Talk:Melly Oitzl

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Questions about notability[edit]

I think that this page raises some questions about notability. Please understand that I am not saying this as a veiled insinuation about deleting the page. I'm really asking the questions, because I don't know the answers, and I would like to see them discussed. On the one hand, the subject of this page is an associate/adjunct professor. That academic rank would rather clearly fail WP:Academic. On the other hand, the page indicates (and seems to go to some pains to emphasize) the subject's h-index and other measures of citation. A case could be made that those metrics justify a WP:GNG claim that sufficient notability has been established. How do we reconcile these considerations? And if it is becoming commonplace for scholars with a particular citation level to be, nonetheless, appointed at levels below full professorship, does that mean that such citation levels are inconsistent with WP:Academic? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've linked to this discussion at WT:PROF: [1]. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:57, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't bother to try an AfD. Subject has 12 papers in GS with over 100 cites each and clearly passes WP:Prof#1 even in a highly cited field. WP:Prof does not take account of academic rank (apart from WP:Prof#C5). Xxanthippe (talk) 23:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
I wasn't asking whether to try an AfD. I'm not sure that I read Prof #1 and #5 the same way you do. Satisfying #1 is pretty much tantamount to being full professor-level. Although maybe this is pointing to saying that this page should be expanded to explain more completely the impact of the subject's work. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:39, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There has been consensus in the past that being a full professor (where? standards vary) does not give an automatic pass of WP:Prof. Also, WP:Prof makes it clear that it applies to scholars and researchers outside academia. I will copy this interesting thread onto the academic notability talk page. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:17, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
I think the bigger problem with this article is that it lacks independent sources and biographical details. This seems to be typical of subjects that only satisfy criterion #1. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:20, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That is indeed often the case. Article needs some expansion (but not too much). Xxanthippe (talk) 00:24, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
(edit conflict) Yes, I agree that full professorship is not considered an automatic pass. But, if not all full professors are notable for our purposes, then evidence of notability must be particularly clear for academics at lower appointment levels. So, we have a situation where the university in question (whose evaluations, of course, trump those of editors here) has not (yet) determined that this person is of full professor status, even with these citation metrics, and not even all full professors are notable for our purposes. I think that, in determining how we at Wikipedia evaluate citation metrics, we should take seriously how academic institutions do so (again, because those real-world views trump the views of editors). --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There are all sorts of reasons why people don't get promoted. In this case the citation evidence is very clear. It may not be so in other cases. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:31, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
Indeed, there are all sorts of reasons, but those reasons should generally trump editor opinion here, and in this case it appears that a promotion decision has not yet been made, rather than a decision made in the negative (per "up or out"). But I think that whatever may be clear to you should also be clear to decision makers in the real world, so this kind of puts Wikipedia in the dubious position of predicting the promotion decision. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not in the business of determining a person's academic standing or academic merit like a university appointments or promotions board and it does not defer to such bodies. Wikipedia's criterion for BLP notability is that a person should have been noted by multiple independent reliable sources. The citation databases are an objective tool for that purpose. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:28, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
I never said that we should determine anyone's academic appointment. I said that, when we evaluate notability, we should be influenced by the real world. Those databases are objective tools for finding the data they contain, but they don't provide us with a cut-off that determines the line for notability. We make those cut-offs: an h-index above a certain number might indicate notability, whereas below that number might not. If someone published one paper, and it was cited two or three times, one could technically argue that the work had been noted by two or three independent reliable sources, but that would not be a convincing argument for notability. Here, we have a much higher number of citations, but they are not reflected in the academic rank. I'm asking whether our current interpretations of h-index etc. might no longer reflect what the real world thinks of those metrics. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:55, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever Wikipedia's standards are they should be applied uniformly. I gave some reflections on my impression of the consensus of citation numbers that have been accepted for academic notability in the last few years here. [2] Xxanthippe (talk) 09:38, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
  • I'm not sure this is the place for this discussion (I would have preferred this to be on the WP:PROF talkpage), but let me make a few remarks here. First of all, this is just a stub. I think it basically shows notability and admit that it could use expansion, but WP is a work in progress, isn't it? In any case,the lack of in-depth sources on her biography is not exceptional for academics, but rather the rule. Second, academic rank is rather immaterial for WP:PROF (except for named chairs). There are assistant professors (and even lower level), that have been deemed notable at AfD, based on WP:PROF. Third, the meaning of "full professor" differs from country to country. The Netherlands is very much like the UK (even though it is moving in the direction of a system similar to the US one), with only few full professors (often, the only full professor in a Department will be the Chair). Finally, as to this particular person, I have some more information about her academic situation, but no sources for that, so I cannot (and will not) put this in the article or even here. Suffice it to say that significant levels of (rather murky) academic politics are involved. The fact that she has fulfilled significant positions in a distinguished society like EBBS shows the esteem of her colleagues at an international level (you don't get Treasurer of EBBS if you're an insignificant associate professor somewhere...). --Randykitty (talk) 08:54, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It is an interesting discussion. If you look at the history you will see that I transferred it to the WP:PROF talkpage but it got transferred back. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:38, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
I agree. It's of more general interest than just this article. I vote we delete this here and copy it to the WP:PROF talkpage. --Randykitty (talk) 09:46, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have no objection if Tryptofish doesn't. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:49, 12 December 2012 (UTC).[reply]
It looks to me like discussion has quieted down, so I have no objection now to that move. My original reason for starting the discussion here was that I thought it was actually more considerate to do so, by putting it with the article itself, where editors who have worked on the page will quickly see it. If I was mistaken about that, OK. And I want to emphasize: I wasn't underhandedly proposing an AfD. I was (and still am) genuinely asking some questions, because it really seems to me that some things don't add up here. My objection yesterday to the move was that a couple of us were actively making comments at the same time that the move was taking place, resulting in two discussions simultaneously in two separate places, but that no longer seems to be the situation. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions[edit]

Let me make some suggestions for improving this stub page. First of all: WP:NOTRESUME – as much as what the shortcut itself says as what it says at the target page. Most readers are not really going to be that interested in the magna cum laude part, or the grant. There are tons of academics who have had multiple research grants, but who are not notable for our purposes. It sounds like the text is trying too hard to say "this page passes notability", and that leads readers like me to wonder why. On the positive side, it should be possible to explain more about what readers are likely to be interested in. The page says that "Oitzl is mainly interested in the relationships between stress, cognition, and emotion." What has her research shown those relationships to be? What is new about our understanding of those relationships is really the key information that is currently missing from the page. By briefly summarizing the conclusions of a few of the most important papers, it should be pretty straightforward to add that information. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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