Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rafael Gely

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 Speedy deleted as a copyright violation from uc.edu from its very first edit. The only text that has been changed in a year and a half is the first sentence stating the names of his wife and children. —bbatsell ¿? ✍ 03:48, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rafael Gely

Rafael Gely (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Not-notable professor. Probably an autobio (I mean, who else would throw in info about the name of his kids (!) and of forthcoming (!!) publications?). Also, I'd like to preempt the arguments that his work has been cited and that he therefore meets WP:PROF: every academic (except the ones who are not active in research) publish a lot and get cited a lot. That's just the nature of their work. The fact is there is no evidence provided that this article can be built on solid sources as WP:ATT asks us to do. Pascal.Tesson 22:32, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- Bduke 23:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. I don't have an opinion on Gely, but I disagree with Tesson's reasoning: the "except the ones who are not active" clause is begging the question, and it also doesn't describe why being "the nature of their work" should in any way disqualify it from being notable. —David Eppstein 03:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
• comment similarly with Supreme Court justices. writing decisions is just the nature of their work. Let us hear the last of this nonsensical argument. Further, a surprising number of unambiguously notable people give the names of their spouses and children. We usually let that stay in. Almost all academics I know include accepted papers as forthcoming in their cv's--and Gely includes the journal name, so we know they're accepted. --The most austere journal editorial policies permit this. We usually trim publications lists to the most cited, and we would here, , but it doesn't reflect adversely on their notability. Those academic who publish less than the average in terms of numbers and citations are not notable; those who publish decidedly more generally are considered notable. We do not require the Fields medal, or its equivalents. (But I haven't looked closely at the record here yet, so I'm not giving a !vote right now.) DGG 05:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment Hmmmm... I don't think I made my point so clear so let me give it another shot. I am most certainly not saying that having been published disqualifies him from being notable. But because of their work academics do publish and do so quite a lot. They are also often cited, yes even the average professor. And so publications is a pretty bad measure to understand the notability of academics. Actually, to stick with the judges' comparison: every judge on any court writes decisions and these decisions are routinely cited by other judges. Yet this gives us no clue as to whether or not this particular judge is "notable". A supreme court judge is notable not because he writes decisions that are then cited by other legal experts. He's notable because, well, he's on the supreme court! Unless we have sources whose primary subject is Rafael Gely and the importance of his body of work, I see no way we can attribute the material included in the article to a solid source. As for the names of his children, I thought it was pretty clear I was not holding this against the notability of the man... I'm just saying that there are good reasons to believe that this is either an autobiography or a bio written by someone who does not have a critical distance to the subject. Pascal.Tesson 06:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

WP:AUTO does not mean we never accept such articles- what it means is that other people can usually do this better than the subject, so when the subject does it we look at them closely to make sure they are sourced and well-balanced . They all end up rewritten, just as other articles do; many good bio articles have started this way. A personal website is accepted as an RS for personal details; the official cv on a university site is accepted for degrees and so on, though they can be and generally are checked. But obviously there must be something objective besides that, and citation indexes do nicely. Opinion is also needed, and in the academic world the form of review is the tenured appointment. The people who prove ATT are the peers who cite him, and the peers who peer-review him for grants and appointments. They are the experts, they decide. We just record. It would greatly facilitate our work here if if other fields of human endeavor had such accessible measures. DGG 02:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment I would disagree with you idea that only inactive academics publish a lot. It is all dependent upon your field of research. Some work that is highly notable will take a long time to develop and not many publications will occur during this time. Also due to patents and such, publication can be with held for a lengthly time until the idea is fully protected. - Curious Gregor - Synthesis for all 11:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

• Delete It's a copyvio of his homepage at UC. DrKiernan 12:57, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. Pascal.Tesson, you are correct that "because of their work academics do publish and do so quite a lot". However, this does not mean they are cited a lot. The vast majority of academic works are cited no more than half a dozen times. -- Black Falcon 00:41, 2 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.