Talk:William Rathje

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
	This article is supported by the Science and academia work group.

An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

	Archaeology Portal This article is part of WikiProject Archaeology, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to archaeology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

---

Not only is this a stub, I wonder if in fact this person is quite important enough to have their own wikipedia article. it sounds like something I could write about myself or my father, without any real consequence to humankind. Perhaps if he'd at least published a book (even a textbook) or was the head of several organizations? I'm not trying to put William Rathje down in any way, but there's a threshhold of importance for Wikipedia articles, and I'm not convinced by the current content that he meets it. I'm also wondering about his inclusion on the Notable Alumni page for the University of Arizona. Short point: Make me understand why he's more important than any random person I can meet on a college campus. Then he's worth a Wikipedia article and inclusion on Notable alumni (which is not intended to be a list of all degrees received by all wikipedians who graduated from the UofA). --ABQCat 11:42, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

He's the primary academic concerned with the fascinating topic of garbology and has been for decades. His center at Az is the foremost for the topic. Connections to scociology, to environmental study, pollution study, business planning (packaging, etc). and so on. He should be here, but there should certainly be more information on him, the discipline, and current results of garbology investigations here and there. I left it very stubby because I didn't know about the subject to write adequately. Didn't know he was an Ariz alum (nor why he should be listed as Notable, except for the garbology). ww 18:30, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)