Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William Brandon Snyder


 * 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. The article as it stands does not prove notability. The article doesn't meet our criteria for such an article - Notability (academics). Discussion below suggested that some of the things that this person had done could be accumulated to give an impression of notability, however  there is nothing significant. I considered a close of No consensus; however, I feel the general trend of the discussion was "This person may be notable, but we don't yet have enough information", which is consensus for a delete. I will WP:userfy the article on request to allow someone to build up the required evidence to demonstrate notability.  SilkTork  *YES! 17:13, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

William Brandon Snyder

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Contested PROD; prod tag deleted with the note "appears to have enough publications to possibly meet WP:PROF". Original prod reason was "A search for references failed to find significant coverage in reliable sources to comply with notability requirements. This included web searches for news coverage, books, and journals, which can be seen from the following links: William Brandon Snyder – news, books, scholar . Consequently, this article is about a subject that appears to lack sufficient notability." Was PRODed a 2nd time with the note "Does not meet Wikipedia general standards for notability nor those for academics", but since it can't be PRODed again, I brought it here. I agree, the standards in WP:GNG and WP:PROF haven't been met - Delete. Dawn Bard (talk) 16:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete Sorry, I was the prodder. Doesn't meet standards for notability under general or WP:PROF guidelines. Drawn Some (talk) 16:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Weak Keep--changed because of the uncertainties of just which papers he has written.  Editor of a journal, author of a significant book; I'm now looking for citations to his papers in the proper indexes. That's how we tell if someone meets the standards, not by impressions from the article. DGG (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC) DGG (talk) 08:51, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually he's just co-editor of a minor quarterly journal. Drawn Some (talk) 17:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Follow up: The G search given above was not correct, since it included the full middle name within the name as an exact phrase, which is not normally used in scientific publications, compare --one must include name variations in such searches. However, some seem to be in a different field. I have not yet checked  without the middle initial, for there are even more people. DGG (talk) 17:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Most of those are someone else, largely a former UCSD biologist who seems to have fallen off the map. Try this instead. Hairhorn (talk) 17:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

of Shalott  17:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - the book, editorship, and publications indicate enough notability. Lady
 * Delete. Even with some guesswork about his citations on Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar, I don't see any papers with high citation numbers, and his h-index could be as low as 5 or possibly as high as 16. I checked with and without the middle initial. I disagree that one book means much. I also don't know how DGG determines that the book is significant. Joey the Mango (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I determine the book is significant on the basis of the publisher:OUP. DGG (talk) 08:51, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I totally reject your contention that any book published by any particular publisher, including Oxford University Press, is therefore notable, nor is the author. Notability is NOT inherited in that manner. This is a basic principle. Same for significance. Drawn Some (talk) 12:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Right; WP:AUTHOR says nothing about the publisher. Joey the Mango (talk) 19:31, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Publication by one of the world's most distinguished academic publishers is presumption of notability of the book. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:18, 8 June 2009 (UTC).


 * keep most wikipedia articles on academics are inadequate. This does not mean that the subjects are non-notable.  Only that the articles are inadequate.   As a general rule, it is the controversial academics who get detailed articles.  Lots of people doing   important work have very poor articles.  We need more editors form the academic world.Historicist (talk) 18:41, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that we should not delete articles on academic people, so that we will get more editors from the world of academia? I suspect that these articles on assistant or associate profs are written by these profs themselves or their graduate or undergraduate students. In this case user:William.snyder created his page, and the page for the little journal he co-edits, and nothing else. It's not like he improved our coverage of his field, language acquisition. Joey the Mango (talk) 19:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment With all the people screaming "keep keep" you would think one of them might have added some independent reliable source to verify the information in the article. It could be completely false except for the name and publications.  "Who's Who" is just a scam to solicit autobiographical information to compile to sell directories to the autobiographers, not at all reliable. Sure this guy is the average prof, he's co-edited a minor journal and published a book by a respected press and some of his articles about baby babble have been cited.  But let's get real, he's not notable and if it weren't a conflict of interest editor the article would never have been written because nobody cares because he's not notable. Drawn Some (talk) 19:14, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment. U of C website confirms that he is head of a small department. The final sentence of the above comment should not be here. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:49, 7 June 2009 (UTC). On second thoughts I have removed the offending sentence according to Xxanthippe (talk) 10:28, 7 June 2009 (UTC).
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions.  --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  21:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:02, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete. A Google search for 'William Snyder linguistics' gets quite a lot of results, but I'm not sure if there's anything there that provides clear evidence of notability - if there is, I haven't found it yet. However, the facts that he's (i) head of the linguistics department at the University of Connecticut, (ii) co-editor of a journal, and (iii) author of a book published by OUP, are significant and mean there is a plausible case for notability to be made here. If direct evidence of notability in independent reliable sources can be found, I'll change to Keep. Robofish (talk) 21:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note to closing admin. Reading the full text of WP:PROF, including the examples and footnotes, shows that one must be the Editor-in-Chief of a major journal, and that one's book(s) must be shown to be widely held in libraries, using WorldCat (or be a widely read popular press book). No mention is made in WP:PROF of inherited notability from the publisher. Dr Synder's book is held at 219 libraries. By way of comparison, Alison Elliot's book Child language is held by 758 libraries, and Barbara Lust's book Child language : acquisition and growth is held by 182. Abductive (talk) 18:45, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note. Abductive previously edited this page under the name of Joey the Mango. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:01, 11 June 2009 (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.