Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tushar Kanti Barua

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 delete. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:04, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tushar Kanti Barua

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Searches did not turn up enough in-depth coverage to show he passes WP:GNG, and his citation count is pretty anemic (a high of 44), so he doesn't appear to pass WP:NSCHOLAR. Unless being a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of GB & I auto qualifies someone (but I don't think it does). And we'd need a source showing that assertion. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:59, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:59, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:59, 11 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete TNT. There are no sources, meaning the whole, long article is OR. A SPA has written/nurtured this article for a long time, suggesting COI. Anyhow, this person may be notable, but I don't think it's worth much investment at this time on the article in its current form. Need to start over. Agricola44 (talk) 15:53, 12 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ansh 666 00:29, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. This is archeology, not biology. Using citation statistics without considering the subject gives irrelevant conclusions. A citation count of 44 would be trivial for someone in experimental biomedicine, but other fields are different. It depends upon the citation density, the number of publications in the field in which things could be cited and the average number of citations in them. Archeology is noteworthy for having very restricted and specialized publication practices, more so than perhaps any other field, so this question has come up frequently. He's an antropologist as well, but working in a less-studied area, where the same publication statistics apply, so the figure is actually quite substantial for the field. He's been director of a museum, and Fellow of both the major US and UK societies in the field. DGG ( talk ) 00:08, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Kagundu Talk To Me 06:26, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Fellowship in the Royal Anthropological Institute (FRAI) would be a pass of WP:PROF#C3 but I can't find him in their directory [1]. And I can't find any evidence that the American Anthropological Association has or had Fellow as an elevated membership class in the sense of #C3 — they offer "fellowships" but that means funding for research visits, not an honor for distinguished research. With one well-cited publication ("Prestige and Culture: A Biosocial Interpretation") in which he is in a middle position among 15 co-authors, and everything else much farther down in citation counts, I can't see a pass for WP:PROF#C1 — yes, this subject has very different citation patterns than biomedicine, so we can't take this record as meaning that he isn't notable, but it also isn't evidence that he is. And directorship of the Ethnological Museum, Chittagong sounds significant but the article makes clear that it was only for a short term while the museum was still in its planning stages, long before it opened to the public. So I don't see a basis for keeping the article. But I'd be happy to change my mind if the FRAI or fellowship of the AAA can be confirmed, or if other evidence of notability turns up. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:08, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Archaeology-related deletion discussions. – Joe (talk) 09:03, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I'm curious about these "very restricted and specialized publication practices", DGG. I thought we published in monographs and journals, like most social scientists. Citation rates do vary from field to field, but 30–40 is middle of the road for archaeology (see e.g. random papers on the Chalcolithic), and there's still only a few of those showing up on a GScholar search. He's not actually an author of the one highly cited paper that David mentions – Current Anthropology confusingly lists all the people who commented on a paper amongst the authors. And the article itself doesn't make a strong case for impact; the "most important" papers it lists are mostly conference proceedings.

For WP:PROF#C3, even if it could be verified, RAI fellowship is not very selective and I don't think it would qualifiy. Similarly membership of the AAA is open to anyone and as far as I'm aware they don't have fellows as such.

In terms of positions, I can't see how a short stint as director of a provincial museum indicates notability. The career history in the article is confusing (and again – all unverifiable), but it seems his highest position was docent at Zurich, which is not suggestive of notability either.

And we shouldn't ignore the fact that this is a poorly written, promotional and completely unreferenced BLP. Inclusions like the marks he got on his university exams and his disagreements with his bosses at the museum strongly suggest a COI. So even if the subject were notable, this is a WP:TNT candidate if I ever saw one. – Joe (talk) 09:55, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As for the GS search, I don't know how you analyzed it, but you must have been looking at the first few screens only, and they are shown in rough citation order. there are 23,000 items there indexed with that word--only the first 6 screes show papers with more than 40 citations -- there are only about 60 papers out of that 23,000 with 40 or more. DGG ( talk ) 18:23, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well famously citation rates have a very long-tailed distribution and up to 80% of papers aren't cited at all. Honestly I don't know of a good way to objectively assess citation rates by field (other than broad data like this). I was trying to think of a way to back up my gut feeling (as somebody in the field) that 40 cites in archaeology is "good but not great". It does make me wish we had some more solid metrics for WP:PROF#C1. – Joe (talk) 19:02, 5 March 2018 (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.