Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Torkel Franzén

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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 no consensus. More like weak keep, in fact. Not all of our resident mathematicians are convinced of his notability in terms of the guidelines, but it appears that his biography is considered useful nonetheless.  Sandstein  20:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Torkel Franzén

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Torkel Franzén (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This poor guy fails WP:BIO and lacks non-trivial coverage from multiple third party sources qualified by our WP:RS guideline. JBsupreme (talk) 03:30, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete for reasons I have established as nominator. JBsupreme (talk) 03:31, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 04:08, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 04:08, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 04:09, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete (although it pains me to !vote delete for a fellow mathematician). May be considered under WP:PROF or WP:BIO but does not appear to pass either. MathSciNet lists 5 math publications by him, none appear to be particularly widely cited according to MathSciNet, WebOfScience and googlescholar[1]. I also looked in JSTOR and Scopus to see if there was significant coverage there of his philosophical writings, but did not find much there. His "Gödel's theorem" book is well-carried by the U.S. academic libraries[2] but it does not seem to be widely cited (at least not yet) or extensively reviewed (although its review by Wilfried Sieg in Mathematical Reviews was very favorable and it starts with "This book is a welcome and extraordinary addition to the literature."). There are very brief bio mentions of his death at the AMS site [3], in the MAA newsletter [4] and at the SF site[5]. Unless somebody else finds more, there does not seem to be enough here to pass either WP:BIO or WP:PROF. Nsk92 (talk) 12:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep changed to: Keep The authorship of the books is sufficient, a major scholarly work with a very strong review in the standard reviewing source shows notability. DGG (talk) 19:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC) DGG (talk) 04:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the MathSciNet review, if we were talking about a different discipline, I'd be inclined to give it more weight. Mathematics is fairly unique in that MathSciNet (and also Zentralblatt Math) provides third-party reviews of essentially all peer-reviewed mathematical publications. Because they have to deal with such a massive volume of papers and books to be reviewed, the quality of these reviews is generally not as high (even though they are extremely useful), and there is a substantial element of luck and chance involved in who gets assigned to write a review. Because the review is essentially mandatory rather than selective and the choice of people who write them is less careful, I would assign less value to such reviews than to selective reviews in other disciplines. MathSciNet does have a category called "featured review" where a publication reviewed is considered particularly important, the review is longer and more detailed and the reviewer selection process is more careful. The review of Franzén's book was not one of these. In my experience with MathSciNet there is one other factor that is a good indicator of notability of a particular paper/book: how often its review has been cited in other reviews. In the case of Franzen's book its review has been cited only in two other MathSciNet reviews, both of which are of other articles of Franzen's. MathSciNet also allows one to see how often a particular article/book has been cited in other recent publications reviewed in MathSciNet. This citation data is not complete and generally covers the publications for the last 6-7 years or so, with some publications not covered. Still, Franzen's book is listed there as having been cited only once, again in an article of Franzen himself. Nsk92 (talk) 23:34, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm moderately inclined to say "keep" on the grounds that I found an occasion to cite a good passage from one of his books in a paper that may be published next year. (I suppose that's a somewhat subjective endorsement, since I'm not ready to opine on the value of his books generally, even the one I cited the passage from.) Michael Hardy (talk) 19:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep from someone who disagrees with Franzén's work I've almost finished Franzén's book on Gödel's Theorems, and it has me very annoyed. It's billed as for the non-mathematician, but 1) is largely incomprehensible except to a specialist, 2) ignores the all-important philosophical aspects of Gödel's work in favor of Franzén's own hidden and idiosyncratic philosophical agenda and 3) is totally inadequate in terms of covering the historical background which is necessary to a book aimed at a lay audience. Nonetheless many, including people whose expertise in the field commands respect, recommend this book. It's often, I'm sorry to say, suggested as the standard source on Gödel's work for the non-mathematician. I knew more or less what I was in for, and avoided reading this book for as long as I could. Franzén is notable. His bio in my humble opinion is a must keep. Damn. --Jeffreykegler (talk) 23:05, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be willing to accept the argument that Franzen's book is considered a/the standard source on Gödel's Theorems for non-mathematicians, but I'd like to see some more tangible evidence for this. E.g. is the book widely used as a texbook/reading material in logic-related courses oriented on non-mathematicians? Is it often cited in other popular books on the subject? Something of that nature would be convincing. Nsk92 (talk) 23:40, 28 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I feel a bit strange defending Franzén, since I'd be one of the abusers of Gödel's Theorem he decries. Here for example is a Franzén fan page saying that we have "special circle in hell reserved for" us. Torkel Franzén was the crown price and remains the patron saint of the "Gödel minimizers", those who wish Gödel's popularizers would go away or at least tone it down. If you search for TF's name on the Web and on the blogs, you find many people singing his praises, looking for collections of his old sci.logic posts, etc. For praise of the suitability of his book for laypeople, see the reviews on Amazon.com. I'm at a loss to understand what these people are talking about, but there they are.
TF may not have been notable as a mathmetician, but the 2006 Notices of the AMS article indicates that at his death he was considered the expert on how Gödel should be popularized.
As one approach, you might try posting on sci.logic, that TF's article is up for deletion. I'd expect a very strong response in favor of keeping the article. --Jeffreykegler (talk) 00:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
In the sense I'm using them they are reliable. I don't say the Amazon reviews are accurate -- quite the opposite. I say they exist and reflect a sentiment, and that Amazon's page is an independent, reliable source that they exist and say what they say. I don't say the many Web page, sci.logic and blog comments are accurate or reliable -- I don't believe that. I say they exist, and reflect a sentiment, and that the Google hits are independent reliable evidence that they exist and say what they say.
I agree that if any of these reviews or Web pages were used as a source for the contents of TF's article, they would have to be rejected as unreliable. But here the criteria is notability, and popularity, even among unreliable sources, is enough to create notability. --Jeffreykegler (talk) 20:45, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, but I utterly and completely disagree with you. There was a lot of brouhaha a while ago when it was shown that many Amazon "reviews" were actually written by the authors of the books that they were supposedly reviewing. Amazon is utterly unreliable as a gauge of anything, be it notability, popularity, or whatever. At best, the "editorial reviews" posted on the site can point you to real reviews that are published in reliable and independent sources (if you can find them, that is). --Crusio (talk) 23:07, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No! That would be WP:CANVASSING; it's the same reason I wouldn't post such a notice on rec.arts.sf.fandom, where he is missed by the old-timers. --Orange Mike | Talk 15:30, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Usually WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS is invoked to argue why something should be deleted, not the other way around.... --Crusio (talk) 17:44, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Variety is the spice of life; it was going to be said anyway, so I might as well say it first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:17, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The Godel book fulfilled a real need, and represents a very mainstream (mathematical logic) view. Was looking around for it but couldn't find it, but a look at google books confirms that it was blurbed by Solomon Feferman, a well known logician and editor of Godel's collected works, and John W. Dawson, Jr (Godel's biographer). Gbooks links reviews from the Mathematical Association of America [6] , the Notices of the AMS [7] and Philosophia Mathematica [8] . So I think it is a well-known and notable book, in the ordinary and wikipedia senses, and is enough to support a keep for his article.John Z (talk) 18:41, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for digging these up. Feferman and Dawson are two of the editors of Gödel's Collected works, and the first two in order on the title page. Dawson is the author of the only scholarly biography of Gödel, a much-needed work that he executed brilliantly. These are gold-standard blurbs. How they can praise TF the way they do, I dunno, but one of TF's most annoying traits was to pretend contrary opinion didn't exist or wasn't significant, and I don't care to imitate TF in that respect. --Jeffreykegler (talk) 20:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep -> Keep Crusio's point about the unreliability of Amazon reviews makes sense. I know TF has many fans on sci.logic, and a look there can confirm that, but he was a frequent poster and his following there is at best modest evidence for notability. And I now note that Dawson and TF had the same publisher, A. K. Peters, which might explain why Dawson blurbed TF's book.
    On the other hand, I've been hoping TF's book would go away for 5 years, and it hasn't. I've just finished it. While reading it, I turned to Wikipedia trying to find out more about TF. I found a nice concise and AFAIK accurate summary. Won't there be others like me? The page averages ~10 hits a day. While I no longer see the case for a strong keep, I think there is still the case for a keep.
    As an aside, the Gödel literature has gradually become dominated by people who, like myself, are optimistic about application of Gödel's work to philosophy and other fields outside of logic. A book stating the more skeptical point of view, clearly and fairly, would be a useful counter-balance. It's a shame that TF did not write that book. --Jeffreykegler (talk) 01:41, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with your keep, but point out that even in subject I know, (and this is not one), I do not judge notability by my personal estimate of the work. I save that for when I write an actual review. Here we go by what the profession thinks in its published evaluations. DGG (talk) 04:52, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've put off commenting here for a while, to think about it. I have been familiar with T.F.'s book for some time; it was widely advertised to mathematical logicians and displayed at book tables at conferences. I have a copy in my office. But I am not convinced that T.F. is notable enough for a biography. My main concern is that we seem to have extremely little biographical information. If there really is no more info, so that our article will forever remain just a bibliography, then I think T.F. is not notable enough for an article. On the other hand, if new sources arise that allow us to fill in other information about his life, that might tip my opinion the other way. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:10, 31 October 2008 (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.
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