Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seymour Itzkoff

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 as per consensus and the absence of deletion requests beyond the nominator. Non-admin closure. Warrah (talk) 00:22, 17 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seymour Itzkoff

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This is an under-sourced biography of a living person which focuses almost exclusively on one controversial facet of his work. There do not seem to be sufficient high quality sources to cover the less controversial aspects, leading me to conclude that the article is of marginal notability. He has requested deletion, and I pass that request on in good faith. Guy (Help!) 18:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

* Delete- as per subjects request, a couple of weak looking citations have been added by the creator but there doesn't appear to be enough coverage to support a decent well rounded biography. Perhaps a book review, if one of his books is notable enough for a wikipedia article. Off2riorob (talk) 20:01, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I originally created this stub because Dr. Itzkoff is a key figure in the mid-1990's race and intelligence debate, due to his book The Decline of Intelligence in America and the influence of his other works on this topic. Adding more info now. Jokestress (talk) 20:35, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Here is an interesting review of Itzkoff's book and two other books from the New York Times in 1994. -- Bbb23 (talk) 20:40, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Book reviews are at another location. Off2riorob (talk) 20:55, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I misunderstood. I probably shouldn't even be contributing to this discussion because I'm simply not an experienced enough Wikipedia person. But I'll throw another two cents at the discussion. I've seen many articles in Wikipedia, in particular living actors, whose contributions are far less than Itzkoff's. What I would do is just pare back the article and include as complete a bibliography as possible. Of course, if Jokestress adds enough information to satisfy everyone . . . -- Bbb23 (talk) 21:00, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. There's a detailed biographic profile of Dr. Itzkoff in The science of human diversity by Richard Lynn 2001, pp. 417-427. I just added it to the article. Itzkoff has been a cause célèbre for academic freedom for publishing controversial work on intelligence. One of the recently removed external links was heavily indebted to the Lynn biography. Because the vast majority of Dr. Itzkoff's writings on intelligence were controversial in some way or another (especially funding received from the Pioneer Fund), it's not really accurate to say it is "one facet" of his work. Most of his books made the same general assertions about heritability of intelligence. Jokestress (talk) 21:20, 10 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep , highly notable as an academic and an author. Of course, deal with in a balanced way, but NPOV is corrected by editing , not deletion. We need a suitable source for an external link to a reliable CV--I can;t find one posted at Smith. His work is too well known & too controversial for him to be considered as borderline notable--and even if he were, we would be able to decline his request for deletion--I would do that in almost all cases, because its almost always simply due to dissatisfaction with the way the article is written. If the reasons are valid, we fix the article. As for his notability, notability of a writer is shown by reviews of their work, so I do not see why the NYT reviews are irrelevant. it is of course probable that this book is also independently notable. We don't have to choose between an article on it and on him, because he has done other work as well. For judging notability under WP:PROF also the degree to which someone is recognized as an expert is shown by citations to his work, and when possible more specific ways to show its recognition, such as book reviews, so the reviews are significant there also. WorldCCat includes reviews of many of his books in major biological and social science journals [1], and they should be added to the article. He has 12 books that are each in over 300 libraries--1000 for his best known one.

And fwiw, I think the bias in Wikipedia towards including actors rather than academics, is less the different standards of notability, but the interests of people writing articles. DGG ( talk ) 05:09, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think the request for deletion and the point from the subject of the article that the biography focused only on a small area of his work therefore gave a poor reflection of his work and as a whole the stub understated him and so was demeaning to his reputation was a good point. I know editors are here waxing lyrical about him and a few citations have been added, but we are talkng about an article that has existed for four years and last year got only three edits and in four years there has never been one discussion on the article talkpage. Off2riorob (talk) 11:39, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Itzkoff appears to have been well-known mainly for what makes him controversial. Talking about other aspects of his life, other than as background, would serve no purpose. I don't see anything demeaning in the article except to the extent that a reader who doesn't agree with his point of view might find his writings offensive. But what matters is if his work is misrepresented. A person could become famous for inventing one item. He may then never invent anything again in his life or do anything noteworthy, but he's still famous for the single invention. And, naturally, an article on that person is going to focus on that invention, not on the fact that every morning he got up and had bacon for breakfast. I also don't see how the lack of discussion and edits matters. Itzkoff's controversial works were written a long time ago. Apparently, he hasn't done much of any note since. That doesn't mean that what he did before isn't noteworthy, and his objections should only matter if they are well-taken. -- Bbb23 (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your comments fully support the position and the request from the subject for deletion. I take subject requests quite strongly and give them fair weight, we have a duty of care to living people and I support this well-taken request. Personally I know little about his work and I dislike controversy and find in a BLP supporting inclusion because of some controversy is never going to create a well rounded biography. If this article is actually not a biography but an article about a controversy then it would be better titled as such. The reference to the lack of any discussion and lack of edits to the actual article were referenced to reflect the reality that the article has not been improved and that there is little interest in it and little chance of it being improved imo, all of which supports the subjects request for deletion. IMO if wikipedia is to have an article about a person it has a duty of care to create a good article, especially in regards to a living person, in this case the length of time the article has existed and the poor quality of it and the apparent lack of interest of wikipedia editors to improve the article and the subjects request for deletion as regards all encourage me to support his request.Off2riorob (talk) 14:44, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't an article about a single controversy (like a scandal or some unique event that has little to do with the players and more to do with the nature of the scandal). This is an article about a person who wrote many controversial works and was apparently involved with others who had similar ideas and wrote similar works. I'm not sure what would make the article "well-rounded." Itzkoff's objections would be more sympathetic if he cited other "facets" of his life and his works that he believes are noteworthy, should have been included, but yet were not. Otherwise, it just sounds like someone who doesn't want the notoriety, or doesn't like the wording of the article, or subjectively believes that his eating bacon every morning is more important than others do. I also think that Wikipedia does a service to its readers by including the article because when you search the web, almost all you find about the man are his books. The article gives some context to the person who wrote those books. I don't agree that the article is of "poor quality," and I disagree that the lack of editing and discussion means there is little interest in it, just that there's not much to add. I have no idea how Wikipedia tracks the "interest" readers have in its biographical articles. Clearly, some biographical subjects are going to be more interesting to a wider audience than others. That doesn't mean that the ones that interest fewer readers are not worthy of inclusion. -- Bbb23 (talk) 15:15, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I give a fair bit of weight to any good faith request from a subject for deletion, all editors are different in this respect which is what make the wiki such a diverse place, some editors see the wiki as a place to add whatever they want irrespective of any control at all and irrespective of any possible harm the content may do to people. All points are valuable when considered in regards to policy and guidelines. Here are the article viewing figures which imo are mostly bots. Off2riorob (talk) 15:37, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So far, no one has identified the "possible harm." Thanks for the pointer to the viewing statistics, but if you compare them to Richard Hernstein's, for example, Hernstein's are even less. Now it's true that Hernstein is dead, but he died at the same time that Itzkoff wrote what were arguably his most controversial works. Thus, it makes sense that there's less interest in Hernstein and Itzkoff now. However, that doesn't mean there isn't historical interest in both. To be fair, Itzkoff has published more books since 1994, although I don't think he's published much, since the article first appeared. In any event, a more complete bibliography should allay any concerns in that area. -- Bbb23 (talk) 16:28, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - If kept, then the article should include all his "works"(and I am a deletionist/minimalist for disclosure), not some "selected" listing created by whom exactly, with what point/agenda in mind.--Tom (talk) 17:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I added a bunch more of his works. It's a tedious process, looking each one up and doing it. You're welcome to add more. :-) I don't think anyone inserted his works with any agenda in mind, probably more just what he was most famous for (that the creator knew about). If you look back at the history of the article, that seems to be the case. -- Bbb23 (talk) 18:06, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This (3after3's comment) strikes me as a bit of an WP:ALLORNOTHING argument. It is not usually the case that we list all works of an academic in an article about them; that would be long and tedious and unencyclopedic. Rather, as you say, it is usually the more famous/wel-cited ones that are selected. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:33, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

the more famous/wel-cited ones How is that determined and by whom? As I disclosed, I would have no problem including...NONE of them :) Seriously, my reasoning was based on the discussion that the listing of his works might have been determined based on some bias or agenda, anyways, I have no strong opinion either way and defer to others to figure it out, good luck, --Tom (talk) 19:53, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't looked carefully at Itzkoff's specific case, but there are several ways of determining which publications to include on a "selected publications" list: (1) best would be an obituary or retrospective of the academic's work published by someone else that makes such a selection; (2) the academic in question may have made and published a selected list him or herself; (3) Google scholar or similar citation services can be used to pick out the most frequently cited works; (4) not a very good method, but better than nothing, is to list the works that are notable enough to be mentioned as important contributions in other topic-specific Wikipedia articles. The trouble with listing all of them is that most academics have a lot and it fails WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The trouble with listing none of them is that it would be avoiding the major cause of the academic's notability; it would be like having an article about a politician that didn't mention the offices he or she had held. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:02, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

...fair enough...--Tom (talk) 20:18, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not an expert on this, but #1-obit is out becauase Itzkoff is still alive. #2 is out, or at least I haven't been able to find any, and apparently Itzkoff isn't providing one. I realize that my analogies to the entertainment industry may not be perfect, but articles on movie directors list all of their films, not the just the "important" ones. The more important ones might be discussed in the body of the article, which, in Itzkoff's case, is already true. Plus, although I don't think all of Itzkoff's works have been listed, most have, and the list isn't terribly long. Finally, in Itzkoff's particular case, some of his works are probably not controversial at all, whereas others are. Therefore, to the extent it matters, perhaps Itzkoff's objections (whatever they really are) would be at least partly met by including the non-controversial works as well as the controversial ones. -- Bbb23 (talk) 20:13, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:29, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have struck my delete vote as looking at the article now it is a lot improved since the nomination. Off2riorob (talk) 23:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Appears to pass WP:PROF criterion 7; his research has generated not-inconsiderable attention outside academia. Ray^Talk 21:36, 13 April 2010 (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.