Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2016 August 3

Daniel Romanovsky (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

This person was an historical researcher and Soviet dissident. His contributions to the study of the Holocaust under German occupation of parts of the Soviet Union are recognized by a number of authors of scholarly books on the subject. The 8 keep votes recognized this. The 5 delete votes focused on his later career as a educator in Israel and consisted mainly of citing WP policy on the notability of academics, while not addressing his primary notability. (I wrote the original article.) Thoughtmonkey (talk) 18:43, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Restore: I believe that the article should be restored, as I did not see a clear consensus to delete. Granted, some of the comments were “week keeps”, but additional sources were offered during the AfD process that could be used to beef up the article. The subject of the article has done important, and possibly unique, research “document[ing] how ordinary Soviet citizens understood, remembered, and spoke about [the Holocaust] in the mid-1980s” (Oxford Journals). K.e.coffman (talk) 19:24, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Restore. The article needs work, no doubt about it. Parts of Romanovsky's biography were completely overlooked, thus giving a wrong impression of the lesser significance of his work under the Soviet system. However, this can be developed given the valuable feedback from User:K.e.coffman and I. Please see my comment at Talk:The Holocaust#AfD for Holocaust historian about the fact that Danila Romanovsky was a long-time Soviet dissident, politically active under the Soviet system. Seminars on history of Jews were held in his Leningrad apartment in the 1980s, which used to be a serious matter under the totalitarian rule.[1] Meanwhile, the AfD was closed with eight "keep" !votes and only five "delete" !votes. Poeticbent talk 19:53, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse, request does not present new information and appears to simply re-argue points from the AFD debate (see Deletion Review should not be used: #5(not #6)", above). Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:57, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I was going by point 1 of when a review may be opened: "if someone believes the closer of a deletion discussion interpreted the consensus incorrectly." Thoughtmonkey (talk) 20:06, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, both K.e.coffman and I presented new info actually. The point #6" in

WP:DRVPURPOSE says (quote): Review should not be used "to argue technicalities (such as a deletion discussion being closed ten minutes early)". I don't believe my argument to be the case of mere technicality here, Poeticbent talk 20:13, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

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Sorry, typo, I meant #5, not #6. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 22:34, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse deletion as one of the participants of the discussion. Most of the keep opinions argued that "he exists and is a recognized scholar", which is not a policy-based criterion. It is within the purview of the closing admin to recognize that and discount those contributions. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:35, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Restore closed prematurely, against a developing consensus and with an over-reliance on a simplistic citation bean-counting exercise which seriously needs reviewing as policy i.m.o. The guidance states that use of cite counting, esp on Google Scholar should be used with caution. In addition new material is being added to the article adding weight to subjects notability. A whole new area has now been opened up regarding the subjects' role in Soviet-era "illicit" intellectual activity, of which subject appears to have been a significant activist in. Restore and let this article be allowed to develop.
  talk) 22:08, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
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• Restore, agree with Irondome. The 5 delete votes continually ignored the progress being made on finding sources for this Soviet-era researcher and instead hammered away with the argument that there weren't hundreds of Google Scholar citations to satisfy PROF C-1. The subject's field of interest – Holocaust research in the Soviet Union – is itself a little-known and -researched field due to communist suppression, and more leeway needs to be given to present this research on Wikipedia. I also feel the AFD was closed too soon. Yoninah (talk) 23:22, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Endorse, appropriate closure as the "Keep" arguments were pretty weak, as User:David Eppstein points out above. That being said, I wouldn't object to this being restored into draft space if those who insist there are further sources are willing to improve the article so it unambiguously demonstrates the subject's notability. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 01:18, 4 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]
• Endorse deletion. Although this person may be of significance, the sources to prove it are not present, even now. WP:Verifiability, not truth. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:49, 4 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]
• Restore and relist. Closing this AFD as a delete was not in accordance with due process. That said, I would not have closed this AFD as a keep either; It was in its first cycle, so it would have been more reasonable to relist it in order to allow a clearer consensus to develop. The fact that so many of the keep comments were qualified as "weak" would have, presumably, influenced the closing administrator's view of the debate. The article at the time of deletion didn't assert a great deal about his notability, so this should be debated further. KaisaL (talk) 03:02, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment There is also This [[2]] which is a collection of photos of notable intellectual dissidents from the Soviet era. The subject and his wife appear prominently here. There also appear to be accompanying interviews. This is adding to the subjects notability as a Refusnik, working in Leningrad.
  talk) 03:26, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
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• Comment One needs Russian name to find sources. Елена и Даниил Романовские. [3]Xx236 (talk) 08:03, 4 August 2016 (UTC) They cooperated but here is only Elena moved. Xx236 (talk) 06:00, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Overturn to no consensus I have some sympathy with the closing rationale "Keep arguments did not adequately show how subject passes notability guidelines." But it seems to me the delete arguments were also very defective. Staggeringly, SwisterTwister's comment "Delete as there's still nothing actually to suggest enough for his own notability." came closest to being properly guideline-based. The other opinions were variations on not meeting
  WP:GNG is also an acceptable guideline for presuming notability. The discussion was almost entirely based on "notability", which is not a policy, and reasoned opinions based on the guidelines (which allow for commion sense and occasional exceptions) should be taken into account. Thincat (talk) 09:42, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
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• Overturn deletion as a supervote. You should also temporarily restore the article so we can weigh the arguments made at deletion against the article itself. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 12:42, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. The arguments were already weighed – that is the essence of the AfD process. What it comes now is demonstrating that the process itself was capricious in this particular case. Agricola44 (talk) 19:15, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. The first comment here, saying the subject did "important, and possibly unique, research" could be made of all intellectuals/acdemics – as basically an EXISTS argument, it's a pretty good summary of the "keeps" in the AfD. Now we have more pleading about suppression, pictures from a photo album, and such that pile-onto this argument. This seems to be relitigating the AfD. Agricola44 (talk) 13:02, 4 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]
• Overturn to NC - the deletion discussion did not arrive at a consensus and the closer erred in finding one. Thparkth (talk) 18:09, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with the above. What is the point of having a deletion discussion if the developing consensus (8 keeps/weak keeps vs 5 deletes) can be decided by a super vote? Then admins should just delete articles they deem as not meeting notability, and save the rest of us the trouble of participating. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:22, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Closer plainly stated that the "keeps" did not demonstrate notability. You seem to want to rely on a simple numerical tally of votes, rather than the argument each one does (or fails) to make. Agricola44 (talk) 19:15, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn and Restore per Irondome. I did not see this original AfD, so cannot comment on the actual state of the article, but if a historian and a Soviet dissident cannot be deemed notable under WP:ACADEMIC, then WP:ACADEMIC needs some serious re-tweaking to avoid problems with recentism, national bias and a tendency to downplay the world of academe as applied to liberal arts disciplines. Montanabw^(talk) 18:32, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. It sounds like you're arguing that "a historian and a Soviet dissident" are positions notable per se. Agricola44 (talk) 19:15, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Reply: Given that the article has been deleted and I can't see it, I can say that a published historian persecuted by the Soviets back in the days of the Cold War was generally subject to a fair amount of press -- but it was pre-google, of course. Montanabw^(talk) 00:48, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

At the AfD, I offered up this new source: The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943: Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism by Barbara Epstein (a somewhat meaty end-note describing his work). The discussion was terminated shortly thereafter without a chance for participants to review this source. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse. We normally close on the basis of the majority of policy based comments. The relevant standard was WP:PROF, and there was no question he did not meet it. Academic notability is not giving lectures or having a few papers. The keep votes were essentially "Let's make an article anyway". We do have the right to override a guideline byIAR, but there has to be a reason. No reason was presented. Saying "The Sassoon Center has it's own article. Daniel Romanovsky has been involved as an abstractor in the Posen papers aspect of the project, " is not a reason. Princeton University Library has an article; I worked there on typical library functions. Should I have an article? DGG ( talk ) 00:10, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I did not say that DGG. I said that He is or was working on a major academic endeavour. C1 of WP:PROF seems to be satisfied here. "There are other considerations that may be used as contributing factors (usually not sufficient individually) towards satisfying Criterion 1: significant academic awards and honors (see below); service on editorial boards of scholarly publications; publications in especially prestigious and selective academic journals; publication of collected works; special conferences dedicated to honor academic achievements of a particular person; naming of academic awards or lecture series after a particular person; and others. I consider "others" in the guideline quoted above to be satisfied in the subjects' lectures in various countries in Eastern Europe under the aegis of Vad Yashem. This is obviously different to your own comparison. The subject here is also subject to broader notability guidelines, and the fact that he was an active Historian and effectively a refusenik in a hostile totalitarian system, which is documented, should also be considered. I must say that the entire way we measure academic notability in the humanities should be revisited and arguably policy changed. It should be be more nuanced. I have been speaking to my partner about this, who is an academic librarian in the medical sphere, and she has suggested some models in use in England, introduced in 2014, regarding weighing other criteria apart from just citation-counting. I shall be presenting some ideas in a different forum. The subject has notability I believe, but he straddles different criteria.
  talk) 00:43, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
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  • WP:GNG is more applicable, and indeed,
    Irondome is correct that the WP:PROF criteria is fine for the sciences, but terrible for the humanities. I've been looking at some academic papers on this topic, and the gap in things like h-index ratings between, for example, physicists and law professors is stunning. Montanabw^(talk) 00:48, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply
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This is old news. It has long been the convention to adjust citation criteria according to field. There is much discussion of this on the notability talk page and its archives. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:58, 5 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Well it will be revisited. Old news can become new approaches. Nothing is static on WP.

talk) 01:04, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply

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The WP PROF criterion ins fine for the humanities. But we don't use h value to measure, nor citations, but academic books by major publishers. It's still the same factor of impact/influence, but using the measure that applies in the subject. DGG ( talk ) 02:42, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

article temporarily restored for discussion here. DGG ( talk ) 02:43, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- with the article undeleted, I can see that Barbara Epstein source (that I linked to above) was used in the article, but only to cite that Romanovski was a Holocaust researcher. The link that I provided goes into detail as to what the research was. Here's another example: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II by Leonid Rein, with more details on his research. This is from cursory look. So it seems to me that Romanovsky made an important contribution in his field of his study, namely Holocaust in Belarus during WWII and the article can be expanded using these sources. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:07, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've made some additions to the article from your suggestions. Thanks also to DGG for making this possible. Thoughtmonkey (talk) 18:53, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Overturn I !voted "keep" in the AfD, and I understand that this comment will be judged in that light. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the closer did not quite judge consensus correctly. NPROF states "The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources." It does not prescribe a number of GS citations, or a number of mentions, or an official position in a university, or anything else. When I looked at the evidence presented, it seemed to me that the evidence demonstrated a significant impact. This evidence is chiefly the Epstein source, but also the nature of the GS citations and the GB mentions. The evidence still points me towards keeping this (not absolutely clear cut, I admit, but keep). In line with what User:Montanabw says above, we need to be aware of the context in which an academic is working (standards for number of citations vary by discipline, for instance) when judging "significant impact." Regards, Vanamonde (talk) 13:42, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Yes, of course this all depends upon what is meant by significant. Roughly speaking, it is judged relative to the "average professor" in that field. There aren't very many citations to his work, and although a few more have been identified here (e.g. K.e.coffman's above), his citation record is still substantially below what we would consider a notable historian, i.e. Romanovsky is pretty much an "average professor". Moreover, I think the "suppression" angle that has been argued both at AfD and here is a little disingenuous: Romanovsky emigrated to Israel in 1988 and therefore has been free of any sort of intellectual/scholarly oppression for roughly 30 years. Almost all those in favor of overturning seem really to really just be relitigating the AfD instead of demonstrating that its closure was capricious. Agricola44 (talk) 17:23, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: "Publish or perish" may be a motto inside academe for putting people on the tenure track, but we also all know that the process is also filled with political nonsense, and nowhere more so than in the liberal arts, where people often publish more books than scholarly journal articles, where there are fewer publishing opportunities and more peole competing for those opportunities. A person who has to start their entire life over following emigration is not going to necessarily be as prolific as someone who has had the luxury of living in an ivory tower for their entire career. Here, I looked at the somewhat sparse article, and it looks to me like WP:PROF is probably inadequate; this individual clearly has notability from his dissident status on top of his historical work. Montanabw^(talk) 21:48, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment...so, the same sort of pleading as before...comments like yours make it more clear that we're just relitigating the AfD. Agricola44 (talk) 22:15, 6 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]

• Agricola44, you are still basing your definition of an "average professor" based purely on the citation record, which is precisely what I had a problem with: when judging consensus with respect to whether somebody meets WP:PROF, it is my belief that they should also look at the descriptions of the individual's work in reliable sources, and not just the number of citations. Not all citations are equal, and not all publications are equal, either. Vanamonde (talk) 07:50, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. PROF c1 is what is relevant to most academics and the "impact" (or whatever you'd like to call it) 's indeed judged on how "noted" the subject is by her peers, where "noted" can be via citations, holdings of books, etc. It sounds like you're talking more about dedicated reviews of a person's work, technical bios, or the like (for example what appears in a NAS bio for newly-elected members). These are certainly even more compelling, but I don't see that Romanovsky has such. So, while I agree that "not all citations are equal, and not all publications are equal", you'll forgive me if it appears that just offering the same special pleading as others above. Agricola44 (talk) 14:19, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: Yes, the point is not to reargue the AfD, but I believe it was closed prematurely, without all the sources having been explored and active discussion on-going. K.e.coffman (talk) 11:27, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Re: closed prematurely – Was it? The open date was July 16 and the close date was August 2. Agricola44 (talk) 14:19, 8 August 2016 (UTC).[reply]

• Overturn. Poorly closed; absence of a consensus to keep is not consensus to delete, and this should have been closed as no consensus if not keep. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006. (talk) 10:27, 9 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]