Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter J. Lewis

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:{{la|1=Peter J. Lewis}} – (View AfDView log | edits since nomination)

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Subject was previously weakly deleted in 2010 at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Lewis (philosopher) (3rd nomination). Since then they have apparently published a book with some reviews, but on the face of it the article still seems to fall short of notability for an academic. BD2412 T 20:46, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators and Authors. BD2412 T 20:46, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
• Lean Keep since the last time this was up he's gone from Associate Professor at a flagship state university to full professor at an Ivy. His H-Index has gone from 10 to 18 according to Google scholar and he's continuing to publish in top journals (and book chapters with top presses). The book has been cited quite a bit and by our notability standards, if we think he's not notable, the article should be redirected to the book title and an article on the book created. Jahaza (talk) 21:25, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
• I'm not convinced that the book itself is notable. BD2412 T 00:45, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• A bit WP:OTHERSTUFFy, but if this is notable... - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:37, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• {{re|The Bushranger}} Really it isn't, but the AfD on it closed as no consensus. BD2412 T 14:47, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Philosophy, England, California, Florida, and New Hampshire. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 23:04, 12 June 2025 (UTC)
• Keep as above. A good citation presence in a low cited area. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:36, 12 June 2025 (UTC).
• Neutral on the article. The citation record is borderline for WP:PROF#C1 (although maybe strong for philosophy) and one book isn't enough for me for WP:AUTHOR. But the book is definitely notable: the article currently lists three reviews (Sebens, Shaw, and Garcia) and I found three more: : Valia Allori, Philosophy of Science, {{jstor|26551953}}; Ben Novak, The Review of Metaphysics, {{jstor|44806993}}; Alyssa Ney, Metascience, {{doi|10.1007/s11016-017-0232-8}}. With six in-depth independent reliable sources it passes WP:GNG. If the biography is deemed non-notable, it would still be possible to have an article on the book and redirect to it. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:21, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• Weak Keep The topic appears notable. The prior deletion is somewhat antiquated. However, I still cannot observe a substantial enhancement in coverage regarding the subject CresiaBilli (talk) 06:31, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• Keep. Since the last 2010 AfD has had a book published by Oxford University Press and moved from associate professor at a good regional university to full professor at Dartmouth, with good citation numbers for a low-citation field. -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (talk) 09:11, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• :I'm unclear why all of that would make the subject notable, other than the citation numbers, which (as David Eppstein mentioned above) seem borderline, at least to me. Can you refer to any other criterion of Wikipedia:NPROF that you believe this subject meets? Because one book wouldn't be enough, generally. Qflib (talk) 16:54, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• ::Sure, Qflib: from WP:NPROF "The criteria above are sometimes summed up as an "Average Professor Test": When judged against the average impact of a researcher in a given field, does this researcher stand out as clearly more notable or more accomplished?" -- generally speaking, receiving tenure and esp. full professorship at an Ivy League institution happens because someone is clearly more notable or more accomplished than the average researcher in a field. Maybe you don't like this argument, but it is a commonly used criterion. -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (talk) 09:07, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
• :::This doesn’t convince me, but since the subject is borderline on C1 I won’t oppose keeping the article. Qflib (talk) 14:18, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
• Keep. In addition to the above, I note that his article-length works aren't just cited in passing; his work has started some long-standing conversations in the philosophy of science. See, e.g., the opening line of [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3541946?seq=1 this] paper. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1355219803000650?casa_token=X6O5NLcSZIEAAAAA:mHpOX0o7pSMnomgtOJ9AX__iIcvqaXYAzEtbTztACnfpm2PY6rdGYKc5F6LE1xafxYdCJC3d Here] and [https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1093/bjps/50.4.697?journalCode=bjps here] are papers in that conversation where Lewis's name is literally the first thing that appears in the abstract. Josh Milburn (talk) 15:57, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
• : None of this has made it into the article. BD2412 T 18:14, 16 June 2025 (UTC)
• ::So? Now that it's been pointed out someone can add it. But it's often not worth it to add things to the article when it's being considered for deletion, because then the work gets deleted if it gets deleted. Jahaza (talk) 19:14, 16 June 2025 (UTC)
• ::: My point is that to the casual reader of this article, nothing indicates the encyclopedic importance of this subject beyond that of the average professor with a book under their belt. BD2412 T 19:29, 16 June 2025 (UTC)
• ::::Which is a problem with the article as written, not with the notability of the subject. Jahaza (talk) 20:29, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

:Weak keep - his philosophical monograph has a couple hundred citations in google scholar, and also three book reviews, which are both *technically* qualifying for the bare minimum of WP:NPROF and WP:NAUTHOR. I wouldn't personally nominate something like this for AfD, but I also don't think the project would be any worse off if we didn't have this page or the probably 3000 other alive-during-wikipedia philosophy professors of roughly equal notability. Psychastes (talk) 16:51, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

::i.e. "Keep but I really wish we had a broader discussion as a community about how we're running a vanity service for middling academics" Psychastes (talk) 17:04, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Thank you! I would love to see a discussion to clarify NPROF since we seem to be all over the map. In the end I fear we are introducing prejudice to this category of articles. Lamona (talk) 22:20, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

{{clear}}

: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.