Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah

:{{la|Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah}} – (View AfDView log)

:({{Find sources|Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah}})

To quote the PROD: "No in-depth sources appear to exist on this person. Currently fails WP:GNG.". Prod contested, but no sources were added. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 02:31, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
• Keep per WP:PROF#C5 and WP:BEFORE. Or, to quote the edit summary when it was deprodded (not by me): "please stop using guesswork and spend a few minutes looking for sources before proposing deletion". Sources do not seem to be hard to find but AfD is not the way to go about asking other people to do the work for you. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

::Have you read WP:PROF? "It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for an article in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject. Every topic on Wikipedia must be one for which sources exist; see Wikipedia:Verifiability." Two of us spent nearly ten minutes looking for sources in two professional databases which have millions of records of newspapers and books and are far more extensive than a Google search, which we also tried. The only source I could find was a profile for a university he works at, which in my eyes is a primary source (most likely, in my experience, it was written by him). One primary source does not equal notability anymore than twenty man-minutes trawling through databases is 'guesswork'. I know you're only trying to help here, but read up on the appropriate policy on verifiability: Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed. That's what we're doing here - removing unsourced information. Either someone provides a source, or the article - per policy - has to go. We have made good efforts to find sources that support the material. We did not succeed. Others are welcome to try - we're not all-powerful sourcerers, and I applaud efforts to source the article. Hell, I'll help all I can. However, I find it absolutely incredible that some people have had the gall to call what is clearly a well-organised, good faith effort to improve the project as nothing more than 'disruption'. We haven't tried to do anything but help. TLDR: In this case, we've not managed to source the article, so it's not verifiable and should be deleted. Others are welcome to try. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 04:07, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

:::Ok, maybe you're just really really bad at finding sources. Because two seconds of the usual Google found [http://www.dundee.ac.uk/cepmlp/staff/msornarajah.php this one] which is clearly nontrivial, about the subject, and reliable (in that it's published by a reliable third party, a university department, and corroborates much of the detail in the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:27, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

::::That's the one I found, but large chunks are copied from {{cite web|url= http://law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/faculty/staff/staffcv/sornarajahcv2009.pdf |title=his CV }}, so I dismissed it as a primary source, and we need multiple secondary ones. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 04:36, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

:::::Ok, 20 minutes of searching found a lot more. The Koh Professorship can be sourced to [http://law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/faculty/staff/staffdiv.asp his department's faculty listing], and the chair at the University of Malaya can also be sourced to [http://umfacts.um.edu.my/staffdirectory/index.php?query=Sornarajah&chartType=N their faculty directory]. [http://www.law.kyushu-u.ac.jp/programsinenglish/conference2008/sornarajah.html Here] is yet another third party source. And [http://www.lakbimanews.lk/archvi/lakbimanews_10_06_27/defence.htm here] is an actual news story with a one-paragraph bio of him, also sourcing two journal editorships, if for some reason you don't like the non-media sources.

:::::The journal International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics has two papers specifically about Sornarajah's research, in its December 2006 issue [https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10784-006-9024-0] [https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10784-006-9028-9]. Additionally, his book The Pursuit of Nationalized Property has a published review in International and Comparative Law Quarterly [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1509696]. His book The International Law on Foreign Investment has a review in the American Journal of International Law in 1995 (though I haven't found the actual text of this one online), in ICLQ [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1519976], in British Year Book of International Law [http://bybil.oxfordjournals.org/content/76/1/557.full.pdf+html], in World Trade Review [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=340389], and in Verfassung und Recht in Ubersee (2006, volume 39, issue 3 , p. 369-370, but I don't seem to have access to the text of this review either). His book Law of International Joint Ventures again has a review in ICLQ [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1517964]. So there's plenty to write about what he's done. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:05, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

::::::Excellent. Twenty minutes well spent! Let's stick those in so that the article is keepable. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 05:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

:::::::Lazy and condescending, a fine combination. I added the sources, no thanks to no help from you. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

::::::::Passive and aggressive is an equally fine combination, from what I can see. So is assuming bad faith. It's not my job to add the sources, I didn't find them. I spent 20 minutes trying to do what you say, and couldn't. The sources are now added however, thanks to yourself, and the project was improved through this AFD. In future, though, given the massive incivility coming from these users, I will be deleting BLP articles if I am unable to find sources for them articles. I will not be taking them to AFD, although others are welcome to. I will simply delete them as 'unsourced BLP article for which a comprehensive reference search has been carried no sources can be found'. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 19:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Keep. Passes WP:Prof#C5 on basis of two named chairs. Passes WP:Prof#C1 on basis of text with 337 cites in GS. Nominator is asked to follow WP:Before before making further nominations. Xxanthippe (talk) 04:59, 31 January 2011 (UTC).

::Nominator understands WP:BEFORE. Nominator is, in fact, rather well-versed in policy, oddly enough. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 05:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

:::The fact that you are well-versed in policy makes your failure to apply it even less excusable. Phil Bridger (talk) 11:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

::::Which bit did I fail to apply? Would you like to open up an RfC, or perhaps call for my resignation from ArbCom? Obviously my rampant 'disruption', as you called it, needs to be dealt with. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 13:35, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

:::::Deletion policy, which says "reasons for deletion include...articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed", not "articles which do no not currently cite any sources". Phil Bridger (talk) 13:55, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

::::::That's cute, Phil. You've not read the above discussion(or policy) at all. Instead, you've given one user - whom you knew had schizophrenia if you'd had read her userpahge - a severe panic attack and driven her off the project and off work for the foreseeable future. You've also labelled an arbitrators AfDs as tantamount to a blockable offence. I will say it again now for you, in simple words: I made thorough attempts to find reliable sources and failed to find any. I did not break any policy, although I'm pretty close to your level of incivility. The next step you should go is WP:ANI, where you can inform them of the blockable offences I've committed and ask them to comment. See you there! Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

• Keep although gnews turns up nothing, sufficient hits in gscholar to establish this person as an academic author. LibStar (talk) 06:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

: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.