Talk:Paul Sally

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This article was nominated for deletion on 16/3/2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Removed Quote 2 Most difficult class 3 notability 4 Assorted Nitpicks 5 Citations needed

[edit] Removed Quote

The quote, "Now that I'm going to have a second prosthetic leg, I could be seven feet tall if I wanted to be." was in fact spoken by Sally when he was going to get his second prosthetic leg-- the joke was told to a significant audience of students. It is verifiable with Dr. Sally himself who will no doubt verify it. Don't revert it just because it offends you, Sally said it himself, and that's why he's worth having a "quotes" section for. 10lbs of potatoes

We can't use Sally himself as a source though. It goes against WP:Verifiability. That's the trouble with the quotes and some of the other information. --C S (Talk) 09:49, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Most difficult class

This is, of course, just pure POV, not verifiable nor as universally agreed to as the article's editors think. I, for one, have never heard of this class before. --C S (Talk) 03:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

nevermind, have at it. 10lbs of potatoes

[edit] notability

Also, the page is pretty cool and funny, but editors should work on adding notable accomplishments by Sally. As it stands, it's a collection of anecdotes. I'm not going to offer it up for AFD, but don't be surprised if somebody does eventually as a result of the current contents. --C S (Talk) 03:57, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

It authomatically passes the College Professor test, as the subject of the article is in fact a college professor --SpaceMoose 08:00, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

First off, I believe you're referring to the "professor test" given on Wikipedia:Notability (people). However that test says that the professor must be above "average". Secondly, the professor test is only a proposal and many people don't agree with it. Passing the "college professor test" definitely does not mean it will pass AFD, and in fact, unless something especially noteworthy is established about the subject, being even an above average college professor may not stop a deletion. It's happened many a time, and I'd hate to see it happen if Sally was noteworthy. But the state of the page hardly inspires confidence.

I'd suggest at least establishing that Sally is above "average", i.e. passes the test you propose, by putting down notable accomplishments as I suggested above. Then hopefully his accomplishments will make clear that he is far enough above average so as to not have his article deleted. --C S (Talk) 09:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Head of undergraduate instruction in the math department at the University of Chicago...I think that's safely above average. An accomplishments section would be nice though. I'm removing the citations needed tags on the quotes because clearly no citations are going to be produced and it's excessive. If you'd like to delete the quotes section, feel free to debate with the other editors. There is no reason to tag every statement with {{Fact}}. 10lbs of potatoes

I'm not sure being head of undergraduate education at Chicago is really enough to please a lot of people, but the time for that debate is not now anyway. Now that I'm pretty convinced from your remarks that there are no citations to be produced, I'm removing the quotes per WP:Verifiability. There's nothing to be debated, unfortunately; no citations = no quotes. Policy is very clear on this. I'm going to add the tag back though to the anecdote as I think it may be mentioned at least in some student publication. --C S (Talk) 16:16, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I dug up some info on his accomplishments and added them to the article. I think the article is looking much better now. --C S (Talk) 17:45, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, good job. I liked the quotes, but you're right. 10lbs of potatoes

[edit] Assorted Nitpicks

Honors Analysis is not strictly a "second-year class." I'm in the class right now and most of the students are first-years.

Also, what citation could one give for the bit about the graphic he uses in place of the Halmos box? I have a draft of a couple of the chapters sitting in my room right now. Should I scan them and post the image somewhere?

1)Per the "second year" thing; thanks for clearing that up. I wrote that based on what was written in the Amoco award article:

When Sally is teaching undergraduates, he has one course that is a particular favorite, an honors course in analysis for talented second-year students and what he calls "pyrotechnic" first-year students.

What would probably be best is say something like "honors analysis course for talented freshmen and sophomores". I'll make that change.

2) For the "Sally box", I'm curious: is it going to appear in the published version? If so, I don't really see a problem with just citing the book. If it's just a joke for the manuscript version, I would guess verifiability becomes a bigger concern. People generally frown upon doing things like what you suggest, but it would certainly allay my concerns about that factoid and I suspect even those that frown on it would not object too strongly. --C S (Talk) 22:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'll ask him about the "Sally box" when I go to his class in about four hours. And I didn't know he called us "pyrotechnic." I'm honored.

Edit: Nevermind, I never got a chance to ask him. Oh well.

Concerning the "Sally box": I didn't know that he was currently using it for anything. However, in case you find that it's in use, you can find the original image on my former home page: [[1]]. The idea was mine, the drawing is by John Boller, and the digitization was by Jon Trowbridge. The first two of us were part of the Séminaire Paul Sally, which was devoted to reading and editing one of the many classic but unpublished papers in our field. Not only is the paper still unpublished (except via the web), but the web version has had the Sally box removed, and so cannot serve as a citation. 130.101.153.52 07:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)Jeff A.

[edit] Citations needed

As has been contemplated by others already, I have nominated this article for deletion. My motivation is partly to determine where we're currently drawing the line of professorial notability, but even more so to drum up some reliable sources for some of the anecdotal information in this article. More solid sources directly translate to notability support. That's the carrot; here's the stick. If this article survives its AfD, I plan to delete any material that isn't backed up by a reliable source. This is perfectly in keeping with Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. My goal is not to trim the article; it's to get people who know the subject to ensure their statements are backed up by published information. Thank you for your assistance. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:26, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[Comment copied over to AFD page; please include AFD relevant responses to this comment there]

I think if you look at the discussion on the talk page of the article so far, you will see that I am among the foremost of critics of the article that believe things should be verified and notability established and so forth. But I can't agree with your motivation for nominating this article for AFD. AFDs should be kept distinct from content disputes. If you dispute some assertion, AFD is not supposed to be a battleground for verifying some fact. Not to mention that the disputed facts are not what I would regard as essential to a claim of notability. The article claims he is a widely recognized math educator. This has nothing to do, for example, with whether he was the math consultant for the movie "Proof" or whether some anecdote about him is correct. It has plenty to do with the achievements and awards noted. In fact, my research into this has convinced me he is more than notable enough and not anywhere near the "gray" area that you would need to see where to draw the line. In addition, I suspect his research may be quite significant also, but I have difficulty determining this due to my lack of expertise, which is why I have prodded others on this talk page to supply the info. --C S (Talk) 07:21, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[Responses also copied from now-closed AfD; further discussion should continue here]

I apologize for making this nomination sound like it was primarily a content dispute by listing that reason first of the three that I gave, but as I said above, I had two others that led me to make this a general AfD instead of my usual talk page discussions. The possibility of an AfD had been raised twice already on the article's talk page, so I was hardly out of line to make it official. Frankly, I suspected it would pass, and the above votes seem to be confirming this. However, I saw no point in raising the content issue if the article was going to be deleted, so I waited until the consensus was strongly leaning toward "keep" to post the specific content argument on the talk page. Finally, Wikiquote, which rarely has more than 2 or 3 participants in its AfDs (still VfDs there), benefits greatly from Wikipedian input on debatable articles that have been nominated in both projects. I felt that this nomination would clear up doubts already expressed here, help Wikiquote in its efforts, and perhaps incidentally resolve the content issue, one way or another. I believe this was an efficient multiple use of this forum. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:28, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Jeff, for explaining the reasons more fully. I agree this has been a beneficial discussion. --C S (Talk) 20:12, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I think we've now put the question of Professor Sally's notability to rest. But the lack of citations remains. I hate to be an ogre about this, especially since Sally sounds like a fascinating person, but we need reliable sources for a number of reasons, including (as applies here) the need to avoid having an encyclopedia article degenerate into a collection of unverifiable reminiscences about a popular educator. The Proof claim clearly should be verifiable, so it may have a chance. The other two anecdotes seem likely to go. Can we even find a University of Chicago publication (newsletter, student paper, yearbook) that mentioned any of these three statements? If the school itself didn't find these events print-worthy, it's hard to justify them here. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:41, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I want to thank Rdsmith4 for rising to the challenge by adding a citation for the Scavenger Hunt anecdote! I'm sure most people don't worry about such things, but whenever we can source such information, it incrementally adds to the respectability of Wikipedia, even more than the material itself does. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

About the need of a citation for the "Proof" claim, as User:Monicasdude pointed out, there is a Maroon article [2] that mentions Paul Sally is involved in the film. Also, his name also appears in the "thanks to" section of the films credits. This doesn't prove that he was an academic consultant, but it clearly shows he did something related to the production of the film. I don't know if we can find any sources that have more specific information.Flutefreek 00:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

For those who didn't participate in the AfD, Flutefreek is no doubt referring to Monicasdude's posting there:

• Strong Keep as above. Professional awards, involved in influential educational project outside standard teaching role, scores of Google Scholar hits. May not be as notable as Bulbasaur, Ewa Sonnet, or Blue Beetle to some, but hardly an individual whose notability should be denied. And it took me about 4 seconds to verify that he was involved in the film mentioned [3], which really makes me wonder, half seriously, if somebody got a bad grade in math class. Monicasdude 21:11, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I take this last comment to be a semi-jest about the possibility of the nominator (me) having had a bad experience in a Sally class. I'd never heard of Sally before running across him on Wikiquote, and I've never even been to the University of Chicago, let alone attended it, but I am suitably chastised (and most embarrassed) for having missed the cited link in the AfD discussion. The specific quote from the Maroon article that mentions Sally's role is:

The math department is expected to be well represented in the picture, as professor Paul Sally helped recruit 50 or so department members and graduate students to be in the film.

I think we should be able to reword this article's text to reflect this sourced evidence. It also helps to have the film credits confirm some role. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I wish Rdsmith4, who added the statement in question when he created the article, could explain where he got the information about Sally being a consultant. That way we could be more certain of Sally's role in consultation, what he did, what his official position was, etc.

Given the thanks in the credits and the Maroon article, it may be best just to mention he was a consultant and helped "recruit...", etc. I don't think there's a real pressing need to over-document this. --C S (Talk) 13:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)