Talk:Mike Morris (physicist)

Usenet

Please abstain from nonsensical deletion of references to Usenet activities, verifiable with a personal inquiry with their author. Larvatus 04:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)larvatus

• Please refer to a reliable secondary source so that the relevance and noteworthiness, as well as the factual status, of his alleged online posting habits and assumed participation in various hobby activities, such as informal online group discussions, can be established. Thanks, Afv2006 05:18, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• • I don't see how "a reliable secondary source" might be relevant to documenting Usenet and its notable participants. It is undisputed that these subjects merit some coverage, as witness the relevant Wikipedia categories. If you want to dispute the general matter of Usenet notability, this is not the place to do it. Larvatus 08:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)larvatus
    • This person is not listed on Notable Usenet personalities, which is a referenced article. If there is no mention in any reliable published source were a reader can verify your claim that the scientist in question is really the individual behind the Usenet moniker, then this info appears both unreliable and non-notable (that is, irrelevant to his claim to fame as a scientist and unrelated to his inclusion here as a serious scholar). But I'll bring this concern to the attention of an admin. for comment, rather than reverting again. Afv2006 01:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, someone asked me :), not that admins necessarily know more, but personally I do look at WP articles about academics when they show up at AfD--

1. inclusion in a WP article like that is not a necessary criterion for notability--in fact, it tends to work the opposite way-people do not generally get get listed in such list-type articles UNLESS they have an individual WP article to establish the notability. Now, it is relatively hard to establish notability depending only on usenet contributions--see the articles for the people included in Notable Usenet personalitiesfor the criteria and the standards.
2. If he is notable otherwise, however, there is generally no reason to doubt person on usenet who claims to be a scientist is that scientist, unless it is really challenged in good faith. I consider [1] not a good faith challenge, but a personal attack. It absolutely does not meet the BLP standard & can't be quoted in the article. Frankly I think challenging he is the same person is nit-picking--so much so that I wonder if the basis for the challenge can be further explained? Whether usenet postings can be shown to be notable by other usenet postings is an interesting question. I am flexible about this, but other opinion on this may differ. The place to ask is Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard.

1. But as I see it this article does claim notability based on published works. The question is whether they are enough--the article lists only three papers. Doing it properly, Google Scholar works, but Web of Science works better, & it finds that there are in fact 9 peer-reviewed papers. The most cited is in American Journal of Physics, which carries papers not meant as research, but for an audience of educators, it was cited 395 times; the most cited research paper, in Physical Review Letters--the best physics journal of any--was cited 314 times. Both these figures are extremely high. Both are with his advisor, sometimes a negative factor, but the third one , with 144 citations, is independent. I'd consider this sufficient to justify notability as an academic. I've added the citation data to the article. DGG (talk) 04:27, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks DGG. Just to clarify: In my opinion, there is no reason to question whether the person is notable enough or meets the criteria for inclusion --- based on his scholarly work, he obviously warrants an article. I am only concerned about the criteria for inclusion of information about such things as Usenet participation (or Wikipedia editing/Blogspot commentary/Yahoo discussion list entries) in biographies, unless there is a degree of verifiability. I turned to WikiProject Biography/Science and academia first, because if this person's participation in Usenet discussions is a well-known fact among his peers and colleagues, and if his authorship of the Usenet posts is undisputed, then I would not have a problem with the inclusion and would see no reason to take it to the BLP-noticeboard. However, following the links provided, I did not notice any posts where he actually claims to be the scientist of this article, but I may very well have missed it. The posts I encountered also seemed totally unrelated to issues in the field of physics. Actually, the only post connecting the two was the bad faith posting linked above. Concerning your question about the basis for my concern: as demonstrated by the mocking/sarcastic use of a similar moniker on Usenet (again, see link above), there is an element of anonymity (and maybe also bad faith) in the posting activity there, as in all other types of user driven online activity, and therefore it would seem there is no guarantee that people are who they say they are, or that a (very common) name is not used by someone else with that name. This worries me, especially when it comes to inclusion of such participation in biographies of living persons. However, I have only vague prior knowledge of this person's scholarly work and no familiarity at all with his online activity, which is why I asked for assistance. I ended up here only while randomly searching for instances of blogs etc used as sources or listed under external links. If you feel that there is no reason to doubt that the person behind the moniker is the same person as the subject of this article, then I would trust your judgment. However, I disagree with the implication that things published in online blogs/discussion boards/etc generally belong in biographies of living persons - especially if the posts linked to from the BLP article lack an official e-mail address that demonstrates the authenticity of its origin, such as for example a university e-mail address, in this case. Best, Afv2006 19:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)