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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scott D. White (computer scientist)

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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. - Mailer Diablo 16:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scott D. White (computer scientist)

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NN biography. Possibly vanity, as subject of article shares surname of author. I requested an SD (per CSD A7), but was changed to prod by another editor. Prod then removed by author. -- Merope 13:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Reads like a CV, and 7 publications doesn't seem enough to count as notable. JPD (talk) 14:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I thought there was enough assertion of notability to not be A7, but agree not notable enough to have an article, unless it can be pointed out why those publications are significant. Petros471 14:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Revision notes by author. Sorry, I am a bit new (two weeks old) to writing for Wikipedia, but I have added occassional sites particularly to recognize the major and important contributions of some of my coauthors, and this is one of them. My initial draft WAS more like the CV that I was referencing. You are correct to pick that up, and the immediate feedback helped. Thats one of the great things about Wikipedia, in fact. In this edition, which still needs work but I will now leave alone for a bit for the review process, I bring out the importance of the work. Sorry -- I misunderstood about the remove of the prod, thought after the first revision it could be removed. Work and learn perhaps better than no input at all. For sake of complete disclosure, Scott White is my son, but is a major figure in his own right in computer science (and industry) and the collaboration that we did was a huge contribution to the sciences and to the network field. At some point I have to do a writeup for Wikipedia on the major significance of that work. He was the one, after the initial conception, who programmed and conceptualized the formalisms behind the simulation. In a reedit it would be good to work in the contributions to industry (several were major) and fit in the educational background in a more Wikipedia-approproate way. Thanks for bearing with me through the revision. --Douglas R. White 14:45, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Prod tags can be removed by the author; you didn't err in doing so. I just mentioned it in the nomination for deletion to be thorough. However, I'm not sure that a person who is all-but-dissertated and isn't a primary co-author on a few academic papers is notable enough to warrant an encyclopedic entry. This is not to disparage your son or his works, but WP has standards about what constitutes a notable person and I don't think his works satisfy those conditions yet. -- Merope 14:54, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • (edit conflict) Can you provide a third party source that says that he is notable in some way? Generally people writing about themselves/people close to them is discoraged because they can be biased. It might be better if you write something on your userpage(s) and let others write the article. Petros471 14:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • One can write about one's relatives in Wikipedia, but there is only one way to do so: One must write everything based upon published third party sources, cite all of those sources right from the very first edit, and be absolutely scrupulous about not using any firsthand knowledge or unsourced information at all. If one cannot do that, then one must not write. Please see User:Uncle G/On notability#Tips_for_editors. Uncle G 15:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: The massive conflict of interest means this biography needs to be restarted from scratch by a 3rd party because it reads like Wikipedia:Vanity in its current state. Lack of 3rd party reliable sources apart from a listing of his research papers mean it's also hard to verify his notability. --  Netsnipe  (Talk)  15:04, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Looks like bright graduate student with some decent publications and work experience, but I don't see anything exceptional or notable here. Also looks a bit too much like a monster.com résumé posting. Fan-1967 15:06, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:BIO due to lack of WP:RS. --Kinu t/c 16:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. That an article was created as an autobiography doesn't keep anyone from fixing it. However, I've checked for citations to these papers at citeseer and the ACM archive, and "minor classic" might be a stretch. Gazpacho 20:38, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per Uncle G and Netsnipe, without prejudice. Paddles TC 04:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Documentation I have tried to carefully document everything in the writeup, standardizze in wikipedia style, and to provide external references for bibliography items. Many extraneous items deleted (please delete the work history if it is irrelevant, I am not sure about that, I agree we dont want it to ready like a monster.com resume because of the precedent that would set) but I have stressed the the scientific importance of the work and the outside references for that. The entry should stand on the scientific contributions. Role in the Physics contribution (simulation) was major btw not minor. That contribution will probably receive a Wikipedia writeup that will stand beside the Small-world network model and the Scale-free network model entries. These are the big models in the networks literature --Douglas R. White 15:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Fails WP:BIO, WP:PROF, and WP:VAIN. Wikipedia is not Monster.com --Xrblsnggt 18:59, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Documentation excellent discussion, without prejudice (I am new to Wikipedia so bear with me), In that light, I concur, and deleted the job-history related materials (I am working from the CV and the person being written about has no knowledge of the existence of this page. If the whole page is deleted, no problem]. By the academic criteria alone, above average level of recognition and signification of the work, being a professor myself and in a position to judge, the quality and recognition of the published contributions to computer science, mathematics, networks, open source code, and even physics, is way above that of the average college professor.--Douglas R. White 23:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reviews Sorry to be a pest in this way but I have now added reviews of two major articles, one in the physics journal and the other in SIAM proceedings which is a high-ranking peer reviewed publication ranking above most computer science journals, and usually reserved for high quality faculty publications (unusual in that it is a conference proceedings but having more prestige than most journals in the field). I think it would be useful at this point to find a physicist, a mathematician and/or computer scientist to review the publications for the Professor test WP:PROF. Then if there is agreement and one of them wants to revise and post the page, my version, which is still not well wiki-edited can be withdrawal. But this review process is of excellent quality, as a journal editor myself, an excellent peer review process. I have no qualms if it is deleted, that is normal in academic peer reviewed submissions. I just want to follow this to the end having begun it. --Douglas R. White 00:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
A few things: was Scott ever involved with writing software to help visualize the connectivity of networks on the internet?
Another thing: I've read the paper "Generative Model for Feedback Networks" - It's quite interesting for me to see how some of Tsallis' ideas have propagated to all sorts of topics. One concern I have is that the model is pretty new - it's cutting edge, but it would probably be better to merge that information into a separate (possibly new) article on say, the History of network modelling. As a rule of thumb, Wikipedia tends to present topics proportional to the volume of existing work that is out there describing it.
One last thing: In my opinion, Wikipedia tends to lean on the side of conservativeness when it comes to notability. Yes, there are articles just like this one out there somewhere, but if we had a more efficient system of article review, they would also likely be deleted. The way this AfD is proceeding, it indicates that the community wants to have an article on a subject where the notability is more self evident. If this article were to exist on Wikipedia after this discussion, it would unlikely be developed into a more extensive article (say, like Richard Feynman) simply because there is a lack of information available, beyond what has been presented already.
In my opinion, another reason why this article was spotted for notability concerns to begin with, had to do with the style and approach used in the article. For example, there is a sentence that says:
His generalization of google-type PageRank algorithms for relative importance in networks and graphs represents an important advance for algorithms that run the central processes in the information economy.
As an example, in the typical WP:NPOV style of Wikipedian prose, the reader does not need to be told explicitly that algorithm X is an "important advance" - instead, the reader simply needs to be told that this person worked on generalizing PageRank algorithms for use in networks. This would be sufficient. As another example, the phrase "(a field founded by his coauthor)" suggests that the notability is conditional on that fact, which is also something to avoid. However, typically an article does not reach get to that state overnight - it usually takes months and months of revisions. I'll keep this page on my watchlist. If the article ends up being deleted, there are other things a Wikipedian can do, but I'll elaborate on this later when it's more appropriate to do so. --HappyCamper 04:10, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Good questions, comments and suggestions. Pt 1: Scott wrote quite a few of the JUNG package programs that dealt with that particular question of visualization. I dont know the details tho -- to run JUNG you need to build your own Java front end (GUI) and that is beyond me. We would have to get Scott in on this (he hasnt a clue that I have tried to draft a presentation of his contributions) but if he did get involved he could explain what his contributions were.
pt 2, on the generative models article. You have what may be a better way for me to have written up that presentation: as a history of the the model classes, from small-world to scale-free to social-circle. Could be quite interesting presented that way, and could be short as well, although others might chime in on the variants and some of the issue involved. Since the first two have their own sites and you have read the paper on the third, this could be a joint venture. Usually takes me a bit to get the kinks out when writing.
pt 3, right, the SDWhite article would unfold more slowly, but somewhere I read too that we want to pick up on work that will be developing in the future and scott's work is one of these areas. As for the relative importance sentence, yes it was bad and I rewrote it. Your NPOV point is quite correct.--Douglas R. White 05:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I asked about part 1, because way back, I read in a magazine somewhere, that someone managed to create a meaningful "map" of the internet in a day, and this was something which was considered unfeasible. Perhaps this was in New Scientist or something like that. I will have to check. Actually, this is really drifting away from what an AfD is supposed to be for - stuff like this should be relegated back to the article talk page. --HappyCamper 10:26, 20 August 2006 (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.
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