Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christina Sormani

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. Carabinieri 15:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Christina Sormani

Christina Sormani (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

WP:BIO Not a notable person. DavidCBryant 15:57, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. The first criterion in WP:BIO is that at least one major work (or multiple small articles) should have been written about this person by someone else. I searched "Christina Sormani" on Google and I got 532 hits. I reviewed the first 100 of these. Not one of them was a biographical work about Christina Sormani, except for her C.V. The rest were links to papers she has authored, invitations to seminars where she has spoken, links to e-mail messages she has sent, etc.

I also point to WP:AUTO. Sormani herself apparently wrote this article. The only external link is to her C.V. The publications listed are her papers. Autobiographies of non-notable persons ought not be in article space. If she wants to put this on her user page, that's fine with me. DavidCBryant 16:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

• Neutral Keep . I added the Mathematics Genealogy Project, a 3rd party RS frequently used in WP. The interpretation of about in science and academic life generally means citations. (Almost no academic gets a biographic article until they retire or die, and to have one is not the standard, as can be seen from most of the scientific bio articles in WP.) Unfortunately, upon looking for the number of citations in WoS, I find a total of 37, which is not very high, even in math, where citations come slowly. I therefore change the keep to a neutral She may not be notable yet, but she appears to be working on a very recently important topic, and the citations may be forthcoming. She is referred to as an authority on the interpretation of Perelman's work in many professional blogs, but they aren't sources. But its close enough to be worth the investigation. DGG 19:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: I don't know what you mean by "professional blog", but I would find such references dubious. Sormani is most definitely not an authority on Ricci flow, let alone Perelman's work. In Sormani's own words, "I know a little about Ricci flow but have done no research in the area. I'm somewhat acquainted with the Geometrization Conjecture and Thurston's approach having read articles by Anderson, but have done no work in that direction either." [1] It's been several years since she wrote that, but it doesn't appear that she has pursued research in these directions since then. --C S (Talk) 00:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. As DavidCBryant says, rules is rules. Gleuschk 22:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- David Eppstein 03:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep. WP:BIO is only a guideline and horrid for judging the notability of scientists and scholars, who rarely receive mainstream press mentions. She has a reasonable number of citations for her field and is referred to as an authority in her area of expertise in published scholarly articles. Hardly non-notable for the field, but still an emerging figure. Vassyana 08:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. I wanted to point out the proper guideline is not WP:BIO, but rather WP:PROF. Apologies, as I should have mentioned that initially. Vassyana 10:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. I don't think it makes much difference whether one looks at "Bio" or "Prof" – those are just guidelines, and the judgment of whether a particular person is notable or not is always going to be subjective. Here's a more objective comparison for your consideration, Vassyana. Another mathematician was added to Wikipedia recently – the bio on Vera Pless was created 2/26/07. I ran an author search on her using Google Scholar. I got 64 hits, of which four were books (not articles). The search turned up 731 citations by other authors. I ran the same search for Christina Sormani, whose Wiki-bio was created 01/19/07. I got 13 hits, of which none were books, and 7 were preprints. I counted 53 citations in total (31, excluding the preprints).

I don't know exactly where an objective cutoff line should be drawn. I am asserting that a mathematician with so few published papers, with no books in print, and who is not the recipient of a major prize, is not notable by Wikipedia's standards. DavidCBryant 12:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• Vassyana, could you please comments where "[she] is referred to as an authority in her area of expertise in published scholarly articles" is based on? Thanks. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 09:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. When one considers an article on an associate professor of mathematics, there has to be some sign this person is above the norm (relative to the usual associate professor) in terms of research or some extra-mathematical event (such as some kind of notoriety in the press). I see nothing like that. DGG's comments are reasonable (excepting my clarification above). If she is indeed an "emerging figure", I say let her emerge and then she can write a Wikipedia bio. Or even better, someone else will. --C S (Talk) 15:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
• Delete or userfy. Per DavidCBryant, DGG (who says "neutral" but whose comments point to "delete" in my opinion) and Chan-Ho Suh. There are hardly any secondary sources, and no critical secondary sources about Sormani or her work. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 09:29, 9 March 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.