Why isn't Wikipedia best served by both? If someone comes across one of your papers and wants to know more about the author, isn't that useful, even if they just find out that the author is no one special?
There's clearly a potential benefit, and I just don't see what the negative is. As long as you stick to insisting that everything in the article is easily verifiable, anyway (which is already a rule outside of notability).
I suppose you could argue that such an article is best served by a dedicated wiki, one for all authors, for instance. But that would mean either creating a fork or taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia entirely. The other alternative, to have notable authors in Wikipedia and non-notable ones out of Wikipedia, would likely cause way too many problems in implementation. Taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia is very unlikely to happen, so you're basically ensuring a fork.
Anthony
Nah, I disagree with that. I've written several papers in astronomy, and
a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field, but I'd hate to see an article about myself. The specific field I am allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article, although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote that) and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]].
Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field in the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of published academics.
WT
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