Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Juliet Davis

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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. BJTalk 21:43, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Juliet Davis[edit]

Juliet Davis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Independent sources about the subject are generally lacking. Horrid vanity tone, but in any case seems like self-promotion of a non-notable individual than something we should fix through editing. Biruitorul Talk 18:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I take it that the nominator is raising a COI concern in pointing to the "vanity tone." On that point, Davis is a professor at the University of Tampa, and the lion's share of the edits (see [1]) are from an IP address in Tampa ([2]). Moreover, the user account that created the article (and the only other contributor) is an WP:SPA. Neither of these prove violation of WP:AB, but it raises the inference.

A COI violation doesn't require deletion, of course, but lack of notability generally does. See WP:FAILN. None of the criteria in WP:ACADEMIC appear to apply; that leaves WP:BIO, but the article fares little better on that front. It cites no secondary source material ("reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject" or otherwise) that has Davis as its subject. A google search doesn't turn up much, and although I've hardly combed the desert, my view is that WP:BURDEN places the onus on the article's creator and lead editors to demonstrate notability.

For all that, however, I think this nomination is unfortunate. The article has existed for barely a month, and there is at least a colorable claim that Davis could be notable. A better approach might have been to cut the article down to size and add the {{notability}} tag, as WP:FAILN suggests.

Nevertheless, we have a nomination. Given the COI problems and the apparent lack of notability, I lean towards and will support deletion. I would prefer, however, that the nomination be withdrawn, and the approach noted above be tried for a reasonable period -- say, a month. If the nominator will withdraw, I'm willing to make those changes and take responsibility for relisting. If we do that and no reliable sources have been added in a month (if we are correct that this is a WP:AB, Davis will of course have very strong incentive to find such sources), I would fully support renomination. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 15:12, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

    • Thank you for that thoughtful reply, Simon. As the nomination doesn't expire until July 15, and as the author of the article hasn't edited here since June 16, how about we wait until July 12-13 or so, see if anyone turns up material, in what direction the discussion is moving, and then go for a withdrawal if appropriate? I have no particular objection to withdrawing, but at the same time, the pressure of AfD has often worked wonders when it comes to bettering articles. Let's see if that can happen in the next few days. - Biruitorul Talk 15:21, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed on all points. - Simon Dodd { U·T·C·WP:LAW } 15:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I should point out that withdrawal is only appropriate when there are no delete opinions other than the nominator's. The nominator can, of course, change his or her mind at any point, but the AfD should be closed normally by an uninvolved party based on all opinions represented in it. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. As we're all aware, there are often pleas of "let's wait and see because more notable points would be added", but I'm afraid that's unlikely to be the case here, at least from the WP:PROF persepctive (which I believe is relevant, since she's a professor). I've examined her scholarly output based upon her own CV. Her one peer-reviewed publication is listed in WoS, "Fractured Cybertales: Navigating the Feminine" Leonardo 41(1), but it has not been cited by any other work. The other items she lists in "articles" on her CV would not be considered notable by academic standards, for example 2 articles are from Rhizome Digest. According to the Rhizome website, this appears to have been nothing more than a short-lived e-mail list, quoting from the site: "The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest when was simply a plain-text, weekly email". Several items are in Media-N, a recent electronic publication that does not appear to be indexed. One article, "Like a Virgin - Or Not", was "published" by a virtual on-line museum called The International Museum of Women. This seems to be a website where women are encouraged to submit personal stories. Another article was published in Intelligent Agent Magazine, which, according to their website was/is published (somewhat sporadically) as an online and/or print newsletter and magazine – yet again, not an academic-standard journal. Finally, the book listed by her CV has not been published yet. I'm afraid that, at best, we get the picture of "a-scholar-not-yet-notable", which does not pass muster with respect to WP:PROF. I'll leave it to others to argue if she passes on any other grounds. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC).[reply]
  • Delete Certainly not notable at this point per WP:PROF. Leonardo is a first rate journal of its sort, but one does not expect material from there to be cited the way scientific articles are--to show up in WoS it would have to be cited by another article in WoS. The dispersal of the humanities material is why WoS and Scopus do not work well in that field. Per WP:PROF, academics who are creative artists must be considered from that perspective as well. Might possibly be notable as a visual artist, especially for the award , but the citation for it does not make sense. However, there might well sooner or later be discussions of her work, and that will show notability. DGG (talk) 02:58, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. Permit me to point out that DGG and I respectfully disagree on the usefulness/applicability of WoS for scholars in the humanities. This is a good case in point: A person's CV publication list will often be puffed up with entries that will be perceived by most casual observers to be bona fide peer-reviewed publications in mainstream academic journals. Of course, the problem is that there are quite literally tens of thousands of such journals across all academic specialties, making it enormously difficult for any single commentator in this forum to always discern the WP:PUFF. A WoS search will often help: articles in the CV that are not in WoS are immediately suspect, prompting one to check further. I concede that not everything of academic value is in WoS, but we routinely find that absence in WoS correctly pegs a "journal" as something much much less, e.g. as in the case of Rhizome Digest here. For the numerous true academic journals that actually exist, there are vastly more impostors. Furthermore, and unfortunately so, academics (in the very broad sense of the term) are often not shy about employing puff to elevate their status – this tends to find its way, sometimes intentionally, into a WP article. Puff can extend even to what is essentially subtly faked authorship, which WoS will also reveal. I believe all these aspects make WoS a useful assessment tool for all cases where the claimed notability rests at least partially on "journal publication", humanities or otherwise. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 15:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Do you distinguish between WoS and WoK? Xxanthippe (talk) 02:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Yes, I think there is a distinction. My understanding is that WoK is the umbrella under which all the Thomson-Reuters tools exist, including WoS (quoting) "Access the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities...", Inspec (quoting) "A comprehensive index to the global journal and proceedings literature in physics, electrical/electronic engineering, computing, control engineering, and information technology", and Journal Citation Reports (quoting) "Journal performance metrics...", ISI HighlyCited.com (the database of highly-cited researchers), ResearcherID.com, and so forth. WoS is probably the most useful of these for our purposes in AfD. Respectfully, Agricola44 (talk) 14:40, 14 July 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Thanks for your helpful comment. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:01, 14 July 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.
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