Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard F. Costigan

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. --Coredesat 04:54, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Richard F. Costigan

Richard F. Costigan (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Delete unsourced sub-stub for a blp prof; no assertion that he meets WP:PROF, WP:BIO, just nn - so nn that we don't know when or where he was born, red flags of nn for modern bios Carlossuarez46 16:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Speedy Delete per A7 (no assertions of notability), A1 (no context). --Jayron32|talk|contribs 17:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

*Delete. I tried to distinguish between this cleric and a number of others with similar names; I could only find one scholarly article that he may have written and it was behind a paywall. Doesn't seem to meet WP:Verifiable and/or WP:Notable. Accounting4Taste 17:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

A Google search for "Richard F. Costigan" brings up The Consensus Of The Church And Papal Infallibility as his most prominent book, which is easy to find. His other book Rohrbacher... appears to be translated into several languages. • Gene93k 17:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Oh, I have apparently misunderstood; I thought that this citation here was for a scholarly article in the Journal of Theological Studies behind a paywall. I take it that it's some sort of book review from what • Gene93k is saying, and now that I dig more deeply, I find another cite from a Norwegian site with an English description. My apologies for having misunderstood. I've withdrawn my deletion suggestion and I'm going to remain uncommitted in this discussion, because I couldn't find a scrap of biographical information about this individual (and partly because I feel a bit dim for having mistaken the citation; apparently I'm not understanding this sort of publishing history). But the Norwegian site also confirms that he's the author of "Rohrbacher and the Ecclesiology of Ultramontanism", if that helps anyone. Accounting4Taste 18:15, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. —David Eppstein 05:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
• Weak Keep Checking in Worldcat, I find "Consensus of the Church" in 156 libraries, and "Rohrbacher" in 114--I see no evidence of translations. This seems to be about as widespread interest as one could expect on thissort of topic. there seem to be 3 additional articles, of his, plus he has written 5 book reviews. There seems to be sat least 2 reviews o "Consensus" I think this is borderline. Two books is just enough to get someone tenure which is the meaning of an appointment as Associate Professor. Since that indicates acceptance by ones peers as a productive scholar, I can see including this level as notable. I don;t think that question is decided. DGG (talk) 00:00, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
• delete having accomplished the minimum to obtain tenure doesn't equate to encylopedic notability, I don't think this passes WP:PROF. Pete.Hurd 03:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per Pete.Hurd. WP:PROF guildelines have not been met. Doctorfluffy 05:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Note - user indefinitely blocked as disruptive sockpuppet. — xDanielx ^T/_C 22:37, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

• Weak delete. An associate professor in the humanities with two university-press published books is rather unremarkable per se. I should note that his "consensus" book does have reviews in Theological Studies and Irish Theological Quarterly, and his ultramontanism book has a review in Church History; the existence of these reviews is also unremarkable but does satisfy the requirement for nontrivial independent reliable sourcing. —David Eppstein 15:33, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete. DGG's argument is compelling, and I think that Eppstein's findings place the subject above the "average professor" bar. But the article's subject clears the bar only barely and probably would not under any more strenuous tests (evidence of major award, etc.). For borderline cases such as these, I think we can take into account the quality of the article, its probability of future expansion, and loss to the world if it were removed. The article's prospects look bad under each of these three "tiebreakers," so I go with delete. If evidence of much greater notability is uncovered in the future, recreating the article in its current state or better would pose no problem to a future writer. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 03:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment . I agree that a really lousy article can condemn a good topic if nobody will fix it, but we should otherwise be judging the subject, not the article, as it is much easier to improve than to re-create. As for your other criteria, as the person is only still writing, there will most likely be another book; and there is almost no article in WP which would really individually be a loss to the world. DGG (talk) 04:37, 5 November 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.