Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthias Kuhle

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 no consensus. He sems to be on the cusp of notability whatever way you look at it. However, no clear consensus to delete has emerged over the ten days of this discussion. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 03:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Matthias Kuhle

Non-notable, written like a resume. Was speedily deleted prior. Previous article was an autobiography written by the subject; it's likely that this one is as well. CyberGhostface (talk) 12:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Reads not so much like a résumé as like the personal webpage from about 15 years ago. —SlamDiego_←T 15:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Does not meet WP:PROF notability guidelines. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I think the subjects publication record makes clear that they satisfy the first criteria of WP:PROF. Thus, the article should be kept and cleaned up. However, since I am not volunteering to do the cleanup, I cannot vote keep. -Atmoz (talk) 17:06, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Having many publications does not satisfy WP:ACADEMIC #1. All academics publish, that's their job. What is important here is whether those publications make enough of an impact to make the author notable. Equally, whether or not this is an autobio is no ground for deletion, either. If it is an autobio, then it needs to be checked for POV (some autobios are actually quite NPOV, even though that's a minority) and cleaned-up if needed, but not necessarily deleted. The only question is whether the subject is notable. --Crusio (talk) 08:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't just look at the number of publications and say "wow that's a lot". I think the quality of the publications is such that it has significantly impacted the field of glaciology. He's not published a lot recently, and he hasn't been cited a lot overall, but my standards for "significant impact" are fairly low for profs. -Atmoz (talk) 03:08, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Many papers published in even the most prestigious journals with the highest impact factors are never cited. I don't think that one than can argue that such papers have impacted the field, solely because they were published in Science or Nature. Editors are human and can get it wrong. It is not up to us here to say "I think the quality of the publications is..", all we should be worried about is notability. For all we care at AfD, the quality of the articles could be abominable, but they could then still be notable. Quality does not equal notability (all too many academics creating an autobio for themselves forget this...). --Crusio (talk) 08:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

- - Comment: While your principal point is well-taken, it's not strictly true that all academics publish. Some institutions place all of their focus upon teaching. —SlamDiego_←T 14:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And how did those teachers get their PhDs if they didn't publish? --Crusio (talk) 15:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, they typically published one or two articles along with their doctorate, and probably one or two since then, which would normally be considered sufficient productivity for a non-doctorate granting college in the US, if accompanied by a number of conference presentations and the like. such careers are not notable as researchers, though they may be as teachers if it can be proven. Researchers typically do a great deal more than that--how much, depends on the area. All academics publish. some publish a little, and are not notable for it. Some publish a lot, and are. It's basically a simple f=difference, complicated only by those at early career stages who will publish a great deal, but have just been starting to.Most faculty know very well under which of these classes they fall., though a few do delude themselves. DGG (talk) 09:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:24, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The very wide and deep range of publications in his field clearly establishes him as an authority.DGG (talk) 09:05, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz ^talk 08:50, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I continue to think him clearly significant within his subject, based on the number of publications in good journals. DGG (talk) 15:49, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete. The subject’s contributions are indeed in a variety of related topics, and suggest some measure of notability, but I could not find enough to clearly establish notability under WP:PROF. Does not seem to pass WP:BIO either. Citation impact, while not negligible, seems to be relatively low. Most widely held book in libraries, currently in less than 80 libraries worldwide according to WorldCat. News coverage exists, but is not particularly impressive. As noted by Crusio before, the English WP is the main/global WP, so notability should be verifiable through international sources.--Eric Yurken (talk) 20:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think the view in the last sentence is entirely at odds with fundamental Wikipedia policy, The enWP is a universal encyclopedia, written in English. it includes whatever might be notable anywhere. If something is notable in Bhutan, with Bhutanese sources, but someone can write the English article and we can be reasonably assured about the sources, it merits inclusion. That national sources work for every other Wikipedia but we want international ones for the enWP is a novel suggestion--or is the intent to say that for the enWP, national sources for topics from English-speaking countries are OK, but for everywhere else we want sources of international stature? That's ani institutionalization of cultural bias, something Wikipedia guards against. I do not for a minute believe that's what Crusio meant. I think he meant that the standard of notability for a researcher on subjects of international interest is world-wide, which is a much more limited statement. I'm not sure about that, but it is certainly at least defensible , and might be consensus.DGG (talk) 22:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

DGG is entirely correct about my position. The fact that the news sources given in the article (and below) are German sources is to me not a reason to disqualify them. What does make them weigh less in my point of view is that they only mention Kuhle very briefly, almost in passing. --Crusio (talk) 10:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WorldCat and Google (Scholar, News, Books) are international sources, although somewhat flawed and biased. I think we should strive for sources that are widely available to the participants in AfD discussions. Otherwise we fall into the trap of having to lower the standards of notability for lack of verifiable sources. In my opinion, it is not good practice to justify a keep recommendation based on the assumption that sources of notability MAY or PROBABLY exist, for this or that person. As for their language, it does not have to be English. In fact, recent Google News searchers usually turn up articles in multiple languages, when they exist.--Eric Yurken (talk) 15:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Eric, it looks to me that DGG, you, and I are basically in agreement about this, but just misunderstood what was being written. --Crusio (talk) 16:07, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete~~Delete~~ per Eric Yurken. I am not convinced by DGG's argument that having an excellent publication record in itself suffices for notability. I feel notability only is established if it can be shown that said publications have had a significant impact on the field. --Crusio (talk) 20:39, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

expanding on the very brief comment I gave with the keep, no I do not think that volume of publications alone is automatically notable. They have to be in places of decent reputation, and they have to get cited significantly for the field. His field is one I am not familiar with, so ,using Scopus, which is not ideal for the purpose but does cover recent European work fairly well, I find it lists 56 publications of his. Since Scopus is selective, these are then reputable journals. The highest citations are 48, for a 1998 paper in Quaternary International 45-46, pp. 71-108, "Reconstruction of the 2.4 million km2 Late Pleistocene ice sheet on the Tibetan Plateau and its impact on the global climate ",. and over 20 cites for each of a series of paper in Geojournal. Quaternary International is an Elsevier title, the largest international scientific publisher, and the journal is in 260 WorldCat libraries. . It is an international Geojournal is a Springer publication, the 2nd largest international scientific publisher, an international journal held in over 200 worldCat libraries. I think that's substantial impact for geography. Anyway, he is Full Professor at Gottingen, which is either notability in itself or by itself very close to it. In a field i do not personally think myself capable of judging, I trust the collective judgment of the faculty at a university like that more than my own. Is there someone here who thinks himself more reliable? DGG (talk) 23:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still not sure that I agree with this. We usually do not take being a full professor at any university in and of itself as sufficient evidence for notability. I agree with DGG that generally such full professors are notable, but then there is always independent evidence for that. I vehemently oppose (both here and in my professional life) the tendency to judge a researcher's productivity by the journals in which it was published. I only know all too well that editors are human and fallible. A large proportion of articles published in the most prestigious journals like Nature and Science never get cited (not even by their own authors) and I maintain that such articles have no measurable impact and could just as well have been published in the local free door-to-door weekly paper. Impact is not what we publish and where we publish it. Notability is established if other researchers are influenced significantly by our work and/or if our research draws the attention of the general public sufficiently to make an academic notable in that way. I admit however, that I am not too familiar with citation rates in this particular field and for that reason I am "downgrading" my !vote to "weak delete". As for DGG's remark about the "collective judgment of the faculty", I agree with that. However, the standards that this faculty (have to) use are different from ours: to become a full professor at a university like that, one needs to have a solid publication record and do good-quality research. There is no doubt in my mind that Kuhle more than passes that bar. However, I repeat that quality is not what we are looking for here, it is notability, which is not the same thing. That is why (unfortunately) we cannot simply take the decisions from journal editors and faculty to make our life simpler. BTW, with "excellent publication record" in my previous comment, I did not just mean the volume of the publications but also the fact that they were published in journals in good or very good standing. --Crusio (talk) 10:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. —Shawn in Montreal (talk) 03:19, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Per DGG. From the article and these two news articles:[1] and [2] the theory of ice ages originating from the Tibetan plateau is due to him. This seems to be a minority theory, but important enough that the originator deserves a bio. The best evidence may be the papers poorly cited in the article :( Derbyshire et al. 1991; Rutter 1995; Zheng and Rutter 1998; Owen et al. 2005; Lehmkuhl and Owen 2005) Important enough for many to argue with is significant impact is important enough to be wikipedia notable. John Z (talk) 10:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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.