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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 delete. Randykitty (talk) 21:43, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sanne Knudsen

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Sanne Knudsen (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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GNG fail. Single source. WP:BEFORE turns up nothing special. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 19:45, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 19:45, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That is one indicator of notability that means she may likely be notable. However, there is not much else here.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 20:04, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Named professorships are typically endowed positions, which just means that they are specially funded. They are typically given to professors who rise above their peers at their local institution, but that does not mean that they are notable by Wikipedia's standards. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:12, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonesey95: Really? I thought that Full Professor or any endowement establishes notabolity per WP:Academics #5? See: this.--Biografer (talk) 20:51, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. The wording of that criterion is completely at odds with the spirit of WP:GNG; it essentially allows a rich donor to purchase "notability" for academics. Johns Hopkins University alone has 483 endowed professorships! That's more professors than there are players in the entire National Basketball Association! But I try not to get involved in WP drama, so I'll bow out of this one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:52, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and departments are thrilled to have endowed chairs because it does not come out of an annual operating budget that fluctuates. She does have an endowed chair, but I cannot find anything else she is notable for. Ergo the nomination.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 00:59, 25 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Women-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:39, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 14:39, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Not finding coverage of her outside of UW internal news, does not appear to pass NPROF. Thanks to Jonesey95 for showing the absurdity of using named professorships toward notability; it's a widely used method of funding for both senior and junior faculty, not necessarily an indicator of a researcher or professor's impact or significance. Reywas92Talk 22:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, we should perhaps look into changing that. A named professorship is one of the things a Dean can dangle in front of a candidate during the hiring process, and it is not linearly connected to notability.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 23:14, 26 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:49, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Although she appears to have an endowed professorship, this speaker profile from 2016 indicates that she was given it as an associate professor. Therefore, it is unlikely to be the sort of endowed professorship given for extraordinary scholarship above and beyond the level of a typical full professor, and WP:PROF#C5 (which should properly be about only that kind of endowed professorship) should have no bearing on this case. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:55, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree that WP:PROF#C5 is inapplicable here. That criterion is about recognition for a distinguished career, above and beyond tenured full professorship. XOR'easter (talk) 16:33, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Weak Keep She meets WP:NACADEMIC#5 "The person has held a named chair appointment or distinguished professor appointment at a major institution of higher education and research", as she is the Stimson Bullitt Endowed Professor of Environmental Law [1]. WP:NACADEMIC states that "Academics meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable." This is not the place to discuss changes to WP:NACADEMIC. For those who are not familiar with it (not all editors commenting here, I am well aware), it explicitly states "This guideline is independent from the other subject-specific notability guidelines, such as WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:AUTH etc. and is explicitly listed as an alternative to the general notability guideline .... failure to meet either the general notability guideline or other subject-specific notability guidelines is irrelevant if an academic is notable under this guideline." And it also emphasises that only one of the 8 criteria needs to be met, so citation metrics are irrelevant, as is the issue of whether other sources exist. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:18, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I will add more info from these sources: "Rethinking Chemical and Pesticide Regulation", The Regulatory Review [2]; "Better Environmental Law from an Unlikely Source", Jotwell [3]; and "Trump and the Constitution: Law course explores the limits of executive power", ABA Journal [4]. I'll look for more sources too. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:38, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I think all commenters prior to you are aware of it, and are criticizing its application here.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 14:40, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It did not seem that some were familiar with it before this AfD, or not with #5. RebeccaGreen (talk) 14:44, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You need not explain it in detail; the entire discussion before your comment is discussing it, and everyone before your comment has rejected the SNG in this case. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 14:54, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I did read all the comments. I would take comments like "Wow" and "absurdity" as indicating lack of familiarity with the criteria. That is one of the reasons why I think that this is not the place to discuss changes to this SNG. Clearly all the editors contributing so far have a different opinion, but WP:NACADEMIC is very clear that academics meeting any one of the criteria are notable, and there is nothing in #5 that says "held a named chair appointment (as long as they were a full professor, associate professors holding named chairs don't count)". It's also clear, in the Wikipedia:Notability_(academics)#Specific_criteria_notes, that sources outside the institution are not required to verify that the person meets one of the criteria ("For documenting that a person has held such an appointment (but not for a judgement of whether or not the institution is a major one), publications of the appointing institution are considered a reliable source.") I believe that Biografer was quite justified in writing an article about this person, but if no other editors agree (or not enough), then I guess this will end up being one of the "occasional exceptions" mentioned in the box at the top of WP:NPROF. RebeccaGreen (talk) 15:19, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The WP:NPROF guidelines say that C5 can "be applied reliably only" for persons tenured at the full professor level, so a delete decision would not be contrary to that guideline. The endowed chair certainly helps support notability. Why did they appoint her to it? The best reason I've been able to see so far is promise, in which case this is WP:TOOSOON. But perhaps her supreme court briefs are more notable than they appear? A subject-matter expert would be helpful here. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 17:13, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • She does not hold an endowed chair (which is nonetheless expansive), she holds an endowed professorship, so C5 would still not apply here. Reywas92Talk 21:48, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Reywas92, the two terms (endowed chair/endowed professorship) are fairly interchangeable, with much of the variation coming down to local terminology of one university or another. C5 appears to be relevant, but (per the fine print in WP:NPROF) not reliable. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 22:04, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • Fair point then; I had hoped this search result from UT might have clarification, but "The very best universities in America often endow a third of their faculty positions" shows all the more reason this is a poor criterion that certainly doesn't confer automatic notability alone, since maybe about a third of positions are full professorships anyway. This caveat is interesting since I suppose someone may be hired as assistant professor with an endowment and keep that as a full professor too. Reywas92Talk 22:14, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Back in the 1980s some universities were creating their first endowed professorships. They used to mean more than they do today. With Johns Hopkins alone having 483 of them, I think we need to stop taking them as default signs of notability. Often they do mean there is substance there, but not in every single case.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:41, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Criteria 5 has this caveat though that some above are ignoring "Criterion 5 can be applied reliably only for persons who are tenured at the full professor level, and not for junior faculty members with endowed appointments." So the person must have reached the rank of full professor before they get the appoitnment. If they are not yet a full professor having a named chair will not always be a default show of notability and this appears to fall under the later arangement.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:44, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have changed my vote from Strong Keep to Weak Keep. Looking at the directory of faculty at the University of Washington School of Law, I see that the 67 faculty members are identified as: Lecturer (5), Senior Lecturer (7), Principal Lecturer (1), Assistant Professor (3), Associate Professor (7), Professor (32, of whom 13 are named positions), Fellow (1) and Chair (3) (and a few directors, deans, advisors, etc). Only 2 others have WP articles (one of the chairs, and a named professor emerita). None of the named positions are described as Associate Professor, although as Knudsen's CV says both "Stimson Bullitt Professor of Environmental Law" and "Associate Professor, 2015 to present", perhaps some are, and perhaps she is, and perhaps Criterion 5 can't therefore be applied reliably. And 20% of a faculty would be a large rate of notable members, though not improbable in a very notable institution - which this probably isn't. RebeccaGreen (talk) 11:57, 31 December 2019 (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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