Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vasilijus Safronovas


 * 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. Stifle (talk) 15:39, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Vasilijus Safronovas

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Non-notable academic. No secondary sources to support notability. Publishing articles and contributing to publications is an academic's "Day job". An individual needs to do something more than his/her job to be considered notable. WP:ACADEMIC provides guidelines for notability of academics. The criteria are quite demanding and Safronovas still falls well short of them. Wikipeterproject (talk) 21:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  —David Eppstein (talk) 04:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * '''Note: This debate has been included in the WikiProject Deletion sorting/Lithuania discussions. Novickas (talk) 19:44, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. This person is a fresh graduate of a small newly-formed school and is now on faculty there. Claims are difficult to verify, even from the school's website, as most of their departments (including history) have no web pages. WoS shows not a single article published in the peer-reviewed literature and GS shows no citations either (h-index = 0). The article claims a published book: "At the age 17 he published his first scientific book – a synthetic work on history of the city of Klaipėda", however, this seems only to be an article within an edited collection that was actually edited by someone else and which seems to be held only by a single institution. It also claims he's a major contributor to "Encyclopaedia of Lithuania Minor", but this held by <20 institutions. All of these claims fall far short of WP:PROF #1. Textbook case of an article too early. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 16:11, 1 March 2010 (UTC).
 * I beg to differ about two points. Klaipeda University is not small, has some 10K sutdents. It wasn't formally founded until 1991, true, but it's not a diploma mill. Re the notability of the Encyclopaedia of Lithuania Minor, aka Mazosios lietuvos enciklopedija, the first page of Worldcat shows it held by New York Public Library, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Library of Congress, Toronto Public Library, University of Toronto. . (After that my search hangs). But its presence in those libraries alone makes it a notable publication. I agree this guy's notability will take some research. Novickas (talk) 20:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I never said Klaipeda University was a "diploma mill". Those are your words. Also, the issue with respect to book holdings is specifically not which libraries hold the publication, it's how many. For example, the NYPL and LOC are not very discriminating in the sense that they hold practically everything. From the Library of Congress article: LOC "receives copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered in the United States". WorldCat shows only 18 institutions holding the Lithuania Minor book – quite a low number indeed. For comparison, the vanity-published book "Off the Wall" (which has been discussed here before) is held by 75 libraries. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 21:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Oh no. I'm falling into the WP cycle of escalating rhetoric, following the real life cycle of same. No, you didn't call KU a diploma mill, but you did describe him as a "fresh graduate of a small newly-formed school" as a factor in his notability. As I say, I'm still forming an opinion about his notability. Novickas (talk) 23:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Best of luck in forming an opinion. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 15:38, 2 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Your way of establishing book's notability is disgustingly biased. Counting how many copies of a Lithuanian book is held by U.S. libraries is flat wrong. The count will obviously won't come nowhere close to any English book. You should count how many copies are held by Lithuanian libraries (but alas they are not part of Worldcat). Just FYI, the book is respectable & notable. It's published by Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas, which publishes Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia (Lithuanian equivalent of Encyclopedia Britannica). Mažosios Lietuvos enciklopedija was covered in press quite a bit (some quick examples mostly from last year): . Renata (talk) 14:54, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * WorldCat does, in fact, catalog many Lithuanian-language publications (they claim 26,272). It is the "the world's largest bibliographic database" (from WorldCat) and it is the consensus method (and not "my way", thanks) by which we do such evaluations. If you have something better, then propose it. And, let's also try to remember that we're really not even debating the red-herring merits of book indexing services, but rather Safronovas himself. And, I think the facts here remain: he's basically an entry-level academic who has not yet made contributions sufficient to pass any of the criteria in WP:PROF. He may do so in the future, but that necessarily remains to be seen. I'm sorry if any feelings are hurt, but this is almost always the verdict for new profs because they haven't yet had the time to make the necessary accomplishments. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 15:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Well, thank you very much for such a discussion on my article. I would say the guidelines for notability of academics are too strict, especially in context of such small countries as Lithuania. Anyways, just to prevent you from wasting time on trivialities, as an author, I would suggest to delete the article. RGB EN (talk) 21:37, 1 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete in support of user RGB EN. Also zero GS cites. Too early. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Comment worldCat does contain many Lithuanian books, but very few libraries in the US and canada collect them, and these make up about 95% of WorldCat's coverage.(It does contain a few libraries in other parts of the English speaking world, and a very few representative libraries elsewhere). Even if it did cover other language materials adequately world-wide, the number of holdings would be proportional to the size of the country and of its publishing industry, and the numbers would have to be judged accordingly.   I consider holdings in WorldCat worthless as  negative evidence for any non -English language publication. Positive holdings there for a small language are on the other hand very highly significant. That it is the best universal db for books currently available  does not mean that it is adequate. Ditto for Google Scholar & Google books, even more anglocentric.
 * Weak Keep The question is whether he is an authority on his subject, no matter how small the subject is.   I'm a little dubious about how to count specialization in regional history as a specific subject. He's an authority on Klaipėda / Memel --  is that a sufficient subject?   In  --  Eight journal articles is normally somewhat below the standard for historians--normally at least one important book is expected I'm not sure though how to judge the extensive contributions to an encyclopedia.  DGG ( talk ) 04:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Klaipeda/Memel is quite significant regionally, altho the lead of its WP article may not convey that very well. It's better shown in other articles - Port of Klaipeda, Klaipėda Region, 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania, Klaipeda Castle, etc. Been fought over quite a bit, being a (usually) ice free port on the Baltic - this is reasonably well-covered in the K. article itself. Novickas (talk) 15:17, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep Dear Collegues, I would like to explain something. 1) The author I have described has written a book on history of Klaipeda ("Klaipėdos miesto istorinės raidos bruožai") - it was published in 2002 and you can find it mentioned in [Google Books catalogue]. 2) The historian I have described is an author of approximetely 20 scientific articles; I have included only some of them in English Wikipedia. Among them are articles in prestigious scientific journals of Lithuania, as "Lietuvos istorijos metraštis" (published by The Lithuanian Institute of History) or "Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis" (published by Institute of History and Archaeology, Klaipeda University). You can also find very profound article on contemporary Lithuania's politics of remembrance in "Ab Imperio" (2009) - the latter is an affiliated journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Cambridge, Mass.). Isn't it notable enough? 3) Encyclopaedia of Lithuania Minor is a unique project, which was initiated by Lithuania Minor Foundation (USA-Canada) and realised by more than 300 specialists all around the world, including scholars from the USA, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Australia, Poland, Russia; of course, most of the contributors were the Lithuanians, as the project itself was oriented towards the Lithuanian-speakers. Safronovas was major contributor to the 4th and the last Volume, where he has wrote articles on German Nationalism, History of Germany, East Prussia after World War II, Politics of Germany towards Question of Memel and many others. Of course, all this points to the fact that Safronovas is a specialist on regional history, known in particular groups of historians at least in Lithuania and Germany. So how could you expect notability (as you see it) from such an author? He is notable in particular fields, which, of course, do not include the USA, Great Britain or other English-speaking states. Therefore you can't find a lot of information about him in Worldcat or Google scientists. I have wrote about this historian at least because of the fact he is a young man of great likelihood, who has astonished Lithuanian professors when he wrote his scientific book at the age 17. I would say he is wonder boy. Therefore I saw my task here to present this talent to English-speaking world. I don't know if my arguments convince you? Respectfully, RGB EN (talk) 11:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. His major contributions to the encyclopedia show him an authority on Lithuania Minor - thereby fulfilling a condition of WP:ANYBIO - that "the person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." Novickas (talk) 15:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. You misunderstand WP:ANYBIO entirely, which I grant is somewhat poorly worded. However, the footnote attached to the text you quote provides clarification: generally, a person who is "part of the enduring historical record" will have been written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books on that field, by historians... (bold-emphasis mine). In other words, the "enduring historical record" refers to the person discussed therein as the subject, not the person who wrote it. So, if Safronovas himself is indeed the subject of any of the encyclopedia articles, I'll be glad to change my position. If not, you might consider changing yours. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 16:18, 4 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Dear Agricola44, actually Safronovas is the subject of article in Encyclopaedia of Lithuania Minor, Volume 4 (Vilnius, 2009), p. 168. I have used information from this article when I was writing the Wikipedia-article and I have made corresponding footnote. RGB EN (talk) 18:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My sense is that most commentators here will not be able to assess the article and its coverage of Safronovas because of inability to access the article. You appear to be extremely familiar with it. Might you be able to give some additional information and context so that we could get a better handle on it? For example, is it one of the proper encyclopedia articles, or is it an entry in the "about the authors" section? Does the article give incidental mention of Safronovas, or is it actually titled as "Vasilijus Safronovas", or some such, giving his actual biography? Answers to these questions should clarify matters tremendously. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 18:35, 4 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Very well, as you wish: The article, named "Safronovas, Vasilijus" is about him as a historian. The size of the article is about 1000 characters. In the article the following information is given: his day of birth, his profession, his credentials, his range of scientific interests, his participation in particular scientific projects, his major works. I have used the information from this article creating the Wikipedia-article. RGB EN (talk) 21:02, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Can I presume you mean 1000 words, not 1000 characters? Also, can you identify any other publications that discuss him (per the multiple sources requirement in WP:ANYBIO), especially in something more mainstream (i.e. more widely distributed)? This could turn the tide in favor of keep. Thanks for your work. Agricola44 (talk) 22:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Here he is profiled in the newspaper Klaipeda diena. Another one in Vakaru ekspresas  Sorry we don't have WP articles on these news outlets. Briefer mention in Eurozine . Novickas (talk) 00:54, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I was hoping that items that are both more mainstream and substantive could be offered. The first two seem to be briefs in local Lithuanian-language newspapers (pardon if this is incorrect, I don't speak/read the language) and the third is a brief in a netzine. I would rather like to concentrate on his article (i.e. the one that talks about him) in the Lithuanian encyclopedia, because I think that could satisfy (at least partially) the requirement about being "written about, in depth, independently in multiple history books on that field, by historians" in WP:ANYBIO. I'm hoping someone can describe this article in more detail so that the panelists here can get a better understanding of it. I would like to change my vote, but I can only do this in good conscience based on evidence. Thanks again for all your work, Agricola44 (talk) 15:56, 5 March 2010 (UTC).
 * A couple of other offerings. This is a strong one, IMO:, on Sep 11 2009, Vakaru expresas describes a 2-day conference of what it describes as 'starring Lithuanian historians'. Titled "Klaipėdoje - svarbiausias istorikų renginys" (In Klaipeda - a conference of the most notable historians). Quote: "Vakar prasidėjo ir šiandien Klaipėdos universitete (KU) tęsiasi Antrasis Lietuvos istorikų suvažiavimas "Tarp tradicijos ir naujų iššūkių: Lietuvos istorijos mokslas naujojo tūkstantmečio pradžioje", į kurį suvažiavo ir dar atvažiuos visas Lietuvos istorikų žvaigždynas - Alfredas Bumblauskas, Alvydas Nikžentaitis, Česlovas Laurinavičius, Zigmantas Kiaupa, Irena Vaišvilaitė ir kt." Because it only lasted 2 days there weren't a whole lot of participants (Dalyviai) - Vasilijus is one of them ("Dalyviai Vladas Žulkus, Nijolė Laužikienė, Rasa Čepaitienė, Vasilijus Safronovas.") This 2007 article focuses entirely on V.S. . Lietuvos rytas reprinted his article mentioned in Eurozine. . Eurozine, BTW, is better than a zine in the commonly used US sense; it has an editorial board. Novickas (talk) 01:38, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 11:25, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Comment - After reading the article, there is no indication for me, why it should be kept. But maybe the problem is the way the article is written because it does not justfully present him. So, I'd like few questions answered which might help me and others take a decision. 1) If you were to make a resumé of one line describing his research and/or specialization, what would it be? 2) Who are the known researchers in that field (notable enough to have their article), provide at most 5 names. 3) How many of those have used his study in their work and/or reviewed his works. If that's hard to find, using a citation index could help. From my point of view, the most important aspect to show notability, is the number of times his studies have been cited elsewhere, particularly by those who are established notable enough to have their artcle. -RobertMel (talk) 18:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC) + Since I vote in several AfD, I may not return here, so please warn me in my talkpage if you answer. -RobertMel (talk) 18:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
 * My stance is that he's notable under the overarching guideline Notability (people), basic criteria - A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. Bio entry in the encyclopedia + full length dedicated articles in two of LT's major newspapers. (LT has about 350 newspapers, per this ref from the European Journalism Centre,  which then mentions these 2 in its short list of 11; I think this addresses an earlier question about whether these newspapers are local). Further addressing DGG's question above as to whether the field of Klaipeda/Memel history is significant - a Gbook search on Memel shows over 6,000 results in several languages.  Novickas (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. Newspapers are not ideal, particularly when they only make a passing mention. For an accademic, anyone holding a position at university level will have some level of notability. So, assessing an accademician notability should be mostly based on citation indexes and reviews their works have generated by their notable peers. I will check his notability myself and come with an assessment. Regards. -RobertMel (talk) 19:55, 9 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge - OK, after checking, very interesting scholar and will probably become notable, but as of now, he is not enought notable. On the other hand, I think an article (of course if it does not exist, I have not checked) on the Lithuanian history writting during Soviet times with an appropriate title could be justifiable, better yet starting with Lithuanian historiography dealing with the different periods. If a similar article does exist, then Vasilijus Safronovas name could be redirected in an appropriate section of the article, if not creating an Lithuanian historiography which could accomodate a redirect in a relevant section which could be worthwhile. -RobertMel (talk) 20:17, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. I've actually taken time to take a look at a couple of his papers, and he seems to be a serious historian, with a decent publication record. Just the paper on the graves in Klaipeda could be a useful source for quite a few - perhaps not yet written - Wikipedia aritcles about the history of that corner of the world. It's not quite clear from the Wikipedia article whether the young historian (he's 25) has earned his [Lithuanian equivalent of] Ph.D. already, but I assume that he will eventually. If the person is considered not "notable" based on the formal notability criteria, I guess the article can be "userified" (moved to the main author's user space), and then the author can move it to the main space again in a couple years, when the historian in question actually has his thesis published as a book (he probably will)... Vmenkov (talk) 04:57, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you elaborate on "a decent publication record" in light of the fact that the main indexing services show little, if anything, from him? I'm also a little confused by your "keep" because the second half of your statement tacitly indicates he's not yet notable. Thanks in advance for clarification. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 15:48, 10 March 2010 (UTC).
 * I gladly will elaborate.
 * (1) I have to admit that when I decide to create an article about a scholars or a writer, I do so not as a result of evaluating the person's "notability" with respect to whatever the standard guidelines may say, but rather because I am reading up on a certain topic, and want to fill in red links for things such as the "authorlink" parameter in the Citation template, or in an "according to X..." text in an article I am writing. So for example when I was reading on the Jurchens/Manchus, I ended up creating stubs for Herbert Franke, Daniel Kane (linguist), and Evgenij Ivanovich Kychanov, and added a bit to the already existing article on Pamela Kyle Crossley.
 * (2) A couple of Safronovas' articles that I looked at ( Vasilijus Safronovas, „Identitätskonflikte, Symbolwerdung der Grabstätten und der Kult um die Befreier in Memel/Klaipėda des 20. Jahrhunderts“, in: Annaberger Annalen, 2008, Nr. 16, S. 205-226.; Василиюс Сафроновас, «О тенденциях политики воспоминания в нынешней Литве», in: Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space, 2009, No. 3, p. 424–458. [“On Tendencies of the Politics of Remembrance in Contemporary Lithuania”]) seem to contain solid historical scholarship: a study of extensive factual material, plus the historians "synthesis" based on such material. While I am not writing any wikipedia articles on Lithuania, I feel that if one were to write something, say, on the history of Memel/Klaipeda, or on National Holidays of Lithuania, s/he can certainly make use extensive use of these articles as sources - and thus, make the author of the articles a potential topic for an article too (under my "subjective criterion" above).
 * (3) "Main indexing services"? I know all too well how incomplete those things are when dealing with literature in "minor" languages, published in journals (or by book pressed) of a "minor" country. Even libraries that hold such things (typically, at universities with an appropriate research program) sometimes don't catalog them properly. (I can tell plenty of stories related for looking for and finding books/papers needed for writing wiki articles on more "obscure" topics, but it's not too relevant here). So I mostly judged on the record based on the content of the papers listed in the articles, rather than on where they may have been indexed. I would imagine that the Lietuvos istorijos metraštis (Yearbook of Lithuanian History) and the Annaberger Annalen are probably as major journals on Lithuanian history as there are, but they still may fly below the radar of the "Main indexing services" of the English-speaking world.
 * (4) "tacitly indicat[ing] he's not yet notable"? I do realize that my subjective criterion for "should I bother to write an article on X?" may sometimes produce different results from whatever the official notability criteria may say. I don't claim expertise on interpreting the latter, or to start a discussion on the merits of them (this is not the right place, anyway). But should the experts decide that the official notability criteria are not [yet] satisfied, I would like to note that they likely will be satisfied in a few years, considering that the historian in question has already been quite prolific. It seems like he is publishing articles centered around a certain group of topics (related to how the local history is viewed and commemorated by the people of today), which will eventually develop into a thesis and probably a published book. (This, after all, is a fairly topic trajectory that you see in many historians' CVs: from a series of papers to a Ph.D. thesis to a monograph). Therefore I felt that should the decision to delete be made, it would be good  to avoid an unnecessary loss of material, since the article could eventually be legitimately be re-created later on anyway. Thus I suggested "userification" as an option for that eventuality. Vmenkov (talk) 04:15, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. You've repeated that you're making what is essentially a subjective argument and I guess I'll just say simply that the claim that his works "seem to contain solid historical scholarship" is really not at all what is it issue here. We assume this would be a minimum condition for anyone in academia. I don't buy for a minute your variation of the claim of "english" or "western" bias of the indexing services against his publications. It's easy to find boatloads of Lithuania-related humanities/history/literature-type publications in e.g. WoS. For example, searching "Topic=(lithuania*)" and refining by filters such as HUMANITIES, HISTORY OR FOLKLORE OR LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS OR LITERATURE etc. returns >1000 publications from journals such as Slavic Review, Journal of Baltic Studies, Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, Logos-Vilnius, Folia Linguisitica, Zeitschrift fur Slawistik, Acta Historica Tallinnensia, and so forth. Academics, conscious as they are of "impact" and "relevance", invariably try to get their work published in the most prestigious avenues possible. So far, I haven't seen any convincing explanation of why Safronovas is notable despite the fact that none of his work has apparently been published at this mainstream and not-necessarily-english-only level. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2010 (UTC).
 * Comment: There is a reason why the WP:NOTYET guideline exists. Although notability can sometimes be arguable, it is probably best for creators of new articles to understand the criteria and think äbout them before starting their new article.  I think Vmenkov actually presents a strong delete case without meaning to!  Wikipeterproject (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment responding to some points made above. 1. His newspaper mentions are not in passing; the two linked articles are dedicated solely to him. 2. If an article on Lithuanian historiography were created, to include Safronovas, it'd need to discuss only the most notable historians; it wouldn't be worthwhile to include him if WP deemed him unworthy of a separate article. 3. Does he meet general notability guidelines, by virtue of his coverage in the two papers and the Encyclopedia of Lithuania Minor, or does WP:PROF override those? Novickas (talk) 23:04, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. This AfD discussion seems to be an example of the longer the argument the weaker the case. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:12, 15 March 2010 (UTC).


 * Delete. There's still no evidence that he passes WP:PROF. The article makes clear that he published a lot, but quantity of publication not one of the WP:PROF criteria — we're looking instead for signs that his research has made a big impact. If those signs are out there, they don't seem to have shown up in our article. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per above. Ray  Talk 03:27, 16 March 2010 (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.