Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alois Purgathofer

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 keep. Majorly (hot!) 20:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alois Purgathofer

Alois Purgathofer (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Subject fails WP:BIO and WP:A, scoring exactly 9 non-wiki ghits. Conflict of interest concerns. Wikipedia is not a memorial. Contested prod. MER-C 12:03, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Speedy delete Speedy delete. Close AfD per nom and let CSD process take over. Thewinchester ^(talk) 12:57, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment There appears to be a claim of notability. I'm going to do some research on the subject but I don't see what the rush to close the AfD is. I don't think it's a speedy candidate at all, but it's possible to have a speedy and AfD open at the same time; the closing admin will handle it if it gets speedied. Leebo ^T/C 13:05, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Has a fair number of publications (unless there's another "A. Purgathofer" working in astronomy), but I'm afraid I'm not qualified to assess whether they qualify him under WP:PROF. Would appreciate comment from someone better-versed in the field. Certainly not a speedy candidate, though. JavaTenor 18:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. His papers Radial velocities of planetary nebulae (third of four authors, 148 cites in GS) and UBV sequences in selected star fields (solo author, 48 cites in GS) would seem to satisfy WP:PROF #3 "An academic work may be significant or well known if ... it is widely cited by other authors in the academic literature". ISI Web of Knowledge doesn't list the UBV paper but otherwise looks very similar (an identical 148 cite count for the radial velocity paper, not high for any other paper). The number of publications in Web of Knowledge (12) is not high but Google scholar lists a more respectable 41. —David Eppstein 21:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  • PS. Perhaps these two papers should be emphasized in the article, more than his work on 51 Nemausa. I started to add the cite for Purgathofer's paper to the Nemausa article, but then I ran a Google scholar search on Nemausa and could find no reason why Purgathofer's work on it could be said to stand out among the 112 papers it found. On the other hamd, the two papers mentioned above are much more widely cited. —David Eppstein 05:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- Pete.Hurd 20:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Namesake of both an asteroid and the second-largest private observatory in Europe (from the German article on the observatory) seems enough for notability to me, regardless of the unsourced nature of the other claims for notability in the article. And those claims for notability are clearly there, in the phrasing "well known and respected Austrian astronomer" and "knowledge of astronomical instruments was legendary" — they need better sourcing but their presence makes any attempt to use the speedy deletion process for this article inappropriate. —David Eppstein 21:29, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
• Strong Keep Speedy would have been in direct contradiction to the letter and the purpose of the policy, for a claim to N is unmistakably asserted and nobody could have though this uncontroversial. As others have already show above , notability is obvious from the publications as well as the other information. . (It would seem that putting in a speedy during the course of an AfD discussion is like the Queen of hearts, conviction first and trial afterwards, but it seems to be technically permitted here. I can't see why.) DGG 04:30, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. I am the original author of this article. Maybe I misunderstand Wikipedia, and I certainly do not insist in keeping this article. I found the line <<5341 Purgathofer 6040 P-L Alois Purgathofer, Austrian astronomer*>> with an empty link to the name of my father under the listing of asteroids on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meanings_of_asteroid_names_%285001-5500%29 and clicking on it invited me to create a new article describing the name in more detail. Actually, as a user I would wish to have a link to every asteroid name explaining the background of that name. So I tried to fill a gap, not promote anyone or anything. During the next days, I also wanted to create a new short article on the Purgathofer observatory, so that there are several cross links explaining the interconnections. From the scientific importance, Alois Purgathofer was one of several hundreds of equally important people during his period of life, no Nobel Prize winner or anything similar, but he was world-wide well known and respected in the community. He died before the Web had any significant importance and so the number of Google-hits is very low (as opposed to example the number of Google-hits for my brother and me – although we are far not so important :-) Summing up, I believe that keeping this article is justified.

—Werner Purgathofer 08:00, 11 April 2007 (CET)

• Comment Others have found your father to be notable, Purgathofer, but please note that many users feel strongly that conflicts of interest should be avoided when editing articles. I would recommend not editing anymore articles related to your father, and allow other editors to do it. Leebo ^T/C 11:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

• Keep but refer to the astronomy Wikiproject for urgent and substantial cleanup. COI is a standard newbie error, fogivable in the son of a clearly-notable father, but still a pressing problem for neutrality. Guy (Help!) 15:46, 15 April 2007 (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.