Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Todd May

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. MBisanz ^talk 02:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Todd May[edit]

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No indication of notability per GNG ~~or WP:NACADEMIC.~~^{(note 'keep' !vote below)} No significant coverage (of the subject) in reliable sources could be found. There is some coverage of one of his books (see the talk page), but not much else. Repeatedly recreated from the redirect by an IP, so worth having a discussion rather than edit warring over it. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 20:53, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. XOR'easter (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - He appears to have once held a named chair (McDevitt Chair in Religious Philosophy) of Le Moyne College [1], therefore possibly satisfies WP:NACADEMIC #5. He is also Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University [2]. His books are also reviewed in major publications, for example, Times Higher Education, The Guardian, LA Reviews of Books (this is in addition to specialist review publications, e.g. [3], [4]), therefore may qualify under WP:AUTHOR #3. There are also interviews and discussion ABC, Believer, and his work quoted and discussed in books (e.g. [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], among too many to list here). He therefore possibly satisfies WP:NACADEMIC #1. He has written opinion pieces for New York Times. I believe he is notable enough based on a few different notability criteria. Hzh (talk) 00:28, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that WP:NACADEMIC #5 will be satisfied by Le Moyne College because I wouldn't call it a "major institution of higher education and research". While the interviews are good sources, they can't be used to demonstrate notability because they are not independent of the subject. However, the reviews of his work and citations in other works might be enough to qualify for WP:AUTHOR #3 or WP:NACADEMIC #1. I'll let others weigh in before deciding to withdraw this nomination. I mainly submitted this article as a way to start a discussion due to edit warring on the page (reverting to redirect and back repeatedly). Thanks for your comments Hzh. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}

Redirect or delete. Are we working with any biographical secondary sources? Because if so, I haven't seen them, nevertheless enough to write a biographical article that does justice to the topic. None of his book reviews go into enough depth to even describe his writing career. To review the above links, the THE and The Guardian reviews are both hopelessly short, leaving the LA Rev of Books piece. As I said months ago, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism, which is supposed to be his standout work, was only reviewed in Ethics (philosophy journal) and Choice (very brief listings for librarian purchase recommendations): it isn't independently notable. And his other books did not receive many major reviews. The Google Books links have little substance on May apart from repeating what he said, e.g., even in the first link of the group, which has the longest relevance, there is no analysis and only recitation. I'd welcome other sources, especially if they are offline or in languages other than English. I would support restoring the redirect to Post-anarchism#Approaches, which is another mess but at least cites a secondary source in May's relation to "poststructuralist anarchism", the work for which he is best known, but since that single-sentence mention serves little function in the article, I'd also back the nom's rationale to delete. czar 02:51, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Size of reviews, need for analysis, offline sources or in other languages do not appear to be criteria for notability. However, establishing a new turn in concept ("poststructuralist anarchism" in his case) is for WP:NACADEMIC #1 - see here, and an interview here. Also counting towards WP:NACADEMIC #1 are citations, therefore you cannot dismissed the Google Books hits as they are part of how you can establish notability. You can also find multiple reviews for many of his books, for example Death - in addition to two already given above, also [10], [11] (the FT one reviewed a number of books, but it singled out May's book for praise, and later listed it as one of the books of the year of 2009 [12]). Same for other books - A Fragile Life - [13] in addition to THE and LA Review given above; a The Moral Theory of Poststructuralism - [14], [15]; A Significant Life - [16], etc. These should easily qualify him under WP:AUTHOR #3. Hzh (talk) 14:14, 6 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We measure sources by the extent to which they address the subject, not counts of mere mentions. (We can write only write articles with the former, as the latter gives us no content to paraphrase.) "Poststructuralist" is an adjective that can be applied to anything. If you take Antliff's JSTOR article at its word that The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism was a "seminal" work—as I mentioned before, where are the sources that discuss it and its impact? Because if there are few or none, it means that the book and May's contribution to the concept should be addressed within the concept's own article. How does one write an article about a philosopher when the only sources are primary/affiliated (interviews/staff bios) or single book reviews (sometimes two) on individual books? Even a bibliography of Todd May article would be primitive based on such sparse sourcing. Philosophers show impact in field by having their work reviewed and discussed by their peers in the field's many journals. I don't see how that bar has been met here. czar 23:44, 6 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you are wrong there. Per WP:ACADEMIC, ordinary citations and reviews are counted towards notability - Reviews of the person's work, published in selective academic publications, can be considered together with ordinary citations here. You are not arguing based on established criteria. There are plenty of academics whose work are important enough to be merely cited and not discussed. It is also odd for you to say there is no discussion of his concept when there is one that starts the first sentence with him and describes his work as "seminal". You also appear to have completely ignored WP:AUTHOR, May is not just noted for poststructuralist anarchism, he qualifies under multiple criteria. (You also miscounted, I have already given three and four book reviews each for a few of his books.) Hzh (talk) 14:12, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Afraid I can't be any more exact, but in simple summation:

If May's contributions to poststructuralism are important, per the same quoted guideline section, there would be more coverage than the single hagiographic Antliff statement. If instead his "significant impact" is attributed to his general academic career, there would be works that react to his points.
If May's contributions as a general author are important, the major "reviews" would have more than cursory synopsis to express about his oeuvre. None of the Google Books texts above discuss any aspect of May's work that can be paraphrased for our purposes—they're simple citations and recitations, no secondary analysis. (Not to mention that the other major "reviews" mentioned above are largely short, routine, or from unreliable sources, and we could go source-by-source if necessary.) I have already given three and four book reviews each for a few of his books. If anyone actually read the content of those reviews, they'd find two or fewer (sometimes no) usable reviews for each book. And I thought we established that we don't have enough material to consider any of the books independently notable. Writing a handful of books, each reviewed once or twice in an area journal, is not an indicator of general author notability.

Any article written from the above sourcing will lack in biographical detail, and if scoped to just his works (bibliography of Todd May), would be so threadbare of content that no justice would be done to the topic. I don't need to be patronized by the text of the notability guidelines—I know them well—because the point of those guidelines is to presume notability. The substance of the sourcing is ultimately what determines the basis for the article, and in this case, the sources are weak and accordingly, there is no article. czar 00:44, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yet you are still not arguing from any established notability guidelines. What you linked to is not even an official guideline. Per official guideline WP:AUTHOR #3 he should be author of a work that is the subject of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews. Three or four independent reviews (and I'm sure there are more) for a book means "multiple". You appear to have misunderstood the purpose of the reviews, they are not there to help fill the article with content (although they may well can), they are there to establish notability. At the moment the article is still a stub, and it can be fleshed out by someone who wants to do it. All we are doing now is simply establishing whether it satisfies the notability criteria, which no doubt the subject does. Arguing from what you believe what an article should be (or even what kind of reviews you believe they should be) but which are not actually specified by notability guidelines is not going to help the discussion. Hzh (talk) 02:09, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I stick by GNG. May's work on political philosophy and poststructuralism is covered significantly by reliable (Peer-reviewed journals) and independent sources. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 09:20, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Pirhayati, where is his work on poststructualism covered significantly? The claim to this effect in the article is unsourced, hagiographic. czar 23:44, 6 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is a review of his work on poststructuralism by an independent reliable source. Ali Pirhayati (talk) 07:13, 7 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A single review isn't significant coverage, nor are the three reviews of his two works on poststructuralism in toto czar 00:44, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to GNG, "significant" refers to the quality of source, not the number of sources. It simply means "non-trivial". Ali Pirhayati (talk) 09:41, 8 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - I redirected the article due to the sourcing issues. Due to the commonality of his name, it is difficult to find sources which are about him specifically. However, I didn't go to AfD due to his citation count, which in my opinion clearly meets WP:NSCHOLAR. Although, with the current sourcing I wouldn't mind redirecting (obviously, since I did), without any issue with recreation, once reliable sourcing is included. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 11:04, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I nominated this article, but have been convinced that the topic meets WP:AUTHOR #3 and WP:NACADEMIC #1, based on reviews of his work. Even if the article briefly discusses him and is mostly about his academic work, such an article would appear to be well within Wikipedia's content guidelines based on the sources above. I am still not convinced that the subject meets WP:GNG, but rather that he qualifies on subject specific notability criteria alone (which is allowed per WP:PROF). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 03:27, 8 January 2018 (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.