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. The delete arguments (specifically JPL and Celestina007) are perfunctory and there is no real rebuttal to the assertions that the subject passes WP:AUTHOR. A Train^talk 19:26, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Robert Bruce Ware[edit]

Robert Bruce Ware (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Fails notability guidelines for a person My very best wishes (talk) 15:34, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 15:39, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Fails primary notability requirements for inclusion into the encylopedia.Celestina007 (talk) 18:04, 05 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete no where even close to meeting the notability guidelines for academics.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:08, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Slow down. The article as currently constructed is trash. It is a badly paraphrased version of this [1] with no critical thought. Ware is a published expert on central Asia (check Google Scholar). He's a TV guy [2]. He's a full professor now. His books sell on Amazon not just by obscure university presses. He is way more notable than a single-appearance cricket player. And more literate than Walid Phares. Rhadow (talk) 17:30, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking about his own page, this is basically a self-published or simply an unreliable source. As disclaimer tells, "The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by SIUE.". If something can be supported by other sources which qualify as RS, that something can be included on the page. My very best wishes (talk) 19:25, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. WP:PROF#C1 is more adapted to paper-publishing academics than book-publishing ones. But with two books and an edited volume, all with multiple published reviews, I think he passes the lower bar of WP:AUTHOR. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:45, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I checked his ISI citation index ("Web of Science"), and it gives h-index of 3; his publications included in Web of Science (24 publications) were cited 30 times excluding self-citations. This is way too low. My very best wishes (talk) 19:46, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I said, you are applying paper-publishing standards to a book-publishing academic. That doesn't work, and what you see is exactly what you would expect when you do this. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:55, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • If I understand correctly, you refer to WP:PROF#C1 which reads as The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors. Yes, he published a few books, and each of them was cited several times in reviews, such as that one. OK. But it does not seem "widely cited" to me. My very best wishes (talk) 20:10, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not sure why you are failing to understand what David Eppstein is saying. The subject is not a scientist, so shouldn't be judged on metrics applicable to scientists such as citations in the Web of Science. A book review is an article completely about the book author's work, so can't be compared to a citation to a particular finding in a journal article about something else. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:57, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not a scientist? Oh no, he is most certainly a scientist, he published in scientific journals, and his work therefore included in "Web of Science" database. My very best wishes (talk) 23:12, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Our article describes him as a philosopher, and one might imagine that at this point he is also more of a historian. Neither of those things is generally classified among the sciences. Which of the journals that he publishes in do you think is a science journal? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:06, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I must note that there is a reliable secondary source saying that the subject is a leading specialist on Dagestan, but the nominator has repeatedly removed both the source and the statement from the article. How can we have a proper discussion about notability when one of the participants is removing reliable sourced content? This is WP:BATTLEGROUND behaviour rather than an attempt to reach consensus. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 21:16, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Why do I get the idea that you have a verdict, and you're just waiting for your jury to come tell us what you want to hear? This guy is a professor of the humanities. He writes papers and books. If the New York Times would review one of his books, that would be, like, a thousand citations of a research paper on cancer. But he doesn't write about cancer. He writes about Dagestan. PBS News interviews him about that. Truth-out says he served as an advisor to the US State Department from 1999 to 2007. I have no idea who Truth-out is. He publishes in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies. How many citations do you think he will get? He wrote Ethnic parity and democratic pluralism in Dagestan: A consociational approach, 47 cited him. Not bad in that field. In the fifty years since Henry Kissinger wrote The troubled partnership: a re-appraisal of the Atlantic alliance, it has been cited only 350 times ... and he taught at Harvard and headed the State Department.
  If the standard for academics is the Nobel and the standard for a writer is the Man Booker, then the equivalent standard for athletes would be a world championship or the Olympic gold. That, however, is not our standard. We recognize anyone who has made a professional appearance. When PBS Newshour interviews you for four and a half minutes, you've made a professional appearance [3]. Quit being such snobs. Rhadow (talk) 21:51, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• WP:PROF#C1 tells "widely cited". There are certain standards what is called "widely cited" in the scientific community. There are various resources and indexes, such as Science Citation Index and h-index. These resources and indexes usually do not make distinction between citations of books, reviews and original scientific articles (all count the same). They also do not make distinction if the citing paper was in Nature, JACS, or any other journal included in citation database. Based on these widely accepted indexes, that author has very low citation. This is all. If you want to check indexes other than Science Citation Index (and h-index it provides), that's fine. Please do, with supporting links. My very best wishes (talk) 22:20, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• He also has a very low vote count in the last US presidential election, not enough to pass WP:NPOL. Why do you think this is relevant? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:07, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I agree with David that the multiple reviews of his books passes WP:AUTHOR/WP:PROF, and that citation metrics are not a reliable way of gauging the notability of humanities scholars. – Joe (talk) 22:12, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep We keep academics who have written multiple books each of which has gotten multiple multiple, thoughtful reviews in multiple, respected academic journals. We keep them. We just do.E.M.Gregory (talk) 23:18, 5 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not think that would be consistent with WP guidelines. I am looking, for example, at Wikipedia:Notability_(academics). #1 tells about high citation and Simply having authored a large number of published academic works is not considered sufficient to satisfy Criterion 1. #4 tells: Criterion 4 may be satisfied, for example, if the person has authored several books that are widely used as textbooks (or as a basis for a course) at multiple institutions of higher education. This is not the case. My very best wishes (talk) 00:04, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I do see your point. However, there is also WP:AUTHOR, which is routinely passed with three book reviews of at least one book in reliable, secondary sources such as an academic journal or general circulation newspaper. It is often used instead of WP:PROFESSOR with with academics in the humanities and social sciences. I am not saying that his books are reliable, or good or anything else about them - I do not know his work.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:46, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• I did not know about the "three book reviews of at least one book" rule. Was it written in guidelines? If not, that must be written in WP:AUTHOR. If I knew, I would never nominated this page for deletion. However, honestly, I think that "three book reviews of at least one book" is a very low cutoff. One can only guess how many pages about hardly notable researchers in humanities have been created and kept. My very best wishes (talk) 01:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• No. It's an informal rule of thumb used by editors who regularly do WP:AUTHORS which, as you may or may not know, is an area where Wikipedia is swamped on a daily basis by self-published, wannabe writers self-promoting self-published novels and by non-notable writers of non-notable books of self-promotion in all fields . We need some kind of guideline, and this is the rule of thumb we use. You're right that it's a pretty low bar. I have wondered about that, too.E.M.Gregory (talk) 01:37, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I had no idea. Was it a discussion or an RfC somewhere to establish such rule and use it per WP:Consensus? My very best wishes (talk) 01:41, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No. It's not. It's just a sort of consensus interpretation of WP:AUTHOR 4.c. I know it sounds strange, but that guideline reads "The person's work (or works) either... (c) has won significant critical attention" and this is a sort of way to operationalize that. And, in our defense, to deal with the daily avalanche of truly non-notable authors who create pages for themselves. Three independent full-length reviews in major daily papers, or academic journals. An unwritten rule. (I hope that you have seen Tom Cruise cross examine Noah Wylie in A Few Good Men, here:[4].)E.M.Gregory (talk) 02:14, 6 November 2017 (UTC) Addendum; to clarify. It is, as I stated, a sort of rule of thumb. Other arguments can certainly trump it, and no one states outright: Keep as per three review rule - or anything like that. It's just, I have been doing AUTHOR and minor academic AfDs pretty regularly for for 2-3 years, and, well, I can't remember an article being deleted when an author had a book that had gotten three solid reviews in well-known journals or newspapers. E.M.Gregory (talk) 02:32, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is bad. One must start a formal RfC or discussion and include such rule in official guideline if RfC succeeds. Then I would not waste my time here. But I'd like to hear what a closing administrator thinks about it. My very best wishes (talk) 02:25, 6 November 2017 (UTC

The formal rule or guideline exists, and has already been pointed out to you. It is WP:AUTHOR. All such rules are interpreted as meaning something by the editors who apply them. EMG is merely describing to you EMG's interpretation of WP:AUTHOR, which is apparently consistent with how many other editors have been interpreting it. What is bad about that? We are not robots, nor should we be; the guidelines and policies guide our interpretations, but they are not and cannot be purely mechanical. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:04, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It tells: The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors.. Should someone simply with a couple of books mentioned in several reviews be regarded as "widely cited" or an "important figure"? I thought the obvious answer was "no". Actually, I am even surprised that reviews like that serve as a proof of notability. These guys/journals probably just review all recent books. This is not a scientific review of all literature in the field, where such citation would definitely count. This is like a peer review after the publication. Such book reviews frequently are not even included in "Web of Science" database. My very best wishes (talk) 13:07, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's only criterion #1 out of the four criteria of WP:AUTHOR. Arguably, it is supported by the claim in a source you pointed to yourself on the article talk page that Ware is "arguably America's leading authority on Dagestan". But the part of WP:AUTHOR that is more relevant to EMG's argument is 3, "the primary subject of ... multiple independent periodical articles or reviews" and 4(c), "The person's work (or works)...has won significant critical attention". —David Eppstein (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No, he was not "the primary subject" of publications here or elsewhere. Yes, his work was cited, among many others. This is all. Having a few reviews of books does not mean "significant critical attention". Like I said, he has h-index of 3, and his works were cited ~30 times according to "Web of Science" (probably more because it does not cover everything). So yes, he was cited. However, this is very low citation. My very best wishes (talk) 18:32, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You are continuing to misread WP:AUTHOR. It's not that long. Try harder. It doesn't require that Ware himself be the primary subject, but that his works be. His works (three books) are indeed the primary subject of multiple publications (the book reviews). And why on earth are you returning to this off-topic argument about citation counts? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:43, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I read it. It tells:

The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series) or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.

You are quoting only second phrase. It tells "In addition...". But I do not see any signs that the "person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work". Low citation index is the proof that whatever he published was not "well-known" or "significant". My very best wishes (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as WP:AUTHOR; author / editor of multiple books with non-trivial reviews. Sample reviews:

• Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the North Caucasus - By Robert Bruce Ware and Enver F. Kisriev. Zabyelina, Yuliya. Political Studies Review, Jan 01, 2012; Vol. 10, No. 1, p. 154. The article reviews the book "Dagestan: Russian Hegemony and Islamic Resistance in the... more
• Caucasian problems and old Russian questions. Andrew Wachtel. Political Quarterly, Jan 01, 2014; Vol. 85, No. 1, p. 90-109. Reviews The Fire Below. How the Caucasus Shaped Russia, edited by Robert Bruce Ware. Bloomsbury. 360pp.

Etc. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:13, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• rethink provoked by User:My very best wishes excellent cross-examination, I ran a quick gNews search to see why this minor acdemic seems to be controversial. An book review in Foreign Affairs of somebody else's book had this phrase "a curiously emotional attack on Lieven, Jack Matlock, Robert Bruce Ware, and other leading Western experts.", and it persuaded me that I don';t have to understand why Ware is controversial. Are foreign policy journals like Foreign Affairs partisan and inexorably POV? Is the Pope Catholic? But my POV on the Caucasus is as irrelevant as Foreigh Affairs's POV, it, like at least some of the journals that review his books, are WP:RSes. and so I do think it passed WP:BASIC.E.M.Gregory (talk) 02:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is a typical "opinion piece" that does not explain anything. One can only guess that Evangelista criticizes B. Ware for misrepresenting genocide during Second Chechen War as a legitimate anti-terrorist operation. However, this is not really in the quoted source. My very best wishes (talk) 13:14, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We do have an article on Justin McCarthy (American historian), a genocide denier with footnotes, so bad history does not get your page deleted. However, I promise to return later and take a deep dive into the sources. One question would be whether the journals cited are reliable and independent.E.M.Gregory (talk) 13:43, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If someone was a genocide denier is completely irrelevant. Only notability of the person is relevant. My very best wishes (talk) 14:55, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- There is a big POV problem here. User:My very best wishes, who argues for citation counts, dePRODs Simon Saradzhyan, a similar academic who is a research fellow, not professor, with substantially lower citation counts than Ware. Oh, and NO book reviews. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Rhadow (talk) 14:02, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I PRODed this page again. Now this is your responsibility to follow up. I simply do not have time, sorry. My very best wishes (talk) 14:55, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Question to closing admin. Based on discussion here and elsewhere [5], the participants keep pages about academic researchers if they published at least a couple of books that have been reviewed, even without other indications of notability. Is it generally a good idea? Is it consistent with our guidelines? I understand that in the case of Ware there are additional indications of notability, such as his appearance (once) on TV and someone else calling him a "leading expert". My very best wishes (talk) 13:11, 7 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Observation -- Not just once on TV. Not the most notable appearance, but another on Pravda.ru [6], and an interview by UPI [7].

Pravda.ru is actually "a link to avoid" (no one will listen to this heavy Russian accent). 2nd one is a good RS, although the content is terrifying (the subject justifies murder of moderate Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov as an "achievement"). But here is bottom line. Just look at the page. It is now well sourced and objective, thanks to David Eppstein! Should it be kept? Yes, if someone thinks that pages about all authors with multiple reviews of their books should be kept. But is it anywhere in AfD guidelines? No, this is only in the "common outcomes" that should not be used as a guideline. My very best wishes (talk) 15:07, 10 November 2017 (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.