Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Susan Cotter


 * 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. 's comments to the effect that the subject meets WP:ACADEMIC were not rebutted, and this information appears to have been unknown at nomination. The subject has not spoken clearly on the issue of desiring deletion; if she does the request should be made here. Xymmax So let it be written   So let it be done  22:40, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Susan Cotter

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While looking for sources to confirm or contradict the claims about factual errors given on the talk page, I failed to find a single third-party source that covers Cotter in any detail. Thus there's no indication of notability. Furthermore, the person who disputed those claims (and who, according to the primary source, is right) also said that Cotter was interested in seeing the article gone. For BLPs where the subject is of borderline notability, we should defer to the subject's wishes in favor of privacy. See WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE. Huon (talk) 23:44, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * First of all, read the source again:

"Susan Cotter O.D., M.S. received her doctor of optometry degree in 1983 from the Illinois College of Optometry, completed a residency in Children’s Vision at the Southern California College of Optometry (SCCO) in 1984, and received a M.S. degree in Clinical and Biomedical Investigations from the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine in 2006"
 * Obviously it means master's in optometry. Second, even if Barack Obama will want his article to be deleted we as Wikipedians are not deleting anything simply because one person doesn't like the information on him/her. Third, the primary source indicates that she is a former chair woman of the American Academy of Optometry a notability guideline which is covered by the WP:Academics #6. Fourth, if that's not enough I can speak to user and maybe he will see if she is notable.--Mishae (talk) 22:40, 12 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Sorry, what? The article currently says, "Cotter got her master's degree from the Illinois College of Optometry in 1983". Unless you say a doctor of optometry is a master's degree, or that she got both in the same year, the article is wrong (but that on its own is not a reason to delete it, of course). Regarding notability, I'm looking forward to seeing third-party sources that cover Cotter in some detail. For Obama we have them; for Cotter I couldn't find any. I'll have to note that the American Academy of Optometry article doesn't cite any, either. Huon (talk) 23:56, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In the current field yes, O.D. M.S. probably means master's degree in optometry, since it is an abriviation for Doctor of Optometry Master of Science. I changed it to Ph.D. since its probably means that. As far as the American Academy of Optometry article goes, maybe the editors forgot to update it. Realize that not every individual is wikified there either.--Mishae (talk) 00:05, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Huh? O.D. and M.S. are two separate degrees, not a single four-letter degree, one of them means a doctor (not masters) in optometry, and neither of them is the same as a Ph.D. I agree with Huon: this sort of guesswork is not ok. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:46, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We should have the discussion about content on the article talk page, not here. I still see no third-party coverage of Cotter, but rather WP:OR guesswork unsuitable for a biography of a living person. Huon (talk) 00:19, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * From where did you got that WP:OR from? I see no original research because its sourced. Either way, we will wait till Randykitty will come and then we will continue this discussion wherever you want. I'm usually dubious in my writing regarding doctors, but I trust him because he knows better.:)--Mishae (talk) 00:25, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Illinois-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete Strangest thing...The American Academy of Optometry has Presidents, not Chairpersons - and her name ain't on the list. Otherwise, no one really cares about how many degrees she's got, that and a quarter might buy you a song downtown. Not Noteworthy per WP:ACADEMIC Nikto   wha?  02:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * O.K. Then that solves everything, I guess. I wrote the article by the fact that she is a chairperson of a notable organization. Guess I was wrong, thanks for heads up though. Will keep your Presidents of American Academy of Optometry in my mind. :)--Mishae (talk) 03:01, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete - I'm open to changing my mind if someone finds more evidence that she is a notable academic, but at the moment this is a long stretch. Metamagician3000 (talk) 08:57, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 *  Neutral for now.  There are some issues with the article, as noted above (correcting her educational record, for example), but that is rather trivial. She has no GScholar profile, but GS does list some heavily-cited articles. She does have a Scopus profile, which gives citation data that are borderline notable (but Scopus has no good coverage before the mid-90s and Cotter started doing research in the 80S). I went to the (more reliable) Web of Science and found over a 100 publications, cited 2423 times (highest ones: 184, 149, 121) with an h-index of 28. This is beyond the range of what we usually take as meeting WP:ACADEMIC#1. Her profile at USC is not online any more, but she has another one at Marshall B. Ketchum University. There are a few fellowships mentioned, but I would need to do some more research to figure out whether those are selective enough for ACADEMIC#3. She also seems to have written a textbook (which has been translated into Spanish), if that would be used widely, she'd make #4.
 * Normally I would now !vote "keep", but the wishes of the subject count, too. Mishae is right that we wouldn't delete Barack Obama, but that's not a fair comparison, because Obama obviously is so notable that it would be ridiculous not covering him. Cotter is notable because of her citation record, and I don't think WP would suffer significantly if we didn't cover her. However, before !voting "delete", I'd like to know where and how the subject expressed her wish that this bio be deleted (and that we can be sure that it was the indeed the subject herself) and whether she would still want this bio deleted if the factual errors in the bio are corrected. --Randykitty (talk) 10:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * A person who said they were an acquaintance of Cotter came into the live help channel, pointed out the factual errors, and insisted that Cotter wanted the article deleted despite our explanations that the inaccuracies could easily be corrected. Josve05a was present during that conversation. We haven't spoken to Cotter herself, but I see no reason to doubt that person's account of her wishes. Huon (talk) 14:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I can imagine her being upset about an article containing mistakes, but would she still object to a corrected bio? I find a person that came on IRC (i.e., not through more formal channels) not really convincing. --Randykitty (talk) 14:56, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * not through more formal channels - People prefer IRC-chat much more than send an email to info-en-q due to it is acctually live, they think it is just the same "support-group". Furthermore, I can confirm that the helpee in the chat was chatting from Los Angeles, California. (t) Josve05a  (c) 15:11, 13 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete The current source doesn not establish notability in my opinion. Therefor I'm !voting !delete, that does not mean I'm not open to chnage my mind if something else comes up. (t) Josve05a  (c) 15:20, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Going to Keep: meets ACADEMIC#1 and possibly other criteria, too (but one is enough). No convincing arguments in favor of deletion. --Randykitty (talk) 15:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I think people will say that this article is not a part of this AfD but it had the same issue. A user came to my the article talkpage and mine as well and complained that I did some inaccuracies and therefore the subject need to be deleted. Now, that subject was covered by the New York Times which made her automatically notable. In this case, I don't see coverage from New York Times or the like, but user convinced me back then not to delete the article simply because the subject issued an ultimatum. Really, Wikipedia relies heavily on notability and we shouldn't really care about subject's wishes. If we will care about every wish of a subject we will end up writing about dead individuals and looking for reliable sources through archives which is a) pain in the butt and b) some websites get deleted long before they end up in any of the archives. This practice of caring of individual wishes will lead us to 1 million less articles because majority of dead individuals are covered on Wikipedia. Plus, our readers are relying heavily on biographies, majority of them read on the living ones.--Mishae (talk) 16:49, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Another thing to mention; the nominator didn't read the fine print under the PROD template which said that the previous discussion was closed as keep, that means that we should close this discussion as keep too per WP:SNOW.--Mishae (talk) 18:12, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
 * Keep but monitor. BLP issues are usually fixed quickly, when they are on people's radars (watch lists). Bearian (talk) 19:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Off topic comment So what does watch lists do? Like, they never notify me of any changes in the article, so what is their purpose?--Mishae (talk) 20:51, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you go to Special:Watchlist you will see the most recent changes in your watched articles. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, slakr  \ talk / 03:54, 23 December 2014 (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.