Talk:Laurence D. Marks

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A comment to @Drmies, with cc To editors StarryGrandma, Russ Woodroofe, FuzzyMagma and Rublamb: wholesale deletion of selected publications from an academic BLP without any prior discussion is unusual. Many academic pages have a few publications, as one example see David Eppstein, I am sure that there are many other academics who are also Wikipedia editors who have a few. The papers you deleted were selected by @StarryGrandma some time ago; please note that I did not select these. The citations of them range from 100 for the first to 1857 for the last with an average of 548. I do find your statement "if any of these are provably noteworthy, with a secondary source, restore the individual item" unusual since high citation numbers are typically taken as some form of indication of notability. I know that we have disagreed a number of times on edits/AfD etc, I do hope that is not why you did such a mass deletion. Ldm1954 (talk) 22:10, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I was typing this @Rublamb reverted the deletion. Ldm1954 (talk) 22:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't recall ever having run into you, Ldm1954, but I firmly believe that a list of journal article is little more than resume building. No high citation numbers are provided (and citation numbers are a rather difficult metric generally), so who is to know what was properly selected and what wasn't? Besides, in this field it is so common to have multiple, sometimes dozens of co-editors, and I think we all know how collaborative writing goes in reality. Anywayz, without proper citations that prove noteworthiness, it's an arbitrary selection. User:Rublamb, you are incorrect: such a resume is not standard for academic biographies; I have written many of them and edited even more. I'm not going to fight over this, but you haven't told me anything that will make me think I was wrong. Besides, please understand that not every edit, to a BLP or not, should be discussed beforehand, so no, such a deletion is also not unusual. One could consider adding citations for individual noteworthy items--surely that is not too much to ask. I just wrote up Garland Greever and hit up JSTOR--not so I could include the many articles and reviews he published, but so I could find verification for the books he wrote. Drmies (talk) 22:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies: Some history: there was a great deal of discussion about the publication list for this article a while back—not about removing it entirely but about the length of the list. At the time, the editors involved reached a consensus on this specific list, although it is longer than some wanted. I personally took a look at the list, reviewing each item, determining the notability of the journal and research, and cutting many from the list. I have a mineralogy background and felt comfortable with the subject matter but also looked at the number of contributing authors and the age of the reseach. Because of the history of this article and its publication section, I do believe discussion rather than "boldly go" is appropriate. Rather, the burden is on you to explain why a particular item is inappropriate for this list, not the other way around. Note that per MOS and the guidelines for lists of publications, citations are not required and are actually frowned upon for linked publications or items with ISBN numbers. See GA ad FL articles for examples. Rublamb (talk) 22:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No no no, Rublamb: if something is completely unverified, if there is no citation or reference or anything that indicates the veracity or the relevance of the information, it's on the editor who inserts (or re-inserts) the information to prove why it should be there. And surely you cannot expect an editor to go through the history of an article that's been here since 2015 to investigate that history to figure if someone, somehow might have a problem with a regular edit--the removal of unverified resume-style information, in this case.

I'm looking through the history. I see some back and forths, some brief edit summaries pertaining to COI, but you are saying there was "a great deal of discussion" and that "the editors involved reached a consensus"--well, there is nothing on this talk page, and there is precious little in the archived version: I don't see a consensus on a list of articles at all, I don't see a discussion about citation numbers and some number above which things should be included. In fact, that talk page (I'm not sure why the subject archived all of it) ends with a valuable note: " As you know, a Wikipedia article isn't a CV". Anyway, you seem to be accusing me of, in summary, removing unverified material that I should have smelled was in fact relevant while ignoring a clear consensus that I cannot find anywhere? Drmies (talk) 23:27, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is not worth tracking down, but this article was discussed on several editor's pages and the WikiProject talkpage, not just this talk page. Discussions were contentious; I recall the Tea House and Village Pump being involved.

@Drmies, you are a knowledgeable editor who is way more experienced than I am, but lists of publications do not require citations for each item in the list. For example, look at FA Ernest Hemingway which has no citations in its Selected works section. Nor are there any citations in the related Ernest Hemingway bibliography. Are you saying that the FGA reviewers were wrong or that the second article should be AfD for lack of citations for the publication lists?

As a new editor, I added references for everything, including each item in publication lists. With my first few GA reviews, I quickly learned that we don't need citations for a list of publications because the item is its own citation. MOS allows citations to be notes or text within the article--which is the case with a publication list. MOS:LISTSOFWORKS says that the list of publications acts as a citation even though it is not technically a citation. With the added link to the actual item or an ISBN, these lists are essentially sourced. That being said, apparently The Guardian just called one of his works "landmark". Rublamb (talk) 00:29, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DrmiesI also should have mentioned, for many academics in the modern world of online publishing, it is easy to get published and/or to have trivial work published. In those cases, you are correct that such a list would be academic puffery. However, this is an exmaple of a academic who conducted significant research and was published in peer-reviwed print publications that were higly selective. I don't know Dr. Marks (and he generally hates my edits to his article) but I do support a list of up to ten or twelve articles in this case because his work was at the top of his field. Rublamb (talk) 23:07, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ldm1954, @Drmies, @Rublamb, since this discussion has the potential to affect so many articles, it needs a wider discussion. I am raising the question at WT:NPROF. Please continue there. Thank you. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:30, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. You are always the voice of reason. Rublamb (talk) 00:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Please change the first line from "an American professor" to "an emeritus American professor". Sources:

• https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/07/the-science-behind-the-viral-tinfoil-frizz-trick-on-tiktok
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/09/240918125057.htm
• https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/materials-science/people/faculty/emeritus-faculty.html

Ldm1954 (talk) 22:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ldm1954: hope you are enjoing (semi) retirement! Rublamb (talk) 22:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Somewhat. I miss not have PhD students to boss around, but dont miss meetings.

N.B., for fun look at the guardian link in my edit request above. (The 2nd one is real science, albeit so far it is churnalism.) Ldm1954 (talk) 23:05, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's great. And of course, it says, "Laurence Marks, emeritus professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University in the US, and author of a landmark paper on the theory of static electricity". Rublamb (talk) 23:54, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]