Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas McElwain

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 of the debate was Keep. - Bobet 22:27, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thomas McElwain

Reason: the stub does not specify why this person is notable Pecher ^Talk 13:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• Speedy Delete, CSD A7.--Blue520 15:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak Delete. Thank you Monicasdude, some how I over looked the book.--Blue520 16:31, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Keep. greatly improved--Blue520 12:34, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, certainly not a candidate for speedy; apparently notable as published author of scholarly work. Monicasdude 15:51, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• Just publishing something does not make an author immediately notable; see WP:BIO for guidelines. Pecher ^Talk 16:11, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• Weak delete; he apparently is a bona fide academic, but does not appear particularly notable: his book - which I hereby co-nominate for deletion - has a Amazon rank of 2,475,176. Sandstein 16:18, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete book too. Pecher ^Talk 16:23, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - Is verifiable. Delete book though. --Irishpunktom\^talk 16:52, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete one book, nothing on Google Scholar and a few hundred Ghits mainly for namesakes. Insufficient notability. Delete the book also - it's a stub that I don't see expanding
• Keep as per Шизомби. Delete the book. Dlyons493 Talk 17:05, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Amazon has three titles authored by him (I'll add them to the article), and his name is mentioned in eight other books - though it is possible they're not all the same person. I'm not sure about this one, but the book should go. Шизомби 20:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment I saw those in Google Scholar but felt it was probably a different McElwain - if it's the same person then he's heading towards notability all right. Dlyons493 Talk 21:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment Quite sure it's the same guy: U. Stockholm and languages. See also http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Thomas+McElwain%22+site%3Aworldcatlibraries.org (click on the details tab on those pages). Still not sure how notable he is, or if he is still with the University (I couldn't find a page for him on their website). He is also AKA Ali Haydar Шизомби 21:40, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per well argued nomination. εγκυκλοπαίδεια* 17:06, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep very notable Shi'a twelver scholar in a narrow field, his book is reproduced in its entirety on al-islam.org [1], assuring that he has more than the 5000 demanded in WP:BIO. Deleteting his biography is plain wrong considering only this link, the book having been repreinted in the biggest Shi'a website says it all. --Striver 19:25, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

al-islam.org itself is of very dubious notability, and not surprisingly it was nominated for deletion. The link on globalresearch.com is essentially the only link saying something meaningful about that book. Not notable, whatever way you look. Pecher ^Talk 20:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

You need to look things in perspektive. Of course you are going to find a Shi'a twelver book only on Shi'a twelver sites, you expected to find them on atheis sites? Al-islam.org is THE bigest shi'a twelver site according to Yahoo. It doenst get bigger and more notable than that, not as long as the book is addressing only Shi'a twelvers. --Striver 00:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

If McElwain is notable, I think it's probably more for his work with languages. As for Yahoo, it's difficult to judge their criteria for popularity. The top-ranked site is the most popular among Yahoo! users and only among the sites listed in that category of the directory, and it doesn't indicate how popular the most popular site actually is. It could be that there are more popular sites among all internet users, or among sites not listed in that directory category. Шизомби 01:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• keep. We need more scholars, not fewer. --Zero 09:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Seems perfectly notable to me. David | Talk 11:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
• Since his book either is academic or has academic pretensions, its low Amazon rating is of no interest to me whatever. (For that matter, even if it had no academic pretensions, a low Amazon rating might not worry me.) Whoever it was that wrote the nominal article about it clearly put no effort into the article; a small and perhaps inadequate amount of my own effort failed to turn up anything about it. Have it redirect to McElwain, at least until somebody can be bothered to write an intelligent short article about it. Even though McElwain is merely a real-life human who has written published books (hardly a matter of indisputable cognointellectual significance to millions of right-thinking Wikipedia users), his existence seems verifiable and of some note. Thus, keep. -- Hoary 07:23, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, published author. Kappa 08:51, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.