Testwiki:Articles for deletion/Thomas L. Evans (archaeologist)

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. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:30, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Thomas L. Evans (archaeologist)

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Stub article on academic archaeologist whose claim to notability seems to be two books, one as sole author and the other as co-editor. There are no refs other than to his own works.

This seems to be to be marginal wrt WP:PROF's notability criteria, so I am listing this article at AFD without recommendation in the hope that those who know how to assess academics by such techniques as counting their citations can make a more informed assessment. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Delete as notability is not established. ----Boston (talk) 20:24, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• Delete Fails WP:N at present. --Artene50 (talk) 01:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• note Google scholar seems to turn up very little. This suggests the Digital Archeology book has only been cited once, and the other book not at all, the only other work by TL Evans in Arcaehology was a 1985 paper in South African Archaeological Bulletin (cited once) that I assume is another author. I could not find his present institution. Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• Weak delete "Digital archaeology bridging method and theory", New York : Routledge, 2006, a general book, but of which he is only a co-editor, has 508 Library holdings in worldcat ; there are 50 for "Quantitative identities : a statistical summary and analysis of Iron Age cemeteries in North-Eastern France, 600-130 B.C." a very much more specialised work. Considering the slow citation pattern in the field, this is too soon to expect much in the way of citations, as Peter confirmed. There are probably a few paper also, but I have not yet been able to identify them. This is not enough to make him an expert respected in the fieldsince he was not the author of the digital archeology book, just the writer of the introduction. DGG (talk) 05:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• See also related AFD for his co-editor, Patrick Daly. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Of course, if he played sports professionally, he would be notable... because this is Wikipedia. Mandsford (talk) 14:32, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• comment I prefer to think of it as two Wikipedias: one for knolwedge pertaining to academic topics, and the second for the fandom of sports, gundam and characters appearing in two pages of twelve volume sci fi novels. If he were any of the latter, he'd qualify for inclusion in Wikipedia${}_2$, but this is Wikipedia${}_1$, where WP:N still holds... Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• I deeply sympathise with the frustration relating to the way that WP:N allows reams to written on sports players and fictional characters, particularly after recently spending two weeks battling a wikilawyering attempt to delete election results, while squillions of detailed lists of sports scores remain unmolested. But in reality, WP:PROF is not a high threshold to pass, allowing the retention of articles which meet any one of with 9 extra criteria in addition to the basic principles of WP:BIO. I made no recommendation with this nomination, because it seemed to me that Evans might meet the significant impact criterion of WP:PROF; but from the evidence so far it seems that there isn't much verifiable to say to about Evans other the bare fact of than his two publications. WP:N and WP:V constrain wikipedia to holding up a mirror to the word as it is, and I think that the resulting bias towards trivia is probably more of a reflection on the generally poor state of reportage of academia than on wikipedia :( --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• Weak delete. According to WorldCat, the book Digital archaeology (which the subject co-edited, as noted by DGG) is actually in 258 libraries worldwide in electronic format, and in 211 in printed format. (Several libraries hold the book in both formats, so it is not appropriate to add them up to come up with a total number of holdings.) Given the low citation impact of the book, pointed out by Pete.Hurd, these holdings alone fall a bit short of establishing notability under WP:PROF criterion #1 (significant impact in scholarly discipline, broadly construed). The subject may become WP-notable in the future, but has not reached that stage yet, in my opinion.--Eric Yurken (talk) 17:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• delete I don't see the evidence of his work having a notable influence on scholarship in his field that would satisfy me that he has passed WP:PROF. Pete.Hurd (talk) 22:54, 1 March 2009 (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.