Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2013 August 16

Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability – Endorsed – Spartaz ^Humbug! 20:26, 25 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have been asked on my talk page to expand on this close. Obviously like all WP discussions we are using Rough Consensus which equates to the best policy based argument wins. At DRV the closer has a reasonable degree of discretion in close discussions and there were essentially two arguments. The first one, dominating the early phase suggested that following the AFD a year ago a further discussion would not hurt but also that those supporting that did not feel the material was suitable for mainspace. The latter phase was from two academics who both researched the likely notability of the subject with regard to being a ground breaking paper and their conclusion was clearly in the negative. Its customary to give some weight to end of discussion comments that might sway an outcome and while none of the regulars who voted in phase 1 were persuaded to change their stance none of them chose to argue against it and they are all pretty much daily visitors who are not likely to be shy is prolonging discussion. On that basis I found both arguments persuasive but also noted that even those discussing a relist were not minded to retain the material in mainspace. On that basis it seems a clear consensus by everyone that we probably don't want to host the material and the only issue is really the proccess to get there. Since discussion for discussion sake can be a violation of WP:BURO if the previous discussion was run fairly, the stronger policy based argument is to endorse. Spartaz ^Humbug! 21:37, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.

New draft of article is here. I have discussed the issue with the closing admin here. My goal is to either recreate the page or, at least, relist if for discussion. My primary reason is that the page is improved, especially with more references to reliable sources. The article was improved mainly during the previous deletion review, thanks to some useful feedback. But, because of this changing target, at least some of the participants in that review voted on a preliminary (and flawed) version. I have made some minor improvements in the last few days as well, but these were small changes. Yfever (talk) 15:40, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Participating editors need to know that this topic area has a long history on Wikipedia and the entire subject of Race and Intelligence is subject to discretionary sanctions; you may wish to review the relevant Arbcom case before taking part in this debate.
DRV is normally unwilling to enforce decisions that are a year old, and I think your request to revisit the discussion a year later is a reasonable one. However, I am not at all convinced that it's appropriate to have a Wikipedia article about a single scientific paper, particularly when it's one about heredity that's written by non-geneticists. My basic starting point is that any coverage of this paper belongs in Race and intelligence, so my view is that the discussion should be restarted and I will !vote "delete".
In view of the history of this topic area, I would propose that instead of restoring the article to mainspace and then AfDing it, what we should do is MfD the userspace page (explicitly envisaging a move to mainspace as one possible outcome of the MfD).—S Marshall T/C 18:09, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oyi. I'd not read that Arbcom case before. In any case I've got to say that the closing statement was somewhat unsatisfactory, but that the close was reasonable and so I'd endorse it. I don't see this draft addressing issues raised at the AfD in a major way, but I think it is improved and so should be allowed to escape a speedy deletion. So move draft to mainspace and relist seems reasonable, though S Marshall's novel proposal with MfD is acceptable to me as a second choice. I would like to see more depth here--the rebuttals and re-rebuttals could be a lot stronger. And I do suspect that the right way to cover this is in the Race and intelligence article. But that's an editorial issue and not really a topic for AfD/DRV.

On a broader note, I honestly think that covering major papers like this would be a great idea. But I'd like to see that the paper had a major impact outside of the field and inside of the field--at least for the first few. In the draft I'm not seeing anything in the way of popular press coverage (Science Friday, CNN, Popular Science, etc.). I think that type of coverage would help a lot. (And I'd swear I read some back-in-the-day.) But that the paper is actually discussed, rebutted and re-rebutted means we have coverage about the topic (rather than just cites to it which is much less useful for a Wikipedia article). Hobit (talk) 20:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is complicated. I'm leaning no, but it may take a lot of time to justify that in term of Wikipedia logic. Generally, it is too specific. The references too primary. I don't feel this is really secondary source material so much as various authors' opinions, which are primary source material on the question of the article. The article is discussing a subject, but this page is not about the subject, but about an article. I think that a journal article, as a topic for coverage, is not for an encyclopedia, but for the literature itself. the encyclopedia should be trying to cover the subject covered by the article. For there to be an encyclopedia article on a journal article, I would expect non-specialised, popular press prublications to notice, and for the article to not be filled with journal publication citations. Annus Mirabilis papers comes to mind, and this article doesn't compare. I don't think the userpage draft should be sent to MfD unless there is a project space (ArbCom, DRV, ANI, content noticeboard) declaring the subject unsuitable. MfD is not a proper place to discuss the suitability of mainspace content. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:31, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Journal articles can be topics for WP articles, just as books are. We have normally been very reluctant to do so, because perhaps a million primary journals articles would meet the GNG, being discussed significantly in reliable sources--the nature of scientific publication is to discuss prior work in the field in a new publication. Even were we to ask for significant discussion in secondary publications like books and review articles, there probably would be at least 100,000 that would qualify. The reason for excluding them in almost all cases is that this is detail beyond the scoped of a general encyclopedia; it is sufficient that we refer to important papers in the articles about the subjects, and the articles about the authors.

What would usually qualify for an article would be something that is regarded as "famous", in the sense of being a major landmark in the field that even undergraduates in the subject would be expected to know about, or one which served such a role in some earlier period: the classic example is Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, but see also our category of them at Category:Academic journal articles and its subcats. I think almost all of those deserve to be there, though a few on one particular topic are a little over-specific. So the question of the inclusion of this article would be whether it is of similar importance, and that would need to be discussed at an AfD (the argument would be that this is the Jensen's recent restatement of the subject from his perspective) In terms of citations, some of the other social science papers there have roughly similar figures. (some are much lower, and I think their inclusion might be more questionable than this). DGG ( talk ) 15:42, 18 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Jensen has written one article that is sufficiently famous to qualify for a stand alone article here and which is considered a significant publication in the R/I debate by all commentators. This is not it. The article here is simply a recent review article in a minor journal - it is not at all groundbreaking, and even though, being a review article, it is frequently cited, some recent reviews are actually deliberately leaving it out because it is scientifically problematic (see http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/amp/67/6/503/). User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 14:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.