Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A. F. Gotch

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 Delete. Redwolf24 03:38, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A. F. Gotch

WP not a memorial - he wrote a book with an real ISBN that in itself is not notable --Doc (?) 00:05, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, writing a non-notable book does not make you notable. Amazon sales rank is about 777,000th. -Splash 00:52, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm still not persuaded about this guy. He's a minor academic who's written a book or two, at least one of which got pasted. He's significantly less notable that your average professor, and fails WP:PROF — it's entirely run of the mill for junior, middling and senior academics to write books. This doesn't make the notable above the average in their profession, though. -Splash 19:55, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
• To be entirely fair, it should be pointed out that he actually published (at least, but probably no more than) four books (another one is an omnibus reprint of three earlier ones in one volume). One of them (Mammals: Their Latin names explained, 1979) was given a pretty devastating review by Bryan P. Glass in The Quarterly Review of Biology 1980, p. 85. He summarizes it as a "virtually useless book". Delete. Uppland 04:53, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • P.S. A tip: While searching for this Gotch, I keep noticing the name John Alfred Gotch (Alfred Gotch, J. Alfred Gotch) who appears to have been a fairly prolific historian of English architecture. Somebody should write an article about him instead. Uppland 04:53, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, we can't keep everyone who has ever written a nn book or four. the wub "?/!" 07:49, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, but I'm seeing double standards on academics here. Dead ones seem more deletable than live ones, especially if they died before google started indexing their homepages. --zippedmartin 13:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • According to the article he was "a retired teacher of physical education, anatomy and biology". He presumably had some academic education, but I see no evidence that he was actually a scientist. His books on Latin names of animals (three of the four books I could find) seem to have been rather unsystematic collections of curiosities, at least if the other ones were similar to the one I found a review for. There are certainly amateur scientists who have done important things, but Gotch does not seem to be one of them. Uppland 14:29, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Note my vote is a delete, I basically agree with you. I just can't but think if he was alive and publishing today he'd have got enough google hits and flashy looking amazon pages to be keeps across the board. --zippedmartin 18:33, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. I don't consider amateur scientists who write books that don't sell well notable.--Scimitar ^parley 14:48, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Per above. -(unsigned 14:01, 16 August 2005 by User:Dottoreso)
• Keep Why on earth would we delete an author who has published works? I could see arguing that he's not very well known, and thus links to his page should be constrained, but there's no need to delete at all. PS: I wikified, added a second book and added stub tag. -Harmil 11:09, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

'Suppose it comes down to 'notability'. I've published a book, its got a real ISBN, and it is listed on Amazon (thus verifiable), admittedly, it has sold only a few hundred copies, mainly to specialist libraries, and has been cited about twice in other works. But can I get my own article, and can my book get another? --Doc (?) 11:21, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely! Why would we not list a published author? Shouldn't Wikipedia at least have a chance of listing those people whose books are at the Library of Congress? Doc, give me the ISBN and I'll write your article myself!

The part that really kills me is that the Digimon fancruft of the week is kept, but a published author and teacher is not. Sometimes I wonder why I even contribute... -Harmil 11:25, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

That's because the Digimon fancruft is far more vocally supported than actual educational concepts.  RasputinAXP  talk * contribs 12:27, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, published author, per Harmil. Kappa 12:20, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep as per Harmil and Kappa.  RasputinAXP  talk * contribs 12:27, 19 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.