Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William S. Hobson (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 keep. (non-admin closure) Lourdes  03:31, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

William S. Hobson
AfDs for this article: 
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None of the sources cited demonstrate notability, and I couldn't find anything that does. I understand that there was a previous AFD a few years ago, but I think we should revisit the issue. Simply counting up the number of cites doesn't seem quite right (especially considering that lots are multi-author works), and combined with the dearth of secondary sources to support the article, I'm concerned. agt x 03:56, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. North America1000 04:41, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. North America1000 04:41, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. North America1000 04:42, 22 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. A GS h-index of around 39 (try GS with W S Hobson) is more than enough to pass WP:Prof#C1 in a well-cited field. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:04, 22 September 2016 (UTC).
 * This was your justification last time as well, but I'm not sure I understand it. WP:PROF doesn't say anything about h-indicies--it seems to require a more nuanced look at things. When I look at the GS links, I see papers with 6-8 authors, and when I click on the "cited by" links, all of those papers have been cited similar numbers of times to the ones where Mr. Hobson is listed as an author. To me, that doesn't show individual notability. agt x  16:12, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * H-index is one of many proxies for the "impact" of a person's intellectual work and has routinely been used in STEM-related bio AfDs for years. As to the "individual" nature, except for a handful of journals that has started requiring authors to explicitly their contributions, there is no conclusive way to resolve this. It might be an issue for e.g. papers in biology or medicine (having say ~100 authors), but with a half-dozen-ish authors, it's safe to conclude that his contributions to these papers (some of which he's 1st author) were important. Agricola44 (talk) 21:13, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. WoS tells a substantially similar story. A search crossing his name with the places of employment listed in the article shows an h-index of 32 and at least a half-dozen papers having >100 citations. This certainly satisfies PROF c1. Agricola44 (talk) 21:13, 22 September 2016 (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.