Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brian Treanor

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 Snow Keep. Overall consensus is that he meets PROF & GNG. (Although there's a delete !vote present they had withdrawn so it's not really counted as such), Anyway consensus is to keep (non-admin closure) –Davey2010^Talk 21:34, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Brian Treanor

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Highly promotional article written on this person by the university department he directs. Seems to have published quite a bit, but no sources that are about this person, just ones by him. Blythwood (talk) 21:39, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Meets WP:SCHOLAR as per WP:NACADEMICS point 5 (named chair at major institution). WP:PROMOTIONAL tone can be fixed and is not a valid reason for deletion in itself. ~Kvng (talk)
Delete The criteria at WP:SCHOLAR and WP:NACADEMICS are meant as guidelines to quickly assess the likelihood of notability, not as measures of notability itself, the guidelines of which are WP:GNG. This individual may be a named chair at a major institution-- he still needs to have been the subject of significant coverage in multiple independent reliable secondary sources, and there is no evidence of that provided in this article. That the article was written by a WP:SPA with an institutional name (against policy) adds weight to the reasons for deletion. Changes in tone will not make the subject notable. KDS4444^Talk 11:47, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

From WP:SCHOLAR, "Many scientists, researchers, philosophers and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources." The "named chair at major institution" condition is an attempt to mechanically capture these cases. ~Kvng (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's been awhile since I read over WP:SCHOLAR in detail. Hm. My reading of the WP:SCHOLAR criteria is that if a person is a named chair, he/ she is also likely the subject of sources which would show evidence of notability— if someone went looking for them— but that even a named chair is subject to the same notability criteria as other Wikipedia articles and if a search for adequate sources doesn't actually turn up anything that qualifies, even a named chair wouldn't have met the notability criteria and therefore wouldn't warrant an article. I get concerned that the subject-specific notability guidelines (WP:SCHOLAR et al.) sometimes appear to circumvent WP:GNG when they are meant to be quick-assessment tools, not independent notability criteria. KDS4444^Talk 18:38, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I am noticing thatWP:Prof#C5 states, "Criterion 5 can be applied reliably only for persons who are tenured at the full professor level, and not for junior faculty members with endowed appointments. Major institutions, for these purposes, are those that have a reputation for excellence or selectivity. Named chairs at other institutions are not necessarily sufficient to establish notability" (emphasis added). Loyola Marymount has an undergraduate acceptance rate of 52%, which only qualifies it as "more selective" according to US News & World Report. I am not sure how to quantify "excellence" here, however. My personal sense (as an academic and as a resident of Los Angeles) is that it's considered a "good but very expensive school", on a completely different tier from UCLA or USC. KDS4444^Talk 18:55, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi KDS4444 -- you're right that there's a range of possible agreement levels for what "excellence" or "selectivity" means. While the "chair = full prof. chair, not career development chair" part of the criteria has an almost universally accepted meaning, the second part is far less accepted. I think that looking at invocations of the rule in the past will show that Loyola Marymount is clearly in the realm of schools that have usually been accepted, but consensus can change and there hasn't been support for clarifying this part of the rule. Generally US institutions rated "more" or "most" selective in US News have been held to qualify and I would be hard pressed to find a school called "Selective" that hasn't. It's generally schools that were established within the last ten years, very specialized institutions, and institutions in parts of the world that don't have international standards for selectivity that have been borderline or problematic. Another thing that is sometimes a factor is what % of the department has named chairs (are they given out willy-nilly?). Here he's the only one of about a dozen professors in the department. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 16:12, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Passes WP:Prof#C5. Also, adequate cites for theology. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:44, 25 February 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Keep -- named chair at major seminary/school is sufficient. WP:PROF, like all subject specific guides, is an alternative to the General Notability Guideline; if it is satisfied, that is sufficient. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 18:53, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Named chair at a major university should be enough. His Google scholar citations are low [1] but I think that's mostly a function of his field, and in any case it is not needed to pass all WP:PROF criteria, only one of them. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:16, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And the wool falls over the eyes of another set of onlookers. This piece was written by the university itself to promote its faculty. Who knew the criteria were so easily met? Or could be written by the university staff? Consider my delete vote to be withdrawn. It serves to purpose here. KDS4444^Talk 22:31, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you have evidence of this, present it here as a justification for deletion, edit or delete material to improve neutrality, add a tag to the article or bring it up at WP:COI. Certainly WP:PROD is not appropriate for dealing with these issues. ~Kvng (talk) 15:28, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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.