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. Big Dom 20:45, 6 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thomas Erl[edit]

AfDs for this article:

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Was previously deleted at AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Thomas Erl. Worked on in a user's subpage since then. Bringing back here to AFD to reassess community consensus on whether this article should be in Wikipedia mainspace, or be deleted. Procedural nom, no personal opinion expressed by nominator. -- Cirt (talk) 15:11, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related deletion discussions. — Meph^talk 15:48, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. — Meph^talk 15:48, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete I'm indecisive about this one. On one hand, per WP:BASIC, there is very little coverage of the person Thomas Erl. His work may be covered, but this is not an article about his work but about the person. The "biography" section starts at the age of 37, and could have been titled "professional achievements" just as well. On the other hand, I understand the claim for notability per WP:AUTHOR #2, "The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique." Assuming Mr. Erl is the originator of SOA, how significant is this new concept? An expert opinion from someone uninvolved would be helpful. Given such an opinion I might change my opinion. --Muhandes (talk) 07:14, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree that we should involve other experts in the discussion. However being a contributor to the article, I would just like to clarify one important point. Thomas Erl is not the originator of SOA and the article does not mention about it or claim about being the originator of SOA. He is the originator of principles related to service design and set of SOA patterns that contributed to the evolution of SOA and service orientation. The article was earlier moved to AFD and then after multiple discussions one of the admins asked me to edit it in my user space. I worked on the article with inputs and suggestions from other editors (thanks for their time & guidance) prior to re-publishing it. The date of birth was present earlier in the article but it was later removed by an editor (it can be included with no issue). Edited by Sanjay (talk) 09:45, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

— Note to closing admin: Edited by Sanjay (talk • contribs) is the creator of the page that is the subject of this AfD. Muhandes (talk) 07:49, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

— Edited by Sanjay (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

This just weakens the claim for WP:AUTHOR #2.--Muhandes (talk) 15:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Since I do apply SOA Design patterns and advocate these as very valuable, I would like to make couple of observations. Thomas Erl is not originator of SOA, but he did formulate the set principles and provided comprehensive set of SOA Design patterns that are used today. In addition, Thomas Erl contributed his work to the SOA patterns community with online SOA patterns and glossary that are extermely valuable for anyone who wants to better understand what SOA actually means. My suggestion would be making edits to the page that accurately represents author contributions and helps readers to connect to his work ( principles and patterns). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmitrio (talk • contribs) 16:07, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

— Dmitrio (talk • contribs) has made no other edits outside this discussion.

CommentThomas Erl is an important person in consideration of the global comprehensive education concerning concepts of SOA as a practice. While Thomas did not create SOA he is well known and respected throughout many communities as hub or connector of people in context of these concepts. A connection to Thomas is a connection to practitioners, educators, philosophers, and technologists. For this alone, it would be wise to keep an accurate and up to date page on Thomas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HowardCohen (talk • contribs) 01:00, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

— HowardCohen (talk • contribs) has made no other edits outside this discussion.

Adding comments by editors for which this is the first (and only) edit, just weakens the argument even more, see WP:MEAT. --Muhandes (talk) 10:50, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment We all clearly need to understand a few things about WP and publishing a page about a book author. Muhandes has been very patient in pointing out to me some non-obvious points like the difference between notability and importance. Some of us also have confused discussing formal issues about the page - which is what Muhandes expects - and voting for your favorite SOA author. Muhandes does not need our opinion about Thomas Erl but rather recommendations on how we can improve the page to help him decide whether to withdraw it from deletion or not. There are two main issues about our page, one is reliable sources and the other is notability. As per WP Notability, WP will consider that there is notability, even if there are not enough reliable sources, for 5 reasons. I have been able to elaborate on only three, and I do not know if it will be enough. So here they are:

Item 1: The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors: Thomas is the originator of principles of service design and he initiated the drive and co-created the soa-manifesto presently signed by almost a 1,000 SOA professionals(involving other experts such as Anne Thomas Manes, David Chappel). Apart from this, he is the originator for building a community that came up with SOA design patterns which was later compiled into a book. His books are well cited in many articles and books on SOA by other authors (for example, ACM). Thomas spoke at various SOA events mentioned below (re-listed from the article) : "Application Architecture, Development & Integration", "3rd Annual DoD SOA & Semantic Technology Symposium", and he is also going to be the keynote speaker at SOA in Healthcare Conference http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/HC-WS/index. The other keynote speaker is Ivar Jacobson. It clearly shows that he is an important figure in SOA. I claim that these assertions support item 1.

Item 2: The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique: Very few new things are discovered by a single person from scratch nowadays. Not many new Tim Berners-Lee recently, but much more team work and enterprise R&D. New concepts are frequently based on existing concepts which are revisited, synthesized, aggregated, rationalized, systematized, structured, etc. Sometimes a mass of concepts have been created originally dissociated (OO, BPM, Web Services, EAI, and others) but they contribute in creating a new concept too, as was the case of SOA, for which there was initially no formal definition. It was mainly a potential, and it is until somebody (Thomas among a few others) takes the trouble of studying all the elements and organizing them in a structured manner so that the new aggregated mass of disjointed elements become a unique, coherent, structured and comprehensible paradigm, that the concept can be successfully used and generalized all over the world. As an additional consequence, vendors cannot anymore make unjustified claim of qualities or benefits for their products that they actually do not offer. Thomas Erl introduced in particular the concept of vendor neutrality which, since then, has allowed buyers to be able to actually verify the vendors claims. Additionnally, Thomas has produced unique methods, techniques for designing a service oriented architecture. This did not exist previous to his work. And this also was obtained by providing a unique, standard way of describing SOA elements, which have established a continuum across all his books. His influence was aknowledged when he succeeded in gathering a significant group of IT specialist to create in 2 days the SOA Manifesto, which has now been signed by almost a thousand of IT specialists over the world. The manifesto has been translated in 11 lenguages by twice this amount of voluntary contributors. This is why Thomas Erl did not invent SOA, and did not have to, but helped considerably in shaping SOA into a formal paradigm. I claim that Thomas Erl originated significant new concepts and techniques and that item 2 is met.

Item 3: The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews. Today there are more than 20 authors working with him on SOA & related topics under the umbrella of Prentice Hall Service Oriented Computing Series which is again a unique effort in the area of SOA. However, I fear it will be a (long) while until a book can be written or a movie, around a SOA author (we are not such a popular type of professionals). I claim that these assertions support partially item 3.

I am aware that most of these assertions warrants links or references. If Muhandes accepts these assertions as a base for improving the page and posponing deletion further, then I can later coordinate with all interested parties to provide such links.Yveschaix (talk) 21:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the information. At this point I'd prefer to see what other editors think so I'd recommend that this discussion be relisted for more opinions. --Muhandes (talk) 21:23, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, -- Cirt (talk) 03:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep the work he is doing is notable; so he is notable. I'd say he meets WP:AUTHOR #4 for his series of books on SOA which have been bestsellers and reviewed extensively. jorgenev 05:40, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 20:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source it or lose it... Spartaz ^Humbug! 20:17, 29 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will work on the page in coming week with content to further support it. Edited by Sanjay (talk) 18:11, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Added patent invented by the author on the page. The IP for few patents were transferred to RedHat for building SOA related tool. I assume the patents can be considered as original work of the author. Edited by Sanjay (talk) 07:48, 5 July 2011 (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.