Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marion Frances Chevalier

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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 was Keep. Tikiwont (talk) 09:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Marion Frances Chevalier

Marion Frances Chevalier (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

A (former) professor at USC, lending her name as a professorship, but beyond that, not much. Jmlk17 04:17, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Would it be easier to have an article on her if she were a Pokemon instead of an academic? The Audient Void (talk) 04:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Fails to meet WP:PROF. --Evb-wiki (talk) 04:34, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete as non-notable. She does not appear in Gale Group's Biography and Genealogy Master Index and she does not appear in Marquis's Who's Who Online. Both of those sources index some very minor people. No mention of her was found in the International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance. --Bejnar (talk) 04:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
    • The named chair suggests some significance, as does a book held by major research libraries... The Audient Void (talk) 04:47, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Actually, a book held by minor teaching libraries may suggest significance, but major research libraries hold all sorts of junk of no significance.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:09, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete: This person does not meet Wikipedia:Notability (academics), as already stated above. - Rjd0060 (talk) 05:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
    • That seems like a weird guideline. Does Wikipedia really suffer from complaints that it has too much coverage on academic topics? It seems like the sort of thing that is unlikely to ever make somebody disappointed with an encyclopedia - that it just gives too much academic information. The Audient Void (talk) 06:45, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - I'm curious why, if this article was created only today, it was not given a {{notability}} template tag. To me there are colorable claims to notability and a {{notability}} tag would give notice that those claims need to be fleshed out more. This is not a facetious or clearly absurd claim. We have serious gaps in academic coverage and, unless one is an expert in the field and can assert non-notability, then it seems to me that a {{notability}} template is the better option to generate more work if it can. --Lquilter (talk) 05:34, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
    • It was so tagged. [1] But the original contributor removed it. [2] --Evb-wiki (talk) 05:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
      • It seemed the reasonable thing to do after establishing notability. The Audient Void (talk) 05:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
    • Well, this makes no sense at all. It was put to AFD, on the same day it was created, just because there was a minor edit war, or difference of opinion, on what constitutes sufficient evidence of notability? People can do what they like, but I don't think it serves the encyclopedia well to escalate a potentially notable article to AFD rather than attempting to resolve a confusion or conflict over a notability tag. --Lquilter (talk) 06:00, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
      • That's not what happened. If you check the history, you'll see that someone else came along and nominated it. --Evb-wiki (talk) 06:06, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Please note that Chevalier's major book was published in 1933, and so web resources probably aren't the most effective way to find information on her. The presentist bias here is disheartening. The Audient Void (talk) 05:47, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak keep. She seems to be best known for "A dramatic adaptation of Rabelais in the seventeenth century: Les aventures et le mariage de Panurge (1674) by Pousset de Montauban", her 1933 Ph.D. thesis from Johns Hopkins University. At the time this work seems to have been quite notable: I can find reviews in Modern Language Notes, Modern Philology, and The Modern Language Review. It's unsurprising that it would be difficult to dig up much more detailed information about someone from that time period, but I find the nominator's justification to be very shallow. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:50, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep and Comment: Don't sell your work short, David, :) Given the additional work done by David Eppstein, I believe this subject satisfies WP:N ++Arx Fortis (talk) 07:26, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep as per David Eppstein and has a chair named after her. Why all the tagging minutes after the stub was created and an AfD within one hour?? Please, some patience people. --Crusio (talk) 09:12, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Keep as per Crusio's comments above: give the article time to develop before slapping AfD tags on it. --DAJF (talk) 09:20, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - if she was notable enough to have a chair named for her, there is a high probability that she is notable enough for Wikipedia. Second - in spades - above comments on Pokemon, academic bios and presentism and shallow nominations HeartofaDog (talk) 14:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Sources have been found and of course the fact that a professorial chair has been named after her demonstrates notability. Do you really think that such an honour is handed out lightly? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:45, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
    • We have found reviews of her book, we have not found sources about her. Let us not conflate. --Bejnar (talk) 00:01, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
      • Academics are notable for their works. If we could only list people whose personal lives were notable, we would have an encyclopedia filled only with shallow celebrities. Some might say that that's already what we have. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete The publication of her PhD thesis, a translation of Pousset with notes, appears to be her only publication. If that is her only notability, then the work should get the article, not her. U.S.C. frequently establishes chairs based on money, not notability. Disclosure: I graduated from U.S.C. --Bejnar (talk) 00:11, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
  • All institutions do that to some extent, but even then, donations are not infrequently from unrelated sources "in honor of", and are rarely for purely private citizens who have no notability. At any rate, I take it as a sign of notability, generally, unless there are obvious indications to the contrary. YMMV. --Lquilter (talk) 06:58, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Keep on the basis of the notability of her work. (that a professorship was named after her is in my opinion indeed not all that much of a criterion--USC like other universities, when it gets money for chairs, names them after distigujshed figures or after the donor. In this case it is presumably not the donor--few faculty are paid enough to endow chairs in their own name for future generations, but they can have sufficient academic influence, for others to name chairs after them. One notable publication with multiple reviews is sufficient for the notability of an academic author, and the reviews cited are the third party sources showing the notability. There is not as much supporting material as the would be for someone in the internet era, and this should be taken into account. DGG (talk) 08:37, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Keep for now. Marginally fails WP:BIO at this point, but the article is only 30 hours old, and there appears to be a reasonable prospect that more substantive coverage is available somewhere for a woman who clearly made a significant contribution to her academic field. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:36, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak keep – It seems that contributors have almost exhausted their resources due to a search engine test, but this article appears to satisfy criteria #3 and #6 of the relevant notability guidelines. –thedemonhog talk • edits 01:27, 28 November 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.