Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Theodore Baird


 * 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. Only one participant in the discussion has characterized their opinion as "Keep" but the sources and arguments presented by the nomination and previous comment do not argue strongly for deletion. Eluchil404 (talk) 08:20, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Theodore Baird

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Does not appear to be notable outside of the connection with the LFW house. This is the best I could find, but I don't think it's enough.  S ven M anguard  Wha?  21:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 17:46, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment: To me, Baird seems to have (or have had, which is meant to the same thing here,) some degree of notability beyond the house. Looking through the standard GScholar hits (mostly entirely unrelated to him), there is at least one decently-cited paper by him and several others with a few citations - if one assumes that the citation counts are accurate, not enough to meet WP:PROF#1, but the papers all seem to be at least fifty years old and I suspect that GScholar is missing at least some of the older citations. What looks potentially more notable is his teaching activities, and especially the freshman composition course, at Amherst. Courses don't routinely have entire books written about them a generation after they were last taught but this one did - "Fencing with words: a history of writing instruction at Amherst College during the era of Theodore Baird, 1938-1966" by Robin Varnum (it's the book referred to in the NYT obituary linked to in the nomination). I haven't managed to look at the book itself but on the basis of this review of it, there seems to be at least a plausible case that Baird meets WP:PROF#4. And there's more around, even if most of it is either reviews or citations of Varnum's book, reminiscences of former students or, as in this case, both. PWilkinson (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:01, 27 March 2012 (UTC)




 * Keep. GBooks search turns up a truckload of substantive hits, and GScholar indicates that the book about him (mentioned in the NYTimes obit cited by the nominator) is probably notable itself, and amounts to the substantial coverage required. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 02:43, 27 March 2012 (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.