Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Danielle Bleitrach

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 no consensus. MBisanz ^talk 16:45, 24 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Danielle Bleitrach

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Fails WP:NACADEMIC: Has a small number of academic citations per Google Scholar, and no other criteria of the guideline are apparently met—nor is there support for notability for her political activities. —swpb^T 13:05, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —swpb^T 13:07, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. —swpb^T 13:07, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. —swpb^T 13:07, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - The nomination baldly states, "nor is there support for notability for her political activities". I am mystified as to what nominator means.
Practically none of the individuals the wikipedia covers in standalone biographical article have had their wikipedia notability established with a single notability factor -- like winning a Victoria Cross. For practically all these individuals their notability is established by adding up all their notability factors.
This nomination cannot make a blanket dismissal of the fact Bleitrach was a long-serving member of the French Communist Party's Central Committee.
I don't know if she fully measures up to WP:NACADEMIC, or merely comes close. But, if nominator claims she doesn't why does a google books search on "Danielle Bleitrach" trigger over 2000 hits? Geo Swan (talk) 18:23, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. We do, in fact, use single factors in the sense that we identify a notability guideline that one satisfies, and yes, there is one for WP:POLITICIAN. Her position would not seem to satisfy it per se. I have not done any homework on this article yet, but a quick glance shows that there are some obvious warning flags, especially that it is entirely self-sourced. Agricola44 (talk) 18:58, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Everything you've said about the politics angle is correct (nothing about party committee membership, no matter how long, satisfies WP:POLITICIAN), and as for the academic angle, I would point out the near-worthlessness of a GBooks search that doesn't exclude the subject's own works. This search cuts the results by 3/4, and reveals some more academic citations, but no apparent biographical coverage. And I don't know what guideline this "adding up of notability factors" concept comes from. WP:BASIC allows for combining sources, but so far we have no independent sources offering biographical coverage to combine. @Geo Swan: I'm getting tired of seeing "keep" arguments that ignore the guidelines—I hope it's not something you make a habit of. If you disagree with the guidelines, there are venues to address that. —swpb^T 19:52, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Notability not yet met WP:Too soon. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:35, 20 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Delete Does not meet any notability guidelines for academics and her political roles are not enough to meet the guidelines for politicians.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:38, 20 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Had a chance to take a closer look. Agree that political roles do not confer notability per se. She has published quite a few books, but a WorldCat search indicates that none have more than double-digit holdings, which is pretty small by our conventions. It is true that these are in french, so that may affect the numbers, but another factor that we usually count significantly in such cases is whether any books have been translated...I don't see that. GS shows a few citations (h-index 5), but that is far below our academic threshold. Don't see anything in newspapers and such, so probably no real argument for GNG either. Agricola44 (talk) 15:32, 21 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Keep. Daniel Bleitrach is a noted French marxist academic and sociologist, of Jewish origin, born in 1938. Her Wikipedia biography does her no credit and needs to be cleaned up, rewritten, expanded. I have only just started editing it and will continue to do so in the following days. --Elnon (talk) 02:46, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The WorldCat numbers are actually pretty low by our AfD convention. Agricola44 (talk) 23:54, 23 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Keep -- appears to have decent library holdings per WorldCat: link. I'm not an expert in using WorldCat Identities, but it was explained to me at User talk:DGG#Worldcat holdings that WC does not do a good job of indexing non U.S. based libraries and works that are not in English. With this in mind, this appears passable. Sources also possibly exist in French or off line. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:24, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WorldCat is the most comprehensive book database there is. I already commented above that the French language of her publications may slant a little low, we would look for something to have been translated...that would definitely help for notability. I have not found such yet. Agricola44 (talk) 23:54, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On the balance of things, the subject appears to be notable. It also helps that a French Wiki article exists: link. The article is not in the best of shapes, but the fact that someone bothered to create it suggests to me that there are possibly enough sources out there to support an en Wiki article. I would be hesitant to delete an a page on a subject that is covered in an inter language Wiki (other than English). K.e.coffman (talk) 07:50, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To state the obvious, the "possible" existence of better sources, and the existence of an article on another wiki (which is itself tagged for lack of sources), carry zero weight (see WP:MUSTBESOURCES, WP:OTHERLANGS). Please do not use these or any of the other flawed arguments laid out in Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions; as ever, better sources need to be demonstrated if the article is to be kept. —swpb^T 12:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@K.e.coffman: Are you now saying that Wikipedia internal references to itself and speculation that there may be "possibly enough sources out there" are your arguments for "keep"? I have done some checking an could not find any such sources. You might be able to find them, but absent that, your bald speculation alone is not convincing. Agricola44 (talk) 15:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

I have expressed my opinion via my !vote based on my prior experience at AfDs and I would appreciate not being badgered. As far as coverage / sources are concerned, here's a 200+ book apparently dedicated to the subjet: Une Vie pour lutter: entretiens avec Danielle Bleitrach (1984) ("A life to fight: inteviews with Danielle Bleitrach"). Again, this is indicative of the subject being notable IMO. I will let the community decide on whether this is indeed so. K.e.coffman (talk) 16:43, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You seriously need to revise your interpretation of "badgering". Taking apart faulty reasoning isn't badgering, it's exactly how AfDs are supposed to work. Maybe you've seen reasoning like that on other AfDs, but now you know better. Now to the new case: that book appears to list Bleitrach as an author, which rather undermines its independence. —swpb^T 17:13, 24 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Debating is not badgering. Indeed, substantive debate (what is going right now) is the very purpose of AfD, not just !voting and prancing off to the next task. As for the book just mentioned, Une Vie pour lutter, WorldCat and Google Books likewise list Bleitrach as an author. It's a little strange, given the title, but the fact that she seems to have had some role in authorship and that the book is held in <50 libraries worldwide would seem to be another non-starter. Sorry. Agricola44 (talk) 18:59, 24 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. SST flyer 12:12, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment OK, let's calm down everyone. It is bad for Wikipedia if some of the people who actually critically evaluate notability at AfDs start sniping at each other. Coming back to the topics, here are some of my thoughts

For notability, any one criterion has to be fully satisfied. Half of one and half another doesn't help. Coverage can be added up for GNG but we do not add up notability criteria itself.
GNG is hard to satisfy here, although it might be worth looking into French newspaper archives
It is true that the subject won't pass WP:NPOL. Notability has to be demonstrated using another criterion
WP:PROF is harder to satisfy here considering the low citation rate. None of the other criteria at WP:NACADEMIC are satisfied as well
The best bet is WP:AUTHOR. WorldCat holdings do not guarantee notability, but are a good indication that the subject might be significant. Over here the fact that the subject's books are in French but are still kept in multiple libraries is an indication of significance. I would prefer to research more at this point rather than go with a keep or delete. There is a good chance that reviews of her books might exist. Some of them were also in the pre-internet age, so newspaper archives need to be looked into. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 03:09, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, I don't think google scholar/books searches for her name does justice to the number of citations she has and her impact. Consider a books search and a scholar search for her book, "Classe Ouvriere et Social-Democratie", which google scholar thinks is cited 33 times. Reading through the results of that google book search as well as google book searches using other works of hers, I feel she is notable. Smmurphy^(Talk) 19:53, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Normally one looks for many hundreds of citations to pass WP:Prof#C1. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:46, 28 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

I suppose in hard sciences, but I'm not sure. In any case, I think the point that her impact is understated by google scholar citations stands, whether it meets your criteria or not.

Citations compare like-with like, i.e. with people engaged in the same activities. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:19, 28 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

I did notice that her seven books from her bibliography is included in a book which is in its entirety a collection of social science bibliographies of 378 authors [1]. I can't exactly judge how good of a source that is, but it seems somewhat reliable. Smmurphy^(Talk) 22:27, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I clicked all the way through the GoogleBooks link you supplied and counted 24 citations. As Xxan said, this is a very small number according to our long-established AfD conventions for PROF. I think you have the same problem as criticizing WorldCat as not being representative of institutional holdings of her books. GB is the most comprehensive source for this information. Is it just possible that she doesn't have as much impact as you think/like? Agricola44 (talk) 22:53, 28 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

I agree that it is hard to judge whether or not an academic has had a notable impact. I'm not an expert in Marxist sociology, and can't say for sure whether or not Bleitrach has had an impact. It is possible that she hasn't had a notable impact, but my reading of works referencing her is that she has. I agree, I could be wrong. It is possible that she hasn't had a notable impact. Smmurphy^(Talk) 23:25, 28 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All you have to do is look at her GS citations and compare them with those of other Marxist historians for example Eric Hobsbawm, who has around 50,000. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:58, 29 October 2016 (UTC).[reply]

AfD isn't about comparison, per se, and !votes aren't ignored because someone's reasoning is opposed. It looks to me like the article continues to improve (which is a great outcome, I hope you agree), and I still !vote keep. Smmurphy^(Talk) 23:37, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. 24 is minuscule. —swpb^T 12:39, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me Danielle Bleitrach is a sociologist, not a historian. --Elnon (talk) 19:32, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sociologists get higher cites, so the comparison is worse. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:32, 1 November 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Keep - There are numerous notability guidelines. Cursory Google News search indicates WP:BASIC met to start in addition to WP:ACADEMIC. Don't badger. Hmlarson (talk) 03:57, 29 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- No, it doesn't, as thoroughly broken down above. Unless you have some new argument to add, the closing admin will ignore your vote. —swpb^T 12:35, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The article does not establish that there are adequate reliable independent sources about her to sustain an article. French academics tend to generate a lot of more or less superficial printed matter by and about them almost as a matter of course, so a closer look at the quality and nature of the sources is indispensable, and the discussion above does not really do that. Sandstein 23:07, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I've found and am adding to the entry ~~four~~five reviews of books she co-authored--one longer one from an academic journal and three shorter ones from Le Monde Diplomatique, ETA: and a fourth middle-sized one from Le Monde Diplo (Innisfree987 (talk) 16:53, 2 November 2016 (UTC)), all of which I found without delving into paywalled or pre-Internet-era sources. Le Monde Diplomatique only counts for one source for notability (rightly, in my opinion, as I'd like to see more perspectives represented in the entry), but if LMD has reviewed (at least) ~~three~~four of someone's books, to me it's a foregone conclusion that other reliable sources have reviewed some of them too. The entry needs more work but I don't think it's a deletion candidate. Innisfree987 (talk) 16:03, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh goodness. I seem to have missed completely that there was already a list of independent, reliably sourced "Reviews of the author's contributions" within the entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Danielle_Bleitrach&oldid=747485357 It included two I mentioned and four more I hadn't found yet. Work reviewed in Le Monde Diplo, La Voix du Nord, La Pensée, Les Annales, and still more clears the notability hurdles easily to me, whether GNG or AUTHOR. As an editorial matter I think it's vastly preferable that we convert these refs to inline citations match with the entry text they support (since, clearly, it was too easy to overlook them as they stand!), and inadvertently I've already started on that while reffing up the entry from my google search, so I'll continue to delete dupes as I go and then delete that subsection, but in the meantime, I am more than satisfied we have plenty to found a solid entry. Innisfree987 (talk) 17:35, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: clear indicia of notability. Article needs work, but quality issues are independent of notability. This article passes GNG. Montanabw^(talk) 19:58, 2 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
delete For 2 reasons. The first is the claims that she is important as a political figure, but she held only minor offices in a Party that was in marked decline in the decades when she participated. The second claim is the impact of her scholarchip,but that impact of her scholarship has not been demonstrated. She appears to be a good example of the phenomenon of Francophone scholars whose work has impact only within the French language scholarly community. There are, of course, Francophone scholars whose work has impact on scholarship in other language communities, including English. But Bleitrach appears to write within a French Marxist tradition that forms a walled garden encompassing a community of French Marxists, and her work appears to be of near-zero interest to economists, political scientists or historians elsewhere. (When the work of French Marxists journalists/politicians/scholars attracts outside interest, it gets translated) Article was created in 2011 by translating the French article; only 1 article links to it. Before the AFD, article got 2 or 3 page hits per day. Therefore, it seem appropriate to have a French article about her, but no an article on the English Wikipedia.E.M.Gregory (talk) 07:56, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That she is of interest in"the Francophone" community is adequate, we don't require international stature, or at least if we do not require it of American or British people, we do not want to hold someone who is French to a double standard. If she's notable enough for you to argue there should be an article on fr. wiki, then there also should be an article on en. wiki; I do not agree with your logic on that one. Montanabw^(talk) 05:33, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Will press on this point a little because it's relevant to some work I'd planned, so I want to make sure I understand policy here--I did not understand any of the guidelines to require international attention; my experience at AfD is that national stature is regularly viewed as sufficient. Likewise I actually thought en-wiki encouraged the writing of articles on topics outside the anglophone world (hence WMF's big investment in the translation tool: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation), as long as it's sourced to our usual standards of reliable secondary material. Sum of all human knowledge and all that jazz. No? Innisfree987 (talk) 14:22, 5 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think the article is relevant, but you might want to go dig up more source material per WP:HEY to make a stronger case. The "notable for France but not for English wiki" argument is, IMHO, not an accurate statement of the guidelines. Montanabw^(talk) 05:33, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Subject seems to miss NACADEMIC, NPOLITICIAN, and NBASIC, but perhaps the book reviews might make this a ppass of NAUTHOR and this aspect should perhaps be discussed in more detail. Randykitty (talk) 11:58, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Randykitty (talk) 11:58, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The subject may fail all four SNGs mentioned by narrow margins (or may pass them), but the cumulative coverage appears to satisfy the GNG, and the delete !votes focus on the SNGs and don't make a solid case against her meeting the GNG. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006. (talk) 22:41, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment to note the significant number of secondary sources added to this entry since the last delete ivote; and also mention three more I've found engaging her commentary on Dieudonne, from Rue 89 (and again a year later), FranceInfo, and the New York Times. Mine are all things I found without delving into paywalled or pre-internet sources.

While I'm here I'll also reiterate that I think it imperative we take non-anglophone sources and perspectives as seriously as we do those in English. Innisfree987 (talk) 21:30, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The sources provided show she passes GNG. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:40, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete. The subject appears to fail WP:ACADEMIC, WP:NAUTHOR, WP:POLITICIAN. I am not very convinced at the idea that someone can be a little bit of all of these things, and therefore pass some combination. In any case, that seems to be a radical interpretation of policy. I could easily be convinced with better secondary sources that she passes GNG, but those in the article do not. The few independent secondary sources cited in the article do not rise to the level of "significant coverage". Sławomir Biały (talk) 14:44, 16 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Some of her books translated into Spanish [2], [3]. The Berthold Brecht and Fritz Lang in French and German, held by major U.S universities [4], [5] . Also on Open library [6] and a number of databases worldwide [7] .--DDupard (talk) 11:29, 17 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, Google Book search gives 1,550 hits, tons of other books reference her. --Soman (talk) 16:05, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. That she's a Frenchie commie pinko doesn't matter. What matters is her books are well-read and held in many libraries. That is good for either WP:PROF or WP:AUTHOR. Bearian (talk) 18:33, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Touché!--DDupard (talk) 07:51, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 08:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

'Weak delete: As per User:Sławomir Biały above. Overall, the subject fails WP:BIO and appears to be a little bit of everything without meeting any specific criteria. -- HighKing⁺⁺ 14:21, 24 November 2016 (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.