Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gervase Markham (programmer)

Gervase Markham (programmer)

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Fails WP:BIO and WP:NOTAMEMORIAL. Clarityfiend (talk) 20:18, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The subject is notable. He contributed to this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=G6ybAgAAQBAJ He is cited in the IEEE Xplore: ISBN 9-780-76952304-0. Actually, almost every other book about Mozilla mentions the subject. Dr.KBAHT (talk) 21:01, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That book mentions him exactly twice in passing, and not even on "real" pages (xv and xvi). Clarityfiend (talk) 07:45, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Being one of 37 people listed as having contributed hacks, writing or inspiration to a book and being cited once are both way short of any notability standard. And why, if he is covered by almost every other book about Mozilla, does Google Books only find that mention and a nine-word long quote from the subject in the apparently self-published "How To Build Massive Subscriber, Membership and Social Media Lists" by Marc Charles, which appears not to even rise to the level of having an ISBN? Phil Bridger (talk) 10:13, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Google books lists many mentions: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22Gervase+Markham%22+Mozilla There are at least 6 matches on the first page. Anyway, not notable people are not cited by the IEEE. Dr.KBAHT (talk) 15:23, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I make it five mentions, and none goes beyond the simple fact that the subject worked for Mozilla. And if you want to get into citations, for which WP:PROF#C1 is the guideline, typically people who work in computer science need to have thousands of them before they are even considered to be possibly notable, not one. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:02, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You counted 5 mentions because the 6th book doesn't mention the subject and you assumed that the rest of the list doesn't either. If you keep scrolling you'll find more. If you really think that somebody needs thousands of citations in scientific journals, then why everybody knows Nicklaus Wirth, Richad Stallman, Donald Knuth? I know people who published dozens of computer science books and were never cited by the IEEE. Dr.KBAHT (talk) 20:44, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because those people (if you spell their names correctly) do have thousands of citations to their work. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:11, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 17:51, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 17:52, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 17:52, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:19, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I found this through the academics deletion sorting list, but for this sort of subject, academic notability is not really an option (because scholarly writing is not what he did, so it's unsurprising that he doesn't meet any criterion of a notability guideline based on that). The only reasonable option is WP:GNG. But the only thing we have in the article that looks like a published source about Markham is the Dr. Dobbs interview. There are some editors who think interviews shouldn't count for notability at all — I tend to disagree, but we should only count them when they go into some depth about the subject, rather than focusing on other topics, and this one is the kind of interview that's primarily about some other topic. It's also only one source and we need multiple sources. The passing mentions in books discussed above also don't add anything to the case. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:34, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]