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. (non-admin closure) Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 06:20, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Webe Kadima[edit]

Webe Kadima (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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There is nothing in this article that seems to satisfy Wikipedia:Notability (academics) Slashme (talk) 20:33, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:40, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:40, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. A GS h-index of only 9 in a highly cited field is not enough for WP:Prof#C1. A good start but at present WP:Too soon. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:25, 8 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]
• Keep. Being a "professor at the State University of New York at Oswego" is far from being not notable. The responsibilty of a professor is based on three columns: (1) teaching, (2) research and (3) public responsibility. The achievements regarding Numbers 1 and 3 are difficult to assess just by doing just a web search. Thus, I propose to keep the article, and emphasise the achievements in these three sectors. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 23:02, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Which of the notability criteria for academics does Prof. Kadima fulfil? --Slashme (talk) 23:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity" in 2004, when "she went back to the Congo ... concentrating her research on plants used in the Congo to treat diabetes. She created ... the Bioactive Botanical Research Institute, whose mission was to investigate medicinal plants used in the Congo." This is unusual and thus in my eyes notable, indeed. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 05:43, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that's a reasonable argument. --Slashme (talk) 13:51, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I'd agree with that. Also she has enough coverage generally to just meet WP:GNG. Her Dictionary of African Biography entry is especially persuasive. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 11:17, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I cannot trace her entry in Dictionary of African Biography. Can anybody help? Xxanthippe (talk) 22:30, 9 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]
  • @Xxanthippe: Here you go. Yes, the ref in the article doesn't seem to take you to the right page. Just click on the top link for p. 257 if needed. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:48, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:57, 10 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]

• Thanks, I updated the reference. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:49, 10 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep due to the professor's activities in Oswego and more importantly the unusual scientific work in the Congo. NearEMPTiness (talk) 09:23, 16 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• striking second !vote. Agricola44 (talk) 05:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]

• Delete. African Dictionary bio is helpful, but it falls pretty far short of "multiple sources". With low h-index (I get 8), notability claim is also pretty far short of PROF. I think Xxan has it correctly characterized as TOOSOON. Agricola44 (talk) 05:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]
• Keep The article has used more sources than just the African Dictionary bio. Also she has accomplished some notable things such as creating the Bioactive Botanical Research Institute.2601:46:C801:5300:45EB:6148:6233:5AB2 (talk) 17:33, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• It's true that the reference list has more entries, but they're all web pages and other such insignifcances. Her departmental listing does not help the notability argument. Is the Bioactive Botanical Research Institute that she created notable, or is just another institute in the vast sea of non-profits? Agricola44 (talk) 21:44, 21 July 2016 (UTC).[reply]

• Weak keep based on a couple of things. The "Dictionary of African Biography" entry, stating that she created a non-profit, in addition to the citations she has received [1] make me believe that she just barely passes WP:PROF. Vanamonde (talk) 09:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete instead as this is still too bare to suggest better and there's not convincingly enough. SwisterTwister talk 19:13, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Have you checked the claim that "she discovered that cadmium binds within the red blood cell mostly to a tripeptide called glutathione and to a lesser degree to hemoglobin"? This is not trivial at all. The Dictionary of African Biography states also that the "results of her MS work were published in the Journal of Inorganical Chemica Acta in 1983", which looks like a peer reviewed paper to me. Please keep this in mind, before taking any actions. NearEMPTiness (talk) 21:31, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken a look at the article in question: she's third author along with Rabenstein and Isab,^[1] (Edit: sorry, that's not the one in question - wrong journal. I couldn't find her Inorganica Chimica Acta publication.) and Rabenstein published quite a lot in that field. It's good to get a publication out of your M.Sc., but hardly unusual. I see that she was later first author on a paper looking at the stability of the cadmium-glutathione complex in hemolysed red blood cells.^[2] That's solid science, but not really a notable breakthrough or surprising discovery as far as I can tell. --Slashme (talk) 07:02, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, second edit to clear things up: I found the Inorganica Chimica Acta article. It is not about glutathione, cadmium or erythrocytes, which is why I didn't find it right away: it's about the kinetics of palladium ethylenediamine chloride in solution.^[3] Again, solid science. The discovery that cadmium binds to glutathione and hemoglobin is indeed not trivial, and that's why it got published in a peer-reviewed journal, but discovering non-trivial facts about nature is what scientists do. My Biochem M.Sc. study leader did most of her work in Africa, and has over 60 publications, compared to Kadima's 17, and I have great respect for her, but she's still not notable by Wikipedia standards. So my take-away from this is that Kadima is professionally competent, but not notable as a researcher, so we have to decide notability based on the fact that she founded the Bioactive Botanical Research Institute. --Slashme (talk) 07:55, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Slashme: Thank you very much for collating the information about her scientific publications. I added a summary to the article, to make it easier for an administrator to make a valuable decision about keeping or deleting this article. It will also enable search engines to find this article more easily. I fully agree with you, that articles about non-notable persons should be deleted from Wikipedia, but I think, on this occasion, the notability threshold has easily been passed, at least according to the standards of the German Wikipedia, with which I am more familiar. Fingers and toes crossed... --NearEMPTiness (talk) 17:38, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

While I translated this article to German (de:Webe Kadima), I noted that she has received a $200,000 national science fund, which is another indication of her notability. --NearEMPTiness (talk) 18:43, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, here's the documentation on the NSF grant: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1008535 And she is the principal investigator for it. Innisfree987 (talk) 18:53, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

According to the NSF, they make 12000 awards per year, so getting an NSF grant is not evidence of notability. --Slashme (talk) 20:29, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment And now User:David Eppstein has decided to make an article about Amanda Swart (I noticed because I get notified of Wikilinks to Aspalathin and Nothofagin). That's a bit WP:POINTy, but hey, why not. It doesn't affect Prof. Kadima's notability either way: the point I was making was that Kadima's publications and academic career don't rise to the level of Wikipedia notability, and her notability must therefore be judged on the notability of the Bioactive Botanical Research Institute. --Slashme (talk) 21:12, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, not trying to make a point, I merely felt that she was notable enough for an article (through WP:PROF#C7 – her work has been described multiple times in the popular press, and the case for #C1 is less clear). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:53, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Very weak keep. The citation record is not yet strong enough to make a convincing case for WP:PROF#C1, the Oswegonian piece is entirely composed of quotes from a press release by her employer, and the Mwakilishi.com article (mirrored elsewhere) mentions her only in passing. And the arguments made above about how she has made scientific discoveries and been funded by grants are pointless: all academics in the sciences do that, and I don't think we want to argue that all are notable. The standard in sports of including anyone who walks onto the field in a professional game should be fixed, not emulated. But I think the "Dictionary of African Biography" entry linked above does count strongly for notability (even though it seems not to be linked in the actual article). Although the Post-Standard article is too local to count for WP:GNG notability by itself, it is reliable and independent of the subject, and I think it can be combined with the DAB source to provide the multiple in-depth reliable independent sources required by WP:GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:33, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - I've thought a bunch about this one because honestly I don't think the entry outrightly meets any of the notability guidelines. But at the end of the day, the reason for those guidelines--WP:WHYN--is to make sure we're providing readers with a reliable account. And I have vanishingly little concern that we might lead readers astray with this entry--much less so, in fact, than any number of entries that do meet our notability guidelines, but do so through popular press sources that in many cases are much less credible than the Dictionary of African Biography. Now, if the DAB were literally the only source, we might have a different issue, along the lines of WP:COPYVIO: we can't create a Wikipedia entry by, essentially, copying the entry from another encyclopedia, especially not one that's not in the public domain! But that doesn't seem to be the issue here; the DAB provides some information for this entry, and confirms information from other sources we have.

Bottom line, to me this seems like an entry that is reliable despite limited sources, on a topic that Wikipedia presently does a very poor job covering (actually several topics: women in science in Africa!) I think this is a case where following the rules here would be at odds with improving or maintaining the encyclopedia: WP:BURO / WP:IAR. Not to mention that even as stated, the BLP notability rules mean "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included" WP:BASIC; and I don't see that any of the specific grounds for exclusion WP:NOT apply here. So, keep. Innisfree987 (talk) 16:23, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep per WP:BARE. I'm looking holistically. FWIW, I graduated from SUNY New Paltz. Bearian (talk) 21:34, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• In case it matters, this article was specifically requested to be created by the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Women's History/Requested articles.173.62.200.237 (talk) 03:04, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - As stated above, this individual appears to clearly meet the notability criteria for academics through "7. The person has made substantial impact outside academia in their academic capacity". This article should be retained. CoffeeWithMarkets (talk) 14:45, 29 July 2016 (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.