Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/R G C Levens

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. Cbrown1023 01:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] R G C Levens

R G C Levens (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

Speedy deletion for lack of assertion of notability was overturned, so Mr. Levens gets a full run at AfD now. Procedural listing, I have no opinion. ~ trialsanderrors 00:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep for now to allow a reasonable time for expansion and establishment of notability. There's a big difference between a clearly non-notable person and a potentially notable one. Newyorkbrad 00:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Notable published author. The listings for the books do not include ISBN because they were first published before the introduction of the ISBN. --TruthbringerToronto (Talk | contribs) 00:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Not that ISBNs are 100% reliable proof of a book's existence anyway, but at least one of the books mentioned does have a ISBN[1][ Bwithh 05:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. If kept, maybe it should be moved, either to his full name or to R. G. C. Levens. —EdGl 01:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

  Spaced initials without periods is per typical British usage, as opposed to American English which would include the periods. I have located nothing in WP:MOS speaking to this issue, though there appears to have been a tentative proposal to include the periods and most articles do. In notable cases both conventions are supported, e.g. J R R Tolkien redirects to J. R. R. Tolkien. Newyorkbrad 02:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Stubbiness is not evidence of non-notability. If all past article stubs had been deleted on the basis that they didn't yet assert notability, Wikipedia would have almost no content today. dryguy 04:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Failure of WP:PROF and failure to assert substantive encyclopedic notability (even stubs should do this). The only insubstantive attempt made is the claim that he edited a classroom version of a speech or speeches by Cicero. A search of the Oxford library catalog turns up only the two books mentioned in the article plus a brief Greek translation of a Shakespeare scene he did as a student to win a student prize. Google Books (Oxford University Library is one of the 9 library partners of this project) returns 37 hits but no books by him. Of the 37 hits (some of them are inaccessible), I can only find one which is more than a passing mention or footnote[2] (no hits for his full name) Bwithh 05:59, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. So many people are involved in writing textbooks it isn't funny, and it definitely doesn't make them notable. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 06:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete fails WP:PROFC.lettinga 06:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete - fails WP:PROF as well as BIO... SkierRMH,06:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Vicarious 07:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per SkierRMH Akihabara 14:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Since there is no coverage of subject by reliable, third-party sources, the contents of this article cannot be properly verified. -- Satori Son 22:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I think some of the earlier contributors have been labouring under a misapprehension. Levens certainly didn't write textbooks. Editing a classical text is a substantially more complex and academic procedure, involving consideration of sources and careful analysis of documents over several years. That the edited text was then widely used in schools is a red herring: editions of classical texts are typically used by scholars at all levels of the discipline, and his work in this area was not like that of a "textbook hack". In addition to his work as an editor, it appears from a cursory google that Levens also researched in classical studies, and published papers in such academic journals as "Greece and Rome" and "The Classical Quarterly". Because almost all of this work was paper-based, it's difficult for us to track it down quickly: google-hits are not a good guide to notability in this case. Note that Levens was a fellow of Merton College ( for many years perhaps the most academically prestigious college at Oxford University - see the Norrington Table ): this, on its own, is a pretty good indicator of academic distinction. I've adjusted the article to reflect these points. As it stands, the article is too brief, but it's not clear to me that deleting it is the way to go; rather, we should keep and expand as time and information permit. One final thing: to say that Levens was a Mods tutor is to misunderstand the way classics are taught at Oxford, so I've deleted that as misleading. Roughly speaking, at the time that Levens was working at Oxford, his teaching load would have been largely in Literae Humaniores: Mods would have been concerned with the literature of ancient Greece and Rome, and Greats with the related history, philosophy, historiography and related disciplines. Levens would have taught whilst researching: the Oxford system is built on the principle of putting smart students in the company of leading researchers, and hoping the genius will transfer from one generation to the next ! I hope all this is helpful. WMMartin 14:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I should also add that I think he passes WP:PROF. As noted above, editing a widely-used edition of a major text pretty much guarantees that he passes "Criterion 1", and this is before we get to the academic papers. WMMartin 14:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The Google Books project includes the digital archiving of old book texts from Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, New York Public Library, and several other major libraries[3]. I ran a search through it and specifically looked for references to his work mentioned in other books - not simply books that he wrote. I also ran a search through the Oxford University library catalog, which even threw up a prize essay he wrote as a student. So I didn't base my conclusion on a cursory use of normal google. If he was a prolific scholarly paper writer and that hasn't been shown by searches so far, that still needs to be verified (WP:V) and not simply assumed. btw, I graduated from an old, venerable college in the Oxbridge system too - but I don't see why simply being a teacher at a place like this is a supporting reason for justifying a encyclopedic article. Bwithh 15:34, 20 December 2006 (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.