Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Douglas Ulmer

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. No consensus for a particular action has surfaced herein. I have interpreted the "meh" !votes as essentially being "neutral". North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:21, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Douglas Ulmer[edit]

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I'm not sure if he passes the average professor test. The article claims that he is known for "his work on abelian varieties over global function fields", but the references point to his own papers.

Nothing else in the article indicates notability. Rentier (talk) 21:39, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rentier (talk), I wrote the original article on Douglas Ulmer. However, subsequent editors have stripped the article of some of its meaningful content. I am adding new citations, and his notability will soon become evident again.Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 00:29, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If you go to the "Scholar" suggested sources for Wikipedia writers, you can see over 140 listings for Douglas Ulmer in a fraction of a second.Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 00:33, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mitzi - Google Scholar citations (specifically a measure called the h-index) can be helpful for measuring the impact of some academics, but that's generally not true for mathematicians. They make their impact through textbooks and other activity. Although Ulmer's journal publication list seems long, almost none of the articles are well-cited by his peers (which is to be expected for mathematicians). For some other ways that academics meet notability guidelines, see WP:PROF and especially the footnotes that go with each criterion there. I don't see any that are met right now. EricEnfermero (Talk) 02:29, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Subject isn't notable. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:22, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Would you elaborate? SwisterTwister talk 20:43, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SwisterTwister: Sure. The claim in the lede that the subject is "particularly known for his work on abelian varieties over global function fields" is OR; it's sourced only to the subject's publications. WP:NACADEMIC requires anyone passing for their published works has to be "demonstrated by independent reliable sources" and we don't have that here. I don't buy Xxanthippe's claim (poorly worded and hard to understand) about being highly cited. Mathematics isn't my field. PROF mentions that there should be reviews in " Mathematical Reviews, also known as MathSciNet, and Zentralblatt MATH". Where are those? Mitzi makes a WP:GHITS claim, which can be discounted. You've claimed that PROF rests on academics being highly cited (true) but how are we to know? Chris Troutman (talk) 21:07, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about the poorly worded and hard to understand. I will try to do better in future. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Chris, you asked for an independent reliable source for his citations....and it's GoogleScholar, exactly where they can be found by anyone; therefore WP:PROF itself counts GoogleScholar acceptable given it's where you find such materials. Reviews are not a single qualifier, the citations itself can be and GoogleScholar itself will actually elaborate about when, who, etc. OR cannot be applied when the publications are laid out like this, it only would be if there were no sources at all available. SwisterTwister talk 21:11, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think you are mistaken. GoogleScholar shows his work has been cited. It does not prove he is "highly cited" nor does it prove what he is known for. Deriving claims like that from primary sources is OR. Show me a secondary source that says the subject is "highly cited" or that they are know for some particular study. Those citations aren't present in the article; just a lot of nonsense claims about the fact being true with no proof that it is. Chris Troutman (talk) 22:20, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

84 in a rarely cited field is itself significant for WP:PROF (that's how the field of scientific citations works) and since that's an independently operating Notability, nothing else is needed. "nonsense claims about the fact being true with no proof that it is" is inapplicable as long as it's sourced by facts. Since we would never say GoogleScholar is a primary source, it therefore is unacceptable to otherwise discount it. We would never ask an astronaut to otherwise give a secondary source about his firsthand space travels, so it's no different in here. SwisterTwister talk 23:59, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SwisterTwister: "84 in a rarely cited field is itself significant" How am I to know that? PROF doesn't say any such thing. The rest of what you said was unintelligible. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:23, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Georgia (U.S. state)-related deletion discussions. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:23, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Weak Keep. GS cites are 84, 30, 22, 18, 17, 16, 13, 13, ..... in a very low cited field; passes WP:Prof#C1. Xxanthippe (talk) 06:10, 29 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Keep. I began writing the article on Douglas Ulmer on 7 January 2017.

I see today, 6/29/2017, that another writer created a draft-- see Draft:Douglas Ulmer: Revision history-- on 21 December 2016, before mine but has not pursued it. Does that have any bearing on the deletion discussion?Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 15:48, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as publications are sufficient for WP:PROF which is the qualifying factor here, not GNG or any other standard guideline which hasn't applied to academics or education itself. As with WP:PROF, we consider his own papers, especially when shown to be highly cited, to be the significance. SwisterTwister talk 20:43, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I had a go at cleaning this up in April. This is how I left the article (yes, not very good, I know, I now wish I'd done better). Since then an awful lot of nonsense has been added back. If that is distracting people, the page could perhaps be reverted to that imperfect bare-bones version to allow us (me included) to concentrate on the important question, his notability. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of mathematics-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 01:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

- Reply to comment – The short version is significantly less distracting, in my opinion, since the longer one we currently have is full of redundancies. For example, "The American Mathematical Society has three PDF mathematical publications for Doug Ulmer on its own website"—which points to a page of search-engine results, providing no new information beyond the fact that he has at least three journal publications. Being department chair and serving on the editorial board of a journal count towards notability, but the travelogue of lectures and subsequent publications does not, since the latter is just what all academics are expected to do. XOR'easter (talk) 02:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Addendum – Another example of what I mean: "He lectured on elliptic curves over function fields at the 2009 Park City Math Institute, and the lectures are archived at the Cornell University Library." This read, at first, like the Park City Math Institute was an event at Cornell and the lectures had been videotaped, but no, the PCMI is in Utah, and "the lectures are archived at the Cornell University Library" just means that he posted his notes to the arXiv, which is hosted at Cornell. Everybody is on the arXiv! Likewise, a little later, notes that he wrote are said to be published "on the mathematics website of Stanford University", but this is really just a copy of another arXiv posting included on the reading list of a seminar course. The "Lectures, articles, editorial activity, and visiting professorships" section reads too much like PR written by an outsider to mathematics. This does not mean that Prof. Ulmer is undeserving of an article; he does seem to be pretty well cited in a lightly-cited field, as noted above. XOR'easter (talk) 02:31, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Inexplicably, the current version doesn't include the information that he was a C.L.E. Moore Instructor at MIT, which is more notable than much of what is included. In case anyone wants to add an extra reference, he is listed in Marquis Who's Who [1]. Rentier (talk) 02:43, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This BLP has been much edited by an editor with an interesting edit history of deletion of several of the articles created. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:19, 30 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

- - I searched the suggested reference sources for Wikipedia writers again this evening and found that Douglas Ulmer received a $60,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue his research. I've added the information to the article. Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 02:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm interested in the thoughts of DGG and Randykitty; in the meantime I have removed the kind of information about the kinds of things professors do (give lectures, published papers) that lacked secondary sourcing to indicate that one way or another this is worth mentioning. Drmies (talk) 02:44, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This article had some of the oddest sourcing for a BLP on an academic I've seen in a long time, and some of the weirdest claims. It said he supervised doctoral dissertations (that's what professors do at Ph.D. granting institutions...), which was verified by a link to a student's CV? That is not acceptable. I wonder what Justlettersandnumbers thinks about this article and this AfD; they've worked on it before. Drmies (talk) 02:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I left a comment a little higher up this page, Drmies, now rendered redundant by the excellent clean-up you and others have recently done. When I edited this in April, I thought he was notable because of his citations – otherwise I'd have nominated it for deletion. Now I'm waiting to see the evaluations of those citations by other editors whose opinion I value before making my own decision.

Mitzi.humphrey, you've written extensively on topics where you have a conflict of interest – your husband, members of his family, an arts group you started and so on. Do you also have some personal or professional connection to Ulmer? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 07:59, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

- Yes, Justlettersandnumbers, I do. But remember that commenting on other users is considered disruptive. I hope that this article ultimately succeeds in demonstrating the obvious notability of Dr. Ulmer in the field of mathematics.--Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 12:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is also considered disruptive not to declare a WP:COI where there is one. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Keep. Professors engaged in research do publish papers. That's what they do, and what they're supposed to do. If they do it to a notable degree as measured by the influence they have, they are notable. It's no more a reason for not recognizing their notability as it is to say that an artist paints pictures. In a low-citation density field like mathematics, the citation figures here are sufficient. I do not think the citations to the published papers should have been removed. Not only are they normal in articles in the area, they're essential. It's the citations to them that show him notable . But I will defer to David E if there's something missing here. DGG ( talk ) 03:30, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- I disagree, DGG--I certainly do not leave such citations in, and I've written quite a few of these articles. Surely you agree that they can't be used to verify "person X is important in this or that area" (this edit)--and what was linked was arXiv, four times. Drmies (talk) 12:02, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - - We are obviously going to need some discussion, because I always add such material--I normally had the 3 highest cited as the most objective way to show the influence. DGG ( talk ) 02:39, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Subject has one article that has been cited more than a handful times. But like DGG I'd be interested to hear what David Eppstein has to say about this. --Randykitty (talk) 10:03, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – It would be vaguely surprising to me if a person with an Erdős number of 2 (via Carl Pomerance, [2]) turned out to be non-notable, but it's certainly possible. XOR'easter (talk) 14:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@XOR'easter: Does PROF say anything about Erdos numbers? No. Should it? I don't know. We go into AfD with the notability guidelines we have, not the ones we'd like to have or would wish to have had. (apologies to Don Rumsfeld) Chris Troutman (talk) 14:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Chris troutman: On the whole, I'd say that Erdős numbers are by themselves too much a curiosity to found real judgments upon. It would just seem be a touch odd to me if a person with a low Erdős number weren't independently notable on more solid grounds. XOR'easter (talk) 14:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@XOR'easter: I know lots of people with EN=2 who are clearly not (yet) notable. I don't think that's much of a sign either way for this discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:08, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Now that I'm back at the office, I was able to look the subject up in MathSciNet. He has 27 publications reviewed there, with 3 more pending. This seems like a respectable amount, but I don't work in number theory, so I don't have the greatest sense of what is typical in that area. XOR'easter (talk) 14:51, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Several people mentioned the subject's citation and publication counts, but it seems impossible to judge those without an intimate knowledge of the field. Is there a way to objectively quantify his impact relative to others in the area? Rentier (talk) 15:53, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. He has a full professorship at a good research university, which is both a sign of an already-successful academic career and usually within the range for which we keep articles on academics, but is not in itself a marker of automatic notability. Counting citations in pure mathematics is not very useful; they're too low to convey much information. I don't see any named chairs, society fellowships, major awards, widely used and reviewed books, festschrifts, or other things like that to confirm his notability. He does have one paper in Annals of Mathematics and three in Inventiones Mathematicae, both top journals — many other mathematicians would be jealous of such a record. And we can answer the nominator's complaint about primary referencing by using the MathSciNet reviews as references — they wouldn't say he is "known for" anything but at least they would say what he has accomplished. But in general, we have a large number of articles on good but not stellar mathematicians such as him, and I don't know why this one was singled out. I don't think this one is especially problematic for the encyclopedia — it's factual and sourced or sourceable, and he is after all a successful mathematician. But I can't find a hook to support a keep opinion. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: I nominated this article because it seemed doubtful that he meets any of the notability criteria, as laid out by WP:GNG and WP:PROF, and I was curious what other people thought. I see from yours and DGG's comments that the inclusion criteria are more fluid than I thought, however the length of this discussion shows that this is a controversial topic. It would be good to have it resolved one way or another, since subjects of dubious notability dominate the BLPs I see in the New Pages Feed and it's generally hard to decide how to deal with them. Rentier (talk) 19:33, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"the inclusion criteria are more fluid than I thought" Not really. Some editors want it that way but not everyone agrees. Our criteria are for the most part pretty objective. You were right to nominate. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:05, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Rentier: FWIW I think it's a completely reasonable nomination. If there's notability here, our article doesn't make it obvious. I just think there are many others who could and perhaps should be similarly nominated. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My research update as shown on the Flinn Foundation website: "Grant gives UA $3.5 million for math educators

October 24, 2006 [Source: Associated Press] — The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Arizona a five-year, $3.5 million grant to improve the skills of would-be mathematics educators. It is UA’s second grant for the Vertical Integration of Research and Education program, one that will benefit students from high school classrooms to postdoctoral programs.

The first five-year NSF grant was $2.5 million in 1999. “The first helped create some programs and the second grant will make sure those changes are permanent and propagated throughout the region,” said Douglas Ulmer, who heads the math graduate program at UA. The funding means new fellowships for students, undergraduate research opportunities, collaborations, and interdisciplinary work with the hope of driving more students into the field."--Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 19:44, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That the paper quoted him does not notability make. Your conflict of interest blinds you to objective reality. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:05, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral As David Eppstein stated above, the presence of this article does not seem "especially problematic for the encyclopedia". If the unsourced statements were sourced or removed, I would not object to having it around. That said, I do not see a "silver bullet" that by itself would guarantee notability. XOR'easter (talk) 20:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Meh for me too, per David Eppstein. I have no objection to the article (well, to a decent article that does not inflate, and does not substitute for a faculty page on the university server). Drmies (talk) 21:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Unlike in some other areas, we actually have proper criteria for notability of academics. This person seems to be right on the borderline of those, a fully competent person doing what professors do. But in the total absence of any in-depth coverage whatsoever, there's really no point in having an article on him. Unfortunately, unless he gets appointed to a named chair, we may need to wait until obituaries are written to have anything more substantial to say about him. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:01, 1 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Justlettersandnumbers (talk). I don't think that your assumption that we must wait for an obituary is well-founded. I realize that a deletion discussion is not supposed to be a vote, but since the Keep, Meh, and Neutral responses greatly outweigh the Delete responses, we cannot say that a consensus has been reached here.--Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 15:14, 1 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the comment above in one of the most point-on observations regarding notability:"as publications are sufficient for WP:PROF which is the qualifying factor here, not GNG or any other standard guideline which hasn't applied to academics or education itself. As with WP:PROF, we consider his own papers, especially when shown to be highly cited, to be the significance." I think all discussants here should review the history of the article and see where it went astray from my original article. Ulmer's articles, lectures, and mathematical treatises have been highly regarded and highly cited in his field. Otherwise, he could not have accomplished all that he has.Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 16:12, 1 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's a tendency for those of us who have worked in an academic field to be more than usually skeptical about other people in our own area. I've seeb this for not just academics, but in the arts also--in the things we really know, we use higher standards. I know this to be true of myself in librarianship--many articles in the field I have listed in AfD or said delete for, have been kept. It's an interesting sort of inverse bias. DGG ( talk ) 02:42, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting observation and very true. I brought up the "average professor test" in this nomination because I think that roughly one third of the faculty in my department have a stronger record (as far as it makes any sense to make cross-field comparisons), yet none of them have articles — and I don't think they should, except maybe the top one or two. Rentier (talk) 10:36, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting remarks. If we know a field better, we're more critical. I think that's true for myself, too. We know our fields and who are the important people in it. Doesn't that suggest that our current criteria are perhaps a bit too lax? --Randykitty (talk) 08:28, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rentier, I similarly continue to have a dilemma about the expectations of the "average professor test" and determining which criteria make sense in cross-field comparisons. For example, WorldCat shows a book co-written by Douglas Ulmer which is in print in two different versions. Shouldn't that qualify as a viable publication reference regardless of one's field?Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at WP:Prof. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:49, 2 July 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Yes, "4. The person's academic work has made a significant impact in the area of higher education, affecting a substantial number of academic institutions.

Criterion 4 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has authored several books that are widely used as textbooks (or as a basis for a course) at multiple institutions of higher education." The NSF grants administered by Ulmer for math students (shown higher on the thread) are a good example that this criterion is met.--Mitzi.humphrey (talk) 23:19, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

He was one of eight investigators on a project for which we've seen no evidence of result. He did not author a math book used by thousands of students. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:35, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Mitzi.humphrey, I suggest you disengage. You have a declared conflict of your interest, your comments here look like they are coming from a promotional point of view (you appear to be looking for a way to interpret the notability criteria so they fit Ulmer's record, rather than neutrally measuring Ulmer's record against the criteria), and it is likely that this will push other editors to be more critical of Ulmer rather than changing their opinions in the way you want. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:53, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- reasonable achievements for a mathematician to sustain an encyclopedia article. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:53, 4 July 2017 (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.