Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marc Edwards (civil engineering professor)

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The result was nomination withdrawn. –MuZemike 04:12, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Marc Edwards (civil engineering professor) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Person does not seem to be notable. Article is a WP:Coatrack to talk about a controversy he was involved in. This gives an unfair impression of the person, (IMO) in violation of the spirit of WP's policies on coverage of living persons. Steve Dufour (talk) 01:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep: The study and the professor appear to be highly notable. I don't see the coatrack at all - the negative info is about the folks who questioned his study and even if it was, it would be an editing exercise rather than deletion. Toddst1 (talk) 01:35, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I don't have a strong opinion on whether Edwards is notable. However, the article, as presently constituted, is not about Edwards. It's about the events in DC regarding the drinking water. Edwards was a major player in that controversy, and maybe the controversy deserves an article, but if editors feel the controversy is notable, then the article should be renamed appropriately. If Edwards deserves an article, then it should be a separate article and be about him.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:38, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Further Comment. I just found out from the nominator that there already is an article on the controversy: Lead contamination in Washington, D.C. drinking water. It has also been nominated for deletion. It's much shorter than the Edwards article. Clearly, the two articles and the resolution of what to do are all interrelated.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:43, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Snow Keep: Clearly meets WP:PROF notability guideline—Edwards holds a named chair at Virginia Tech, one of the nation's premier technical institutions. [1] That meets criterion 5 of PROF, so that's more or less an instant "in". Plus, the information about the controversy suggests that there's sufficient reliable, independent sources to write an article about the subject. The article may have WP:UNDUE issues and badly needs a copy-edit, but neither is a deletable offense. There may also be WP:BLP1E concerns, but the PROF notability may counterweight that. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 03:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, as I look through a Google search on "marc edwards -wikipedia -NFL", I'm seeing a ton of RSes, including a Time article naming him one of the innovators of 2004. [2] I'm going to adopt this article; this guy is so undeniably notable that it's a crying shame our article on him is such a stub. I cannot see any way that this article has a snowball's chance in hell of being deleted if we adhere to notability guidelines, so I'm changing my !vote to snow keep. (Typed this before Agricola44, but got so into editing the article I forgot to hit save...) // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 15:51, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep He is notable enough. The article should be expanded. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 09:47, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 13:34, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 13:34, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 13:34, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Snow keep. The article's content may be an issue, but that should be addressed via editing, not AfD. In addition to holding a named professorship (WP:PROF #5), he's a MacArthur Fellow (WP:PROF #2), and has published numerous highly cited research papers – WoS shows 63 articles having cites 70, 70, 64, 58 (h-index 19) which is outstanding for an area of civil engineering (WP:PROF #1). This evidence is conclusive and holding this AfD open any longer will only waste others' time. Thanks, Agricola44 (talk) 15:23, 15 June 2011 (UTC).[reply]
• Keep. It is clear that Edwards is notable - the MacArthur award alone is enough to satisfy both WP:PROF and WP:BIO. It is true that the current text of the article is not balanced and there are significant WP:WEIGHT problems, but I think the way to deal with it is to change the article rather than to delete it. Nsk92 (talk) 18:18, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Nomination withdrawn If by WP's standards (which I don't especially agree with, or even understand) he gets an automatic keep because of his successful career, then keep. However please do something about moving the information about the controversy to its own article, or another (for instance the article on the DC water system itself.) It was only one incident in his life, and as others have said the controversy wasn't his fault. He was just doing his job. Steve Dufour (talk) 19:28, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Working on it. Still, this episode is a very major part of his life that received multiple front-page articles in a newspaper of record (the Washington Post), a writeup in Time, a feature article in the ASEE newsletter, and resulted in a MacArthur grant. That suggests that it's a substantial event in his life that does need appropriate and proportional coverage. Per WP:BLP, we need to cover events in proportion to the sources, and that suggests that this article needs more than a blurb about his uncovering what was, by all accounts, a sizable public health cover-up. At this point in working over the article, I'm satisfied that WP:BLP1E isn't going to be an issue—while this incident is a shining beacon in the man's biography, he has continued to be notable not only academically, but in the popular press, since the 2004 event. I mean, come on, the man was quoted in Good Housekeeping of all places.[3] // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 20:08, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks. Great work. (Not the intention of the AfD to improve the article.) I now understand what the whole thing was about. I would say leave the controversial incident in his article and also mention it in the article on the DC water system, but not give it its own article because of "not news." Steve Dufour (talk) 01:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sometimes that's the best possible outcome of an AfD: A terrible disservice of an article about a truly interesting and notable topic gets caught and corrected. :) However, I would still say that the event may be notable enough in its own right for an article. WP:NOTNEWS applies to routine and breaking news; Edwards's findings are still plaguing the DC water system, and his name is still invoked in the local papers of record as new water-quality issues come up. (Yes, they still have some lead issues.) But I'm going to leave that bit of article rescue for someone else.
      • I did remove one particular bit of controversial coatracking, though. The old article made a big to-do over an ethics question about the CDC paper that Edwards so ably blew to pieces with his own research. That controversy was so tangentally related that it has no business here... but it would definitely merit a short paragraph in an article about the 2000–2004 Washington DC water lead contamination. // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 01:56, 16 June 2011 (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.