director of the Agricultural Research Division at the University of Nebraska, where Olson worked for 38 years. Doesn't seem to meet the independence requirement of GNG. The Dean calls Olson a "prophet" who is "internationally recognized".
 * He received a Lifetime Achievement Award, but it was from the Dept of Agronomy at the University of Nebraska, where he worked. Not sure if this satisfies NPROF. The write-up about the award is not independent and thus wouldn't be a GNG source.
 * According to this 1987 dedication (and other sources as well such as ), he was a fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy. It's unclear whether these are "highly selective" as to meet NPROF. The dedication itself is published by those societies, and thus would be non-independent and not a GNG source. Oddly, he does not appear to be on the "official" list of American Society of Agronomy fellows ; rather, he's listed as an awards recipient.
 * 2013 article in CSA News (PDF) plagiarizes the 1987 death notice, word for word
 * Doesn't appear to have an overwhelming number of GS cites
 * Notes: there are other academics in other fields named "Robert A. Olson"; the author of this article was recently blocked for being a sock; and there is a Draft:Robert A. Olson submitted by an IP in 2018, which is longer than the mainspace article, but unsourced. – Levivich 17:54, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. While he predates Google Scholar profiles, his citation record looks like a pass of WP:NPROF C1, with several articles having 200+ citations.  And the SSSA fellow looks like a pass of WP:NPROF C3, per the description  here. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 18:29, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Would you mind linking to the articles with 200+ citations? I was able to find this (311 on GS) and this (194 on GS), but everything else I found was under 100.
 * The SSSA fellow web page talks about the fellowship today, when they have a membership of 6,000, but Olson was elected as of 1963 (search for his name here), when they had a membership of 2,000 (per the SSSA history). The same history page says that the first fellows were elected in 1976, and in 1977 they "grandfathered in" an unstated number fellows back from 1936. Before 1984, everyone who was a fellow of the ASA was automaticaly made a fellow of SSSA. I don't know if anyone will find any of that persuasive one way or the other on the NPROF#3 question. – Levivich 18:49, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure. GS searching for "author:olson,ra" was productive for me.  "Evaluating the Sulfur Status of Soils by Plant and Soil Tests", "Crop nitrogen requirements, utilization, and fertilization", "Sources of nitrate to ground water" all appear to be highly cited and by the right RA Olson.  Good catch on the SSSA fellowship.  It is not unheard of to jumpstart a fellowship program in similar ways, but we should look to the ASA fellow program instead, which appears to be similarly selective.  In short, I still think this is a C3. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. . The meaning of  notability in WP is not famous, but just notable . The level of citations depends on the field. The number of citations a paper can expect to receive depends upon the citation density, the average number of citations each papers includes in its references. A field like biomedicine, where each paper normally cites many dozens or even hundreds of references as a matter of course will make it much more likely thaat any paper will be cited, than a field in most physical sciences where typically only a dozen or two or cited,  Even in biomedicine, our standard in practice is one or two papers with more than 100 cites. (We tend to ask for two now, because citation density has increased in the last 15 years; the number 100 is the level used 40 or 50 years ago  by Garfield, who invented the modern use of citation analysis in science.    Olson has papers with 311 and 194, and this would be enough for a pass in any field. :There is no need for analysis of whether he passes any of the other criteria.   Meeting any one criterion is enough (actually, the influence in the person's field criterion which is addressed by citations is best thought of as the basic criterion; the others are either shortcuts like national awards  which imply the influence without having to do the bother of citation analysis,  or special cases like writing widely used standard  textbooks.  (fwiw, I do not think being a fellow of the society relevant here is by itself sufficient--I think the only ones we recognize in special fields is ACS, APS, and IEEE; but   it doesn't matter if the citations are there.)   And I agree that calling him a leader in a obit tribute or introduction to a book is irrelevant--these are in any field at all  places for puffery, no matter how distinguished the person who wrote them.  (But, the obit in the NYT is an editorial obit. The image of the page is, which may need a subscription. The editorial ones use the NYT ordinary headline format.  The paid dealh notices are the ones below the line, in the columns headed "Deaths" in fancy type.
 * This article I think would never have been questioned except that the original version was written by a spectacularly unreliable WP editor.  DGG ( talk ) 20:03, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I was going to make the same point about the NYT obituary. The fact that the nominator says that it "appears to be a paid death notice" when the very link that he provided shows that it is in fact an obituary casts severe doubt on whether we can believe all his other statements above. I was nearly 50 when I started editing Wikipedia and had before that never even thought that confusing death notices with obituaries was something anyone did, but it seems that very many editors here can't tell the difference between them. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, boomer. – Levivich 22:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. The Follett dedication (which goes into significant detail on the subject) and the NYT obituary (not paid death notice) are enough for WP:GNG, and by sourcing the claim that Olson "was one of the first to prove and warn that use of nitrogen fertilizers could do harm", they both make a clear case for WP:PROF. #C1 is also plausible. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2020 (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.