Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tomaz Pisanski

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:25, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tomaz Pisanski

non-notable biograpy CH (talk) 18:58, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• *Delete. Although I could be wrong, particularly in this case, but if so, someone who knows should expand the biography to tell us about at least one truly notable mathematical achievement of the subject. And yes, sorry, I didn't follow the correct procedure correctly the first time. Thanks to Oleg for helping me out with that.---CH (talk) 18:58, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. He appears distinguished, but not at the level I think is required for a Wikipedia article. --Chan-Ho 18:52, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, a full professor who has been advisor for nine Ph.D. students, and claims to be co-founder of a newspaper[1]. More notable than the average professional baseball player. Tupsharru 21:06, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Another question for Tupsharru: if his grounds for notability are that he founded a newspaper, shouldn't the biography explain the signficance of this newspaper? Or again, re the Order of Merit: I have no idea what that means. Shouldn't the article tell me? If this information doesn't convince any fair minded individual that the recipient is indeed suitable for inclusion in an English language encyclopedia, maybe the biography should go?---CH (talk) 22:27, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Part of the job of being a professor is to be an advisor, so that part is not notable. So his claim to notability, according to you, rests strictly on co-founding a newspaper. Well, is this a real newspaper or more like a newsletter? --Chan-Ho 00:08, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Part of the job of being a professor is to be an advisor, so that part is not notable. - That is a non sequitur, as it is dependent on how you evaluate things in the first place. Part of the job of being a professional baseball player is playing baseball. Besides all kinds of Pokemon cruft, Wikipedia includes anyone who plays any sport professionally, mostly people of no interest except to the fans of that particular team. This, admittedly, is rather convenient, as it avoids most VfD discussions over sportspeople, so I don't really want to change it. But, to use CH's comparison below, I do not consider a baseball hall-of-famer to be anywhere close in status to somebody winning a major, international scientific award like the Fields Medal. Tupsharru 05:28, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

It may be a non sequitur, but it's one that you brought up! You're the one that mentioned him as a "full professor who has been advisor for nine Ph.D. students". If you are now admitting that it was irrelevant, and you just meant to mention that he is a full professor, fine. But don't bring something up as if it were relevant and then call my criticism of its relevancy a "non sequitur".

As for your position...I was just thinking the other day I would use a bot to input in every professor listed in the AMS directory into Wikipedia. I hope you will support any VFD's that occur over that! --Chan-Ho 16:32, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Whoa! I hope you're kidding, Chan-Ho! Please don't create mindless lists here. Why on earth would anyone want to duplicate here a snapshot of the AMS directory? Who are you trying to help? Disgruntled students eager to spam every math professor in North America? You'd just make a list which would updated irregularly at best, so unreliable, and God forbid some drone should decide to move arbitrary articles from your list into categories like this one. That would be terrible, because we want to help math students at all levels get a quick impression of who some of the major figures in field F are, and of course what their major contributions were. As I see it, that's the whole point of these darned VfDs! I wouldn't bother if I didn't see potential degradation of the utility of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, which is supposed to be the overarching purpose, yes?---CH (talk) 08:43, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

It was not meant seriously. My main motivation in these VFDs so far is that unless a person is just super-famous, they should have some particular reason for being on Wikipedia, so their bios aren't orphaned. If there is an interesting math result that would link to their bio, great. Otherwise, there should be some particularly compelling reason other than "there's already a lot of junk on Wikipedia". I believe that now all the three persons you originally listed for VFD have futures on Wikipedia because they have some results that somebody will hopefully create pages for. --Chan-Ho 03:56, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

I believe Hillman's comparison was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. However, you've made your stance clear. You are not so concerned with the rationale, but how many VFD discussions you can avoid. I can certainly see the appeal in that position, but I find it sad nonetheless. --Chan-Ho 16:45, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I find it sad that you feel a need to misconstrue what I have actually written. Tupsharru 18:01, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I suppose this could go on forever, so I'll just stop with this. You wrote right above that Wikipedia has articles on non-notable professional athletes, but you "don't really want to change it" because it conveniently avoids many VFD discussions. Which part of that did I misconstrue? Since you've made no effort to explain the newspaper angle or why being a professor is so noteworthy except to explain how convenient it is to allow cruft, how could I do anything else than "misconstrue" your position as I did? --Chan-Ho 23:45, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, passes the "average professional baseball player" test. Kappa 22:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't see how. Care to explain your reasoning? --Chan-Ho 00:08, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Exactly! Kappa, to me (and I guess to Chan-Ho), the analogies run something like this:

• earned a Ph.D.: made the local Little League team
• serves on the math faculty at some uni: plays AAA Minor League professional baseball
• won tenure or obscure award: got a pat on the back from the team after a big game
• made a major contribution to mathematics: set a significant major league baseball record
• recieved an internationally known mathematics award: recieved MVP award
• recieved Field's Medal: entered Hall of Fame

Do you see what I am trying to say? ---CH (talk) 02:42, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete; does Slovenia have an Order of Merit? this list doesn't think so; and it's not on Prof. Pisanski's resume.[2] Septentrionalis 22:56, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

• I think you'll find it's called the Order for Services. It wouldn't be on a military medals page. Clair de Lune 02:55, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Professor Pisanski was awarded what is called Red za zasluge, which can be liberally translated to "Order of Merit". According to a national law, this ranks in the middle of 7 orders and medals that can be awarded by the President of Slovenia, them being "Red za izredne zasluge" (Order of exceptional merit), "Zlati red za zasluge" (Golden order of merit), "Srebrni red za zasluge" (Silver order of merit), "Red za zasluge" (Order of merit), "Medalja za zasluge" (Medal of merit), "Medalja za hrabrost" (Medal of courage) and "Medalja za castno dejanje" (Medal of honourable act). --Peterlin 13:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, mostly verifiable (Order of Merit statement possibly excepted). JYolkowski // talk 00:26, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Exceeds bar set by precedent. Clair de Lune 02:46, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

What precedent? The sports pages metaphor? Please note that I propose that we use a more appropriate standard for the math categories in the Wikipedia.---CH (talk) 08:35, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Random professor Pilatus 05:02, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, non-notable professor. Nandesuka 12:47, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep — published 80 research papers, &c., &c. Appears notable. — RJH 16:05, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not clear that publishing 80 papers alone makes one notable. I've seen C.V.s cluttered with scads of nonsense or almost identical "papers", even in math. No idea about this man's C.V.; I'm just saying that this alone is a worthless criterion for math biographies. Really, evidence of widespread recognition of significant work is the touchstone. There are plenty of ways to validate that criterion, e.g. by checking for mention in good review papers, in relevent textbooks (using common sense; very recent work probably won't be in the textbooks yet, e.g Wile's theorem took several years to make it into a proper textbook), etc.

I think the lesson which is emerging here is that non-mathematicians should be circumspect about creating math biographies; if you can't convince the math literate users that the subject is mathematically notable, then unless you're writing about someone who achieved notoriety in a non-mathematical context, expect the article to be proposed for deletion repeatedly.---CH (talk) 08:35, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Clear lack of notability. Dottore So 18:14, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep seems notable.  Grue  19:01, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. He was my professor of Discrete Mathematics II at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics in Ljubljana. Demokracija was notable (although political, not mathematical) Slovenian newspaper back then. He was also chairman of the DMFA in 1998-1999. I'm not sure what Order of Merrit means, but I wouldn't be surprised if he won some national award. --romanm (talk) 17:47, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Romanm, I'm glad you enjoyed (apparently) taking the course, but if you really meant to imply that "he was my professor once" is grounds for notability, I doubt very many would agree with you! Founding a now defunct newspaper in Slovenia? Might be notable enough for the Slovenian language wikipedia, but is that really notable enough for the English language one? How many newspapers have been founded around the world in the past two centuries? We don't even have every "notable at the time" civil war era American newspaper listed here, much less obscure defunct ones in other languages! ---CH (talk) 08:27, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

If something is a valid topic for Wikipedia edition in one language, it should be a valid topic for all other languages. That "sum of all human knowledge" thing.  Grue  13:30, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I read Romanm's comment more as an affirmation that professor Pisanski is a real professor teaching at a real university. But this, I believe, was never questioned anyway. --Peterlin 13:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

That's right, I certainly never had any doubt that he exists, that his uni exists, that he works there as a professor, or the other facts of his life as given in the article. My problem is that no-one has told me why any of that information is sufficiently interesting to belong in an encyclopedia article. The only cure is for someone to describe a clearly interesting/important mathematical result clearly enough for me to agree that P has done something sufficiently notable in mathematics (or for some other good reason) for these mundane details (that he exists, where he went to school, where he works) to possibly interest a general audience in an English language encyclopedia. Again, my problem is simply this: I don't think it should happen that after reading a Wikipedia biography, a general reader has no idea why anyone would think that the subject is sufficiently notable for such a biography.---CH (talk) 07:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunalety, I cannot do that. I am not a specialist in this field, and after having a brief glance at your presentation page, I actually believe I know about graph theory much less than you do. Still, even though I have a rather high oppinion about your credentials, I don't believe the decision on whether to keep or delete a biography should be left to an individual's "feeling". We do need an agreed-on set of criteria about what qualifies for a matematics biography and what does not. And, unless I am wrong, we don't have it yet. Furthermore, as I argue below, I believe that the question you have opened concerns more the organization of articles in a usable manner rather than the sole existance of articles. Cluttering the Wikipedia might indeed be felt as a problem when you browse the article. Often, however, you simply search for a particular article, either using Google or Wikipedia search function. There, having more articles are a clear bonus. OTOH, I would speculate though that the ratio between searching and browsing the English Wikipedia is higher among non-native speakers of English, who often just try to find a particular article rather than browse a category. --Peterlin 08:46, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. I see two principal problems concerning deletion of the article.

Without clearly defined rules, I wouldn't have the guts to call any professional in any field "non-notable". There are of course many possible ways where to cut the list, e.g. a theorem is named after him/her, is a recipient of Fields Medal, is the editor of a major scientific journal (what is a "major" scientific journal? measured by its impact factor?), has published an important scientific monograph (what is an "important" monograph?), won a tenure, earned a PhD, etc. Any criterion is equally legitimate, if it is agreed on. Wikipedia not being limited by paper, I would vote for a wider coverage rather than a narrower, but this is just my oppinion. But first of all we need an agreement about who does qualify as "notable" and does not.

With English being a modern lingua franca, I believe that the "English" Wikipedia should strive to serve as a reference aimed at an audience wider than Americans, Englishmen, Scotsmen, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders put together. English Wikipedia continues to grow and mature not only because of the contributions of native English speakers, but also because of the contributions of other peoples around the world. I am also not sure there is a consensus about which topics are interesting and important enough for the English speaking readers to be included in the English language Wikipedia. The argument doesn't hold even if the English language Wikipedia would be limited to native English speaking world. We probably all agree that articles in geography, zoology or botany describing topics not present in the English speaking world should remain in the English language Wikipedia. What is so different with biographies of foreign nationals? I am actually surprised by these cleansing tendencies in the English Wikipedia. Personally, I would be delighted to have short biographies of all American professors of mathematics along with all American professional baseball players in the Slovenian Wikipedia, and the only problem concerning this I percieve is that probably nobody is willing to write them up.--Peterlin 13:44, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Peterlin, I agree with you that the English language Wikipedia is also the default lingua franca encyclopedia, and should strive to serve students and people all over the world. My concern is precisely that allowing unlimited cruft, particulary in the math pages to clutter up the encyclopedia will cause it to become unusable. Specifically: there are enough truly "notable" mathematicians to populate categories like Category:Algebraic graph theory with a dozen or more biographies. I feel that we need to keep the number of articles in each category to a few dozen at the most, but I hate to think of creating an even more complicated category tree than is already forced upon the math editors by the complexity of our subject. This is why I say that we can't get away with applying rules which originate in the sports pages everywhere, certainly not in the math pages.

I take it everyone noticed that after finding one of the other two is cited in a review paper I respect, I changed my vote to a weak keep for that individual. I still feel that the case has not been made that the remaining two individuals are anywhere near notable to require a biography here. They might well be notable enough for the Slovenian wikipedia, but what about the Urdu wikipedia? The Finnish wikipedia? Are they notable enough for these, or for the English/lingua franca wikipedia? I think, clearly not.---CH (talk) 07:12, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I think I understand your concern. But I believe that it mostly concerns the organization of lists and categories, rather than the existance of the articles itself. It is completely clear to me that all the profesors of mathematics from around the world can not fit onto, say, a List of Mathematicians. The same goes for the categories. I believe though that with introducing a proper hierarchy a biography list can still remain manageable. I agree with you though that we don't want Category:Algebraic graph theory being cluttered by thousands (I am wildly guessing the number of people working in this field) of biographies of researchers. But I would move them to a separate subcategory within this category, say Category:Researchers in algebraic graph theory or simply Category:Algebraic graph theorists, then, once necessary, subdivide this category alphabetically, by country, by field of work or by some other means. There can be of course also some wiser way of organizing categories – from the usability point of view, there is probably some maximal depth of hierarchies that should not be exceeded without harming the usability of the Wikipedia itself. As for your other question – I cannot speak on behalf of the Urdu Wikipedia, but I certainly wouldn't mind having the content of Urdu Wikipedia – including the biographies of all Pakistani professors present there – translated to Slovenian and appearing in Slovenian wikipedia. With a proper organization, I don't believe they can harm anybody. Considering the number of people fluent in both Urdu (the situation with Finnish is a little better, but not much) and Slovenian, I don't consider this a realistic option, though. In fact, the most likely way for Slovenian Wikipedia to ever get some potentially interesting article from the Urdu Wikipedia is that the article is translated from Urdu to English and published in the English Wikipedia. --Peterlin 08:46, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Peterlin, yes, I think we agree on many points. You are right, I have no objection in principle to mindless lists, I just want to be sure cruft doesn't adversely affect the experience of readers who really need to find some information here. Of course it occured to me that one can try to handle this by moving cruft into tailor-made "cruft categories", but my objections to that are:

1. it is all too easy for vandals to move cruft right back, in fact to move articles arbitrarily. You probably know some robovandals are doing just that; so far, this hasn't been a huge problem in these pages, but it's worrisome because even the small amount of this which has happened so far has clearly been a real headache for the admins.

1. 1. to whom would the task of this endless subdivision of mindless categories to organize all the cruft fall? Why, to those who care about not impacting the experience of serious students, namely you and I! I don't have time to spend doing that, and you probably don't either.

Unless "cruft control" can be automated (potentially dangerous, since recognizing cruft might sometimes require expert judgement), I still think it's only a matter of time before everyone sees cruft as a serious problem. Maybe participants in the Math Wiki project should set up a page to discuss formulating an "official policy". I am still a neophyte in such things, so I don't really know how policy issues are handled here.---CH (talk) 11:18, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, White-Pisanski method is listed in the table of contents of a Dover classic http://web.doverpublications.com/cgi-bin/toc.pl/0486417417. Tomo 01:43, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep This looks good. I'm changing my original delete vote. In addition, the book's authors appear well-known and have collaborated with Pisanski. --Chan-Ho 03:50, August 27, 2005 (UTC)

• lukewarm Keep. Good work, Tomo, if this is indeed P's most important contribution, the author of the original article (that wasn't you, was it?) should ahve described the result and why it is important in algebraic graph theory. Can you please do that? Otherwise someone else will come along and start another VfD on the same grounds that I did!

Hmm... just noticed that "Tomo" might be short for "Tomaz", as in "TP". I have no reason to think "Tomo" is TP, but this raises another point about mathematical biographies. The Wiki guidelines apparently do allow people to write their own biographies, so long as the article is factual/NPOV, and so long as the subject clearly meets the "notability" criterion. (As I think we've seen here, this criterion might be too imprecise, and setting the bar too low might cripple Wikipedia as more robovandals become active here, simply because the more articles exist, the harder it is to organize them, keep track of them, e.g. move them back when WoW moves them. So even if "Tomo" really were TP, my principal objection would not be to "self-promotion", but to failure to explain why TP is notable to mathematical audience which presumably includes the users most likely folk to be browsing Category:Algebraic graph theory. The current article makes no case at all that will impress we hard-nosed "show me" mathminded users, so, please, Tomo, fix up the article to explain why TP is notable. And why not write a biography of White? And improve the biography of Tutte, someone we all agree is a truly notable figure in math history? TIA---CH (talk) 11:18, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, He has made several interesting contributions to the graph theory. -- Naive cynic 15:00, 27 August 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.