Wikipedia:Featured list removal candidates/List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University/archive2


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was kept by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:28, 16 February 2022 (UTC).

List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University

 * Notified: Sephiroth BCR, Minimumbias, WikiProject Awards, WikiProject Higher education

This list was promoted back in 2008 along with a few other "List of Nobel Laureates affiliated with X" lists I might bring here to WP:FLRC later. The reason I'm bringing it here is that I don't think it satisfies WP:FLCR 3(c) (In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists; does not violate the content-forking guideline, does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.), particularly when it comes to the WP:LISTCRITERIA.

Nobel Prizes are not awarded to universities, but to individuals. Universities have an interest in claiming Nobel laureates and Prizes as "theirs"—it's a matter of prestige—but that's simply not how the Nobel Prizes work. This is not like the Olympics where the athletes formally represent their countries, and there is no generally agreed-upon way to assign credit for Nobel Prizes/laureates to universities.

When this question, i.e. how is "affiliated with" judged? was brought up by in 2008 at Featured list candidates/List of Nobel Laureates affiliated with Princeton University/archive1, the nominator  replied It ranges from the University of Chicago, which considers any laureate that walked on the campus to be an affiliated laureate to the University of California, Santa Barbara, which only considers members of the faculty that did their research for their Nobel Prize while at the university. Whatever the university considers "affiliated" is what we're going to use, as anything else 1) would be a WP:V problem 2) would be a WP:OR problem as we would be creating our own system of what constitutes affiliation. That's fair, I suppose, but it means that lists for different universities aren't directly comparable to each other.

I suspect that it was to solve this problem of corresponding lists for different universities not being comparable that the criteria were changed back in 2018—to create a set of lists that all consistently use the same criteria. The intention was good and it may have even been a good idea, but the implementation was unfortunately misguided. The problem is that the effort to come up with criteria that could be applied consistently across all these lists ended up producing a set of criteria that was created by Wikipedia's editors, not by WP:Reliable sources. In other words, the criteria themselves are the result of WP:Original research. Consequently, applying these criteria produces novel content. Not helping matters is the fact that the de facto modus operandi was tracking down laureates' CVs and then applying these WP:OR criteria to determine whether someone should count as affiliated with a particular university or not.

This resulted in us recently having a very long AfD (Articles for deletion/List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation) and then a very long DRV (Deletion review/Log/2021 October 21) followed by further discussion on the relevant talk page (Talk:List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation), with the eventual outcome being scrapping the WP:OR set of criteria and rewriting List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation from scratch with an entirely different approach that is used by the official Nobel Prize website. This list, i.e. List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University, still uses the WP:OR set of criteria however. So what we currently have here is a subpage to a defunct version of List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation.

We recently delisted another of these lists, see Featured list removal candidates/List of Nobel laureates affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania/archive1. One of the reasons we did so was the issue of the criteria for the list. My suggestion would be to delist this as well and redirect it to List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation. TompaDompa (talk) 01:48, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Delist As the main editor on most of the Princeton University pages (at least when I have the time), I'd have to agree with the reasons per above. While the Wikipedia editors' attempt from the past was certainly noble, it was WP:Original research. Moreover, if we're going to delist the University of Pennsylvania article, it would seem reasonable to do the same here for both points raised in that AfD and those by the nom here. PoliticsIsExciting (talk) 03:21, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University uses the same inclusion criteria as List of Princeton University people. The two pages include graduates, non-graduate students, postdocs, faculty members, and visitors. Delisting this page will be like delisting List of Brigham Young University alumni or List of University of Central Florida alumni or List of Pomona College people. Ber31 (talk) 15:51, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University is a sub-page of List of Princeton University people. If "List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University" were to be deleted/redirected, all the information will have to be added to "List of Princeton University people". That page is already too long; adding all the Nobel laureates will only make the page longer! Nathan Seiberg is included in "List of Princeton University people". He won the Fundamental Physics Prize. By using "Nobel Prizes are not awarded to universities, but to individuals" argument, Fundamental Physics Prize are also not awarded to universities; should we remove Seiberg from "List of Princeton University people"? "Nobel Prizes are not awarded to universities, but to individuals" is a completely invalid argument. The inclusion criteria for both pages are straightforward: Education and employment (salary, taxes, etc.); they are the basic academic affiliations, which is universally accepted. Here is a brilliant argument by User:Minimumbias: There is absolutely no valid reason to delist or redirect List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University. Ber31 (talk) 17:02, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * WP:NOR violation allegation Some editors have falsely accused this list of violating the core policy of WP:NOR. IMO the allegation is false. This list uses the same inclusion criteria as List of Case Western Reserve University people or List of Ohio State University people or similar pages. Those pages include alumni (graduates and attendees), faculty members, postdocs, and visiting professors affiliated with those universities. IMO this website needs a general guideline for "lists of X people". The guideline should explicitly mention that alumni, postdocs and faculty members are acceptable in "lists of X people". When there is a proper guideline, there will be less controversies. Ber31 (talk) 10:01, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Delist Alumni is a definable set. Associated is not -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 21:51, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * With that type of logic, List of Pomona College people should also be delisted. Ber31 (talk) 13:05, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes -- Guerillero  Parlez Moi 13:19, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * User:Guerillero: As per your logic, University of Colorado Denver and Columbia University should also be delisted as "good articles". See University_of_Colorado_Denver or Columbia_University. "Alumni" contains graduates and non-graduate former students. "Faculty" contains researchers (such as postdocs), faculty members and visitors. List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University contains graduates, non-graduate former students, researchers (such as postdocs), faculty members and visitors. The inclusion criteria are the same. A university is an institution for education and research. Thus, alumni of the university, and people who assumed employment level duties at the university, namely teaching university-level courses or performing research, should be included in such lists or alumni/faculty section(s) of university pages. That has been the standard procedure on Wikipedia for a long time. I think you need to think seriously on this issue. 13:23, 25 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Faculty is also a definable set. Faculty include researchers, full professors and visiting professors. "List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University" can also be called "list of Nobel laureates associated with Princeton University as alumni and faculty". Ber31 (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Rename I have renamed the page as List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty. Alumni is a definable set. Faculty is also a definable set. Problem solved! Ber31 (talk) 07:54, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Update This page was nominated for delisting in November of the last year by TompaDompa. It has been nearly two and a half months, and his rationales are outdated or flawed. List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty isn't a "sub-page" of List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation. "List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation" only lists laureates at the time of the Nobel Prize announcement. "List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty" lists all the Nobel laureates who were alumni or served in the faculty of Princeton University. Alumni and faculty are definable sets. The page doesn't include everyone affiliated with Princeton University; for instance, the page doesn't include people who served as administrative staff at Princeton University. After all, the name of the page isn't "list of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty or administrative staff"! "List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty" is a sub-page of List of Princeton University people, just like List of Princeton University people (government) or List of Princeton University people (United States Congress, Supreme Court, Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention). Nobel Prizes are not awarded to universities, but to individuals is a completely invalid argument. The page doesn't claim that Princeton University has 75 Nobel prizes; the page simply states that 75 Nobel laureates are affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty members.Universities have an interest in claiming Nobel laureates and Prizes as "theirs"—it's a matter of prestige—but that's simply not how the Nobel Prizes work is also a completely invalid argument and a subjective opinion of TompaDompa. Harvard University page claims that eight US presidents has been affiliated with the university as alumni. We can't say that making such claims would give prestige to Harvard or "Harvard has an interest in claiming US presidents as theirs". When we look at the facts objectively, it is clear that Harvard has affiliation with eight US presidents as alumni. As long as there is a reliable source for each entries, there should not be a problem. When it comes down to the WP:OR issue, the inclusion criteria for "List of Nobel laureates affiliated with Princeton University as alumni or faculty" are straightforward: alumni and faculty. The list uses the same inclusion criteria as List of Harvard University people, List of Princeton University people, List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni, List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty, List of Missouri University of Science and Technology alumni, or similar pages. As long as the CVs are published by major universities, tracking down laureates' CVs can't be considered as illegitimate. The CVs of laureates that are published by major universities (not blogs) are reliable sources. The arguments of the nominator and editors who "voted" for the delisting of the page have been debunked. There is no valid reason to delist this page. Ber31 (talk) 15:52, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Update (11th Feb., 2022) It has been almost three months since this page was nominated for delisting. I have improved the page. I have added details, and improved or added sources. There is at least one reliable source for all the 75 laureates who have been affiliated with Princeton as alumni or faculty. It should be kept in mind that routine calculations do not count as original research. IMO this page meets the FL criteria. If anyone has any confusions or questions or want to say something, they can ask or express their opinions. Ber31 (talk) 16:56, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, a few points here. : to be honest, the reason this has stayed open so long is because of your habit of posting long, long messages that aren't in response to anything and that just restate your position in more words and preemptively declare victory. It's exhausting to read, so I've been avoiding this nomination. In the future, please tone it down.

Besides that, in the end this nomination hasn't really moved from where it began: some editors think that the inclusion criteria, both on this list and on the set of all similar lists, is fundamentally flawed. Others, especially one other, do not. No one has raised any issues with the structure/content/formatting of this particular list beyond that. As a result, all we have is a content dispute that has failed to gain traction over the last few months. And while I personally greatly dislike any inclusion criteria for these lists that aren't "people who did the research for which they got a Nobel Prize at this institution, this does not seem to be the consensus that has arisen in any of the discussions so far. As such, since there's no real consensus either way and FLC/FLRC isn't really the place for content disputes in the first place... closing this as kept. -- Pres N  15:01, 15 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.