Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Till Tantau (2nd nomination)


 * 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. Black Kite (talk) 01:18, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Till Tantau
AfDs for this article: 
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Non-notable CS professor. Judging from his own website (which includes a list of awards) and a search on Google, Tantau fails to meet the criteria of WP:ACADEMIC. His LaTeX packages are well known, but the man himself is not. The only sort of third-party source for the article is a German government website that promotes the study of computer science. Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 19:09, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete. Citation record is clearly not enough for WP:PROF. Both beamer and tikz are important latex packages but per WP:INHERITED I would want to see reliable sources with some nontrivial detail about his role in creating them (and not just what they are and how to use them) if we are to use their creation as the basis for notability; the primary sources we have now are certainly not good enough. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:01, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete. As per Eppstein. Too early. It is regrettable that the BLP creator did not do more research before creating this article. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2014 (UTC).
 * Comment. "His LaTeX packages are well known, but the man himself is not" confuses notability with celebrity. (Without waxing too much, we have numerous articles on significantly more obscure figures in the programming language community that have handily survived AfD, like Mark Jason Dominus or Audrey Tang.) As David said tikz, beamer, etal are important cogs in the LaTeX machinery and importance/impact of work implies notability of its creator. I think this should be a simple case of finding items in the published literature that attribute these packages to him and document their importance. The article could then at least be a legitimate stub. I'll have a go at it and I hope that the panelists here might then have another look at it. Thanks, Agricola44 (talk) 16:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC).
 * Maybe my wording was a bit unfortunate, but what I mean is that I couldn't find the third-party coverage that WP:BIO requires. I tried looking for interviews and the like, but even TUGboat didn't have one; only passing mention here. Re: the precedents, Mark Jason Dominus was an invited speaker at OOPSLA, a major conference; Audrey Tang has television coverage (and survived AfD debates with, if I may, pretty weak arguments like "delete, not notable" and "keep, notable"). Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 16:30, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I think I've found acceptable sources, as reported below. Sorry to digress, but being something like an invited speaker at "OOPSLA", much less any other conference, does not confer notability. The 2 other articles I named stand on very shaky notability grounds, but both were "keep" in their respective AfDs. Agricola44 (talk) 16:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC).


 * Keep. Tantau has >200 GS citations, which go toward notability, but may be borderline for CS. What I think clinches this case are the sources that have been added that attribute Beamer and PGF/TikZ to him by name and to him alone (even though others contributed to these) and give some documentation as to their importance (nevermind that both have WP pages of their own, which we know makes them important;) I wonder if the panelists here might have another look. Thanks so much, Agricola44 (talk) 16:58, 27 February 2014 (UTC).
 * Could you add quotations and page numbers? Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 21:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * 200 cites is not remotely enough for this very highly cited field. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:45, 27 February 2014 (UTC).
 * I don't think such quotes are appropriate for the article (this would be very unconventional), but here are a few samples to get a better idea of what I claimed above: from the Green text (pp 4), "The diagrams in this book were produced using TikZ by Till Tantau.", and from the Gratzer text (pp 325), "In this chapter, we discuss Till Tantau's 'beamer' package to help you prepare...". The rest of these (and many others that I found, but did not add to the article) can be checked quickly on Google Books. Agricola44 (talk) 22:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC).
 * I mean quotes in the references, using the  field. I use those all the time with offline sources. GBooks has a habit of restricting previews. Q VVERTYVS  (hm?) 22:40, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm not getting what you're asking for. The quotes I furnished above are from 2 of the references. If you want to add those to the article itself, I suppose you can – but again, this seems like it's "trying too hard". We conventionally accept references at face value without dipping into them for specific text. Agricola44 (talk) 22:52, 27 February 2014 (UTC).
 * You might take refs at face value; I want them to be verifiable, so I want page number for all books sources and always include these when editing. Why do you think Template:Full exists? (I added a few of the page numbers and one quote to the article myself.) Q VVERTYVS (hm?) 10:49, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I've added a book specifically written on the subject of Pgf/Tikz and it has a quote "Till Tantau is the designer of these languages". While I appreciate the issue of verifiability, my own opinion is that there are much more pressing source problems, for example the gajillion BLPs that only have web ephemera. This article was once like that. I think I've done all I can here, so I'll close by once again inviting a re-assessment based on what I think are 7 good sources that have been added during this AfD. Cheers! Agricola44 (talk) 16:27, 28 February 2014 (UTC).


 * Keep following recent article improvements that establish notability. Drmies (talk) 01:41, 6 March 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.