Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shomarka Keita


 * 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 to Delete, which defaults to Keep. Several editors contend that notability exists, and that that notability is sourceable and verifiable. Whether that notability is great enough to meet WP:PROF and other relevant criteria is unclear, and opinion here seems to be split on the matter. The nominator's concern about the article's tone is well taken, and the article needs some (significant) cleanup, but those concerns are outside the purview of AFD. UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 13:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Shomarka Keita

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Limited notability. I see some awards, I'm not sure how those awards are widely known. Additionally, this article reads like a CV, however, that can be fixed outside of AFD. Best, NonvocalScream (talk) 17:11, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikiscribe (talk) 17:48, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.
 * Keep. When you search for him as "S.O.Y. Keita" you find more hits. See this Google Scholar search, this Highbeam search or this Google search --Eastmain (talk) 18:16, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 *  Strong Delete. Does not seem like a noteworthy enough to have an article and the article goes against almost many of these rules WP:BLPSTYLE very poorly written--Wikiscribe (talk) 22:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Dozens of articles in absolutely first rate journals. The citations to them will show recognition by those in the field, and are the secondary sources for notability. Yes, "poorly written", but that's a reason for fixing it, not deleting it.  I note the nom. himself proposed fixing the article outside of AfD. DGG (talk) 01:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Note SPA User Zarahan10 is recruiting other editors to vote keep in this AfD, see here. I have not yet had time to look into this case so for the moment I have no vote, but I noticed this when I saw that one of the alerted editors, Taharqa, has deleted the AfD tag from the article. I undid this deletion and have restored the tag. --Crusio (talk) 15:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Web of Science lists 22 articles that have been cited 109 times in total (most cited 24); h-index is 5. I searched for "Keita SO*", there may be some articles published under "Keita S" that may or may not be the same person. I am not very familiar with this field, so I don't really know whether this is high or low. However, I looked up some impact factors for some of the journals that Keita published in. They are in the 1.8-3.0 region, like most of the journals in my own field (neuroscience), which suggests that citation patterns may be similar here. in that case, the above cited figures are not very remarkable at all. In case WoS does not cover this field adequately, I also searched Google Scholar. I get some more articles, but not that many more citations (32, 22, 10, 9, 7, 5, 4 etc). As DGG noted, his articles have appeared in good journals, but if they don't get cited much, that is to me not really enough evidence for notability. Unless someone can find some other sources, my inclination would be to vote delete here (but I'll wait a few more days to see what people come up with). --Crusio (talk) 15:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete, unless more info to demonstrate notability is provided. I also did a WoS search and got similar results to those of Crusio. The citation results do not appear to be sufficient to establish notability under WP:PROF(for comparison, I looked at the data of a couple of associate professors in the anthropology dept at my university, and the results were rather more impressive there). The article does not list the dates of when various degrees were obtained and does not give a link to a personal website where biographical data can be looked up (I could not find one on the web either). My impression, based on reading the article, is that the PhD date is probably rather recent. The awards listed are for junior academics at the postdoc/grad student level. One of the awards listed is the "Overseas Research Student Award from the Vice Chancellors and Principals of Colleges and Universities in the United Kingdom", with a reference dating the award to 2007. That seems to suggest that the PhD date is 2007 or 2008. All in all, insufficient evidence here, at least for the moment, to establish notability under WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 16:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Changing to Weak Delete. References provided by John Z help but not enough, in my opinion, to move this into the keep territory. Yes, his research is cited in two notable books regarding a notable controversy but, in my view, that is not sufficient to demonstrate actual academic prominence. Nsk92 (talk) 03:47, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Additional comment. I have been trying to find more info about Keita. He is not mentioned at all on the website of Howard's NHGC. In fact, Howard's phone directory lists only an Ibrahima Keita. I am not sure about the possible recent PhD date refereed to by Nsk92 above, either. Note that the earliest publication mentioned in the article dates back to 1981 (which makes the citation record -and number of publications- much less impressive, of course). This seems to suggest that his main occupation is not research, although I am not sure how to interpret that site. On the other hand, I have found a few announcements of talks that Keita gave at different institutions around the US, like this one. Here I found some more info on him and he does not seem to have followed the "classical" academic path (so one possibility is that he obtained an MD long ago and only recently added a PhD as Nsk92 surmises). --Crusio (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * delete Nsk92's analysis suggests to me that he fails WP:PROF, h-index of 5 sums it up. His talks are verifiable evidence of impact on the world of ideas, but they seem a very small impact.  There are not the extensive coverage of him as the subject of independent secondary sources required to pass WP:BIO.  Further to Crusio's search failing to support an official position at Howard University (note that the original Dec 2006 version of this article stated that "Dr. Shomarka Keita is a biological anthropologist from Howard University", if this claim cannot be verified then it casts a bit of a shadow on the rest of the article, and deletion of the AfD tag really doesn't help) I note that he does appear to be affiliated with the Smithsonian Human Origins Program Team as a research associate).  Pete.Hurd (talk) 03:47, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete, as nothing more substantial seems to be coming up, I am coming down on the delete side. --Crusio (talk) 07:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep - I have a feeling that this kind of painstaking scrutiny and searching for "exact" proofs and "precise" notability could get half the articles in Wikipedia deleted. Perhpas that is a good idea but it would not be the same Wikipedia anymore. Adam keller (talk) 15:02, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Adam, see WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. --Crusio (talk) 17:37, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep, there is no valid reason whatsoever to delete as this article describes a particularly mainstream scientist, whose works are widely cited and relevant to his field of study. He is a research associate at the Smithsonian and is highly respected in his area of inquiry..

"Dr. Shomarka Keita has a Ph.D. from Oxford and an M.D. from Howard University. His speciality is bio-anthropology.  He lectures on the controversial subject of race and biology.  Dr. Keita is a research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago and a medical officer for the District of Columbia.   His lectures address the Afrocentric theories of race versus the Greek and Middle Eastern  cultural views." - Taharqa (talk) 19:53, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete I carefully read DGG and Eastmain's comments and sources, but considering the controversial nature of the field (as in; the popular press likes to write about these things), Dr Kieta doesn't stand out. Working for the Field Museum as a research associate is not notable. If one reads the article while filtering out the fluff, one can see that there isn't really any claim of notability in there; no discoveries, no controversies, and no major awards. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 01:55, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To the extent he is cited because "the popular press likes to write about such things", this would give him additional notability quite independent of any considerations about his importance as a academic as viewed by other academics. Academics involved in significant controversy as viewed by the non-scholarly press are notable under the general standards for people, just as anybody else. DGG (talk) 03:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * But he isn't so cited, that was my point. His academic record isn't (Wikipedia) notable. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 04:00, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep I think his notability turns largely on his prominence in the Black Athena / Martin Bernal controversy, which was a big debate in academia and its borderland with general culture a while ago.  Judging from his gbook hits, he was prominent enough there for that (plus reasons adduced above) to push him into keep territory. He's mentioned on 14 pages of  6 pages of Afrocentrism Mythical Pasts And Imagined Homes by Stephen Howe, (a book important enough to have a Foreign Affairs review.) 9 pages of Bernal's Black Athena writes back. 6 pages of History in Black By Yaacov Shavit, from Routledge, etc. I get the impression that he is considered  a mainstream, conservative expert by everyone.John Z (talk) 08:13, 10 August 2008 (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.