Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yeap Wai Kiang

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. It is reasonably clear that Kiang fails WP:PROF. However, he may pass WP:BIO, which states "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability." The coverage is not trivial. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:42, 8 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeap Wai Kiang

fails WP:ACADEMIC, nothing to raise him above the bar of a normal academic, yes he's written some papers. but fails WP:BIO as well due to lack of third party coverage [1]. LibStar (talk) 05:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, Malaysia's largest circulation newspaper The Star has an in-depth article[2], therefore meets WP:N. XLerate (talk) 05:31, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

1 article? we need wide coverage. If you can produce more, I'll reconsider LibStar (talk) 05:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:N, "multiple sources are generally preferred", but wide coverage isn't a criteria. One reference meeting the WP:N criteria is ok, more is better. XLerate (talk) 05:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen articles with 5 references get deleted. if we create articles for everyone with 1 article about them...where do we stop? LibStar (talk) 11:40, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, five trivial mentions on blogs doesn't meet the notability criteria, highlighting the issue looking at quantity over quality. This article on the other hand has a reference which meets all the criteria. XLerate (talk) 00:26, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:47, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of New Zealand-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:48, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as the profile in The Star satisfies the basic criteria of WP:BIO: he "has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." It goes on to say "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability", but here the depth of coverage is substantial. His citation count doesn't look bad either: top articles cited 90 and 79 times according to Google Scholar, but this is not my field so i'm unsure of typical citation patterns. Qwfp (talk) 19:45, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. GS above gives top cites of 90, 79, 24, 20, 9, 8 , 8, 6, 6, 5 so h index = 7. On this basis notability WP:Prof is not yet attained. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:31, 26 July 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Weak delete. I concur with Xxanthippe that for someone in AI with a Ph.D. as long ago as 1984, his citation numbers are not stellar and not enough to pass WP:PROF. To get a better sense of calibration I tried looking up the first five people in Category:Artificial intelligence researchers; four of them are clearly more well-cited than Yeap, and the fifth (Victor Allis) has a very similar citation record to Yeap's but left academia immediately after grad school — the much longer period Yeap has had to make an impact implies to me that he should have made a much bigger splash, and he hasn't. The article about Yeap in The Star goes some way towards a pass of WP:BIO, bypassing WP:PROF, but it's only one source; we need more than one to achieve notability that way, and I couldn't find others. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Pastor Theo (talk) 11:36, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: Doesn't fulfill WP:N. One article in a massive newspaper isn't enough to label someone's nobility. –Turian ^talk 12:23, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: agreed. Doesn't meet WP:N.--Gordonrox24 | ^Talk 16:10, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:N the coverage received just doesn't cut it. --Bsay~~USD~~CSU[ π ] 16:21, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep There's an extensive list of published work on google books [3]. The news story cited in the article is quite substantial coverage. He holds a directorship at a major institution. I don't see how deleting this article improves the encyclopedia. He seems to be a significant figure in spatial information theory. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:25, 1 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The "books" referred to above consist mostly of short articles or are published by the subject's institution. They have garnered few, if any, cites. A search of WoS for "Yeap WK" gives top cites of 44, 29, 6, 2, 1..... with h index = 3. This is way below what is needed for the high standards of WP:Prof#1 where h indices of 10-15 are borderline. The institution at which he holds a Directorship is very far from major and will not satisfy WP:Prof#6. My recommendation to delete is unchanged. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:51, 2 August 2009 (UTC).[reply]
- See WP:PROF footnote #5: a report from a consortium of computer science departments states explicitly and emphatically that WoS should not be used to evaluate computer science citation records. Its numbers are too badly distorted by its omission of most of the important computer science publication venues (conferences). That said, the Google scholar numbers (which I trust much more for this area) are not any more impressive. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:17, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
weak delete I am usually in close agreement with David E in the analysis of these records, but I think he is using an irrelevant criterion here. If a person has highly cited papers, it doesn't matter at what age he had them, or if he has done relatively little since. It's the doing of notable work as proven by the citations. Doing some really important work is notable,even if not a long notable career. And comparing with others in the category already is not valid either, whether used in a positive or negative way--it could be that we have a greatly insufficient number of people included in WP--or too many--it's a version of OTHER STUFF. Another editor above used raw h index alone as a criterion --this is always wrong--if a person had 7 papers with 7 citations each, the h value would be 7, if a person had 6 with 300 and one with 7, the value would also be 7. However,citation counts based on Google Scholar are relatively worthless, as they include citations from all sort of non-peer-reviewed sources as well. The usual conversion is to divide by two, so those citation counts are very borderline. DGG (talk) 04:10, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- If citation counts from Google scholar are worthless, then all citation counts in computer science are worthless, as the other sources of data are even worse than GS. Actually I am leaning towards the idea that citation counts (in the absence of knowledgeable analysis for why citations are high or low) are generally not very meaningful. My comment tried to address by at least looking at the numbers relative to peers in the same field rather than as absolutes, but GIGO. Sadly I don't have a suggestion for an alternative method for us to measure impact with any reliability across disciplines... —David Eppstein (talk) 06:21, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The entry does not make a case for notability, and cursory searches turn up nothing particularly different from thousands of other academics. The bar is being set too low for academics lately.Hairhorn (talk) 07:08, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting comment above. Would you be able to indicate when you think it was that the bar became to be set too low? Do you think the WP:Prof criteria need to be changed or that the current ones are not being applied properly? Can you give examples of particular AfDs that you feel were not dealt with appropriately? My own feeling at present is that standards for academic notability are very high. We require hundreds of independent citations rather than the dozen or less required in other subjects. I would be interested in your views. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:35, 2 August 2009 (UTC).[reply]

My issue is not with the notability criteria, but with too many entries scraping by (or arguably not qualifying at all). There are several recent examples, the first one that comes to mind is Warsame Ali (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Warsame Ali). Hairhorn (talk) 01:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, with three keeps and four deletes (including the nom) it was judged a 'no consensus'. I am sure you noted my own edits on the subject. It should have been relisted for further discussion. My own impression (without counting) is that in the last month or so the delete rate on these pages has been highish, say around 75%. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:54, 3 August 2009 (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.