Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hagen Kleinert

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was KEEP. Mgm|^(talk) 13:24, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

Hagen Kleinert[edit]

Vanity?--ZayZayEM 06:23, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC) If Dr. Kleinert was of real encyclopediac value (more than just being a real person) he would have more than "Clean ups" and "dead ends" [1]. This page is quite obvious self made and hence both Vanity and Self Promotion. It therefore needs to be deleted. A lot of people seem to be quick to jump on articles link Chonk for exactly the same reason, this guy gets off because he's an academic, smeg off.--ZayZayEM 00:40, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No. A very quick check seems to confirm that this is indeed an important university professor, the author of 8 books (most seem to be available on Amazon) and 350+ scientific articles. Heads a research team of 25 persons and has had a "festschrift" written to his honour by other scholars. Gets almost 5,000 google hits. Granted, his web design skills might be somewhat limited, but that alone shouldn't stop someone from getting into Wikipedia, should it? Obvious notability, strong keep. / Alarm 17:39, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
As I pointed out on the talk page a while ago, it is almost certainly autobiographical; it is created by User:Kleinert, and later edited by an IP traceable to the Freie Universität in Berlin (if I remember correctly from when I looked into this). However, he is clearly notable enough for a Wikipedia article, and in spite of the obviously autobiographical origin, I vote to keep this. It would be good, though, if some physicist could take a look at the article and write a fuller description of Kleinert's research. / up land 20:59, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Agree with up land's conclusion that this is autobiographical. Wikipedia:No autobiographies is a principle worth defending even if we temporarily lose an article. (However, I would have no objection if this is moved to his user page nor will I object if someone else later writes an article about him.) Rossami (talk) 00:45, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep, needs definite cleanup and expansion. The professor passes notability test. Megan1967 01:26, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- How?? 5,000 google hits, 8 books and only 350 scientific articles is actually not that much. A lot of mediocre academics have acheived this and more. Someone is going to have to come up with a very clear reason why this guy is notable. This page at least needs to eb deleted on standard grounds that vanity pages and autobiographies are not wikipedia content. I have no problem if a future page gets written up, I'll deal with notability then. This page needs to be deleted because the snail's pace of Wikipedia, plus the general non-notability of this character means it is not likely to be cleaned up any time soon.--ZayZayEM 02:42, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - How is 5000+ Google hits and 8 books not notable? There have been people with fewer hits and publications that have biographies in Wikipedia. I'm not suggesting the article remain unchanged. As I said, it needs cleanup to make it NPOV. Megan1967 06:03, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    - The onus is not on me to prove non-notability, it is for keepers to prove notability. Thats how things usually work. This article has not be nominated due to non-notability. It has been nominated as vanity, self promotion and autobiography - I have shown this to be correct. If you'd like to disagree with those then your vote might make sense. If those go through with a keep I really expect those who vote that way make an effort towards cleaning the article up.--ZayZayEM 06:14, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      - Actually that statement position is incorrect. It's up to the person putting up the article for deletion to provide evidence why (non-notability, vanity etc.), not the keepers. Remember this is Votes for Deletion - so technically anyone who abstains/no votes, is voting for its retention by default - its up to people who wish to delete the article to prove otherwise (non-notability, vanity etc.) by majority, not the keepers. Another thing is you've made a comparison between this academic and the artist Chonk. Chonk in no way has scored +5000 Google hits or written 8 books. So professor Kleinert is not in the same category as Chonk. Megan1967 01:14, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
        CapitalistRoadster has done an excellent job in tidying up this article. My vote remains unchanged ie. keep. Megan1967 00:31, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
        Just for the record, it's 3 books, by any realistic account. Multiple editions/volumes should not inflate the count.--192.35.35.34 20:23, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. No auto-biographies. Writing hundreds of article is not necessarily a notability proof. We should look for quality, not for quantity. Where were these articles published? What impact did they have on the physics community? A professor writes articles all the time, most of them is soon forgotten. JoaoRicardo 05:13, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep. "No autobiographies" is a good principle, but it's not a hard rule, and in this case, it seems the individual in question may be reasonably noteworthy. True, professors write articles. He's published roughly one per month since 1967, at least some of which are in scientific journals I recognize (and I'm not a physicist). Eight books seems like a pretty big contribution to his field. The article needs cleanup and expansion, but that isn't valid grounds for deletion. Shimeru 06:05, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
- Writing books is what academics do. As mentioned previously, notability is in quality not quantity. A quick Amazon search yields only two of these books in various editions. If these guy really is notable in the world of physics A) Soemone else would have written an article (or at least expanded on this one) B) At least one physics article might link to him Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies is for Biographies not Autobiographies. This guy seems a pretty average professor - not wikipedia content. We wouldn't let a musician in just because they had 8 CDs of realtively unknown status.--ZayZayEM 07:14, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - We wouldn't? Name three musicians who had 8 CDs released by an independent label (let alone a major corporate one) who we wouldn't include, and I'll change my vote to delete. Kleinert's books are not vanity-published. Shimeru 20:29, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)
Keep. More than sufficiently notable individual.--Centauri 06:08, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Comment: I am not all that convinced that userfying and rewriting may not be the best solution (as a way to eat the cake and still have it), but unless the rewrite is made by somebody expert in the field, it is not going to look much different from the present stub. Compared to the contributions in the same genre we get from some teenagers, this vanity article in its present brevity is downright modest. But as for notability, the professor test speaks of an "average college professor" ("If the individual is more well known and more published than an average college professor, they can and should be included"), obviously referring to the American conditions for reaching professorhood. I would claim that any German professor can be assumed to pass this test with flying colours, even before making any independent assessment of the value of his or her publications, simply because the bar for getting a professorship is so much higher in Germany than in the US. Had Kleinert been a baseball or football/soccer player, there is no doubt that he would have been considered notable for much less. / up land 06:53, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep and Expand. Writing eight books on physics as a professor of that subject in a major university suggests that this man is notable. I would also suggest that the average professor rule be recast as the average academic rule. to account for cultural differences as noted by Uppland. Capitalistroadster 08:56, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Have expanded it somewhat to include details of written works. His most notable work Path Integrals in Quantum Mechanics, Statistics and Polymer Physics has had four editions with the latest two editions including financial markets. Has cowritten a paper with notable physicist Richard Feynman. Capitalistroadster 05:11, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - I have toned the book list down to something more reasonable: 3 books, not artifically inflated by listing multiple editions or multiple volumes.--192.35.35.34 20:23, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep He was my professor at university; believe me, he's notable enough (reasons above) Lectonar 10:56, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Weak Delete I don't know the field at all (Physics) and so the chap may well be notable. But I do know that writing articles - and having them published - is standard form for all Professors over here (EU). In itself, therefore, that would not seem to make anyone particularly notable. Going beyond that stage and having chapters in books and then books published under your own name would be going some way toward notability - but even then the books need to sell and, really, to be the stuff of some import. So, all in all, a weak delete. But if he is prominent in his field then I would change my mind to a definite keep. --Marcus22 12:07, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep. I am a physicist at Harvard, and the amount of his publications etc. justifies a Wikipage. I believe that if the page is deleted, someone else will start it again, anyway. --Lumidek 19:30, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep. I have read a few Google hits, and this guy is notable in the usual sense, even if the current page is not that interesting. Charles Matthews 20:18, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Comment. If this article is written by the professor himself, and not a relative or someone with the same name, then it is vanity, by definition. Wikipedia prohibits autobiographies/vanity. Maybe it shouldn't. What is actually wrong with vanity? If an article is about a notable subject and the information contained therein is verifiable, what does it matter if the person wrote it himself? If by some amazing chance, President Clinton had decided to write a Wikipedia article about himself (perhaps in conjunction with his book tour, or something), would we have deleted it as "vanity", assuming that it was NPOV, true, and verifiable? In fact, "vanity" is rarely provable; it is only a suspicion. We delete, as vanity, bragging articles by high school kids. But these are just as deletable for not being notable, not being verifiable, and being most probably false. Perhaps we should stop using unverifiable suspicions of "vanity" as reasons for deleting articles and stick with notability and verifiability. --BM 01:30, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Reply. It prevents the "Well President Clinton did it" response to any other would be autobiographers trying to add themselves to Wikipedia. If someone is notable enough for inclusion, they really shouldn't have to add themselves. Hence why vanity is a label, not a definition, in this context.--ZayZayEM 09:13, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Re-reading the comments, I'm going to vote Keep. Perhaps it is vanity, but Lumidek is taking responsibility for this article, which is good enough for me. --BM 01:33, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Comment. Hear hear BM. I have often used the term vanity used for people who are notable in their fields but who the person using the term hadn't heard of. Sticking to comments of not notable and not verifiable for votes would be much better. While the article as it was gave indications that he had written it, it would be good news if a Professor of Physics at a notable university was writing articles for Wikipedia. Capitalistroadster 05:11, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The article has now been largely rewritten by Capitalistroadster. In order not to set a precedent (and to get that matter out of the air) we could still userfy this article, and then have Capitalistroadster cut-and-paste his own version to the article space. Anyone for this solution? / up land 10:02, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep. (geesh Florentin Smarandache has a page!) The only issue is whether it's autobiographical or self-promoting. To that effect, a small warning Kleinert, please stay away.CSTAR 04:49, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Comment. Professor Kleinert's work is certainly notable within physics. Richard Feynman, for example, was absolutely brilliant in developing the path integral approach to quantum mechanics. But he was unable to actually solve it for simple systems, like the hydrogen atom. Kleinert solved the latter. Much of his work is like this. A theoretical genius comes up with amazing mathematical frameworks that promise so much to come, but gets bogged down, and Kleinert finds a way to push the method through. Very important work, but no revolutionary discoveries, no grabbing of attention. Kleinert was collaborating with Feynman during Feynman's last illness. If you look in Physics Today, Feb. 1989, at the page of photographs of Feynman's last blackboards, you'll see Kleinert's name.--192.35.35.35 14:50, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

- Thank you for that info. I have added it to the article. Capitalistroadster 14:55, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - Yes, and it came out all wrong sounding.--192.35.35.34 20:23, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    - Don't blame others for trying. /up land 20:45, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      - You are correct, I was out of line. I personally did not want to get involved, just supply the informative comment above, but having my words permuted into amateurish bad science left me feeling grumpy about having to get involved. That and fixing Cap's overstated booklist.--192.35.35.36 23:29, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- No hard feelings. I would welcome it if you obtained a username and started contributing more regularly.Capitalistroadster 08:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - I have removed the attention template--the article has reached a decent minimum. I am contributing regularly, and except for Wanda Tinasky, having fun. I don't want to get sucked into things too deeply, though, so I avoid having a name.--192.35.35.35 16:06, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
An interesting one. I would generally say that if the subject of an entry is the only one interested enough to write the article, then the subject isn't noteworthy enough to be included. Anyway, doesn't he have friends/students/admirers that he could have asked to write it? But, by now it weems to have been "de-vanitised" sufficiently, and it seems Herr Kleinert is probably notable enough, so why not keep it HowardB 07:37, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep, appears to be a professor of note. Unless, of course, we are running out of disk space. In that case, delete. —RaD Man (talk) 09:43, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep, and follow up on up land and Capitalistroadster's leads about globalizing the "average professor test." Samaritan 00:48, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.