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 keep. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 01:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wayles Browne (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Non notable academic who fails WP:PROF Paste _{Let’s have a chat.} 13:13, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: no articulation of why this topic meets WP:ACADEMIC. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:09, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: Wayles Browne is also one of the few significant poetry translators of contemporary works by Bosnian authors into English. —User:Stephkru (talk) 22:00, 4 February 2009 (EST)
• Keep: One of the most significant American linguistics experts on contemporary Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language. See [[1]] User:Stringbergrex^Talk 22.50, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
• Question: what RS evidence do you have that "Wayles Browne is also one of the few significant poetry translators of contemporary works by Bosnian authors into English" or that he is "One of the most significant American linguistics experts on contemporary Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language." Differences between standard Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian makes no explicit mention of him. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Answer: The following might be considered as RS evidence: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]User:StrindbergRex Talk —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC).[reply]

• Comment: none of these links substantiate any of the above grandiloquent descriptions, nor demonstrate that Browne is more than an averagely-capable academic linguist. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:47, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Meets WP:PROF criterion #1 (significant impact in scholarly discipline, broadly construed). Given the specificity of the topic, I would say that these Google Books and Scholar search results indicate notability.--Eric Yurken (talk) 15:56, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: and I would state that they demonstrate nothing of the sort. Running 'Harzing's Publish or Perish' on 'EW Browne' yields a total of only 10 citations to his work -- a pitiful total. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:42, 5 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: However, please note that even Harzing itself notes that their impact factor may be inapplicable to narrow fields and less applicable to Humanities than other areas: If an academic shows good citation metrics, it is very likely that he or she has made a significant impact on the field. However, the reverse is not necessarily true. If an academic shows weak citation metrics, this may be caused by a lack of impact on the field, but also by one or more of the following: 1. Working in a small field (therefore generating fewer citations in total); 2. Publishing in a language other than English (LOTE - effectively also restricting the citation field); 3. Publishing mainly (in) books. All three of these things hold true in Browne's case. He 1. Works in a very small field (the journals in which he publishes, such as the Journal of Slavic Review, are NOT EVEN LISTED in Eigenfactor Linguistics, for example - so how could he have a high impact factor if this is the case?; 2. He publishes in languages other than English and 3. He publishes mainly in books. Additionally, if one considers translation to be a form of art, he must also be measured beyond the academic standards. It is true that translating from Serbo-Croation is a very narrow area, but because of the Yugoslav war, there is almost no functioning publishing system in that country. Bosnian artists have been spread across the world as refugees, and their translators are rare. Please do reconsider this in your evaluation. --Stephanie Krueger (talk) 14:40, 5 February 2009 (EST)

• Weak Keep A classic example of when not to use citation counting. Negative results in GS are not necessarily meaningful. However, that an incorrect argument was used by itself does not make him notable. A just adequate publication record [10] On balance, keep because of likely cultural bias in finding material.DGG (talk) 03:13, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. His linguistic work makes him a significant within his field. I've added some evidence of this to the article, and I'm sure that more could be found by someone with knowledge of the area. The fact that Slavic linguistics has only a few English-language journals makes apparently low citation counts (even on a more thorough search) unreliable as evidence against notability. EALacey (talk) 11:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Living people-related deletion discussions. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 00:01, 7 February 2009 (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.