Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ronald Edsforth

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. -- BD2412 ^talk 04:24, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ronald Edsforth

This was tagged by someone else for speedy deletion but saying that he is a Dartmouth professor could be taken as an assertion of importance of significance, so I'm listing it here instead. No vote. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:42, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. No assertion of notability. I'd ask the author but it's an anonymous IP with no other postings, so I doubt this one will get much counter-argument.... JDoorjam 03:04, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I did a bit of research and have added some more info. Pburka 03:16, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
• I'll say weak keep after rewrite; it looks much better now. Google hits were limited, though. Jaxl | talk 03:33, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Four books under his belt make him more notable than the average professor. -- BD2412 ^talk 03:43, August 14, 2005 (UTC)

To be fair, only four books for an academic who does any quantity of research is pretty average output. This alone shouldn't be judgement of notability, there will be thousands of similar. --zippedmartin 23:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. More notable than the average professional baseball player, and professional baseball players are all kept, regardless of notability. Uppland 05:45, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, passes the "average professional baseball player" test. Kappa 08:33, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keepseems to meet the criteria for notability. Hamster Sandwich 08:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC).
• Keep. Notable historian. Capitalistroadster 10:59, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable author. →ubεr nεmo→ ^lóquï 20:42, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Unless someone proves that people have actually read his books. --zippedmartin 23:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

If they are published there's a pretty large propability that people have read them. →ubεr nεmo→ ^lóquï 04:31, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

By no means. In fact, if the only sales are as a set text on a course he teaches at his uni, you can pretty much guarentee no one has gone cover to cover. Having said that, the amazon page for his most recent one is pretty flash, even if the sales rank is measly compared to fiction - dunno what a 'good seller' would be in the context of US academia. --zippedmartin 12:53, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

In US academia, 5,000 books sold is considered a success. 20,000 sold is considered a blockbuster, according to my professors. That's for sociology, of course, things may be different for history or other fields. Hooper_X

Interesting. Now, if only there was somewhere with the numbers... --zippedmartin 13:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-08-15 02:43
• Comment I refer voters here to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/A. F. Gotch, another academic who has published four books, the most recent of which has a near identical Amazon sales rank as Edsforth's most recent. --zippedmartin 13:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • A high Amazon sales rank is important for the notability of a work aimed at popularity, but a low sales rank is completely irrelevant for the significance of academic publications. And as I pointed out in the other discussion, Gotch was clearly not an academic in the sense Edsforth is, and his books appear to have no scientific value; three of them, with almost identical titles, were popular books on the Latin names of animals, and one of these was deemed "virtually useless" by a reviewer in an academic journal. Uppland 15:14, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

There is currently no assertion of critical importance of Edsforth's work in his article, if there were I agree that sales would be far less relevant. I suggest that without some assesment of an academic's work, there's no reason they should be given an easier ride on the sales front than a writer of popular fiction - university press is only one step from vanity press. You did a good job on digging up a review of Gotch's book, presumably some journal somewhere that will say Class Conflict and Cultural Consensus: The Making of a Mass Consumer Society in Flint, Michigan is notable despite miserable sales compared to Roger & Me or other popularist work. --zippedmartin 18:25, 16 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.