This discussion was begun at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper, where the early history of the discussion can be found.

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See Wikipedia:Notability (academics)/Precedents for a collection of related AfD debates and related information from the early and pre- history of this guideline (2005-2006) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive 2 for lists of all sorted deletions regarding academics since 2007.

The proper application of these guidelines has come up again for me in an AfD discussion during new page patrol. In that case, it is genuinely unclear to me whether the subject merits an article. What I find significant, however, is that everyone else who has weighed in supports inclusion—in spite of the subject clearly not meeting the current criteria. This is entirely fine with me, as it is just a stub without self-promotional language or puffery, and it might in fact be useful to readers. I mention this only as evidence of general disagreement among often very experienced editors about the criteria for academic notability, which (anecdotally) seem to be enforced in a highly inconsistent manner.

I would suggest that the reason for this disagreement is in large part due to the criteria as written, which too frequently just defer the question with reference to the notability of journals, societies, et cetera. All of this, however, is very difficult for non-experts to assess. There will always be borderline cases in both directions, but the community would be well-served by a clearer set of guidelines. It should be easier than it currently is for non-specialists to determine notability, especially when assessing newly created articles.

One criterion that I think would make assessing notability much easier would be to make it, in general, sufficient that the subject is a full professor at a research university. (If that is overly inclusive, this could be restricted to R1 universities or, for the US and Canada, members of the Association of American Universities.) This would act as a proxy for the first criterion – "The person's research has had a significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." – because the entire hiring, tenure, and promotion process is effectively a peer-assessment of just this.

I actually think that even having tenure at any research university would be an even better criterion. The main reason for this more inclusive proposal is that when I work on academic articles, I like to Wikilink out to authorities mentioned by name. Even just a stub allows readers to quickly get background context on who is being cited without leaving Wikipedia, which I think makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia, more useful to its readers. Current criteria, however, exclude many high-quality academic sources from inclusion—or, just as bad, make establishing notability so onerous as to not be worth one's time. (What sort of WorldCat data, for instance, is sufficient to establish notability? How does one cite that? With reference to what public standards? I genuinely have no idea.)

The only downside I see to expanding inclusion criteria is increased need to patrol for self-promotional articles. This, however, does not require any expert knowledge; most editors are already highly alert to this across all of Wikipedia. Further, restricting the university rank criterion to tenured professors makes it less likely anyone would bother inflate their own coverage. There would be grad students, of course, probably unfamiliar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, but I just don't think it would be difficult to manage that.

Other suggestions for simplifying or otherwise clarifying the guidelines would be most welcome! My view is that anything that would make assessing notability less of a research project and less dependent, in general, on discipline-specific expertise would be an improvement.

You may also wish to take a look at this recent discussion–although it is quite long, and I am alerting editors there of this post. Please also share to project pages as you find appropriate.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:27, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Patrick: I suggest you read this talk page and its archives thoroughly. Only after doing so and clearly identifying how what you suggests differs from the many many many past discussions on this topic would it be appropriate to raise this shit again. As for the specifics of your proposal: setting the bar to "full professor at R1 university" is very US-specific, would include many people for whom notability under current standards is difficult to discern, and would exclude many rising stars for whom notability is already obvious. In short, it would make our inclusion criteria more indiscriminate. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:05, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David,

To state the obvious, you definitely do not need to justify your individual editorial decisions to me. Nevertheless, I consider it evidence of a problem that an editor both supports inclusion of an academic these criteria are clearly written to exclude and also opposes reconsideration of the criteria.

As to the R1 status of a university, I presented that only as an alternative for consideration by those who think my preferred alternative of being a full professor at a research university is too expansive.

In cases where a subject's university rank seems out of proportion to their actual publication record, this could be discussed and assessed on a case-by-case basis, as we do now in the other direction. So too with rising stars, who presumably meet one of the other criteria anyway.

Although I do not accept as a reasonable burden to review years' worth of archives just to raise the issue, I would gladly consider any arguments reproduced from the archive. In particular, if there is some devastating objection against implementing a change along the lines of what I am proposing, I would be grateful to anyone who might share it with me so that I could acknowledge its force and publicly withdraw my proposal on the record.

Otherwise, folks who don't want to have this discussion can all just simply ignore it. No? For I am not going to edit the article without strong consensus.

Regards, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 19:54, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All this is triggered by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris Lawn (philosopher)? The discussion there is mostly based on WP:AUTHOR and WP:GNG, not WP:PROF, and he worked in Ireland, so we cannot even begin to apply your R1 university criterion. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:59, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, that just happened to provide an occasion for me to finally raise an issue that has been bothering me pretty much since I started editing.

Also, if the WP:AUTHOR criterion of simply having had one's books reviewed by multiple independent sources applies to academic authors as well as (per that policy) "creative professionals", this would also require altering the current guidelines by loosening (or at least decomplicating) criterion 1(a).

You may also consider me here to entirely drop the proposal of the R1 restriction, which was literally just a parenthetical in the original post.

Finally, in case this was not clear, I am not proposing replacing everything with this or any other single criterion. Editorial judgment will always be a factor, and further discussion will often be necessary with respect to what is specific to any given case. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 20:13, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "this would also require altering the current guidelines by loosening (or at least decomplicating) criterion 1(a).": No. We do not require people notable under one criterion to be notable under all criteria. Book authors with multiple reviewed books can be notable under WP:AUTHOR, and if they are, they are notable, regardless of whether they also happen to be academics, politicians, or sportspeople. Academics who happen to play sports or who happen to run for public office can be notable under WP:PROF, and remain notable regardless of whether they also happen to be notable as electoral candidates, sportspeople, or authors. People who win high public office can be notable as politicians, even if they happen to be academics who do not pass WP:PROF. Etc etc. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:25, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that writing academic monographs on Gadamer (or whomever) qualifies one as a "creative professional", which is the heading under which WP:AUTHOR appears.

Or, if it does, it applies to so many folks I would categorize as academics as to merit mention in this policy guideline.

More to the point, and with all due respect, I find this strategy disingenuous. Someone whose job is university teaching and research is an academic first and an author only as a means of sharing ideas with other researchers and advancing their academic career. Unless someone is, for instance a professor of creative writing, academics self-identify and are generally regarded as lectures/teachers/professors/researchers, who are only incidentally authors of monographs (as part of their academic responsibilities, and as a condition of academic promotion) from which they do not directly make any money and do not expect anyone outside their specialization ever to read.

So unless an academic can be established as notable for work written for a popular audience (definitely some are!), I continue to believe that the current guidelines to be followed are those at 1(a) in WP:ACADEMIC, which I continue to believe are overly strict and unnecessarily difficult to apply. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 20:45, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You are writing as if you think our notability guidelines are based on how significant the topic is. Most of them are not; WP:PROF and WP:NPOL are exceptions. For the other notability guidelines, notability is based not on editors' opinions of significance but on depth of independent reliable sourcing. If the sourcing exists, they are notable even if you somehow think it shouldn't count because they were only doing their job. If an athlete wins a gold medal at the Olympics and wins major newspaper coverage, they are notable by our current standards for that newspaper coverage, not for the medal. If another athlete has a sob story that causes all the newspapers to cover their failed attempt at qualifying for the Olympics, they are notable by our current standards for that newspaper coverage, even if you happen to think they are not significant. The same goes for book authors. If they get lots of publications covering their work in-depth, they are notable, regardless of whether they or their reviewers happen to be academics. If they publish a book and nobody reviews it, then that will not contribute to notability. There is no "this only counts when it was intended for a popular audience" exception to our author and general notability guidelines, nor should there be; that would skew the encyclopedia even farther towards being an encyclopedia only of celebrities and pop culture than our coverage-based notability guideines already skew it. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:12, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If I anywhere appear to be suggesting that my own personal assessment of a subject's notability is at all relevant, I certainly recant such implication.

What I am arguing is that it is a category mistake to apply criteria designed for authors known as creative professionals to authors known as academics. For I simply do not see how reviews of an academic monograph in an academic journal demonstrate notability as an author.

I see that your are yourself a distinguished professor (I tip my cap, sir!), and so I expect you know even more than me how tragically/comically small most print runs of academic works actually are. To say that someone is notable as an author when there are very possibly only a few hundred copies of their books in circulation strikes me as just completely wrong. All the more so when these books are only even intelligible to other academics in the same area of specialization.

For instance, two or three books on Hegel with, say, Palgrave Macmillan would not make me notable as an author even if they garnered a handful of reviews from specialist or mid-tier academic journals. Any notability that might accrue would come from the academic community and would be notability as a Hegel scholar. (I have no plans to publish, I hasten to add, and no expectation or ambition of ever meeting any notability criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia.)

Do you actually disagree with this?

If it helps, I am entirely happy to expand the final paragraph of my previous post to include academics whose academic monographs actually do make their authors notable as authors as evidenced by, for instance reviews in the NYT, New Yorker, and the like (e.g., Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor). It's just that this is rare occurrence, and so it didn't occur to me to mention.

Also, revising the notability guidelines along the lines I am suggesting would make Wikipedia less for only "celebrities and pop culture", not more. More people could be included, and included under the most appropriate category. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 21:51, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just for anyone following who has not linked out to WP:Author, these are the criteria:

=== Creative professionals ===

This guideline applies to authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, and other creative professionals. Such a person is notable if:

1. The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors; or
2. The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory, or technique; or
3. The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews, or of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series); or
4. The person's work (or works) has: (a) become a significant monument, (b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) won significant critical attention, or (d) been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.

___

The emphasis in italics in the first sentence and third criterion are mine and are added to show that these criteria do not, in general, apply to academic works not covered outside specialized academic communities. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 22:16, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, "other creative professionals" does not exclude academic authors from being authors. To argue that it does is ridiculous and tendentious. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:21, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well obviously they are authors! The question is whether they are notable as authors. Although by no means excluded from notability as authors by virtue of academic profession, the majority of academics, however well-published, are not independently notable as authors. And this for the obvious reason that their works exclude from their readership almost everyone without at least post-secondary training in the appropriate academic field of specialization.

More to the point, I fear this discussion has veered rather too far from the issue I intended to raise in my initial post, for which purpose I quote:

The main reason for this more inclusive proposal is that when I work on academic articles, I like to Wikilink out to authorities mentioned by name. Even just a stub allows readers to quickly get background context on who is being cited without leaving Wikipedia, which I think makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia, more useful to its readers. Current criteria, however, exclude many high-quality academic sources from inclusion—or, just as bad, make establishing notability so onerous as to not be worth one's time. (What sort of WorldCat data, for instance, is sufficient to establish notability? How does one cite that? With reference to what public standards? I genuinely have no idea.)

My appreciation for the various Wikipedia policies has (mostly!) grown as I have become a more active editor. Without at all dropping these from consideration, however, I would love for this conversation to be focused more upon what helps editors make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia for readers.

I do not doubt for a second that this is also your goal; you have put in far more time and effort than me to improving this open resource. I only suggest that our discussion has veered rather too far afield from what I, at least, take to be the central issue.

To return to the example from my own area of expertise, publishing multiple books about Hegel does not, in any ordinary (or, I at least provisionally contend, defensible) sense make one notable as an author just on account of receiving reviews in academic journals (exceptions, of course, for raves in elite journals or by those at the top of their field). However, barring coverage in general interest publications, which here might include even the NYREV and peer publications, this just does not make one a notable author.

What matters instead is the reception of one's work by other experts in the field. This is what the current criteria at WP:ACADEMIC are intended to capture. Pretty much all that I am proposing is that one's rank at a research university is, generally, a good proxy by which to assess this. If some folks who work at universities happen to be independently notable as authors, that's great! Also, lots of scholars who do not work at research universities are absolutely notable. Nothing that I am proposing excludes anyone for not holding a certain title at a certain category of institution. What I am saying is just that some small changes to the existing criteria could make life easier for editors who work on academic subjects and, by extension, make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia for readers interested in these sorts of articles. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 00:12, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect many who have written articles on academics wish that WP:PROF could be loosened to include more people, but the status quo is a longstanding but fragile compromise between those who think academics are worthy of articles even if they don't pass GNG, and the growing group who think GNG should apply to all articles. Given the increasingly loud calls for all subjects to fall within GNG, talking about loosening WP:PROF is at best a waste of time. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:41, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, but bracketing Wikipedia politics, what do you think would be the best policy on principle?

(In no way does answering this question commit you to defending it from an angry mob of GNG fanatics—or anyone else.)

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 01:01, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I should add, my concern here is not directly with the coverage of living academics, only an elite few of whom merit more than a stub, but with Wikipedia's ability to meaningfully contextualize sources cited as experts on subjects of undisputed notability. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 01:37, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is a very basic thing that you are missing, PatrickJWelsh. This is all about how we construct biographical articles. They are about a person's life and works. We can document both from independent coverage of them by reliable sources, which academic reviews of books and whatnot by other qualified experts in the field definitely are (as long as they don't spend most of the review not even talking about the work being reviewed ☺). So even if we cannot write a biographical article documenting someone's life in detail, because the world hasn't independently documented it, if the world has independently documented that person's works in depth, then we can write a biographical article on that person's works. (There are plenty of authors throughout history for whom this is true, note.) Moreover if the world has independently documented neither, then we cannot write an article, irrespective of what position(s) someone might have. It's always about what the world has documented. Because it's always about how we can construct an article in accordance with content policy. Notability is not a blanket. The actual documented world, that we are making an encyclopaedia of, is uneven. We have limited exceptions and we used to work on the bases of blanket notability a lot many years ago, but since the advent of the Project:Biographies of living persons policy many years ago, as well as the (rightly so) failure of the Project:Fame and importance idea even before that, a lot of people have come around to the idea that if we cannot write a biography legitimately, we cannot have an article, and when blanket criteria contradict this it is the blanket criteria that are wrong, and overriden by core content policies. Uncle G (talk) 05:15, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Uncle G,

My suggestion is that the publication by a research university that they employ someone at the rank of full professor is documented independent coverage of that person being an expert in their field. The internal processes for hiring and promotion completely blow away the standards of journalistic coverage. This for the obvious reason that university administration and departmental faculty experts have commented to invest their resources and reputation in a scholar for (quite likely) decades, whereas a journalist is probably just unhappily seeking daily clicks in order to keep their job. (Please excuse the hyperbole. I am well aware that there are a handful of reliable news outlets that can afford much higher standards.) Academic book reviews are also strange in ways that I would be happy to discuss further if this seems important to anyone.

This, I stress again, is just something that should – absent factors to the contrary – establish notability. If there are not reliable sources establishing further facts, then the article must remain a stub. Even a stub, however, is a service to readers and so makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia. This primarily for the reason that editors citing these academics can Wikilink out to these stubs, even if all they say is that so-and-so has been a professor at university such-and-such since date and these are some select publications. Secondarily, it also makes it possible for novice editors who would not think to create an article to make additional contributions should further independent coverage subsequently emerge.

I appreciate your taking the time to weigh in on my proposal.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:12, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:NOTDIRECTORY #1: "Simple listings without contextual information showing encyclopedic merit". In particular, Wikipedia is not a faculty directory listing all professors at major universities. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:39, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The context is being a full professor at a major university. This meaningfully distinguishes a scholar from others who are not. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 19:49, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• I doubt the community would change PROF to say that holding a full professorship without multiple independent, significant coverage. With limited exceptions, neither GNG or any of the SNGs provide presumptive notability for holding a position or participating in an event. When there is any presumptive notability, it is because the subject won an well-known and significant award or there are alternative methods to capture the significance of the subject or a lot of information that can be used to construct a biography. For WP:PROF, citations are an in-direct measure of the significance of a scholar's importance, as other scholars are writing about or responding to the work of the subject. For elected officials, editors have lots of information about the subject, from election results, introduced legislation, votes taken, speeches on the public record, in addition to any media coverage the subject received during the campaign or term of office (while recognizing that WP:NPOL is written with a global perspective). So, even in those cases, the expectations of GNG are met ("significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject"), but there is less reliance on news coverage. --Enos733 (talk) 20:16, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Hi @Enos733,

  I agree that citation metrics and library holdings, both of which are already included in WP:PROF, are in principle better indicators than having such-and-such rank at this-or-that status university. The problem, however, is that in practice the relevant standards vary wildly among (and even within) disciplines, and so both article creators and curators are presented with a research project, rather than a general policy guideline, when attempting to assess notability.

  If someone smarter or more tech-savvy than me has a solution, I would gladly withdraw my proposal. As things stand, however, being a full professor at a research university is the best proxy I can think of to capture the academic notability of folks doing highly-regarded work in fields that don't routinely award prizes or attract media attention.

  Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 20:41, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Notability within Wikipedia is a fuzzy ecosystem. There will always be edge cases where real world notability and who participates at an AFD are going to impact whether an article is kept, deleted, or redirected. But, if you look at NSPORTS, you will see the community is moving away from concepts of notability that are tied with a particular position (or participation). So, even if I thought that your proposal does a better job of informing edge cases, the larger community would likely respond negativity with several aspects of the proposal (does your proposal fit the need of of a global encyclopedia, is being a full professor verifiable (and does this always mean someone with tenure), what does this mean for the notability of any junior professor (as you seem to be discarding the citation metric), and as I have articulated, attributing notability with a particular title or position without any relationship with GNG. - Enos733 (talk) 00:50, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with this summary of the notability zeitgeist. Suriname0 (talk) 17:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Hi @Enos733,

  Sorry for the delay in this response.

  Notability is a fuzzy concept, and any Wikipedia policy that obscured this would be suspect on these grounds. So, I think we agree on this point. There will always be a lot of folks somewhere in between the clear passes and clear fails that require editorial judgment and reasoned discussion.

  My attempt at an intervention here is motivated by what I perceive as an inadequacy of Wikipedia's guidelines with respect to assessing academic notability with respect to criterion no. 1. I believe that what I propose would be helpful to both article creators and curators. In no way am I proposing that this should be the one governing criterion or that this should automatically qualify someone as notable. It is just something that I think would, especially in the humanities, helpfully serve as a proxy for metrics that can be extremely difficult to assess.

  In no way, however, I am proposing we do away with citation metrics as a direct indication of notability. In the medical fields, for instance, citations are a far more reliable source than academic titles, and anyone qualified to create articles about medicine is unlikely to have a difficult time demonstrating notability with such data.

  In the humanities, however, things are much less clear.

  For background, I have PhD in philosophy, and I worked for several years at an academic journal. Yet, in spite of this, I have no idea what kind of data about library holdings would constitute Wikipedia-quality evidence of notability in my own discipline. Also, although I do know what journals are the most prestigious, it's not clear how to me how I might demonstrate the relative significance of being published here-rather-than-there according to Wikipedia standards of reliable sources. This is because, in philosophy, as I expect just about everywhere else, such criteria are not publicized in a way that Wikipedia can (or should) recognize as authoritative (i.e., I can tell you what Internet sources are generally to be trusted in philosophy, but I do not think that Wikipedia should rely on the assertions of any editors upon the credibility of these kinds of self-published sources.)

  If I'm just unusually ignorant in this respect, I will not be offended by anyone who can explain what I have been missing. I would only then request instead that whatever the criteria or the guidelines for establishing them are spelled out in the policy. Right now, however, the section on metrics barely mentions the humanities at all and, even for the sciences, is overwhelming devoted to the untrustworthiness of basically everything available.

  Let me define the two key terms of my proposal for at least ameliorating this shortcoming in the current policy:

  i.) "Full professor": the "full" is mostly specific to the United States and Canada, where I received my education. What I mean, however, is pretty much what is meant by the Wikipedia entry professor. In particular:

  Professors in the United States commonly occupy any of several positions in academia. In the U.S., the word "professor" informally refers collectively to the academic ranks of assistant professor, associate professor, or professor. This usage differs from the predominant usage of the word professor internationally, where the unqualified word professor only refers to "full professors." The majority of university lecturers and instructors in the United States, as of 2015, do not occupy these tenure-track ranks, but are part-time adjuncts.

  The presumption of notability that I propose applies only to those shy of the (already acknowledged as default notable) distinguished professors – who have been promoted on the basis of peer-testimonials that their work has reshaped the direction of research in their discipline – but whose published research has nevertheless earned them the the highest academic rank internally awarded by a university. (Lots of folks, for instance, retire at the "mere" rank of associate professor. Many more eek out a month-to-month living as adjuncts at multiple institutions.)

  I submit that it is in general a safe assumption that full professors at research universities pass what the policy calls the "Average Professor Test", i.e., "When judged against the average impact of a researcher in a given field, does this researcher stand out as clearly more notable or more accomplished?" Although I cannot find good statistics on this, these positions are extremely competitive and are not awarded lightly.

  ii.) "Research university": by this I mean an institution of post-secondary education accredited to award terminal degrees (usually a PhD) in the field of the professor in question. So, for instance, even if you are a full professor at a U.S. university accredited to grant MBAs or nursing degrees, this does not qualify you unless your department is also accredited to award terminal degrees in your own field. Neither would one be qualified merely on grounds of being a full professor at a community or liberal arts college—although, of course, scholars at these institutions may still qualify on other grounds.

  A final note to this lengthy post: WP:NOTDIRECTORY, as written, is not relevant to this question. And even if that is the policy that ought to be refined, it would make no sense to me to do so in such a way as would exclude articles on scholars being cited as high-quality sources in other articles.

  Thanks for reading through! I've not yet looked at NSPORTS, but I'll try to get to that in case it might prove to be an instructive model.

  Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 19:04, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have always used faculty web pages and CVs as sources for facts such as dates and places of education, etc. in their articles. I am getting objections to these sources at Talk:Laurence D. Marks. As well as objections to using an academic's thesis and papers as sources for their work. Any suggestions on how to proceed? StarryGrandma (talk) 18:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

According to Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#General_notes, "Once the passage of one or more notability criteria has been verified through independent sources, or through the reliable sources listed explicitly for this purpose in the specific criteria notes, non-independent sources, such as official institutional and professional sources, are widely accepted as reliable sourcing for routine, uncontroversial details."

Hope that helps?

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:18, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See also WP:BLPSELFPUB, which again states that personal web pages and CVs are acceptable for routine, uncontroversial details. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:21, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for both of your suggestions. StarryGrandma (talk) 21:16, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@PatrickJWelsh and @David Eppstein, Thank for advising on this. I am struggling with pairing Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#General_noting: "Every topic on Wikipedia must have sources that comply with Wikipedia:Verifiability. Major awards must be confirmed, claims of impact must be substantiated by independent statements, reviews, citation metrics, or library holdings, and so on." with WP:BLPSELFPUB, saying personal web pages and CVs are acceptable for routine, uncontroversial details as long as the article is not primarily based on such sources. Specifically, what do you consider routine details? If we are talking about where someone went to college, that info is available elsewhere, meaning that a vita or self-published source is not needed. What about scholarships received? Or where someone did post-graduate research and who they worked under? What about academic work history, when they were hired, and when they received a promotion? I am still somewhat uncomfortable with the only source for someone's education and work experience being a vita, especially since the latter is typically part of their notability. But I may be overthinking this?

@StarryGrandma, as far as I can tell, there are not any issues with articles and the thesis citated in this article; there may a case where a stated fact is not obviously backed by a journal citation as another editor was asking for the specific page within a long article, but that is a different issue altogether. Rublamb (talk) 05:48, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Verifiability means that we must have reliable sources. We can believe that certain types of sources for certain types of information are reliable, when they are not secondary or not independent. All of these things describe different characteristics of sources that may be true or untrue independently of each other. It also depends on what kind of information we are using the sources for. In cases where we have reason to believe that someone has exaggerated their background, or where we are using sources to say what the impact of some work is rather than just bare-bones career milestones, personal statements might be unreliable, but in most cases things like degrees and professional positions held can be sourced to a cv, because we take it as reliable even though it is clearly not independent. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:27, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@David Eppstein, That helps. I have written articles about academics before but found adequate sources elsewhere, so this was something new to contemplate. I also see from #3 of WP:BLPSELFPUB, that we should not use a cv to detail who they worked with, which tracks with your explanation. Rublamb (talk) 07:13, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A line that I find helpful: if a fact is a plausible pass or progress towards a pass of a notability criterion (thinking mostly in NPROF now), then I look for a reliable source that is at least independent of the subject. So, being a fellow in an academic society, awards, an editor-in-chief-ship, etc. Basic career details, earlier degrees, birth date, etc are fine from CV, so long as no other source contradicts. I'll comment that for the PhD thesis, the library record is a reliable secondary source for the fact that someone got a PhD (but the thesis and other papers are primary for their contents). Russ Woodroofe (talk) 12:13, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There have been a number of BLPs recently created/expanded that are focused on university presidents, including a number of interim college or university presidents, and presidents of community colleges. The notability guidelines would, at first reading, suggest that this is enough to establish notability by the following bullet: "Criterion 6 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has held the post of president or chancellor (or vice-chancellor in countries where this is the top academic post) of a significant accredited college or university, director of a highly regarded, notable academic independent research institute or center (which is not a part of a university), president of a notable national or international scholarly society, etc."

The question is two part: do interim presidents count as holding the post of university president for purposes of identifying notability, or is the intent for this criteria to be limited to individuals placed in the post in a non-interim status? Secondly, would a community college count as a "significant accredited college"? A narrow reading of the first would seem to indicate that no, they would not meet the criteria, but a broader interpretation could be that an interim president is still a president. For the second part, a narrow reading would be yes, a community college is significant so long as it meets the WP:ORG notability requirements. But that begs the question: is every president of every community college that has, for instance, write-ups in regional newspapers in sufficient volume to narrowly meet the significant coverage requirements *really* notable without meeting additional criteria? Not saying that it isn't the case, but I'm genuinely curious if this is the spirit of the criteria!

Thanks! nf utvol (talk) 22:11, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that interim presidents do not "count" in this way and their notability would have to be established otherwise.

In the past, I have been told that serving as president of a community college does not convey notability in itself, even if the college is itself notable enough to warrant a Wikipedia page. Once again, notability would have to be established otherwise. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 03:46, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that community colleges do not count as the sort of "major academic institution" that this criterion concerns. That does not mean that their presidents are automatically non-notable, but it needs to be demonstrated through WP:GNG rather than being automatic. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this interpretation. I suggest that arguments of this sort could be avoided if in WP:Prof "major academic institution" was changed to "major academic institution with a significant presence in scholarship and research"? Xxanthippe (talk) 07:10, 26 November 2023 (UTC).[reply]

I'm not sure this is needed. Moreover "siginificant" seems up to substantial interpretation.

Personally I favor removing college and university presidents entirely from this Notability project. Once upon a time, presidents of major universities were academic leaders with influence far beyond their own school. Nowadays, most of the presidents are primarily focused on fundraising/currying alumni support for a living and I really, honestly strive mightily to see what it is about their career path that makes them automatically notable from the specific standpoint of Notability (academics), which is really oriented around scholarship. Some of them have no academic experience at all before becoming presidents. They don't manage budgets (they have people for that) or the faculty (provosts/VPAAs do that for them) or the students (again, various administrators) or deal with their communities (they have offices for public affairs). The exceptions to all of that? Community college presidents. They do all of those things and some of them are running institutions with more than 40,000 students and larger budgets than some of the major universities. The whole idea that being the president of a major academic institution makes you notable, but being the president of a major community college does not, makes no sense to me at all. I'd rather get rid of the whole thing and put presidents in lists at most.

Of course, some presidents have had notable academic careers, and that's fine, they'd fit under the other criteria. Other presidents are notable for other, general notability reasons. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 01:20, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would be happy with either of the two proposals. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks for all of the feedback and discussion! I, personally, am softly leaning towards the proposal to remove presidents entirely from the notability guidelines, per the reasoning outlined above by Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib. There are plenty of college and university Presidents who are notable, either through academic notability other than being a president or through general notability. There have been dozens of articles created in the last few days meeting these criteria that are of, in my opinion, questionable notability, and I want to continue to get more consensus here on their status before I start pushing them through the AfD process. nf utvol (talk) 13:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I support removing the position of university/college president as a qualifying criterion for academic notability. It's a full-time administrative position that actually takes the office-holder away from the research and publishing activity that is the core of specifically academic notability. Moreover, even those who do not already meet other PROF criteria very likely meet other notability requirements in the same way as top executives at other major institutions. This proposed change seems to me like just a bit of housecleaning that is unlike to have much practical effect on the encyclopedia itself.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:04, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I made this spreadsheet a while ago looking into the academic credentials of various university presidents in the US. The entries were chosen by starting at U Mich's president (don't remember why) and clicking any universities linked in his profile and looking at their current president (and so on). For the R1 and maybe R2 universities, the presidents are mostly already notable through other NPROF criteria. This changes if they weren't previously a professor, though; a couple places have career admins who never had academic impact. I think looking at places we would consider on the edge of "major" (non-research-heavy, small and private, etc.) would be informative. JoelleJay (talk) 21:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW I don't think either interim or CC presidents qualify under NPROF C6. JoelleJay (talk) 21:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Although I am super impressed with the work you put into this, I do wonder if presidents who are academically notable might have more likelihood to link to others that are also academically notable. I'd say your study shows that we have a policy that errs on the side of the president being academically notable (I'll go ahead and grant that this might sample might be representative of the majority), but it's also clear from your analysis that there are situations where this is not the case - and I think we should not err on the side of assuming them automatically notable.

I don't recommend changing the criterion lightly. In general the NPROF criteria have served Wikipedia "as is" very well. So along with nt utvol, I'd say that I'm "softly leaning" in this direction. I would be pleased to be educated by others as to why it's a bad idea to change it. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 21:56, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I could be persuaded to go along with this change as long we make other changes that naturally follow the same logic. Specifically, it would seem that the entirety of criterion 6 ("The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed administrative post at a major academic institution or major academic society.") would need to be removed. ElKevbo (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it has served us well to combine discussion of these two very different populations.

Can those who are opining that interim presidents of major institution of higher education do not meet this notability guideline please explain why?

And can those who are opining that presidents of community colleges do not meet this notability guideline please explain why? (For this population, I am particularly worried that we could omit them because of popular views of community colleges as being less important or meaningful than other colleges and universities.) ElKevbo (talk) 22:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

These are excellent questions. I can only answer that my perception of the community college issue has been based on other, more senior editors telling me so in the past. For example, I think I made a page for a community college president once that seemed to me to meet GNG as well, but I was told otherwise - that NPROF 6 did not apply and that the GNG was too weak, and the page was not accepted for inclusion - an outcome I accepted. I think we discussed it on this talk page, too. It was a lot of years ago, though.

Interim presidents of colleges are sometimes career administrators working at the school and who the trustees ask to run things for a few months. I think that is why I was told that they should not be considered notable solely on NPROF 6. But again, I could be misremembering something. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 16:05, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@ElKevbo, I don't read this as "community colleges are less important or meaningful" since that isn't really what the notability guidelines are about. We don't make articles on educational institutions based on their "meaningfulness". WP:NPROF is a notability guideline based on the idea that researchers are important to have in an encyclopedia because of their role in generating the knowledge that we use to write the encyclopedia - ie, that they are notable for the research they produce, in a way that WP:GNG does not account for well. Community colleges are extremely meaningful institutions, but they are primarily about teaching, not about research, so I would not expect "is a president (or similar)" of this type of institution to be a useful metric to determine "is influential in the history of ideas". -- asilvering (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

+1. JoelleJay (talk) 21:13, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

asilvering is spot on: apples and oranges (+2 I suppose). Xxanthippe (talk) 22:02, 28 November 2023 (UTC).[reply]

Thank you for the explanation. I think it might be helpful to expand your borders or maybe just shift your language from "research" to something a bit broader like "scholarship" or even "scholarship and creative activities" to more broadly encompass how college and university faculty, staff, and students contribute to the world (outside of teaching). (This is on my mind because my current university has been changing language in policies over the past several years along these lines - it makes it easier for us to recognize the important contributions of colleagues in the humanities, in particular, whose work is not always characterized as "research.") ElKevbo (talk) 00:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Again, that doesn't have anything to do with notability. (In fact, humanists meet notability criteria quite easily, via WP:NAUTHOR.) -- asilvering (talk) 09:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The more I mull over this, the more I lean towards completely getting rid of, or substantially narrowing, criteria 6. I, too, don't come to this conclusion lightly, as it will almost certainly require a substantial review of every article subject currently considered notable solely due to this criterion. I understand that the president of Harvard, Penn State, or Stanford could be considered de facto notable, but the odds are that they would already meet GNG, NPROF, or NPEOPLE criteria. But the president of, say, Dyersburg State Community College or Clear Creek Baptist Bible College, would probably not meet any notability guidelines other than NPROF criteria 6...and not to discount their accomplishments or the challenging nature of their work, but are they *really* notable just because they're the senior administrator of a small, two-year school with smaller enrollment than some high schools, or a bible college training a few dozen future Baptist ministers? As it stands, I think that the criteria casts too broad of a net.

Separately, if criteria 6 is retained or not substantially altered, it should at least be clarified to purposely include or exclude individuals in an acting or interim role. I would argue more confidently that these individuals should not be included in criteria 6 for notability, as they are, generally speaking, only placed in these positions in a temporary status purely for the sake of continuity and administrative functionality.

(Hooray for building consensus through deliberate, conscientious, and respectful discussion!) nf utvol (talk) 15:56, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would make more sense to subordinate it than to remove it entirely. As in, we should keep it as a "presumed notable" criterion (AfC reviewers should accept, NPP shouldn't draftify, PROD should probably be avoided) but not a "confirmed notable" (ie, rock-solid AfD argument) one. I say this from the point of view of an AfC reviewer who frequently sees incorrectly declined articles on academics. "At least notable enough to deserve an AfD" is a really useful metric for reviewers and patrollers to have, and those are easiest for generalist editors to apply when they're something clear-cut like "is the president of a university". -- asilvering (talk) 23:17, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't disagree with trying to find a middle ground between keeping it as-is and removing it, but how do you propose we create this subordination? I think it's a good idea, I'm just not sure of how to approach that, technically. Would it be appropriate to get rid of it but put a note in the General Notes stating something along the lines of, "Individuals holding the highest elected position at a major academic institution (e.g., a tier one research university) are likely to be considered notable, although merely holding this position at every institution of higher learning does not necessarily confer de facto notability. Individuals in these positions often meet notability through other WP:PROF, WP:PEOPLE, WP:AUTHOR, or WP:GNG guidelines." Just a thought, not sure if that is appropriate or fulfills the requirements. In the meantime, if there are no objections, I think we should go ahead and spell out that individuals in an interim or acting capacity are not considered notable unless meeting other guidelines. nf utvol (talk) 00:34, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "I think we should go ahead and spell out that individuals in an interim or acting capacity are not considered notable unless meeting other guidelines." - yes, I agree with this, I think we should do that. Everyone here seems to be in agreement on this point unless I have missed something. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 14:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I spoke to this specifically in my remarks above, but I do endorse the proposal. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 18:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion is ongoing at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tun Razak Chair regarding whether this notability guideline applies to named chairs themselves, as separate from the people who hold those chairs. Editors interested in this discussion page might have relevant opinions; please participate. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A situation arose in a recent AfD, where a university apparently tied a named chair to their law school deanship. (Not linking to AfD, as I don't want to relitigate, and I'm not sure that it really matters.) Is a named chair granted for administrative office a pass of WP:NPROF C5? My suggestion would be "no": I think that WP:NPROF C5 should be a signal for the kind of research impact discussed in WP:NPROF C1. Perhaps it would be worth adding to the subcriterion notes "Criterion 5 is intended to to cover endowed appointments granted for research accomplishment"? (We may otherwise wind up in a situation where many law schools and business schools create named chairs for their deans.) Russ Woodroofe (talk) 19:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not to be nitpicky but I just have to say that I prefer "scholarly impact" to "research impact," in honor of my many colleagues who are professors of art, music, drama, architecture, and so forth - and who may occupy endowed chairs in recognition of their contributions in those fields, sometimes entirely on the basis of the impact of their performance work. With that caveat, I have no problem with making an addition. I'd suggest "Criterion 5 is intended to apply to endowed chair appointments which are granted in recognition of impactful scholarship in the subject's field," or the like. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 21:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest cut this Gordian knot that causes so much confabulation and remove WP:Prof#C5 altogether. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC).[reply]

That connects to Qflib's point, because if we remove the use of above-full-professor professorial titles as a way of recognizing scholarly impact, we would be left with mainly #C1 and #C3 (as the others are rarely used). This would exaggerate the already-disproportionate advantage to scholars in STEM fields where journal citations and fellowships in discipline-specific societies are more common. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:22, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

1) I like Qflib's wording, and agree that it is better to be more inclusive along these lines. 2) On a different tack, I have in the past suggested subordinating C5 to other criteria: the language I suggested then had problems that David Eppstein pointed out at the time, but an alternative along the lines of what Xxanthippe suggests would be to make C5 a presumed pass of C1. (I think this is in effect how we think about C5 anyway, or at least how we would like to think about it.) That might be a conversation for another time, however. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 01:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of making C5 (and C6, if we don't end up deleting it) a rebuttable presumption of C1. JoelleJay (talk) 05:01, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If we don't want to get rid of C5 because of all the C5-passing academics in non-stem fields who do not pass C1, why would it be any improvement to keep C5 but make it (C5 and C1) instead of C5? What even is the point of having one criterion that is the conjunction of something with another criterion? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:57, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Who says they don't pass C1? The proof needed to demonstrate a C5-meeting prof doesn't pass C1 would presumably involve a much more detailed BEFORE and go beyond the usual citation analysis used in STEM. JoelleJay (talk) 18:00, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but do we have any more examples that could help illustrate the issue? Are we contemplating changes because of a single recent AfD, or has this been a more recurring case? Offhand, I don't recall another example that was just like the recent instance (where to all appearances the named chair was a package deal with the deanship). XOR'easter (talk) 18:30, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. Guidelines are not intended to cover every possible case, and should allow for exceptions. That's why we come to a consensus by discussing things at AfD rather than just treat guidelines as tick boxes. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Propose that Wikipedia entries on academic researchers move to its own separate wikiacademic.org place. Wikipedia should not be a CV for academics. Please look at the many stub topics linked from List of members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for examples.

wikipedia should not be a current and former academic staff at each university directory.

Placing them in a different.org site will help alleviate the is this person notable debate 2600:1700:D591:5F10:855E:9015:7127:7D67 (talk) 05:44, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at several academic entries, listing statements in them, excluding birth place, family, where they went to school and non notable jobs like professor of math, university D, 1998-2006, many of the topics do not have any real content — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:D591:5F10:855E:9015:7127:7D67 (talk) 05:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe sometime after all Wikipedia articles on footballers get moved to their own separate wikifootball place, I might take your suggestion more seriously. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:00, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 14:50, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Although I have some complaints about the current criteria, particularly as they apply to folks in the humanities (see above), notable academics very much belong on Wikipedia. To give just one reason, when I work on academic articles, I like to Wikilink out to authorities mentioned by name. Even just a stub allows readers to quickly get background context on who is being cited without leaving Wikipedia, which I think makes Wikipedia a better encyclopedia, more useful to its readers.

That said – and even though I think the fear of Wikipedia becoming a directory is overblown (an insufficiently notable academic is just not going to get any traffic, so who is this hurting exactly?) – I certainly agree there need to be inclusion criteria more-or-less along the lines of what we currently have. In particular, Wikipedia cannot become a venue for self-promotion. But I think the community is already plenty good at spotting this and dealing with it as appropriate.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 15:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Academics and educators provides a regular stream of the kind of articles on academics that we shouldn't have. They generally err on the side of being too long rather than too short. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:08, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There's an AfD at the moment where the point of discussion is NPROF, in particular the notability of the endowment (not sure if that's the best or correct term) behind a named professorship. The nom admits there are insufficient sources for the GNG but essentially says that if NPROF uses a "chaired" position as a sign of notability for inclusion then it stands to reason that the chaired position itself must also be notable.

I'm not linking to the AfD as I'm not asking anyone to go there and !vote in any direction, but it does seem to be an oxymoron which may need thought and clarity here.

As it stands, it seems like having a "named chair" professorship acts as a shortcut/proxy for academic seniority and therefore notability in the wild, and hence notability on en.wiki via this guideline.

However if the chair itself has been met by shrugs and without any significant coverage in RS, can it therefore be used to give notability to the individual that holds the position? On the other hand if this is considered a reliable shortcut, can we ever then say that the chair endowment is non-notable given that the guidelines states that the person who occupies it would be considered notable? JMWt (talk) 10:05, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I would assume the chair endowment would only be notable if it itself were covered in depth in reliable sources, which certainly is not true of most named professorships. I'm not really sure what the oxymoron here is (isn't this precisely what WP:NOTINHERITED is supposed to be about?) and it seems to me that AfD is the right place for the argument, not here. Am I missing something? -- asilvering (talk) 12:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The oxymoron is the idea that something non-notable in terms of the GNG could give notability to someone via NPROF.

This isn't about an AfD because this is something that needs clarity in this guideline - if the chair endowment is to be used to show notability, isn't it also necessary for it to be notable?

Does NPROF imply something about a named professorial chair endowment? JMWt (talk) 13:13, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think so. NPROF is best taken at face value. That is how it was always intended to be used. You seem to think it is some sort of logical contradiction; I don’t see it. In this case a university can create a new named chair and honor a scholar with it, helping us to identify the scholars notability under NPROF, with the chair position itself not yet being sufficiently notable to merit a Wikipedia page of its own. NPROF is designed to help identify important scholars as notable, full stop. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 14:49, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This also seems to me the plain meaning of the policy. If the chair itself has some kind of historical significance (as I'm sure a few do), then independent sources should establish that. Otherwise, what is the article even going to say? "It was established at x date with a donation from entity y at institution z, and this list of people have occupied it"? That seems like trivia. Maybe some of this would be worth mentioning in the context of an article about a notable professor who occupies said chair, but I don't see how a one-off academic title needs its own Wikipedia entry. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 15:23, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, in that case, I do not believe I am missing anything, and my first sentence stands. -- asilvering (talk) 16:36, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, the article-worthiness of the person does not have to be inherited from article-worthiness of the position. That's not how the criterion works or the rationale behind it. The point of C5 is that a person gets the kind of position it talks about for having done important things, and people who do important things are the kind of people we can write articles about. XOR'easter (talk) 18:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• For the record, my opinion is that a non-notable 'endowment' giving evidence of notability to an academic is only the same as a non-notable published book giving significant coverage to a topic. However I think it is something worth discussing here to clarify, hence why I'm bringing it up. JMWt (talk) 15:26, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Most of the independent reliable books that have significant coverage of a topic and so give it notability are not notable themselves. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Someone will please correct me if I am mistaken, but this is my understanding why occupying a named chair is an indicator of notability:

  What distinguishes a named chair from an ordinary tenured professorship is that the funding comes from a private source controlled by the department, rather than from university funds. This means that the faculty have much more leeway about whom to hire. They don't have to deal with deans, and there is much less risk of an offer falling through over salary negotiations, for example, because the university administration is far less involved. Also, I suspect they pay more than would otherwise be typical. The main point of establishing one, after all, is to advance the mission of the department by allowing them to hire (in effect, to poach) more senior folks they would not otherwise be able to get.

Also, just anecdotally, those at research universities seem to have lower undergrad teaching requirements than their colleagues. But I have no idea if this is something built into the appointment, or something negotiated later on.

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 15:53, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's not really how it normally works in British universities, I can't comment on US universities. I don't really understand why you think the source of funding matters in terms of notability on en.wiki JMWt (talk) 16:11, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To the extent that it matters, this is because faculty can approach someone at another university and credibly promise a position at a certain salary with, perhaps, a lower teaching load or other perks. There are a lot more things that can go wrong when multiple levels of university administration are more heavily involved. It's a lot easier to get someone to move to your university when they know that some parts of the application process are basically a formality. This means that endowed chairs tend to go to more senior people that the faculty really want who would otherwise probably not consider relocating. This is a rather weak indication of notability, but it's my best reconstruction of the reasoning behind including it as a criterion. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:32, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh yes, and I'm speaking from a US perspective. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:32, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ok well other countries exist and the words "professor" and "chaired professor" do not mean the same things everywhere. JMWt (talk) 17:03, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies. I was aware of the first, but not the second. Thanks for informing me. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 17:07, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In my university, at least, what distinguishes a named chair, or a title like "Distinguished Professor" or "Chancellor's Professor" (also covered by C5, but not named chairs) from an ordinary tenured professorship is that a special campus committee has examined the accomplishments and recommendation letters of the person to be given the named chair, and has agreed that they have a level of special scholarly distinction beyond that of an ordinary full professor, worthy of the title. It is that "one step beyond a full professor" that we are trying to capture in C5. That is why chairs given to associate professors do not count, for instance. It is also why (see discussion above) named chairs given as a slush fund for specific administrative titles should be treated differently than named chairs given to a person for their scholarly accomplishments. (Also, in my experience, lower teaching expectations are set for new faculty and administrators but not advanced-rank regular faculty.) —David Eppstein (talk) 16:12, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've only ever seemed named chairs used as a hiring incentive—or just something the faculty was happy to have more in their control.

If they are sometimes awarded as a form of promotion indicating exceptional contributions to the discipline as a whole, via a process similar to that of promotion to Distinguished Professor, that certain makes those chairs far stronger indications of notability!

I'm not sure what the language should be, but it seems like we might want to introduce more fine-grained distinctions into the criteria to reflect these differences beyond the simple distinction between holding a named/endowed chair and holding the administrative position of department chair. Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 16:41, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We've been down this road in the past re administrative department chairs versus named chairs. The current language reflects all of that discussion - but I think anyone is welcome to make suggestions to the project to make it clearer. Qflib, aka KeeYou Flib (talk) 20:45, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the discussion above regarding notability of interim/acting university presidents and the applicability of community/junior colleges to the guideline, I propose the following re-write of criterion 6. Please vote below or provide feedback as needed, thanks!

6. The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed administrative post at a major academic institution or society.

1. For documenting that a person has held such a post (but not for a judgement of whether or not the institution or society is a major one), publications of the institution where the post is held are considered a reliable source.
2. Criterion 6 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has held the post of president or chancellor (or vice-chancellor in countries where this is the top academic post) of a major research university, director of a highly regarded, notable academic independent research institute or center (which is not a part of a university), president of a notable national or international scholarly society, etc. Appointment to such a post in an acting or interim status is not generally sufficient to qualify under Criterion 6 alone.
3. Major research universities include those listed by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the QS World University Rankings, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, or by a recognized accrediting body or governmental education department.
4. Lesser administrative posts (provost, dean, department chair, etc.) are generally not sufficient to qualify under Criterion 6 alone, although exceptions are possible on a case-by-case basis (e.g., a provost of a Carnegie Classification R1 Research University may sometimes qualify).
5. Heads of institutes and centers devoted to promoting pseudo-science and marginal or fringe theories, two-year colleges (including community colleges, junior colleges, and preparatory schools), or non-accredited or non-degree granting institutions are generally not covered by Criterion 6; they may still be notable under other criteria of this guideline or under the general WP:BIO or WP:N guidelines.

nf utvol (talk) 17:49, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I wanted to ask for more information about the h-index, something I'm particularly unfamiliar with. Specifically, I wanted to ask if it accounts for factors such as regional bias. I created Draft:Carolina Chang a couple of months ago and thought that due to her publications and citations, she could meet WP:NPROF, and I'm afraid that she might be underrepresented in this regard, being from South America. Do you think the article could stand a chance in a AfD?

Best wishes and many thanks in advance NoonIcarus (talk) 08:14, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The h-index is based on a simple count of citations, not taking into consideration any other factors. Some points to bear in mind are that computer science is a very high citation (and so h-index) field, and that it is unusual for an associate professor to be notable. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:40, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]