Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas A. Marting


 * 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 delete. Yunshui 雲 水 07:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Thomas A. Marting

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This autobiography fails WP:NACADEMIC and WP:BIO. There is almost no significant coverage of the subject in reliable sources, and the award that the subject received does not appear to be sufficient to confer notability. I accepted this through AfC about a year ago in the hope that it could be brought up to standards, but that hasn't happened, and at this point doesn't appear possible. – bradv 🍁  00:31, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  94rain  Talk 01:35, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Ohio-related deletion discussions.  94rain  Talk 01:35, 22 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete. All we seem to have here are some minor local awards and one published academic paper with a mere 15 citations in Google Scholar from other publications. It's not enough for WP:PROF, WP:GNG, or any other form of notability. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 22 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep  Delete 15 citations for an article that is 3 years old in an emerging field of study like Biomimicry represents a lot of influence, it is not “mere.” If you search all papers published in the entire field of Biomimicry since 2016, only 6 other publications have more citations.   The work is influential across the US, being written about by Great Lakes Biomimicry in Cleveland, Ohio and the Biomimicry Institute bases in Missoula, Montana.  This meets the wp:NACADEMIC criteria “The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources.”  The Maurice Holland Award is a well known national award going back 37 years, as is the environmental and energy leader 100, these are not minor local awards.   This meets the WP:BIO criteria “The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times.”  The subject was also the topic of an academic case study published by Case Western Reserve University School of Business, which demonstrates notable “influential in the world of ideas.”
 * —Tmarting73 (talk) 12:04, 23 May 2019 (UTC)TMarting73 — Tmarting73 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * After further study of of WP:NACADEMIC, WP:PROF and in particular WP:WHYN I’ve come to concur, within the bounds of these guidelines the article doesn’t meet the qualifications and should be deleted. An edit to Biomimetics should be considered instead.  Tmarting73 (talk) 03:00, 26 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Google Scholar search for biomimicry finds Benyus 1997, 2943 citations; Passino 2002, 2805 citations; Esfand and Tomalia 2001, 1619 citations, etc. In contrast, Marting's paper (on which by the way he is not even first author) has a mere 15. Normally we require multiple papers with triple-digit citations in order to pass WP:PROF. One paper in the low double-digits, when the field has several with quadruple digits, is clearly not enough. In addition the fact that these citations go back 20 years puts the word "emerging" in context. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:23, 23 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Google Scholar search for biomimicry since 2016 produced 222 results and finds Dumanli 2016, 73 citations; Aziz 2016, 29 citations; Paul et. al. 2017, 29 citations; Dicks 2016, 21 citations; Blok & Gremmen 2016, 20 citations; Kennedy & Marting 2016, 15 citations (they were described as co-authors when presenting their research as keynote speakers at the 2017 IRI Summit and Conference, neither one was identified as a lead author) which means the work is within the top 3% in terms of influence within the last 3 years. Comparing citations for an article published in 2016 in a peer reviewed, technical journal to Dr. Benyus's groundbreaking popular book written in 1997 launching the current field of study is not a fair comparison. WP:PROF is the wrong criteria for assessment, that's intended for professors and professional academics which the subject is not, there are no guidelines in WP:NACADEMIC or WP:PROF about triple digit citations. That seems very arbitrary criteria anyway, especially when considering the amount of research varies wildly from field to field (search Scholar for "quarks" produces 11,600 results, 50 times the amount of research volume as "biomimicry" over the same time period, and naturally a higher number of citations for each entry).  Also considering the subject is not a professional academic or part of any full time university research program makes the achievement of co-authoring an influential study and winning a nationally recognized prize all the more noteworthy, not less.
 * If notability requires a 25 year waiting period to rack up hundreds or thousands of citations in an emerging field (as biomimicry is often described  ) to determine, then only retirees will be notable rather than people active in the fields of research. If it takes decades for a subject clear the hurdle for notability you are doing Wikipedia as a digital platform a disservice, as it loses it's immediacy and real time value over old fashion printed encyclopedias. - Tmarting73 (talk) 01:10, 24 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Even for that self-servingly specific time range, if I search only for papers with "biomimicry", "biomimic", or "biomimicking" in their titles, I get citation counts 79 (Zheng et al), 73 (Dumanji & Savin), 56 (Liu et al), 41 (Lin et al), 30 (Blok), 29 (Paul et al), 29 (Aziz), 22 (Song et al), 22 (Chen et al), 21 (Dicks), 19 (Popa et al), 19 (Wybon et al), 17 (Buck). So the Marting paper is much farther down in the rankings even of these recent papers than you claim. But it doesn't matter; even if it were the top-ranked paper in that cohort, one double-digit paper would not be enough. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:28, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Adding those additional search terms increases the number of results to 356, still putting the Marting paper in the top 3%. The question is how many of those papers you identified won a national award like the Maurice Holland Award? Still, if your criteria for notability takes 30 years to achieve, there's no value to having a digital platform, might as well print books again.  -Tmarting73 (talk) 01:32, 24 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete Subject fails WP:GNG, WP:NPROF, etc., who created this autobiography, . Delete the article and block the editor for wasting our time perpetrating this sham. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 14:06, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The Maurice Holland Award is a significant national award, there is no case for it's exclusion to meet Criteria 2 of WP:NACADEMIC.  Tmarting73 (talk) 14:43, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I've made a fact based argument based on the criteria established. You are perfectly welcome to contest my points, but making personal remarks and calling for me to be blocked simply because you disagree the the logical points I've made demonstrates an unwarranted personal bias on your part User:Chris troutman.  Tmarting73 (talk) 14:46, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * , editors tend to have less patience for people who are here for self-interested reasons than to generally improve the encyclopedia. This is the behavior that Chris was commenting on and reflects that some editors who cause disruption while focusing on a single topic end up blocked. You've obviously got a different perspective on this but his comment about what we call single purpose accounts (spa) reflects the feelings of many (probably even most) regular editors. This is separate from whether the article about you is notable (which he also commented on). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:11, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I apologize to Tmarting73 for what he perceived to be a personal attack. I have no enemies and I don't seek to persecute anyone. What I should have said is that our volunteer editors write this encyclopedia and get nothing, not even thanks from the home office in San Francisco, for their work. I hate to see our encyclopedia jammed up with promotional dreck and resent our editors' time being wasted cleaning up messes that should have never existed in the first place. I wish newcomers to this website would respect our volunteers enough to first do no harm. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 15:16, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Apology accepted. I understand that there is a frustrating element out there who are out to use this platform for self promotion or whatever.  I'm not selling any books and I don't have some kind of consultancy, so there's no profit to inclusion.  I genuinely believe the work has significance and that it meets the established criteria for being influential, and the award is significant.  Through this discussion I've come to see the criteria as it is being applied here as biased, it is obviously intentionally designed to be applied to professional academics or professors at universities who are researching in and publishing full time in well established fields, and so contributors outside of academia who are making contributions in emerging fields like biomimicry are being disadvantaged. That's unfortunate because a lot of very important work is happening in the private sector and those contributors are apparently being excluded.  If the process plays out and the consensus is deletion, then fine. It's likely that if the work continues to be influential those thresholds may be passed in the future.  But if nothing else, the process bias against contributions outside of academia should be obvious through this discourse, and consideration should be given as to how to improve the system.  Tmarting73 (talk) 16:08, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * WP:NPROF is what's called a SNG (Subject Notability Guide). It acts as a kind of shortcut - in most instances - to whether something is notable. If an article passes one of the criteria of an SNG most editors believe there is adequate sourcing to support an encyclopedic article and that the topic is notable. However, a person can establish themselves as notable under the broader General Notability Guideline (GNG). In this case the shortcut for non-academics is more closed off but the broader method of showing the sources themselves remains open to those outside formal academic structures who become notable through their work. As for re-examining NPROF, that has been an very active point of discussion recently. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:31, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. Thsmi002 (talk) 15:33, 24 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete I concur with Epstein and Troutman. Subject fails WP:ANYBIO and WP:NPROF. Thsmi002 (talk) 15:37, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete A "best paper of the year" award from a journal isn't significant enough for WP:PROF. 15 citations (by the permissive standards of Google Scholar, at that &mdash; Web of Science reports only 4) isn't "highly cited" by any stretch of the imagination. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:22, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete. No pass of WP:Prof or even WP:GNG. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:38, 28 May 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.