Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Robert Shostak


 * 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 keep. Ad Orientem (talk) 01:30, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Robert Shostak

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Verifiability / BLP policy violations. Probably notable, but there are no sources for any of the biographical information, only his research papers. The lack of sourcing and the promotional tone suggests this was written by an associate of Shostak and it is not verifiable. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 22:27, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 23:15, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 23:15, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 23:16, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Question for nominator Why is deletion preferable to removing the unverifiable content, or just stubifying? Bakazaka (talk) 23:20, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Based on what I could find publicly, all I could verify was that he was a co-author of the paper "The Byzantine Generals Problem", and is now affiliated with Vocera. An article stubbed down to that length would not demonstrate notability or that he is a public figure, and sourcing to press releases like  wouldn't be good enough. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 23:28, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The "Reaching Agreement" paper (cited >2000 times) as well as several other papers cited in the hundreds of times each, as well as the "Byzantine Generals" paper (cited >5000 times!) are together enough for a clear pass of WP:ACADEMIC, in my opinion. Reducing the article to the "Interactive Consistency and Byzantine Fault Tolerance" section, which is a more or less accurate description of the academic contribution, would be verifiable (paper contents + citation metrics for impact) and would show why he passes WP:ACADEMIC with a "significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed". Bakazaka (talk) 23:35, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 23:36, 18 February 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep While I agree that the article text needs some aggressive pruning, the subject is verifiably notable under WP:ACADEMIC, as a search of Google Scholar will attest. Additionally, much of the SRI-related material is also covered in Donald MacKenzie's MIT Press book Mechanizing Proof, pages 269-272, and searching under "Rob Shostak" finds mid-to-late-1980s coverage in (e.g.) Computerworld, Byte, Infoworld, Personal Computing, etc of his work for companies like Ansa and Borland. So there's also a good case for WP:GNG. With notability easily established, the rest of the article issues are reasons to edit, not reasons to delete. Bakazaka (talk) 03:15, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:PROF. I also agree that some pruning would be an improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:47, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for your comments and searches. The sections on the Ansa/Paradox/Vocera have now been substantially pruned and merged into a single section.  I think it’s important to keep this in order to provide a rounded picture of the subject.  In addition, some additional citations were added (including the MacKenzie book that Bakazaka found – good catch)  to improve verifiability. Richardlschwartz (talk) 16:12, 23 February 2019 (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.