Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Andrea Christofidou

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. (Several anonymous or suspiciously new users' votes were discounted but that still failed to establish a clear consensus to delete the article.)

Having said that this group's decision is "keep", I am disturbed to note that the relevant standard - the "more than an average professor test" - was never applied to this article. (See the recommended criteria for inclusion of biographies.) Neither the article nor this discussion thread establish that she is more than an average professor.

Additionally, I'd like to comment that a vote to keep the article (at least for now) is not an endorsement that the current content must be kept. Much of the biographic detail is in my opinion inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. However, that is something that any editor can fix. It does not need discussion on this page.

I am going to tag this article for clean-up. Please be aware that if the article is not cleaned up in a reasonable amount of time (no firm standard exists), and if notability is not established which passes the "average professor test", there is a significant chance that this article will be again nominated for deletion. Rossami (talk) 01:09, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As an aside, Mel Etitis challenges our policy of discounting anonymous votes by noting that we allow and encourage user IDs to be pseudonyms. The point Mel misses is that we are a community. Within this community, BM and Geogre have worked hard to establish and maintain a reputation. The fact that their Wikipedia identity can not be correlated to their physical identity is irrelevant. Their standing in the community is established by their pattern of behaviors here.

For the comments about Wikipedia not being a peer-reviewed encyclopedia, they are right. It is both a weakness and a strength. May I recommend that you review Wikipedia:What Our Critics Say About Us. Rossami (talk) 01:19, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Andrea Christofidou[edit]

Looks like a vanity page, text seems to be adapted from here. She's published a couple of articles in philosophical papers, which in my opinion does not necessarily make her notable, but feel free to disagree :) -- Ferkelparade π 12:22, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Vote against deletion (is there a separate page for this? I couldn't find it) I'm in the process of writing this page (in fact it's only been up for about ten minutes); the material so far does indeed come from her own Web site, but I'm adding more substantial descriptions of her positions. She's an extremely popular and well-respected lecturer (on Descartes, expecially) in Oxford; philosophical worth isn't merely a matter of the length of one's publications list. (I don't have a User name -- do I need one for these purposes? I should say that I'm not Dr Christofidou, so whatever else the page is, it's not vanity.) 13:27, 29 Dec 2004.
~~Tentative Keep~~ Delete. She is a Lecturer at Oxford. I'm not up on British academic titles, so I don't know how significant this is; but obviously the university if a very highly-regarded one. The article could do a lot better job of establishing her notability. Being popular doesn't equate to being notable. And if she is well-respected, the article does not indicate why. --BM 13:01, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Changed my vote. Doesn't seem like the author has much more to say about this person other than a "Lecturer" at Oxford is not equivalent to an Assistant Professor in the U.S., and 'could' be notable. That doesn't mean she is, and it doesn't look like there is going to be more information forthcoming. --BM 00:14, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I recommend getting a user name. You can vote to keep, but your vote may not be given much or any weight if you have no edit history. Whether you have a user name or not please sign with ~~~~ on talk pages like this one. If you want her included I recommend trying to show what impact she's had on her field, and especially at the start of the article telling (randomly page using) readers why they should be interesting in this person. No vote. Kappa 13:06, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Weak Delete. --fvw * 14:25, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)
Keep. Needs more info and maybe a claenup, but worth having. --Is Mise le Méas, Irishpunktom 14:47, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)
Keep. I've been looking at a number of entries for philosophers and others, and have come across a number which offer a line or two of text, with no publications, on people of whom I've never heard. Is there some reason for not wanting this particular entry (which is, as has been pointed out, a work in progress, and already offers more than many)? --Mel Etitis 16:03 29 Dec, 2004
- Wikipedia is very uneven in quality. The existence of low-quality articles in Wikipedia should not be used as a rationale to continually add more low-quality articles. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:57, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Keep, VfD is not a cleanup tool. GRider\^talk 17:34, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Keep, it's helpful, could be cleaned up a bit. Wyss 21:08, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Keep others seem to feel she's notable enough for a lecturer on wikipedia so I'll support them. Verifiable anyhow. Kappa 21:56, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Delete: Vanity page for a random professor. First, it's biography with personal details (hallmark of the vanity page). Second, she is a lecturer (aka "assistant professor"). Third, there is no indication that her works are influential or leading the field. Professors always chalk up publications. We've long had a standard for academics that they need more than to be at a university. Geogre 22:19, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Comment: "Lecturer" is the first rung of an academic career in Britain, it turns out. So basically every faculty member at Oxford, Cambridge, and equally notable schools is as notable as this person, based on her post alone. The references cite several of her journal articles. The journals are among the most respected ones, but someone else will have to comment on whether these articles are notable. It would be nice if the people responsible for this article had done their homework, instead of expecting other people to do it. No change of vote. --22:42, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
(The page-writer again — still no User-name; I've tried twice, but both times I was told that my chosen name was in use, though a search came up with nothing. I'll try again.) Aside from the person before last, who seemed not to have read what went before, the debate has been interesting. There seems to be no clear agreement on what an entry is supposed to do. I'd assumed that entries were primarily for those who were looking for them, rather than as introductions for idle browsers (perhaps that's just because that's the way I've generally used Wikipedia). I didn't intend my entry on Dr Christofidou to puff her, to tell people why they should be interested in her; rather, I intended to offer information for those who looking for it. I started with the easy bit – the biography, etc. – intending to add the harder stuff (what's distinctive about her positions and arguments in the areas of the philosophy of the self and of Cartesian studies).
- The last person is wrong, I'm afraid; the British system is in general more complicated than this, and the Oxford system is different again. I'm surprised that anyone thinks that philosophical distinction is a function of one's position in the academic hierarchy (few eminent philosophers of the past were academic successes, and many holders of University chairs are tedious nobodies). Finally, I don't know what homework I'm supposed to have done; if the reference is to the stuff about what "lecturer" means, was I really supposed to include that in the entry? Incidentally, if the entry gets to stay, and I go back to working on it, what did people mean by the need for cleaning up? Is that the coding, or something to do with the content? --(Call me Ishmael — at least for now) 22:50 29 Dec 2004
  - Actually, those who came before were the ones who had not read what had come before them. In fact, Wikipedia has been around for quite a while. How many assistant professors/lecturers do you see on the site? Know why? Academic articles are for those persons who are notable within their field. This does not merely mean individual, as all academics have to be original to some degree to publish, but rather those who are talked up, discussed, leading. As for whether eminent philosophers of the past have been academic successes or not, that's an utter red herring, for how many academic failures have been notable philosophers? Is this person Richard Rorty or just a striving academic? If the former, then an article is in order. If the latter, then she is like the thousands of others who toil in hope's delusive mine. Geogre 03:51, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
    - I suspect that what was meant was that you referred to it as a "vanity page", when we've been told that it isn't. I can't comment on that, but your insistence on the claim that a U.K Lecturer is the same as a U.S. Assistant Professor is certainly wrong. Wikipedia is full of U.K. Lecturers; we don't have the formal and highly-articulated hierarchy that you do. A U.K. Lecturer can be equivalent to anything from an Assistant Professor to a Full Professor in the U.S. (Is Associate Prof higher or lower than Assistant Prof? Anyway, "Lecturer" includes all three.) --Mel Etitis 15:51 30 Dec 2004
- You need to cater for different kinds of readers - people who know who she is, but want to know more about her, people who find her page in a search engine using words it mentions, people who might have followed a link from "oxford philosophers" or Cartesian studies or some such article, "idle browsers" who get there with "random page", etc. // It's not that academic position is a wonderful measure of philosphical distinction, but at least its an objective one, the same as record sales. The argument about notability is a constant one here. One reference is: Criteria for inclusion of biographies (and no, wikipedia is not consistent). // Cleanup is mostly about formatting and maybe some rearrangement. Try previewing a {{cleanup}} tag and see what it says. Kappa 00:24, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Keep. Megan1967 01:34, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Keep Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 06:25, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Delete: personal promo. A lecturer is nobody in particular. Author has salted other articles with promo links. Wile E. Heresiarch 16:56, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Not only isn't it personal, or vanity, or whatever, but Dr Christofidou knows nothing about it. The comment concerning lecturers is an inaccurate and petty generalisation. As for "salting" other articles, I added links to a couple of relevant articles, just as I linked from this page to others -- I'd thought that that was how Wikipedia worked. Checking one of them, I see that you've removed it. Isn't that jumping the gun, at the very least? --(Call me Ishmael — at least for now) 17:12 30 Dec 2004
I've just discovered this discussion; the usual Usenet-level stuff, with dogmatic nonsense from anonymous, ignorant, arrogant little nobodies. Andrea would be upset by some of the crass comments, but then I don't suppose you really understand taht, you autistic creeps. Take the page down; why would she be interested in having n edited duplicate of the bio from her own page on a non-peer-reviewed "Encyclopedia"? I expect that the person who started putting it up had the best of motives, but take it down please, and leave these autistic twerps to play their dominance games with each other. --[A friend and colleague of A.C.] 9.25am 31st December 2004
- The most striking example of autistic Usenet dominance games in this discussion is your own (anonymous) contribution. Unfortunately votes from anonymous IP's don't count. People writing biographies when the notabiity of the subject can't be readily established aren't really doing the subject any favors. They are potentially exposing the person to a fairly blunt discussion of how notable he or she really is. No university lecturer (or her colleagues , apparently) wants to read on the Internet that she is just another person working in the education industry. Other encyclopedias are not peer-reviewed, either; but they don't conduct their editorial discussions in public. --BM 13:49, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - Hmmm... a few problems with BM's reply: (1) it seems to be using "autistic" as a general term of abuse (from the Wikipedia article on autism: "people on the autism spectrum have difficulty seeing things from another person's perspective. Neurotypical 5-year-olds understand that other people have different knowledge, feelings, and goals than they have. An autistic person may lack such understanding, an inability that leaves them unable to predict or understand other people's actions"; (2) the use of "anonymous" to mean someone not using a pseudonym like "BM" or "Geogre" or even "Mel Etitis" is peculiar to say the least; (3) I'll pass over the repeated sily stuff about the relative importance of academics and the notion of education being just another industry (we get enough of that from right-wing politicians here); (4) I've contributed to a few non-Internet Encyclopedias, and they were all peer-reviewed to various degrees (at least having a subject-specialist editor who was responsible for accepting, rejecting, or asking for alterations in articles). Mel Etitis 10:21, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Keep. Seems notable. --JuntungWu 07:22, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Keep, notable. Dan100 11:39, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
This discussion has been going on for more than the five days mentioned in the Wikipedia guidleines; isn't it time to make decision? I'll vote to keep, which makes the votes for keeping eleven and the votes against four (five including the original questioner, who in fact seems not to have voted). Doesn't this mean that the page stays, or have I missed something? Mel Etitis 17:57, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- I could only find 8 9 keeps, but yeah that's a majority so it will be retained. Some admin will come along and do the paperwork eventually. I should point out that keep decisions aren't permanent, and someone might nominate it again later. Kappa 18:15, 6 Jan 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 on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.