This discussion was begun at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Nicholas J. Hopper, where the early history of the discussion can be found.

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See Wikipedia:Notability (academics)/Precedents for a collection of related AfD debates and related information from the early and pre- history of this guideline (2005-2006) and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Academics_and_educators/archive 2 for lists of all sorted deletions regarding academics since 2007.

That says:

The person has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a fellow of a major scholarly society which reserves fellow status as a highly selective honor (e.g., Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics).

And then then notes below says:

3. The person has been an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association (e.g., a National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society) or a Fellow of a major scholarly society for which that is a highly selective honor (e.g., the IEEE).

For the purposes of Criterion 3, elected memberships in minor and non-notable societies are insufficient (most newly formed societies fall into that category).

For documenting that a person has been elected member or fellow (but not for a judgement of whether or not that membership/fellowship is prestigious), publications of the electing institution are considered a reliable source.

Based on this, if someone is listed as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and found under this URL...

• https://www.nasonline.org/membership/member-directory

Does that mean the presumption should their article goes to AfC or AfD they are automatically notable? The reason I ask is because this page (List of members of the National Academy of Sciences, likely out of date) says 2000~ members, but their search says 7000+. It seems like a red link editing waiting to be written bonanza if membership there plus Wikipedia:Notability (academics)#C3 is an instant notability pass (assuming the article is written).

Am I interpreting this criteria right? — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 00:26, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes.

There are more like 3683 members of Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences but still, there are plenty of members for whom we do not have articles.

I'm not sure what you mean about the bonanza: if it means you were running out of inspiration for your Wikipedia editing and have now found some, then good. If it means mass creation of thousands of substubs saying only that they are a member and sourced only to those directory entries (or worse, longer AI-written slop), then please don't. (We are still cleaning up the problems created by one past editor who did that and mass creation is generally frowned on and likely to get stopped.) If it means that you think there is a problem with the notability criterion, then no, there isn't. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:02, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, no, I wouldn't make a bunch of crappy tiny things. I noticed that come up in an AfD and I'd never looked that closely at the criteria, then the number discrepency was just eye-popping. I've got plenty to do; it's just neat having a reservoir of science-related red links to scratch at when I'm bored or sick of working on other things. How many did that guy make? — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 01:38, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the new article listings for Topcipher and SwisterTwister (maybe around 1500 and 2500), but there were other usernames, I don't remember them all, and they're not all in the SPI. My general impression is that they were generally on people notable by our standards (not only #C3), but were low-quality sub-stubs. Some have been expanded since (often by COI editors) but many have not and are still low-quality. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:53, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Setting aside users who have violated various policies, the basic answer to the question of whether membership in the NAS should be taken as a presumption of notability is yes. Pretty much anyone who attains membership there can be considered notable for our purposes. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think an improvement in how User:SDZeroBot/NPP sorting handles academic biographies would be useful to aid reviewing. Some get sorted under STEM, but many are only in the massive Biography list and hard to isolate. Many STEM academics also never make it to the STEM list, and there is no non-STEM academics sorting. I made a request to SD0001 on the talk page, but the response was not enthusiastic. Maybe someone here has a better approach to this, and/or a better sorting page or strategy. Ldm1954 (talk) 09:57, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have written Draft:Alexandre Zerbini in return for compensation. It has been declined because of him not being notable. Zerbini has a citation count of 8800 with him being the first or the last author on many of the highly cited papers. He has 3900 citations according to Scopus. I understand that notability based on criterion 1 differs from field to field. Zerbini is a marine scientist. For this field, do 8800 citations make him notable? HRShami (talk) HRShami (talk) 10:30, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would put him on the border, as he is one-of-many for his highest cited papers, and their citation numbers are not great. One issue is that you describe his research, but do not focus on what would make him notable. A significant weakness is a lack of peer recognition through awards etc. Why did you skip IWC Science Committee? (Use a better source.) Anything else? Ldm1954 (talk) 11:53, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Ldm1954, Thank you very much for your detailed feedback. If he is borderline notable, I will leave this aside and come back to it at a later date when he is clearly notable. HRShami (talk) 06:17, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I know this is not on academics, but we are the people who have an interest in this.

I have seen academic conferences nominated for deletion (PROD/AfD) because the sources are primary, there are few GS papers on them and there is little sigcov. To me there are similarities to NPROF. Only a minority of who we accept as notable academics get articles written about them etc, we instead accept peer recognition via awards and a strong citation history as demonstrations. To me academic "NCONFERENCE" should similarly accept peer attendance in large numbers and citations of conference papers (in some fields critical) as important metrics.

I could not see a discussion on this so I am posting here - slap me with a fish if this is well trodden territory.

Courtesy ping of @LibStar who I have seen do some nominations for deletion. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:03, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"peer attendance in large numbers" and what exactly constitutes large numbers? Many conferences get well attended. LibStar (talk) 21:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I deliberately did not specify details here, I wanted to get a community feel for the topic relevance first, and knowledge of whether this is a settled or unsettled issue. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:56, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think the current status is that conference notability is subject only to WP:GNG. I am personally in favor of notability tests that are more oriented to significance than publicity, and we did recently succeed in getting WP:SPECIES established as a notability guideline, but that was mostly a codification of longstanding practice. Unfortunately, I think there is not much community appetite for moving more notability guidelines away from GNG. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:17, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that having a h-index criterion for conferences could potentially work, although much like NPROF we're not going to be able to come up with a specific score other than "high for its field". Conference attendance seems even more nebulous, since conferences vary in format and can attract a fair amount of attendance outside of their immediate field. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think an academic conference would fall under WP:NCORP. - Enos733 (talk) 22:37, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that series of large conferences that are central to a discipline or large subdiscipline are probably notable, or should be. As usual, in cases where they are hosted by a notable organization, the conference might be better covered with a few paragraphs in the article about the organization. Pinging @Randykitty and Headbomb: as experts on academic publishing, they might have opinions. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 14:05, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]