Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roel Sterckx

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 No consensus, which defaults to Keep. Please note also the WP:WAX argument in reverse (rare indeed!). If someone is more notable or accomplished than Mr. Sterckx, we should have an article on him or her perhaps as well? Keeper | 76 | Disclaimer 20:58, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Roel Sterckx

Roel Sterckx (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This page was already nominated for deletion and accordingly deleted, but the original author simply came back and recreated it. The subject is a minor academic, not of encyclopaedic notabilityBaldeggboy (talk) 21:11, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• Keep, full Professor at Cambridge is notable (British usage), also a Fellow and president of an international scholarly organization. Recognized scholar[1]. I'll leave it somebody else to judge his publications, this seems sufficient for me. --Dhartung | Talk 23:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

• Keep The position makes him presumably one of the top 3 or 4 scholars of Chinese in the UK. 3 =SOAS, 4, for whichever one I may not know about. (Professor at Cambridge=head of department, in the US. ) There's at least 2 more books . I added them, and the articles. Publications in English, French, German and Chinese. . There seem to be numerous reviews of one key book of his--I added the complete list ofthem to the web page. Author of one really impotant book, plus a good deal else. DGG (talk) 01:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

• Delete Professorship at Cambridge does not of itself amount to notability. DGG - professor at Cambridge is not necessarily head of department; in this case Professor van de Ven is senior. Some Professorships are essentially administrative roles seen as distracting from academic work. I don't know which, if either, is nominally head of department (though as the department is the Department of East Asian Studies it may be Prof Bowring or Prof Kornicki - there are at least five professors in the department, perhaps more.) I don't know how you work out that he's one of the top 3 or 4 UK scholars, or what you mean by that (erudition? experience?) - are you just speculating? At Cambridge alone I would rank van de Ven, Yuan, Daruvala, McDermott plus a host of nominally retired but still active people like Prof McMullen higher than Sterckx in pretty much every way. Most of them don't have or need a Wikipedia page. Then you have scholars at Oxford, SOAS, Durham, Edinburgh, there may be people at Leeds and Sheffield too. And neither does writing a few books and articles of itself amount to notability. A minor academic with administrative responsibilities - there are hundreds of Cambridge professors with no Wikipedia entry.JaneGrey (talk) 12:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. The department web site shows that there are two full time professors in the department, the other one of which is van de Ven who is Professor of Modern Chinese History rather than of Chinese. You may rank Yuan, Daruvala, and McDermott higher than Sterckx in pretty much every way, but the faculty doesn't - it hasn't given them professorships. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:15, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

• CommentOkay, let's get this straight. I was responding to the comment above which suggested that a professor at Cambridge is necessarily a head of department. This is not the case. In this case, as I said, the department is the Dept of East Asian Studies. The page linked to above lists only some of the staff of this department, as you might guess from its URL. The department currently has four professors and one Prof Emeritus. As for the difference in title; professorial titles are generally not duplicated. It does not follow that if there is a Professor of Something there is also a Department of Something of which he/she is the head. My point was simply that the argument presented above that x is Professor of Chinese; therefore x is head of a supposed Department of Chinese; therefore x is the most erudite, learned scholar of Chinese is a false argument. Wikipedia is not simply a listing of people who have achieved a certain professional rank or title; entry in Wikipedia requires notability. Above, I tried to make the point that professional rank does not correlate exactly to academic distinction. Neither does it correlate to notability. It seems to me that decisions about inclusion in Wikipedia should be based on facts rather than speculation, and therefore I attempted to clarify the true position.JaneGrey (talk) 16:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. Are you seriously suggesting that professorships at Cambridge are awarded based on administrative ability rather than academic distinction? The fact is that Sterckx has been recognised for his work by one of the world's top universities with a professorship (and this is a proper professorship, not an over-inflated title as given by American universities); the speculation is that others who have not been recognised in this way are in some way more more academically distinguished than he is. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete. Sterckx is an interesting young academic but not yet of encyclopedic notability. There are hundreds of others in Cambridge alone of equal or greater notability; there must be tens of thousands worldwide. Twenty years from now perhaps he will merit inclusion. Note to Comment above:There are four full time Professors and one Professor Emeritus in the Department of East Asian Studies, of these Prof Sterckx is the youngest and most recently appointed. DGG above wrote "presumably one of the top 3 or 4 scholars of Chinese in the UK" - this is a misapprehension; Professorship does not necessarily imply that one is a 'top scholar' but that one is willing to take on administrative duties in return for career advancement. It's my understanding, if we have to go into the details, that when Prof McMullen reached the retirement age and had to give up the full-time professorship (end of academic year 2004-5) then-Dr van de Ven was appointed to take on his duties in the then-Chinese Department. With the amalgamation of Chinese and Japanese into one Department, the title 'Professor of Chinese' no longer carries the implication of Head of Department but may imply a certain administrative burden. I'm not up to speed on all the internal politics, nor do I know the exact arrangemnts for sharing of duties but I can assure you that the idea that Sterckx by virtue of his title alone is somehow an exceptional scholar who merits inclusion in an encyclopedia is a misapprehension. I won't attempt a ranking of scholars as I don't understand how this can be done, but I think it's fair to say that, say Joseph Needham, James Legge, Thomas Francis Wade certainly merit inclusion, Jonathan Spence, Michael Loewe and Mark Edward Lewis may merit it and in some cases have it, but to include every successful young academic is to go beyond the purpose of this encyclopedia.JulieRudiani (talk) 09:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. There may well be hundreds of professors at Cambridge who are notable, and tens of thousands worldwide. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, so we can have articles about them all. I also need to repeat my reply to JaneGrey: Cambridge awards professorships based on academic distinction, not admistrative ability. They have plenty of non-academic admistrators to take care of that work. A Cambridge professorship clearly satifies criterion 6 of WP:PROF. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of academic-related deletion discussions. —Lquilter (talk) 23:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. Not at all my subject, so hard to judge his publication record, but Professor at a major UK university, elected fellow of national academic society, Secretary-General of European society, and textbook receiving widespread critical notice appears adequate to meet WP:PROF. Espresso Addict (talk) 11:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. Minor academic. There are dozens of more notable people without pages. This is an Encyclopedia, not an an Omnipedia. Worrying that the page was apparently already deleted once and simply reinstated by the author. Also noticeable that all the keep votes seem to come from people who admit or demonstrate that they don't really know about this subject.131.111.164.246 (talk) 16:45, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. Clearly an ambitious young man, willing to do what it takes to get noticed, but as was said above, this is not an omnipedia.Quelcrime (talk) 17:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per my comments above. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per Expresso Addict. Dsp13 (talk) 02:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - Being a "professor", in the UK sense of the word, in a top-rated department (RAE 5^* rating) at the top-rated UK university is strong evidence of high notability. - Neparis (talk) 03:19, 3 February 2008 (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.