Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prasenjit Mitra

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 delete. --Core desat 04:47, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Prasenjit Mitra

Nom - nice academic CV, but not otherwise notable. Speedied once & reposted, I'm listing it here for review. Rklawton 22:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. —David Eppstein 00:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. A Google Scholar search says his published work is widely cited. His claims appear plausible but no vote to keep without third-party WP:RS. • Gene93k 03:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete Google Scholar often gives inflated citation counts. In the Web of Science the most cited article gets just 39 hits, which is not really much. Unless other independent secondary sources can be found, I vote delete. --Crusio 09:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Actually 39 hits is pretty good given the relative recency; those counts go up over time. And, published bibliometric studies show Google Scholar is just as good as Scopus and ISI, and that each one misses citations the others find. See Bakkalbasi et al. (2006) at doi:10.1186/1742-5581-3-7 --taking a maximum across the three is probably more accurate than picking the service that provides the lowest number. Chris Hoadley 18:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- 39 hits is not bad at all in some subjects. In Computer Science, isn't the publication barrier lower, so more citations are expected? 61.17.80.168 21:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This comes from a WP:SPA with an obvious conflict of interest. Dr. Hoadley is another associate professor at Penn State. Rklawton 19:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Actually it's not a WP:SPA--I had to recreate my account because I couldn't recover the old password. I was user choadley. And yes, I am another professor at the same institution. But I still don't think google scholar citation counts should be regarded any less than WoS or Scopus. Crusio doesn't cite any evidence that Google Scholar inflates citation counts. 202 citations to a book in 5 years is a pretty big deal in our field (and yes, I'm a qualified expert in that field) and getting a book in computer science published by Springer is a big deal too. 19:22, 29 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cmhoadley (talk • contribs) [reply]
Reply - the proposal that all authors published by Springer automatically satisfy notability requirements is novel but not compelling. Rklawton 19:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - this article is one of a flood of obviously self-authored articles from this department to appear on Wikipedia these last few days. Rklawton 19:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Part of this claim is inaccurate: I wrote the John Bagby article as an interested party in his work (a student) and thus my article in this 'flood' is clearly not "obviously self-authored" treypsu 00:48, 30 October (UTC)
Strong Delete - From my understanding of the relevant polices, this article doesn't meet WP:N. Cmhoadley/Choadley, if you're at the same university, you could have a conflict of interest, and I think it'd be prudent for you not to involve yourself too much in this discussion, just in case. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry 21:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reply - OK, if you see my presence at the same university as a conflict of interest, then I'll butt out of this discussion, and you can consider my recommendation that this page be kept as retracted. However, I just spent some time reading the WP:PROF guidelines, and I'm still quite a critic of Web of Science as a metric for citations of people's work, as the WoS has very strange inclusion practices for what they'll take in their corpus. I'll take my criticism of that issue there instead of here. cmhoadley 01:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete lets see some RS to prove N. SashaCall ^(Sign!)/_(Talk!) 21:39, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Probably non-notable. (Appears to fail the guideline for academics). Bfigura ^(talk) 21:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
comment These articles are not self-authored, but were written by Hoadley's class as an assignment, one on each of the department faculty. As would be expected, some are notable, some not. Associate professors are usually on the borderline. It usually depends on the published work and the citations. In most academic fields WoS,m which limits itself to major peer reviewed journals, is the best for comparative purposes; if GS is used, the citing articles need to be examined, not just counted, for it includes a lot of things which are of relative low importance in evaluating work. But in some fields, it can be a useful corrective. I haven't checked the details on this particular person yet. to be continued. DGG (talk) 00:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note - that's funny: assigning a project to your class guaranteed to humiliate some of your peers as they find themselves deleted as non-notable. Talking about putting one's foot in it. On a side note, my personal best involved suggesting my students file a FOIA request to learn who their univeristy was selling their names to and for how much. Rklawton 00:55, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reply actually I did not ask them to do each of the department faculty. I asked them to select notable faculty. I have 14 students, and the department has over 50 faculty, and my influence in their choice was to say they not do the same person and that our non-tenure-track people as a class aren't notable. (And no, I didn't suggest that one of them do me.) And because I told the students not to do original research, I suspect most of the subjects of these bios are unaware of their pages. Even if they are, most care predominantly what experts think of them, not students or wikipedians. Rklawton, if you have commentary on how to improve assignments for wikipedia, I've solicited them on the admin page discussing all this, or you can send it to my talk page. Out of deference for COI concerns I've stayed out of this discussion but I would respectfully request that people focus on the issue at hand, which is whether this article establishes that this person is notable, not comments about me or the motives of the article authors. My students are reading all of this, and they've been trying to improve their own arguments for notability, but I've had to give them permission to take the assignment offline because some are being treated very badly, and many feel their contributions are being slammed without respect to rhyme or reason, for instance by speedy deletion. They were eager to try to meet the thresholds, now they are fleeing in droves. Notice how some are blanking their pages? I didn't ask them to do that, they're just fed up. Think they'll grow up to be longterm contributors? Cmhoadley 10:45, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since this thread is here, I'll reply here. Wikipedia takes a pounding from both ends. The media reports that professors don't allow students to use Wikipedia as a source due to quality concerns (not that I know any professor who permits any encyclopedia to be used as a source), and the media bashes Wikipedia for being strict about quality and notability – thereby discouraging new editors. In the final analysis, Wikipedia tends to discourage (run off) contributors who don't take this project seriously. To quote from the bottom of this very form (in edit mode) "if you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it." What are your students learning from this experience? I think your students are learning about basic conflict of interest issues (Journalism 101) and Wikipedia's notability requirements. So yes, some of your students may decide not to contribute in the future, and that's probably for the best. Aside from that, I think it is unconscionable that you would require your students to give up the intellectual property rights to their own creative work. Tell me, did you seek any guidance at all from a Wikipedia administrator before making this a class assignment? Rklawton 14:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This is indeed not the place, but here it is nevertheless. I think both CmhHoadley and Rklawton have a point. I think it is actually a good idea to have students contribute to Wikipedia as a class assignment. If well done, this would benefit both Wikipedia and the students. But they should not be "thrown in the deep" without guidance. Before letting them loose, they should be instructed on such concepts as notability and verifiable sources. And, yes, they should be informed that they would have no intellectual property rights to their writings. But let's face it, the number of students that produce texts that might be so good that they need intellectual property protection is vanishingly small and would not need this kind of classes anyway... Just my 2 cents. --Crusio 14:33, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's not vanishingly small. To wit: the model for FedEx started as one of Fred Smith's class assignments (he got a "C"). Rklawton 14:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say the potential benefits were vanishingly small, but the number of students for whom this is important. So Fred Smith was an exception. How many more amont the millions of students in every year since Fred Smith?? --Crusio 14:50, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not thinking in terms of benefits. I'm thinking in terms of liability to the professor and school. You don't need a million one dollar cases to demonstrate the problems with this idea, you just need one million dollar case. Rklawton 15:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We certainly don't want to mess around with US liability laws :-)) Here in Europe there's no problem at all and if a teacher would carefully instruct the students and explain the potential of others using their work/ideas, I would not in all reasonability expect that Wikipedia assignments could be a liability. But then, law is not necessary reasonable... Teachers, be warned! --Crusio 15:12, 1 November 2007 (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.