Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abraham (Avi) Loeb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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. John254 00:41, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Abraham (Avi) Loeb

Abraham (Avi) Loeb (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This is an autobiography - see comment by Dha321 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:67.43.156.42 . Attempts to modify page by other users besides Dha321 have been reverted. Faol87 22:25, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Weak DeleteWeak Keep There is probably notability present, but the article needs to be cleaned up so it doesn't read like a faculty profile page. Also, the user should probably be notified about WP:COI and it should be made clear that he doesn't own the article and has no right to remove legitimate edits as such. On that note, I'm usually in favor of killing the article and letting it be generated the legitimate way, by an independent contributor. -Cquan (talk, AMA Desk) 00:06, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Addendum. Ok, I've been pretty vocal about this and DGG is right about restricting this to the article. I just get a little irked at what appears to be self-promotion, notable or not. Despite still being against the manner in which the article was created, I am changing to weak keep since DGG has done the honors and removed the biggest offending section of the article. I'm hoping the originating editor will decide to "allow" others to edit the article without undue issue. -Cquan (talk, AMA Desk) 06:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak keep. Possible WP:AUTO issues, granted. The tone of the above-referenced comment also suggest related WP:OWN issues, as it is completely inappropriate to suggest that Dr. Loeb's clearance is required to make changes in the article. That said, however, the subject is notable and the specific changes to which Dha321 was objecting in that above-referenced comment were, in fact, objectionable. Googling "Sandage-Loeb test" returns over 100 results. Googling just "Sandage test" returns 4, one of which ackwoledges that the test is also called the Sandage-Leob test. So clearly the scholarly world has acknowledged a contribution by Loeb to the test, whether User:67.43.156.42 thanks that should be the case or not. User:144.132.195.54's changes seem more defensible. These were also reverted by Dha321, so that's again suggestive of WP:OWN. But given that Loeb's paper is what's being referenced, and that paper in turn does credit Hills, the original prose that Dha321 restored is not entirely without merit either. On the whole, a re-write so that it's clearly not WP:AUTO and a reminder provided to Dha321 to relinquish "ownership" seem to me to be a better solution than outright deletion. Mwelch 00:18, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep. By googling the web I conclude that the original article

about Prof. Loeb contained true statements that are supported by direct references to primary sources (namely refereed articles by Prof. Loeb). I do not see any problem with the latest (corrected) version. User:67.43.156.42 made statements that are simply false and look as if they are vandalism intended to curropt the article. The original article by Sandage was written in 1962 before quasars were discovered, so he clearly did not have quasars in mind. Loeb's idea from 1998 is mainly about using quasar spectra. The argument that Loeb applied sloppy scholarship in this case is clearly false. User:144.132.195.54 followed a similar agenda with no good justification as far as I can see based on the referenced papers. For example, the work by Loeb and Zaldarriaga on detecting extraterrestrial signals with 21cm observatories was never mentioned before because 21cm observatories did not exist. The paper would not have been accepted for publication in a refereed journal if this idea was discussed before. Again the change here was a false statement. I suggest that these users will be warned for not even reading the original articles that they refer to.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.122.86.236 (talk • contribs)

I've just taken a look at this paper and this is a pretty incremental distinction. The fact that "21cm observatories" are a relatively new concept is not the relevant point here; low frequency radio astronomy has been an area of activity for decades, and it was long ago realized that these new facilities would be ideal experiments for identifying transient sources (including SETI). For example, the LOFAR observatory has had transient radio sources as part of its science case from the outset. [1]. So yes, explicitly saying that LOFAR can detect SETI signals is an original contribution, but it is hardly a major result worthy of mention here.

I've also cleaned up the ADS citation info; the previous numbers were not quite right. Faol87 10:59, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment. I'm not especially against the subject of the article, as I said above, but the article itself is like a bad cross between a bio blip and a CV. The "Research Highlights" has about 20 items in a laundry list. It's unencyclopedic at best and shameless promotion at worst. That section in particular should be completely rewritten as an encyclopedic statement about his notable research. Also, some of the glowing assertions like " Some of his papers pioneered areas that have become by now the focus of established communities of astrophysicists" and "Loeb was among the dominant theorists to trigger the intense current research on the first stars and quasars" should either be toned down, properly sourced or just removed. -Cquan (talk, AMA Desk) 04:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • delete per cquan. ThuranX 04:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep We are judging the subject not the article. He's a full professor at Harvard, possibly one of the top 2 or 3 astronomy departments. He's been a member of the Institute of Advanced Study. He is also a visiting professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
It remains true that those writing articles about academics often say either too much or too little. That's why articles get edited. I can see how people might have gotten frustrated with this article, and the apparent COI of the subject, but the proper course would have been to make an edit such as I just did, removing the entire Research Highlights section. His interests are sufficiently described in the main part, which includes references to a few of his most important papers. DGG 05:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep, assuming further improvements. Subject is somewhat notable. Article is very poorly written, as per Cquan. His students must like him.  ;-) Gnixon 18:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong keep. It is rare to see an academic with both this level of academic success (full prof at Harvard etc) and popular press coverage (Time and Sciam). I would like to see some sourcing for the claim that "Some of his papers are considered pioneering areas that have become by now the focus of established communities" but (ignoring whether a paper can be considered an area) it makes a very strong claim for notability of his research. I don't think article ownership issues are particularly relevant for notability; we don't let subjects of articles request that those articles be removed, so similarly I don't think tendentious editing by the subject of an article (which I'm not convinced has happened) should be the cause for removal. —David Eppstein 20:48, 10 April 2007 (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.