Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gerhard Kramm

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Criticizing someone's wrong claim is not a personal attack.Mmarque (talk) 01:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You're right -- that's why you should have stopped writing before you got to your last two sentences. As a show of good faith, you could always go strike them out. --
talk) 03:43, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
Hey, I have a Google scholar h-index of 14, 885 citations total, 7 papers with over 50 citations (according to Google, don't know what WoS says). And I was only an active researcher for 10 years, over 16 years ago. I have certainly never thought my work in physics justified a wikipedia page for myself. If that's the justification, as I noted above, I'd like to see a commitment to adding pages for the thousands of similar or better qualified people currently missing... ArthurPSmith (talk) 17:05, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You probably should have an article then:) As for commitment, that obviously falls to us, the editors. I've created 8 new bios in roughly the past month and am gathering background on about a dozen more right now. You're urged to do the same...there are many more deserving bios than there are editors, so please carry on. Agricola44 (talk) 18:52, 16 October 2012 (UTC).[reply]
Agricola44, I think your main point is just wrong. The first general note at
talk) 21:16, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
Please see my comment below. Agricola44 (talk) 15:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Phil Bridger, Professor Dr. Foken is engaged in micrometeorology, but not in theoretical meteorology. This means that he is engaged in the field of applied meteorology. Theoretical meteorology is based on theoretical Physics. Please take a look into the textbook of Zdunkowski and Bott (2003), Dynamics of the Atmosphere. This textbook stands for theoretical meteorology. By the way, Kramm and Foken published several papers together. I found that these papers are listed in the References of Foken's textbook. Mmarque (talk) 01:11, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A book written by professor of micrometeorology and published by a major academic publisher is a perfectly reliable source for that fact that theoretical meteorology is one of the major branches of meteorology.
Phil Bridger (talk) 17:24, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]

Joel B. Lewis, I wonder what your qualification is. If you are this post-doc at the

Journal of the Calcutta Mathematical Society. Kramm's fields are also listed in MathSciNet: Fluid mechanics, geophysics, quantum theory, statistical mechanics, and structure of matter. Kramm and Herbert (2006), for instance, derived various blackbody radiation laws using principles of dimensional analysis. One of them is Planck's radiation law. If you are this UMN guy, do you really believe that you are able to assess Kramm's work or his scientific reputation? Thus, tell me what your motivation is? Your behavior is that of an aisle sitter who only had assessed a nativity play of a middle school long time ago. Mmarque (talk) 01:11, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]

[3rd arbitrary break]

In what sense is a report written by Kramm a 3rd party cite? (Am I missing something? It looks like the page you've linked has no information about Kramm other than a PDF of his slides.) --
talk) 19:11, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
Please see Anchorage Presentations (third item), which documents Kramm's appearance at the Alaska state legislature (with a link to his report, published by the State). Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 19:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Uh, Pete T..... GNG requires "significant coverage," and the document you list is inescapably trivial coverage rather than significant, since the only thing written by the 3rd party is his name and talk title.... I mean I appreciate your effort to find more sources, but that source doesn't really help to establish notability..... Sailsbystars (talk) 20:29, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, presumably several such things taken together could be significant, even if each one had only a tiny bit of information. But it would be nice if there were, say, a newspaper account of this talk or something. --
talk) 20:33, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
Sorry, but "the State of Alaska found" is not supported by your source. It confirms that Kramm gave some sort of talk; it is not clear (at least to me) how he came to be invited to give this talk, and it's certainly not clear that "the State of Alaska" (or anyone who plausibly could be so-described) found anything about him at all, nor why they invited him. (Totally agree about "these things add up" in principle; still not convinced that they do in this particular instance, though.) --
talk) 20:50, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
I don't think GNG is relevant anymore because >350 citations is sufficient under PROF 1. What Pete added is supplemental, but not necessary for the notability pass. News and other such would be supplemental too, but again, not necessary. Agricola44 (talk) 20:37, 16 October 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I get about 5 invitation for that per year. It's a vanity press, and very much non-selective about who to include. It does not help to establish notability. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Stephan. I respectfully disagree -- please see the discussion at Talk:Gerhard Kramm#Listing in "Who's Who in Science and Engineering". In my opinion, Kramm's "Who's Who" listings (there are 3, he says) should make a small contrib to his GNG notability. --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:41, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Over there you point to this edit by User:Kestenbaum for support. But Kestenbaum, while defending the reliability of Who's Who, explicitly rejects the idea that it confers notability: "Listing in Who's Who ought not be taken as proof of notability, since the inclusion threshold is lower than it is for Wikipedia." --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • IB Kastenbaum is referring to the academic notability guidelines. As you probably know, the
    WP:GNG are less specific. So I think we could use his Who's Who listings to partially satisfy GNG -- he says he's also listed in "Who's Who in America" and "Who's Who in the World", which arguably could be better for partly meeting GNG. Again, I'm only suggesting we use this as a small "leg up" towards demonstrating Kramm's wiki-Notability. --Pete Tillman (talk) 21:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
    ]
I'm sorry, but the discussion you pointed to is at
WP:ACADEMIC, or even academics, anywhere on that page. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 21:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
  • I've also added a small section to the article [1] on Kramm's signing of a 2009 climate-change advertisement sponsored by the
    New York Times and elsewhere. Another small add to Kramms notability, I think. Pete Tillman (talk) 01:52, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
    ]

YA arbitrary break #4

  • Agricola44 - I thought published scholarly papers were not "by definition"
    WP:OR if you're trying to extract a biography from articles that are not "directly related" to the subject's personal history. The existing page here cites the person's facebook page as a source for some of the quoted info - are personal facebook pages now reliable sources? There seems to be a lot of parsing here to justify things. What I'd like to see for example on the "> 350 times" citation thing is whether that sort of criterion has been used widely for other scientific authors? The average paper these days cites about 15 prior articles, so even the most average scientist publishing 1 paper a year should accumulate about that much in 25 years work. Do you have a reliable source on the "350" as a criterion, as used in other cases for example? ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:52, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
    ]
I certainly agree with Agricola that Kramm's political views should be irrelevant here. In my view, this discussion has been conducted in a reasonably civil fashion -- most of those active in this review, including the AfD nominator, have made clear they welcome new info/refs that would make Kramm clearly wiki-Notable, and I've been trying to fix up his wikibio so it can be retained. Thanks for the kind words re that.
Unfortunately, Dr. Kramm appears to be a genuinely marginal case re wiki-Notability. In my opinion his bio should be retained -- there are plenty of weaker ones already in the BLP files -- but (thank heavens) I haven't seen the kinds of rabid partisanship that characterized the deletion reviews for Marcel Leroux and Tim Ball -- both of whose deletions were unjustified, imo. So -- let's continue to focus on the basics, and let the chips fall where they may. Best regards, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Firstly I must deny that I am influenced here by any opinion I may hold about global warming. Everyone should be evaluated by the same standards regardless of whether I agree with them. More importantly I must disagree with Agricola's statistical analysis that equates an h-index of 15 with a total citation count of 225. Yes, this is theoretically possible, but even if the distribution of citations per paper was linear we would expect the total number of citations to be 2h2 (450 for an h-index of 15), and in practise the distribution is more than skewed than this, so someone with an h-index of 15 would be expected to have a total citation count of well over 450.
    Phil Bridger (talk) 19:03, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
    ]
I have some problems with the lack of reliable secondary sources. As an example, our article currently lists a B.E., a B.S., an M.S. and a Ph.D. among his qualifications, all from German institutions and sourced to his personal web site. I do not doubt that he has equivalent qualifications, but it is very unlikely that a German university or Fachhochschule would have given exactly these degrees in the time frame listed - Bachelor and Master have only recently introduced into the science and engineering disciplines (previously, there was only one degree, the "Diplom", which came in two variants, one from universities proper, one from "Fachhochschulen", both usually considered to be the equivalent of a Master degree). Similarly, very few doctorates given by German universities are actual PhDs in the literal sense. It's not uncommon to translate German degrees into equivalent English ones in informal settings (like a personal web site), but for encyclopaedic coverage, we really should be able to list the original degrees. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Stephan: thanks for your comments. Good points. I wonder if you (or another German speaker) could look on the German Google and fill some of this stuff out? I turned up a fair # of German-language hits for Kramm (plus an eponymous soccer player!) but my 50-year back scientific German is too dim (and was rough even then) ;-[ and I didn't bother to machine-translate. TIA, Pete Tillman (talk) 16:35, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - I had a phone call with Kramm. His doctoral degree correctly reads

Humboldt-University of Berlin, one of Germany's leading universities. He earned a prediploma and diploma in meteorology at the University of Cologne. These degrees are equivalent to the American degrees B.S. and M.S. This means that Kramm is completely educated in meteorology. He has also a diploma in industrial engineering earned at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. This diploma is ranking higher than a bachelor degree in engineering, but there is no equivalent certificate. The German title reads Diplom-Ingenieur (Dipl.-Ing., see Engineer's degree). Mmarque (talk) 01:48, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]

Thanks, that is useful. It would be good if we had a RS for that. As a note: a "Vordiplom" (prediploma) is very much not a Bachelor - indeed, it is not a degree at all, only an intermediate step to a degree. On the other hand, an FH Diploma is usually considered more than a Bachelor, and close to a Master degree (typically, universities require a few additional credits in theoretical subjects for PhD students with FH diplomas, while those with university diplomas need no extra courses). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:01, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

YA arbitrary break #5

  • Comment - I was just reviewing the article again to see the extent to which it relies on anything that could be considered a reliable source based on the above discussion. If you take out all the things sourced to the individual's home page, facebook page, or university "list of publications" page, you have exceedingly little left. Note also that many of the references are duplicated (1, 3, 4 are the home page, 23 and 25 are the facebook page) or broken (8, 9, 17). There are also a large number of references to arXiv, which is self-publishing with essentially no editorial oversight, and one to Bentham_Science_Publishers which - well you can read its wiki page to judge that. To me this speaks to the essential reason why the notability criterion is important - if you have too many less-notable people in your encyclopedia, it quickly gets far beyond the capacity of the editors to maintain quality. Do any of those arguing for retention of this article claim it i of higher than median quality for wikipedia? ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:05, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak delete. The h-index is promising but not quite enough to convince me of a pass of
    WP:PROF#C1 (searching Google scholar for ozone formation or ozone destruction reveals many better-cited papers on the subject than his top paper), and in any case is not enough by itself to write an article. And despite what seems to have been a lot of effort over the course of the article, the sources are still weak and non-neutral, mostly coming either from Kramm himself or from the Cato Institute. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:21, 18 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
    ]

Comment - Please recognize that the Facebook references I introduced a couple of months ago are related to Kramm's outside interests. These are ballroom dancing and naval history. Kramm and his wife are excellent ballroom dancers and well known for various dance performances in Interior Alaska. Many manuscripts submitted to journals and eventually published are first uploaded to the arXiv of the Cornell University. Some physics journals use arXiv in their review processes. I assume that during the last couple of days the number of references increased by more than 70 percent. One of the new ones is the reference to the arXiv manuscript of Hansen et al. (2011). This manuscript was obviously published by

CFACT organisation. Obviously, Kramm is the target of both the AGW activists and the CFACT-sponsored climate skeptics. Mmarque (talk) 01:00, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]

Comment - The paper of Stockwell et al. (1997) is a book article. It has been cited by many authors. Meanwhile, their articles are often more cited because they were published in journals. Unfortunately, the

SCI lists this paper in nine different ways. It is not included in the computation of the h-index. Measures like h-index and g-index were introduced because the number of citations is a weak measure for the scientific impact. By the way, the paper of Stockwell et al. (1997) is not listed in Kramm's list of his ten favorites among his articles. Several other papers authored or co-authored by Kramm are not considered. The Contribution of Atmospheric Physics, for instance, the leading German journal in the matter of theoretical meteorology, was merged with the Meteorologische Zeitschrift, but the papers published by the Contribution of Atmospheric Physics are completely ignored by SCI. Mmarque (talk) 02:37, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]

Comments - I received two nice messages.

  • Your comments about me at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Gerhard_Kramm are unambiguously personal attacks (see WP:NPA: "Comment on content, not on the contributor."). Please strike them out. Thank you. --JBL (talk) 12:27, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Same applies to your comments about me and User:Joshua Halpern on the same article for deletion page - "Aryan Physics" for example seems a clear violation of WP:NPA. The only relevant discussion there should have been about the notability criteria themselves; speculating on various peoples motivations or competency for questioning or defending seem way out of place. ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

These messages reflect what the goal of these users is. Mmarque (talk) 05:40, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I find these messages completely appropriate, but have a hard time reading the originators goals from them. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 06:08, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have created an RfC on Mmarque's behavior
talk) 15:44, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Delete. Citations too small in a highly cited field. 01:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xxanthippe (talkcontribs)
  • Delete - The only source I found was the Anchorage Daily News December 10, 2006 article note in the nom, which was reprinted word for word in an Anchorage Daily News July 18, 2010 article (haven't seen that before). The biography topic doesn't meet
    WP:GNG. To those favoring skepticism about global warming is it more important to have an article on what Kramm says about his skepticism about global warming or an article about his life events? The Kramm topic doesn't qualify as a biography and even Kramm would agree that his life events are less important than his writing and messages on global warming. Maybe instead of a biography, try writing a Writings of Gerhard Kramm article. I think you will get much further in the Wikipedia process. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 03:06, 24 October 2012 (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.