Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Val Henson

While I am sympathetic to the desire to have more articles on women in computing in Wikipedia, I don't think this article will have a significant positive effect, and will all probability dishearten such an audience given the current propensity for discussion of female subjects' appearances and their effects on men. Given the enthusiasm of the various editors (hi, Rabbi!) and the relative lack of third-party source material, I still feel that the wiser course of action at this time is deletion.

For me, the loudest knell of doom for this article is the fact that even people who like me (or, heaven forbid, are infatuated with me) can't clearly explain why I'm notable. Therefore, I'm not.

Valhenson 07:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment:Hi Val -- your use of the phrase "even people who like me" makes me want to point out that my nomination for deletion doesn't have anything to do with not liking you. It should be clear by now that I don't like the paper of yours that I keep hearing mentioned, and am concerned that people coming to this page because of that paper may come away with the impression, based on your biography here, that you have a cryptography background on par with John Black's. I don't particularly think it's "mean minded" to compare backgrounds and competency domains of two parties in a debate, but given the other issues about notability it seems easiest to avoid the debate and have the entry deleted than have it explained that the Compare-By-Hash paper wasn't written by (or apparently peer-reviewed by, judging from the workshop's program committee) someone with a adequate understanding of hash functions.

In my opinion, it's better that the controversy over that paper subside than to continue to confuse developers who don't wish to become experts themselves in the subject of hash functions, but simply wish to have an authorative source to turn to and direct them in proper usage of these primitives. I suspect this is likely to happen now that a peer-reviewed rebuttal has been published in academia -- but with John Black lacking a Wikipedia bio page explaining his background, and with edits expressing limitations of your background in this area being removed for NPOV reasons, I'm uncertain of a good way of presenting a coherent, unconfusing explantion of the controversy of the paper that satisfies NPOV and doesn't denigrate you unfairly. (The Usenix committee really fell down in accepting it, in my opinion, and did you a disservice by doing so.) It's important that developers think about the sorts of questions raised in your paper, but it's also important that they have an accurate source at their disposal from which to seek the answers to those questions.

It's rare that a good programmer is also a good cryptographer, and I hope I've made it clear that I'm not trying to imply that your lack of "kernel hacker celebrity status" means that you're bad at programming. One's level of fame is quite often orthogonal to one's talents or abilities. And as for my comments regarding the initial post and the presumed motives of the author -- I was attempting to sum up what had been previously expressed by others on the talk page. (I believe the original author represented it as his own writing, which explains the confusion.) I think we share the belief that your gender should be irrelevent, or only minorly significant, when considering your notability as an open source developer (and certainly not more significant than the actual code you've written!)

Thanks for commenting.

Rabbi 09:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: To summarize, the above argues for deletion because the mere existence of a Wikipedia article about a person might improperly sway readers' opinions in favor of one of the subject's many publications. It is possible there are better arguments for deletion; if so, I plead that they not suffer by association with this one. On a side note, I appreciate John Black's criticism of my work, which has improved slightly as a result, and also his courtesy in attaching his name to his criticisms. Valhenson 09:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. The point about third-party source material is well-made. "Just needs expansion" -- with what? Blogs and personal websites are not
  WP:BIO. We can still include her name in the Linuxchix article (and relevant kernel articles?) without it needing to be a link; but there is no need for a stub, let alone an article. Telsa (talk) 09:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Delete. Her primary qualification appears to be her gender. Her kernel contributions have been minor, and her publication record is not particularly significant. While she might warrant mention on a page about women in computer science, she does not appear anywhere near notable enough for Wikipedia. With respect to the appalling compare-by-hash paper, that's the downside of being an academic. If you co-invent RSA, everyone knows your name. If you present a braino of a paper at a major conference, everyone knows your name. Rob 06:26, 20 October 2006 (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.