Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luca de Alfaro

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 Delete. Maxim_{(talk) (contributions)} 17:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Luca de Alfaro

Luca de Alfaro (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Random Academic, not really notable. Only reason for listing is that he has written some software that may be adopted by Wikipedia. SimonLyall 01:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete (as nominator) - This guy doesn't really meet inclusion criteria. Writing some software that may be added to wikipedia doesn't qualify him. Other stuff he has done (See article) not notable beyond any other academic, net result not notable. Compare with say Andrew Tridgell - SimonLyall 01:31, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment We need to consider this completely divorced from the obvious attempt to use it as a biased and incomplete discussion of a very interesting and very controversial change in the WP software. As I understand it, not only are there no immediate plans to implement it in the English Wikipedia, but there are other ways to operate it than the ones discussed in the references provided. DGG (talk) 03:48, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep his implementation is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the rules and theory by which Wikipedia decisions about editors and, along with the "trusted" notion, his implementation of "reliability rating" will soon determine who gets to be in the newly-formalized oligarchy. His results are the product of 10 years of research and publishing in the area, with his involvement in Wikipedia being rather reent and, according to UCSD and his peers "headline-making".--Mightyms 03:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC) — Mightyms (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Comment User:Mightyms is the creator of the article in question and the comment above is considerably more polite than the edit summary which reads "Luca de Alfaro is not some "random" faculty unless you are an unaware idiot". I realize that politeness is not a qualification for article retention, but it never hurts. Accounting4Taste 04:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment reply By "random" you clearly mean "forgetable". Let me suggest that, given the current news "headlines" (at least that is what UCSD refers to them as) indicate that he will not be forgotten anytime soon. Why are we so eager to forget about him?--Mightyms 05:53, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. No claim of notability. Keb25 04:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment. I want to be very sure of what WP:BIO says about associate professors before I commit myself but, in the interim, I am troubled by my examination of the 13 references cited. The first three are legitimate publications and the remainder seem to be either blogs or his own university. That's in addition to the WP:COI problems inherent in what I strongly suspect is a self-written article -- university publications about the merits of their own faculty are inherently biased, I feel. I'm also troubled by the forward-looking nature of the notability asserted by the possible future implementation of the software (especially since one of the references cites problems with its implementation in the German Wikipedia) -- seems to have problems with WP:NOT#CRYSTAL. I want to research WP:BIO more thoroughly before I commit myself; that may be the deciding factor for me. I admit it is also rather bizarre to consider the potential untrustworthiness of an article about someone who has apparently created software that will allow people to test the trustworthiness of editors. Accounting4Taste 04:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. According to my reading of Wikipedia:Notability (academics), the only criterion under which this individual would be notable is #5, "known for originating an important new concept". The article goes on to say that "the originator of an idea that is similar to previously existing ideas may not meet criterion 5", and the article itself states "Some find that the software that rates individual editors for reliability is "very similar" to what Sanger implemented at Citizendium.[12]". I can't judge the quality or quantity of his publications appropriately, it not being my field, but my gut reaction is that it's somewhat scanty for an associate/postdoc. Given my reservations about WP:COI and WP:NOT#CRYSTAL noted above as comments, I suggest this should be deleted. I would be happy to revisit the notability of this subject if and when the software is implemented on any Wikipedia. Accounting4Taste 05:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- Pete.Hurd 05:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, does not appear to meet academic notability standards. As for the tone: "As if to demonstrate Godwin's Law in the style of Dr. Strangelove, these changes will first be implemented in the German Wikipedia." Who wrote this crap? Stop doing that, Wikipedia is not your blog/soapbox. --Dhartung | Talk 05:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

  Comment It is your own ego, like an infant on a mother's teat, that compels you to go an latch on to a single sentence of the article and condemn it on that basis. If you were genuinely interested in collaboration, you would just mutely go and delete the awful sentence. Instead, you use it to leverage the deletion of the entire article, having contributed zero to the knowledge-gathering and encyclopedia-building effort. You just set yourself up immediately as an uncredentialed judge and jury, ever-ready to condemn rather than contribute or collaborate. The reader is not a computer and the article is not a fragile computer program made useless by a single serious error.--Mightyms 02:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete I see no evidence of notability here, the floral prose (I see Dhartung's just commented on the most striking example) doesn't help. Pete.Hurd 05:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

  Somebody please assuage me, tell me we aren't going to start spelling "Wikipedia" as "Wikipedia®" throughout article space. Pete.Hurd 14:08, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

  Feel free to be so assuaged. There was a lively discussion about a rejected proposal in May 2006 here about doing it on the front page in just one place. Just one place. But the teen-aged minded users got all squeamish about it because they cannot face the reality about the way Mr. Wales via his Foundation directly controls (and effectively, with or without them, owns) every iota of intellectual property on this web site. You'd think we wanted to talk about precisely and in technicolor detail how their parents conceived them or something like that. Take a listen to Brad Patrick (on the updated link): he's got his head on straight and speaks honestly and uses standard legal terms rather than made-up jargon and acronyms. It really is Wikipedia®. That little symbol is beautiful to me not because of what it represents, but simply because it is the honest truth. I can assure you that it never bothers authentically mature people like Brad Patrick. Why does it bother you?--Mightyms 15:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete as per above. --Crusio 07:56, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Seems notable per wp:prof as innovating a new concept in field and applying it. article needs expansion and improvement with verifiability --Buridan 16:18, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete Clarly fails the stanbdard asserted at WP:PROF. Eusebeus 19:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
• Comment (Lenghthy comment implicitly advocating lowering the notability requirements for WP:PROF moved to appropriate talk page at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Notability (people) V Notability (pornographic actors) criteria--Mightyms 14:52, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, seems to have an ample array of published work. Stifle (talk) 16:32, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, de Alfaro has done some amazing things and his work seems very interesting to me (as a computer scientist). However, to be included in an encyclopedia (and per our guidelines), there needs to be more. There are millions of professors that have produced interesting papers, but only a few of them pass WP:PROF. Please try not too put any extra weight on his Wikipedia papers. ~a (user • talk • contribs) 20:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, professors (not to say about associate professors) are not celebrities and their sci/techno importance is judged by peers, not by newspapers or blogs. (he may be famous from newspapers, though, because of some non-professional activities, and in this case newspapers may be considered as valid refs of notability, but this is not the case here) It is a nice thing he did for wikipedia, but his trick is even not patentable. Mukadderat 23:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
• Keep - a google news search brings up a lot of mentions. - Peregrine Fisher 00:49, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

  Comments Thanks: the Google News search is more specific than just a raw Google search. I have added some of the non-blog news articles to Wikipedia:Press coverage#September. I want you to notice how the story dribbled out all through the month of September 2007 after first being covered on August 31 and that the Foundation provided no press release or feedback until Sept. 21 with a message of "no changes in how Wikipedia will be run have been committed to yet". I noticed that Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-10-01/In the news points to an article that mentions that Sept. 21 de Alfaro's work.--Mightyms 23:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Please note that Mightyms, creator of this article and a substantial contributor to this discussion, has just been blocked indefinitely due to being a sockpuppet for a blocked user. Accounting4Taste 16:44, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
• Weak delete per WP:BLP1E. —David Eppstein 17:36, 4 October 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.