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 Keep. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-02-25 08:36Z

Johann Christoph Wichmannshausen[edit]

Johann Christoph Wichmannshausen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Contested prod. This article was written by following the Mathematics Genealogy Project up to the point where mathematics ceases to be a separate subject, but a part of Natural Philosophy, a fraction of Moral Philosophy. This isn't a mathematician; his thesis title is Moral Disputation on Divorce according to the Law of Nature. The only evidence of notability is that he was the doctoral student of a notable advisor. We are not going to include every seventeenth-century doctorate from every university in Europe, are we? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as nom. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:54, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletions. -- David Eppstein 23:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete unless some assertion of notability is added to the article. Articles that fail to assert the notability of their subjects are supposed to be fodder for the speedy-deletion process. -- Dominus 00:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since assertions of notability have been added to the article, I now vote to keep. -- Dominus 14:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• weak keep I just added what i could find, I'm wondering how this fits into the 100 years test at wp:bio, as its been more than 100 years, and I'm sure someone will find this info useful. The guy has a few redlinks at wikipedia germany, but no article there. Being a professor back then seems rather prestigious, as elitist as universities were, so perhaps this satisfies examples 9 and 10 at WP:PROF. Also, this is a case of an article which helps WP:Build the web. I have a hard time saying delete for these reasons, and because doing some searches it seems that he played a role in the world that we remember a couple hundred years later, which seems notable enough. Smmurphy^(Talk) 02:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

comment I understand that I'm sort of saying that we should include almost every seventeenth-century professor from every major university in Europe. I think this isn't a universally held idea, but I think that being so generally means you satisfy the notability criterion I mentioned. Please, let me know how I'm wrong if you think I am. Thanks. Smmurphy^(Talk) 02:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

strong keep Dr. W. is not being written about on the basis of having a PhD, but of getting the degree, becoming a professor himself at another university, and training doctoral level students. Just getting the degree would not have been enough, and nobody is suggesting that all recipients of the doctorate would be included, any more than they would be today. (For one thing, most of them went on to law or medicine or the church.)

In dealing with contemporary academics, we currently generally include all full professors at research universities, either on the basis that they have been repeatedly been peer-reviewed for quality by qualified and knowledgeable senior faculty from several universities (at least 3 times in succession), or on the basis that they invariably have written a considerable number of well received works of scholarship. In the 17th century there were many fewer universities, and very few full professors in each, and so they can be assumed to have been at least as notable.

His coverage in the Mathematical Genealogy project is accidental, because of the difficulty of setting subject boundaries within the then very broad stretch of "philosophy" but I think this is a plus--the methods used in that project are applicable to what are now the other academic fields. The article should be edited to call him a philologist, not a philosopher, or a mathematician, on the authority of the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie--a truly wonderful resource-- and I have just done so. (He presumable presented a conventional thesis, and then went his own way.) I have also checked for further books he may have written. Now that I realize he was a philologist I recognize the name, because he was also the University librarian. DGG 06:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep. I found some actual scholarship citing Wichmannshausen and so despite having placed the original prod on this article I now feel that there is enough meat in it to merit keeping. —David Eppstein 06:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per DGG and User:Smmurphy. This is a very small article, so it's not using up very much of our resources, and I like the notability arguments of DGG. The information that is already in the article is 'hard-won' because it's not easy to research people from the 17th century. So its deletion would represent more of a loss than in some other cases. The sources which are there now seem quite good. It seems possible that the Mathematical Genealogy Project is mixing him up with his father-in-law Otto Mencke, but I haven't traced this out in detail. Our own article does not make that mistake. EdJohnston 17:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep now that article has been expanded. Spacepotato 02:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep -- his name appears in the genealogy of countless mathematicians (just google it); this is a non-negligible measure of notability, which, in and of itself, should warrant keeping the article. The recent additions and expansions (by David Eppstein and others) completely clinch the case for me. Turgidson 03:36, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, meets WP:BIO due to recently added non trivial mentions by other notable people, and as a result it is also an important bio for building the web. John Vandenberg 04:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep, I absolutely agree with User:Jayvdb about building the web. Moreover, the fact that someone lived long ago and thus is unfamiliar to you is not sufficient to delete the article. As we see W. was the author of several books - and remember that it was something very hard those times to get published. I think it's very stupid to delete something unless it harms somebody. Deleting articles like this is the stupidity squared. Really guys, create not delete. Amir Aliev 12:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Historical info has its own value, and I seriously doubt this will set a harmful precedent in terms of vanity articles. --C S (Talk) 14:54, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. If we're still talking about him 300 years later, he's notable enough. linas 02:10, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep assertion of notability and surces provided in article as modified during the course of this debate. Jerry lavoie 02:21, 25 February 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.