Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John D. Hannah

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

The result was no consensus, defaulting to keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:42, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] John D. Hannah

Created by a banned user who was flooding wikipedia admittedly to push a bias, this article asserts no notablity and fails the The Professor Test. A handful of books in common for a professor, and some of these by a questionable publishers. Arbusto 01:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Keep Hannah appears to be a pretty well known historian of theology; his 2001 book Our Legacy: The History of Christian Doctrine ranks #205,430 on Amazon, which is pretty good for a 5 year old hardcover - perhaps because certain colleges use it as a textbook - for instance, see here, under 'TH4005'. His charts of church history are distributed by Zondervan, which is one of the top religious publishers in the US. "John D. Hannah" get 180 unique Google hits, and almost all of them are him - I wouldn't call that bad for an academic in a backwater discipline. --Brianyoumans 05:12, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Arbusto has recently nominated a number of articles on Dallas-area professors at religious schools for deletion, and many of those AFDs are failing. I think perhaps he should try to do a little more research before trying to AFD these. (See, for instance, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darrell Bock and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jim Underwood - both of whom turned out to have best-selling books.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Brianyoumans (talk • contribs).
• Comment: Actually they are all created by the same user, tied to the same school, and none of them assert notablity. I could care less if the article is kept or not. But if you vote keep, and make a comment such as you did, add to it, clean it up, and demonstrate it is worth keeping. As of now its still sloppy, ill-sourced, and of dubious notablity. Arbusto 06:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep AfD is not beauty school for articles. It's not our job to clean them up and this is not the proper venue to pursue that. They should be appropriately tagged with your concerns left on the article's talk page or with the article. John Hannah is a well known evangelical author who's work is used as text in many accrediated Bible schools. 205.157.110.11 07:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment: This "anon" user knows how to sign and use his only edits in the last day to vote for four afds- all which happened to be mind, and all that are created by Jason Gastrich (talk • contribs) who is banned. Arbusto 10:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• Neutral, not many reviews of his books on amazon, appears to be not very well known as an author. [1] Might change my vote to keep if some assertion of academic achievements can be made. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 09:34, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete generic professor, Gastroturfing. Dime-a-dozen Christian books do not look compelling to me. Guy 09:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, unlike the other 2 related AfD's, Mr. Hannah does not appear to meet WP:BIO.--Isotope23 15:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per WP:BIO. Michael 19:01, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete His best-selling book on Amazon has a SalesRank of 256,624, which is not enough to warrant inclusion. -Elmer Clark 22:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

  Comment Amazon SalesRank is a useless tool for Wikipedia purposes. It reflects recent sales activity, and can vary day to day based on when the last sale was. For academic books or books released a few years back, it is irrelevant. GRBerry 03:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete really seem like an unnotable academic. Anyone can sell books on amazon.com, notability is when brick and mortar stores carry the books. David D. (Talk) 19:36, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
• Weak Delete. But we have to be careful which academics we include and which we don't--there's a lot of profs on here with 6 books who no one would dream of deleting. But few of those teach at Dallas Theological Seminary.-Kmaguir1 08:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per his books. --badlydrawnjeff talk 10:58, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep While, as I said above, Amazon Sales Rank is a poor test for book significance, the research above seems to have found the second best seller, not the best seller, which is currently at 122,000 [2]. For a hardcover academic work, that is a high sales rank. Either it is fairly popular, or (as ssaid already above), it is a frequently used college text book. Per the proposed WP:BOOKS, that would make an article on the book worth keeping. If he has written books worth keeping an article on, we should keep the article on him. At least one of the prior comments seems to indicate that Dallas Theological Seminary is a low prominence institution. In fields like Math, English Literature, etc.. that is true, but then seminaries don't focus on non-religious subjects. In Theologoical studies, which is the relevant field, it is more prominent than places like Harvard that have abandoned their origin and relegated the religious departments to a backwater. I believe DTS should be evaluated as being in the top tier of U.S. colleges/universities when evaluating theological studies. They are "the academic center of Christian dispensationalism." The WP:BIO multiple independent review test is met; he has enough published books, each with at least one or two independent reviews, to meet the test. WP:PROF says "An academic who has published ..., a widely-used textbook, ... is likely to be notable as an author (see WP:BIO), regardless of their academic achievements." So I evaluate as passing WP:BIO (a guideline) and WP:BOOK (a proposed guideline) and WP:PROF (a proposed guideline) being irrelevant by its own language. GRBerry 13:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. He's more than the generic professor as he's published a considerable number of (admittedly rather shoddy or suspect) books. But the generic professor does less than this: he publishes his PhD dissertation and then a couple of more articles before he retires. He's also been the chairman of a department for decades, although in a seminary with no more than 1,900 students (and perhaps some/many of those not full time) this isn't the same thing as being chair at Harvard or the Sorbonne. I don't think I'd have many points of agreement with Mr. Hannah, but the aricle is 1) verifiable and verified, 2) NPOV, and 3) notable in the world of conservative evangelicals. He is NOT notable in my world of secular, ecumenical humanists, but that is not a requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia. Interlingua ^{talk email} 23:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep He is an established theologian and church historian with books that are considerably more than "dime and dozen" and published by reputable published like Zondervan, Crossways (who also publish John Piper and Hans Rookmaaker, Kregal and Moody Press (Publishers of Gleason Archer and Merrill Unger among many others). Both his Charts and Kregal histories are staples not only in church bible studies but also in many home schools and bible colleges (essentially text books). He is a prominent contributor to serious theological journals like Bibliotheca Sacra (around since the early 19th cent.) and Modern Reformation. He clearly passes WP:PROF Agne 21:47, 8 September 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.