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. There's two somewhat separate issues identified here and in the related discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation. The first is redundancy with the content at Fields medal. This is a strong argument, and rebuttal would require demonstrating the encyclopedic nature of the content in this list that is not in that article. The second is the question of original research, and whether the synthetic tables are based on reliable sources. The two questions are related, because the organization of this list is the key difference between the two articles. By and large, those !voting keep have failed to demonstrate that reliable sources examine Fields medal winners by affiliation, instead pointing to the significance of the medal or the fact that each item is individually sourced, neither of which have any bearing on the reasons for deletion. For the record, I would not normally give a different discussion any weight, except that very many !voters referenced that list and that discussion as the basis for their !vote. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:35, 26 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation[edit]
This list is a WP:CONTENTFORK from Fields Medal. This section in the Fields Medal article clearly and concisely informs readers of medalists' relevent institutional affiliations. Per the content fork guidelines, spin off articles are accepted "as a way of making articles clearer and easier to manage." This list article, however, is longer and harder to navigate than the parent article.
Additionally, the format information is presented in (ranking institutions by medal tally, the overlap collumn etc) as well as the criteria for inclusion is novel and not reflected in reliable sources. It is important to remember that Wikipedia is not a database. I appreciate the great deal of work editors have put into this article, and would be sympathetic to useful information being moved into the Fields Medal article if other editors agree. Vladimir.copic (talk) 06:06, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The person who opened up this topic is clearly trying to copy the on-going discussion in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation, for no apparent reason (the person who created this topic also participated in the Nobel Prize's discussion). Most arguments listed in the Nobel Prize's page (for or against) can be used word by word in here. I suggest administrators combine this topic with the Nobel's discussion. Minimumbias (talk) 06:50, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. On reading this I was surprised to see PSL Research University tied for first place, with a French flag alongside. What on earth is that? It turns out to combine the École Normale Supérieure with the Collège de France. Everyone in France has heard of these two, but who has heard of PSL Research University? I haven't tried to edit it for the moment (for example with a footnote or a parenthesis), because that should wait for a decision on the deletion proposal, but if the article is to be kept that should be done. Athel cb (talk) 09:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Athel cb: Originally, the list had ENS and Collège de France separately, as was the case when I created the list. But last year some French people (I suppose) came to change them to PSL Research University, and it was then I realized the French education system was going through some reforms. You can review these changes by looking at the editing history of the list last year, or by looking at the relevant discussion on Talk Page [1]. I still thought ENS and Collège de France must be mentioned, so at the end we have the version of the list as you see today. --Minimumbias (talk) 22:30, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The French education system is always going through some reforms! Unfortunately the French authorities have a passion for changing the names of things. My local university was called Université d'Aix-Marseille II 35 years ago, but everyone called it Luminy. Then they decided to be Université de la Méditerranée (but everyone still called it Luminy). Now it is Aix-Marseille Université -- English word order, French spelling (but everyone still calls it Luminy), and we're supposed to write Aix Marseille Univ on publications (no hyphen, Université abbreviated, because the chaps in Shanghai don't know that Université means University). Anyway, getting back to PSL Research University, hardly anyone has any idea what that is. It sounds like something you'd find in China. Athel cb (talk) 08:11, 19 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting to know! My main impression was that universities in Paris like Sorbonne split and reorganized quite often, because I had some previous visiting experience there and a group of friends and colleagues also joked about it. But perhaps this conversation is not directly relevant here on this page. If you are interested, feel free to weigh in here [2] if you have better ideas on how we should present these French universities and colleges. Thanks. Minimumbias (talk) 03:02, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We are, after all, talking about a nation that had to have two revolutions and five republics. EEng 05:24, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
To me it comes across as extremely misleading to the point of dishonesty to write that Grothendieck, for instance, was affiliated with a newly-named conglomeration which did not exist when Grothendieck was active. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Move to the Fields Medal article, as suggested above. Athel cb (talk) 09:28, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation is important for many reasons. Fields Medal page already has a list of Field Medalists. The list provides information on Fields Medalists and their academic affiliations. The page is also linked with many university pages. For instance, the lead of Harvard and Princeton universities states that Harvard has 18 Fields Medalists and Princeton has 16 Fields Medalists; the information is on the basis of this list. By applying the logic of Vladimir.copic, editors can go to whatever lists in Wikipedia they don't like and call them "database" that should be deleted. If an article is "longer and harder to navigate", it doesn't mean that we should delete the article. The only "criteria" that can be used on the list is almost the universally accepted definition of "academic affiliation" (students, faculty, and short-term staff). Ber31 (talk) 11:02, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Clear and concise information about Fields Medalists and their academic affiliations is already provided here. This list is an unnecessary content fork from that. Further, I cannot find any reliable sources grouping or ranking institutions by number of medalists like this page does (never mind the inclusion criteria). I think Occam’s razor comes into play. Vladimir.copic (talk) 12:10, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Vladimir.copic, there is a big difference. That list within Fields Medal page doesn't say anything about alumni or short-term staff. It only states affiliation at the time of the announcement of the Fields Medal, and current or last affiliation. That list provides only partial information about the long term staff. List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation shows the academic affiliations (alumni, long-term staff, and short-term staff) of Fields Medalists much more comprehensively. List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation is not a WP:CONTENTFORK from Fields Medal. Vladimir.copic, please don't try to mislead people. List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation is modelled after List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation. List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation is like a "sister list". There is an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation. Editors should carefully read the arguments at that page. Ber31 (talk) 13:09, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing to stop editors moving missing information to the Fields Medal page if appropriate. Vladimir.copic (talk) 20:26, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. After reading the comment by Ber31 I'm revising my vote to Keep. Athel cb (talk) 11:48, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For transparency I believe this is in reference to this Talk page message from Ber31 [3]. Vladimir.copic (talk) 12:47, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
After reading my argument, User:Athel cb decided to change his "vote". That was his decision. Ber31 (talk) 13:09, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The Fields medal is well known to be the maths equivalent of the Nobel after that discipline was snubbed by the founder. The same issues as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation therefore arise and so it's disruptive to repeat that huge discussion in which there is clearly no consensus to delete. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:38, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My nomination is about content forking which isn’t the basis of the Nobel AfD. Of course this is a notable topic which is why it is already sufficiently covered here. I look forward to you addressing the substance of this nomination. Vladimir.copic (talk) 20:26, 18 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Nominator argues that this spinoff list is longer. Well that's a good reason to keep it, there more valid information in it, all well referenced. DreamFocus 07:34, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure how, for example, listing Artur Avila as a visitor at University of Toronto, citing Avila's CV as its source, can be described as valid and well referenced information. This seem to be unverifiedWP:SYNTH as well as problematic for a WP:BLP. Vladimir.copic (talk) 06:57, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The individual items are referenced, but the judgment about what counts as "affiliation" is a layer on top of that. For example, it might be a fact that "some award-based visiting positions such as the "Shiing-Shen Chern Visiting Professorship" in UC Berkeley are awards/honors without employment-level duty". And it might be a fact that so-and-so was awarded a Shiing-Shen Chern Visiting Professorship at Berkeley. The problem is inventing the rule that "awards/honors without employment-level duty" don't qualify as "affiliation". The same goes for every other criterion, sub-criterion and exception given in the introduction. The problem is pervasive throughout and fundamental to the list. Some projects just aren't suitable for Wikipedia. This is one of them. XOR'easter (talk) 21:40, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No. This is not inventing new rule. These are basic common sense and universally accepted definitions. Do you call yourself affiliated with another country just because you went there for a trip? Do people who go to Sweden to receive awards like Nobel prizes automatically become affiliated with Sweden or Swedish universities? Do scholars become affiliated with one university simply because they attended some 5-day conference at the university? Absolutely no. We are only explaining this common sense in academia to the public, not inventing new rules or creating subjective criteria. Education and employment (salary, taxes, etc) are the basic academic affiliations, which is universally accepted. What you are trying to do is misleading people and abusing Wikipedia policies. The NOR policy is not applicable when it comes to basic common sense. Minimumbias (talk) 22:01, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Can we please rise above the hostility here? I've said before, and I'll say again, that an effort like this could be a valuable research project. My contention is that it's unsuitable for this particular website. Why? Well, NOR applies everywhere. Hyper-specific criteria like summer visitors are generally excluded from the list unless summer work yielded significant end products such as research publications and components of Fields-winning work are not "basic common sense". An unproductive postdoc counts, while an unproductive summer term doesn't? Teaching counts for visiting positions, but not in the summer? Maybe those are ultimately reasonable lines to draw, but they're not the kind of decisions that we can make here. The introduction to the list itself indicates that there is room for debate, by saying that as for award-based visiting positions, to minimize controversy this list takes a conservative view. That's staking out a subjective criterion. I won't accuse you of misleading people, because I think you genuinely believe this page (and others like it) are both valuable and compliant with Wikipedia's policies. I might even agree with you on the former point. I can't agree on the latter. XOR'easter (talk) 22:21, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'll respond again in two perspectives. 1) You are based on a particular description that you may not agree with, but are using this particular point to argue that everything we say in the article is decision-making or subjective criteria. This is incorrect. If you wish to improve specific content in this article to remove a particular point or language that you think is "OR", then use the Talk Page of the list, instead of arguing that the entire list must be deleted because of OR. 2) For the specifics, I've stated in the Nobel's page that summer school is open to the public and may not be for academic purposes. The teaching and research during this period is run on a different system and basis, sometimes not related to the university's own academics. This topic had been discussed on the Nobel's Talk Page between other editors and I before. However, for example, if one made publications using the name of the university, then it is undeniably academic affiliation. We never invented subjective criteria. We only respected universal rules. Minimumbias (talk) 22:34, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to reply to one of your comments. That "conservative view" does not mean we use subjective rule. The only "criteria" we use is universal rule: education and employment. You have to read and quote the context of "conservative view": we are simply explaining that most award-based visiting positions are awards/honors, with no employment whatsoever, and they are thus not affiliations. If you think this language of "conservative" could imply a sense of "OR", then use Talk Page and we can talk. But please do not misinterpret what we are doing and use misinterpretation to argue that the list should be deleted, because we are only respecting the universal rule (I'll not say that you are misleading people this time). --Minimumbias (talk) 23:01, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is my position that the problems with how this list was constructed are too interwoven to be fixed piecemeal. The trouble is too big and too fundamental for the Talk page. Even if I did not think so, the deletion debate was opened without any action on my part. We're here now; talking elsewhere would be a distraction. Saying to minimize controversy this list takes a conservative view is saying that the underlying facts could also be given a more expansive view. It denies the existence of a "universal" standard. Even a reasonable or justifiable subjective judgment is still subjective. Likewise, the now-removed text about how all types of affiliations count equally represents a subjective standard. It might sound egalitarian, but choosing to be egalitarian (and doing so to that specific extent) is itself a judgment on top of the facts. XOR'easter (talk) 23:13, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
1) Let me repeat. Why not read and quote the full context when we say “conservative view”? As I said, do not misinterpret what we are doing. We are only explaining that award-based positions are in general awards/honors, not affiliations. We are not implying there is a more universal criteria for affiliation. Again, if you think the language itself can be improved so that it does not sound “OR” to editors, which we are not doing, then we can use the Talk Page. But arguing something we did not do and use it for deletion is another story. 2) For your other concern, no I disagree. That sentences only meant we are doing universal counting, meaning when we see 5 people, we say 5. We do not add in any extra subjective criteria. Universal counting is not OR. --Minimumbias (talk) 23:45, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, mostly per XOR'easter and WP:POVFORK. The listing by as-awarded and most-recent affiliations in Fields medal is completely adequate and not in any need of expansion. This adds a pile of WP:SYNTH on top of it, and its violations of MOS:FLAG are in explicit opposition to the consensus at Talk:Fields Medal that nationalities should not be emphasized for this award. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:05, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No OR or synthesis. Same reasons above. Minimumbias (talk) 22:08, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are you intending to reply to all delete opinions, repeating your own contrary opinion? See WP:BLUDGEON. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are you implying that when we do reply, you quote some policy saying we repeat, but when we don’t, you (and some other administrators) say we do not argue enough, like in the Nobel’s deletion review page? I didn’t even repeat my words. I just referred to above. --Minimumbias (talk) 23:36, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That is indeed what you did -- stop doing it, it's a form of WP:BLUDGEONing. --JBL (talk) 11:42, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I've removed According to Wikipedia policies on no original research and objectivity/neutrality, it is impossible in Wikipedia to assign various weights to different types of affiliations. Hence, all types of affiliations count equally in the following table and throughout the whole page. from the article. It's editorializing to the extreme. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 22:19, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I believe precedent has been set on the WP:OR issues of this page by this recent AfD on a page that used a similar methodology. Vladimir.copic (talk) 23:19, 21 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Turning academic awards into a university pissing contest is tacky at any venue, and hosting it at Wikipedia cheapens the encyclopedia effort. –jacobolus(t) 02:21, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It's almost as if Fields medals and Nobel prizes are in some way more serious than video games .... (More seriously: none of the lists you've listed here suffer from the problems that this one does, suggesting you haven't understood the nomination or delete voters concerns.) --JBL (talk) 11:41, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
JBL: After I reviewed your contributions, you seem to be a serious editor. Please read diff 1 and diff 2. I tried to address some of the issues that is also relevant to this AFD. There are some people at universities who like this sort of lists, but you will also find people who are not fond of such lists. Ber31 (talk) 13:08, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ber31: This is not really worth getting into (and I already regret posting my initial comment; where also I have struck the personalized parenthetical), but let me try to briefly expand: there is a difference between lists about trivial topics and lists about trivial aspects of important topics. As I read Jacobolus's comment, what it objects to is trivializing something serious -- so to say "but look, we also have lists about video games" is to miss the point entirely (you can't trivialize video games, they're trivial to begin with). --JBL (talk) 15:25, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:JayBeeEll: I got your point. And, I appreciate your point. If Wikipedia had more editors like you, maybe I would hang around this website a bit longer. Would you consider university rankings as "trivializing something serious"? I would say university rankings can be very controversial. Would you consider a graduate of a state college to be less intelligent that a Princeton graduate? Few years ago, I met with a guy with a PhD who was very smart. After I asked him about the name of the graduate school, he was reluctant to answer. He went to a "lower ranked" university. I have met with graduates of highly ranked schools who lack common sense. I am more interested in how much knowledge you have acquired. Do university rankings matter? I would say unless the ranking of the university is really low, it should not matter! :) Should lists like List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation or List of Fields Medal winners by university affiliation be accused of "trivializing something serious"? We can have an endless debate on such topics. I have met with someone who holds a high position in a highly ranked university, and he was gutted by the fact that his university has "less" Nobel prize winners than the rival school. Speaking as a pragmatist, stuffs such as university rankings, Nobel Prize affiliations, etc. do seem to matter in the real world. List of Nobel laureates by university affiliation may have been deleted from this website, but universities are going will keep on counting Nobel prize affiliates on their lists. That's how the real world works. Ber31 (talk) 16:49, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the kind words. I don't think I have anything else substantive to add here. Probably this isn't your bag, but let me know if you want to work on improving Plane partition or Catalan number. --JBL (talk) 20:05, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are entirely missing my point, and these lists are not comparable. I’m not generally opposed to lists of trivial things. (And e.g. the article Lists of best-selling video games by platform is a list of lists, not a ranking of platforms.) What is tacky about this list is that it turns an award intended to recognize and encourage future great individual mathematical work into some kind of a bulk contest between universities. This doesn’t further scientific collaboration or recognize achievement, but instead encourages chest-thumping tribalism. Once you start down this path you might equally add “list of Grammy winners by record label”, “list of UN Secretaries-General by religious affiliation”, “list of NYT best selling novels by font”, “list of poet laureats by preferred text editor”, “list of olympic sprinters by running shoe”, “list of world-champion bartenders by favorite soccer team”, or a million other original synthetic lists turning various individual recognition into unofficial group competition. –jacobolus(t) 18:13, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There are a million ways to slice this data, and ranking the schools by this particular count seems totally arbitrary, which makes this whole page OR. Including short-term affliations that had nothing to do with the Fields Medal work seems especially problematic. A common sense approach that would give more interesting results would be to weight different affiliations differently, but that just emphasizes that there is no way to make this list without making lots of judgement calls, i.e., original research. Danstronger (talk) 13:27, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, what we can't do is base ourselves on a "universally accepted definition" which is not, unlike what you claim, "universally accepted". If different sources come to different conclusions about what is and what is not "being affiliated to university X"; then we explicitly cannot take a position (per NPOV) on the matter and decide "this definition is the correct one" (as that would indeed be OR). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:55, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Overriding the sources is exactly the opposite of what WP:NPOV and WP:NOR mean. We can report what different universities say, but we cannot tell them that they should be saying something else. XOR'easter (talk) 17:15, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I saw an article by Alexander Grothendieck. The infobox for that article listed the fields, Doctoral advisors, and Doctoral students. Also, Universities also study fields other than mathematics. It's not clear to me what the list discussed in this AfD is trying to get people to understand.--SilverMatsu (talk) 00:09, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:NOT and WP:NOR. Wikipedia is not a database; an indiscriminate collection of unrelated trivia; or a directory based on unrelated characteristics - something which this article very obviously is, as the overly broad concept of "academic affiliation" clearly does not have a significant link with "being awarded a medal". This is, as clearly identified by JayBeeEll, a "trivial aspect of an important topic", the same way that "List of US presidents by day of the week they were born in" is. Additionally, this is clearly OR, not because there are no sources, but because these sources are used in a novel, synthetic manner, and as such the whole of the content of the list, from the ground up, is original research; and because it is based on subjective criteria (which by definition cannot be "routine calculations", which are objective). Something that is first published on Wikipedia, and has no precedent in other sources [not even listed on the site of the Fields Medal itself], and is indeed only based on the synthesis of sources which say, separately, "X attended [institution]" and, often at an entirely unrelated time, "X won [award]", and blatantly explains itself as being OR in the lead (by listing its own criteria, notably in the long paragraph beginning "Further explanations on "visitors" under "Short-term academic staff" are now presented."); is obviously OR, and something built on such a shaky foundation should be deleted. Even if, by some miracle, there are enough appropriate sources to write a proper article, then WP:TNT applies, because it would require rewriting this entirely. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:07, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My point is we don’t even need to rewrite this page as it is already covered in a non-OR way in this table.Vladimir.copic (talk) 20:59, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - We've too many lists articles, which need eliminating. GoodDay (talk) 00:17, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Incomprehensible hyperventilating bean-counting exercise reminiscent of the crazy-wall in Beautiful Mind. EEng 11:17, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:EEng: You are not going to allow me to retire easily. Your comments do tend to get on my nerve. Nerds do like lists such as this! :) Ber31 (talk) 16:52, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Speak for yourself. I'm a nerd and I think it's silly. EEng 18:04, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thanks for pointing that out. It vividly illustrates the persistence of illogical and non–policy-based arguments for keeping. EEng 18:03, 23 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Per @RandomCanadian Fails WP:LISTN and WP:OR as nothing like this list exists in the real world. It is just yet another WP:TRIVIA content-fork of two unrelated topics (Fields Medal winners and the incredibly vague by 'university affiliation') cobbled together through WP:SYNTH. Wikipedia is not a WP:DIRECTORY for trivia. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:13, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect I think the WP:NOR issues are fixable (and mostly fixed) so there isn't a need to delete on that ground. However, I fully agree with the argument that the Fields Medal article clearly and concisely informs readers of medalists' relevent institutional affiliations. If kept, the list possibly should be renamed to a List of Fields Medal winners, and include birth date and place, nationality, etc. as well. (That would be more of a database, but *shrug*.) User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 15:51, 24 October 2021 (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.