Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Karl Svozil

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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 of the debate was no consensus. Default to keep. However, the suggestion to userfy is a good one, so I am moving this article to Karl's userpage. → Ξxtreme Unction {yakłblah} 00:55, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Karl Svozil

Vanity, nn. Created by User:Karlsvozil. Martg76 11:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Comment: This is a verifiable article on an academic; whether he is more notable than the average per the "professor test" I wouldn't like to say. Article is in pressing need of cleanup, though. - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 12:56, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Additional data: Google scholar finds 268 hits for this name, which is quite low. About 1000 for Simon Wessely, who is quite obscure outside his field. Still undecided - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] (W) AfD? 13:02, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Interesting experience with the "moderation" procedure: Martg76 just tries to purge an officially accredited Austrian university the Sigmund Freud University out of Wiki existence, and now he tries to purge a physics professor of the Vienna University of Technology out of Wiki as well.

May I kindly ask you then when a person is notable enough to stay in Wiki? Are there generally accepted rules?

One indication may be given above: “whether he is more notable than the average per the "professor test" I wouldn't like to say”. What does this mean? Although my publication list http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/ includes more than 100 articles in scientific journals, as well as two monographies, I might not be “notable enough”.

Or is it the Google science scores?

With regards to Google science: there seems to be an interesting methodological problem coming up here: Just zis  Guy, you know? reports 268 entries after obviously searching for “Karl Svozil”; i.e., http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=Karl+Svozil+


But a search for an abbreviation of “Karl”, namely “K. Svozil” http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=K.+Svozil+&hl=en&lr= reproduces 745 entries

One might consider the following articles written in well-known journals about my work recently: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/dn7535 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4097258.stm http://www.nzz.ch/2005/07/06/ft/articleCXN7B.html


This is an interesting example of (I believe totally benign and unintentionally) how to downgrade a score within the same database; and an interesting example of scoring in general --- see my article on related subjects: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0208046


In summary: I would be very interested in criteria as to when an academic is “notable enough”. Thank you for clarification.

I would also be most thankful for clarifications as to why this “Article is in pressing need of cleanup.” Thank you for this as well.

Karlsvozil

  • Comment; It is quite common to discuss deletion of articles created by their subject, so I do not think that the nominator did anything particularly strange in this case. In particular, it is always considered a bad idea to write an article about oneself (WP:VAIN). It is also true that we have some articles written by their subject, such as Carl Hewitt.
    Regarding this particular entry, I think that the main issue is not the number of hits, but the number of citations to articles. The first two results of Google scholar [1] (books) get 107 and 38 citations; the first article gets 31, the second 27 and so on. Now, if we wanted to follow what my friend Uncle G once proposed (which would be ideally the best thing to do), we should read all papers citing Karl Svozil's papers and see what the other authors say about the cited article. Just we do not have enough time for that. On one point Karl is wrong: searching

for K Svozil without quotes returns a number of articles written by other authors (this search matches articles containing K far from Svozil: compare searching for "K Svozil") Paolo Liberatore (Talk) 19:38, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep I'm assuming the publication list on his web site is correct. If not, Technische Universität Wien, would be somewhat negligent. Dlyons493 Talk 22:34, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Thank you Paolo, for this clarification. Let me say one or two things about self-publishing (which is now standard practice in physic e-print archies such as http://arxiv.org ): if you try to avoid self-publication officially, you get inofficial self-postings. The most natural thing is to self-post from other identities (remember the scandal at Amazon about fake reader comments written by the authors?); or to ask some friends to post a given text. I could have done this. I could also ask some of my international friends to post for me in my favor, but I refrain from doing this; mostly for pure lazyness and curiosity. I could even approach some of my students who work for the wiki community here an Austria.

To be frank, the reason why I decided to put up this page is because I wanted to create an entry on endophysics (which I suppose will get deleted now by Martg76 as well ;-) because I have been invited to give a talk in Tübingen and will be able to speak about this entry with Otto Rössler there. Of course, you or Martg76 might decide that endophysics is something for quacks, and then all this is in vain, from both perspectives. But yesterday I thought that I got so much already from wikipedia, and I should give something back. Today I have second thoughts.

The real problem in my opinion are guys like the moderator Martg76 who hides in anonymity (he/she has not even an email entry!). He/she did not contact me in the SFU case but rather decided to immediately purge the entry out of existence for reasons of "copyright", (substituting my entire entry incl. logo etc by a single line), which are obviously incorrect. With such practices, I am afraid, Wikipedia will not prosper in the way it should. Still, a very interesting experience!

And as to the "correctness of the publication list on my website": you would be astonished about the harsh reaction of the scientific community on fraud. I might not survive such a scandal professionally, and nobody I ever knew personally (and I am in this business for quite some time now) did such things!

Let me ask the wiki community one thing: I obviously seem to be interested and reaching out. I am member of a scientific communitiy. Why not take a chance and see how I can be made to practical use for wikipedia, instead of attempting to fight me off?

Karlsvozil 22:57, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep and tag for cleanup. Published physics professor is noteable; Google has a built in bias similar to WP, and physics publications don't get passed around on websites nearly as much as AYBABTU or dancing rodents. Google is not an Oracle. KillerChihuahua 00:44, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
books.google.com and www.a9.com with "books" checked as the search have much less of that bias, by the way. I was going to post some results of those searches but it's just all too borderline. Karl Svozil returns more hits than the first three professors listed alphabetically in the current roster of University of Wisconsin Department of Zoology, but fewer than the major professor I had when I was there. My best guess is that a case can be made for his being somewhat more notable than the average professor. A search on the surname "svozil" in a database called the Proquest Research Library turns up exactly one hit: "Short notices of books -- Randomness and Undecidability in Physics by Karl Svozil" in Endeavour. Oxford: Sep 1995. Vol.19, Iss. 3; pg. 137. Not overwhelmingly impressive for a database which "indexes more than 2,000 periodicals and provides the full text of nearly 1,000 of them. It has a mix of general interest and academic journals that cover the arts, business, education, health, humanities, psychology, sciences and the social sciences. It contains periodicals covering multicultural and women's issues and international affairs." Dpbsmith (talk) 15:32, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: Karl, I think you are misunderstanding what is going on here. I hope you don't feel that I'm on a personal crusade against you, and I hope you are not insinuating that my nominatins were made in bad faith.
    • First, I am not a moderator, I am simply the nominator in this two AfDs. Like most Wikipedians, I do not give an email address on my userpage, but you could have left a message at my talk page which I check regularly.
    • Second, I originally nominated Sigmund Freud University Vienna because I thought (and still think) that this educational institution is not sufficiently notable for inclusion in Wikipedia, given that it has no track record at all except for the accreditation. (I hope not every single PädAK or SozAK is going to get a page now.) But if consensus is going the other way, so be it. I only later discovered that the text on that page was a blatent copy & paste from the SFU website. You are surely aware of copyright law, to which Wikipedia must adhere like everyone else. Hence, I tagged it as a copyright violation, which is why the page was speedily deleted by an admin, not be me (I can't do that since I'm not an admin). I have no objection to the current SFU page if it survives AfD. You are as free as anyone else to expand it, and I would encourage you to do so.
    • Third, concerning this nomination, there is consensus on Wikipedia that not every academic should have an encyclopedia entry here. Personally, I don't think that every Austrian ao.Prof. is encyclopedia material, and there are many in my own field who are very far away from it. If you have made outstanding, unique contributions to physics, then you absolutely should have an entry, but the page currently on review here does not describe anything like that. If a page was created by its subject, this is usually an indication to the contrary, without any prejudice to your case.
    • Fourth, I find no reason why endophysics (which I know nothing about) should be deleted. The page might do with some cleanup (for comprehensibility). Keep in mind that pages here should be understandable to the general public. It is certainly to the benefit of Wikipedia if you use your time to create and expand pages on topics you are an expert it. I hope that these AfDs (which are a normal Wikipedia quality control procedure) do not discourage you from editing. This was certainly not my intention. Best, Martg76 09:28, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Response The first and fourth point I understand; they are organizational. Thank you for the clarifications.
    • In the second point, you state that Wikipedia should be *more stringent* than the official accreditation council set up by the Austrian government in granting university status; in particular listing as university. I disagree with you in this respect.
    • Your third point stating that “I don't think that every Austrian ao.Prof. is encyclopedia material, and there are many in my own field who are very far away from it” is an interesting judgment from your side. In this respect you seem to agree with the present government, in particular concerning the addum "a.o." as compared to "o." or just the recent "private nothing". Here, the fine tuning of the Austrian university with all its subtle indirectnesses can be studied anecdotally ;-))
    • May I give a hint which I also tell my PhD students and younger colleagues when they start getting their first requests for peer review from scientific journals? First think, then recommend rejection ;-) This may sound a little bit arrogant from my side, but it helps others to create new science rather than frustratingly cope with quasi-objective opinions with very little substance. --Karlsvozil 11:10, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Two things:
    • Let me clarify that I do not believe that every o.Prof. should be included here as well, especially given how the appointment process sometimes works.
    • Your (slightly offensive) second hint is absolutely out of place here. As it stands, the page Karl Svozil still does not explain how Mr. Svozil is of encyclopdic interest. It's just a resumee with a list of research interests. Martg76 13:29, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: what's the story with this "oProf", "aoProf", etc? I don't know about the others, but I'm not following the discussion much.
    Martg76 gave a good suggestion about the Karl Svozil article: summarize what you have actually done, rather than your interests. Regarding the endophysics article, it may be also a good idea to add some references (possibly with some link to articles that are available on-line).
    Paolo Liberatore (Talk) 14:08, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Weak keep. Looking at a few of the websites which turned up in a Google search and the fact that his own article claims he has written three books, it seems he passes the "professor" test under WP:BIO but the article certainly needs work and it would be helpful if more notability could be stated in the article. -- DS1953 05:23, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • suggestion while passes the professor test. The author wasn't aware of attitudes/precedents against autobiography and made the contribution in good faith. The appropriate response is probably for the author userfy the entry and the rest of us to hope that AfD hasn't totally turned the author off further contributions in his area of expertise. Pete.Hurd 20:24, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Userfy as suggested by Pete.Hurd, and encourage subject to write encyclopedic articles about topics in his field. MCB 23:53, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Support for Userfy per Pete.Hurd. Paolo Liberatore (Talk) 21:39, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Userfication is fine with me (the nominator). Martg76 10:24, 26 November 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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.