On 9/16/05, Snowspinner Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
For what it's worth, I disagree. I think that in an encyclopedia, which values peer-reviewed sources and academic knowledge particularly highly, there is a real case to be made that professors at accredited universities are notable. The way I see it, pretty much all professors, whether PhDs, JDs, or whatever, have made some sort of contribution to their field - law review articles, dissertations, other publications. If we're the sum total of human knowledge, we'd cover all those contributions. Thus articles on the professors seem sensible by default.
I'll go one further, in fact. I think everyone who has been main or sole author on a publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal deserves a Wikipedia article. Yes, this would include a whole lot of grad students. But if they're making or have made verifiable contributions to their field, we should be including them. No question.
My brother was one of three main authors of a published article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal as an <u>undergrad</u> student. But there's no way I would agree that he deserves an article on that basis alone.
Combine that with his name on several patents as inventor or co-inventor, that he's a highly desired public speaker in one of his fields of expertise, the books he's credited in, and the books he's in the process of writing and I think he's getting closer.
But based on a single article? That seems a little extreme to me. If you felt the compulsion, it would be better to summarize each of the thousands of peer reviewed journal articles themselves and mention each otherwise not-notable-enough-for-an-article-of-their-own authors there.