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 keep. John254 16:24, 1 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ludwig Carl Christian Koch (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Fails WP:N and WP:RS. There are no sources given, nor citations. I cannot find anything on this guy on google searches. Any google search. The name Koch and Ludwig are very common and tend to dilute the basic Google search, but the scholar search and the book search should have come up with something to show some notability, but they did not. I say delete. Undead Warrior (talk) 08:19, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Germany-related deletion discussions. -- Undead Warrior (talk) 08:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. -- Undead Warrior (talk) 08:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: A search for Ludwig Carl Christian Koch, arachnids [1] proves to be more fruitful. Sources will need to be added to the article. --OliverTwisted ^(Talk) (Stuff) 08:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —John Z (talk) 09:16, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment looking in German library catalogues turns up a Karl Ludwig Christian Koch with the dates of the Koch in this article (the Carl/Karl spelling is probably not important, but the order is). If I understand correctly, he seems to have mostly published as "Ludwig Koch". N p holmes (talk) 10:38, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep. This deletion process is badly flawed. So, you have a German entomologist who died a century ago and probably had peak performance 150 years ago. He has a two line stub article in the English wiki and articles in six other wiki language projects (also counting the very small Sardu project). The German article was started in 2005, and is the most extensive, the source is Stadtlexikon Nürnberg. My knowledge of entomology is almost nil and I have never heard of him. But what seriously troubles me is the very poor argument for deletion of the English article: "I cannot find anything on this guy on Google" (!) OK, I'm really impressed of what I can find on Google, including some digitalized old works, but would Google really be the right place to look for 150 year old works of a German entomologist? And what about the other wiki language projects, which evidently found the guy notably enough to create an article on him? How can the judgement of these people just be discarded? I admit that sources should be elaborated, I cannot check the German source (site unavaiable), the French is weird, and so is the Italian. The appropriate action here is to ask for references, not deletion. I would say deletion is counter to the very spirit of Wikipedia, to record the world's knowledge. Power.corrupts (talk) 10:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see where you are coming from, but not everything needs/deserves an article on Wikipedia. While this might be kept, other articles are to be deleted and justly so. Undead Warrior (talk) 04:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• KeepDelete. After an extensive search using various tools, such as Worldcat, Google and various academic databases, I could not find enough to establish notability under WP:PROF. Does not seem to pass WP:BIO either. (I did find several entries for his father.)--Eric Yurken (talk) 17:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep given the dates, relying upon Gsearch in any form as a negative criterion is absurd. It is true that GBooks is digitizing 19th century material, but selectively and, at this, point, very incompletely, with an English bias. GScholar at this point has almost no 19th century material and is very heavily biased towards English. As for WorldCat, I see his major work there [2]; from the publication date, it's not his father, who had been dead for 12 years when it began to appear. The other WPs did not just copy and abbreviate the German one; they looked for and added additional sources (I've incorporated the ones that actually linked). Elsewhere, people seeing the article improve it; here, people instead try to delete. BTW, on the basis of [3] the present spelling is correct for the dates given. DGG (talk) 19:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Well this is one of those cases in which we have to be creative to find evidence of notability. It seems that a large number of species of spiders have been discovered by him; something that is not easy to find through electronic catalog or Google searches. I found this out by taking a look at the links to his page, and doing some cross-checking. His name is abbreviated L.Koch on species descriptions, while his father's name is abbreviated C.L.Koch, as noted in the article. He is indeed notable, just not the type of notability that we can easily verify. I changed my recommendation to keep.--Eric Yurken (talk) 02:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Per evidence uncovered by DGG & Eric Yurken. To challenge a German scientist of this date merely for lack of a Google footprint is ludicrous. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:24, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even with the BEMON site, I find very little about this guy. I see quite a bit about his father and mentions of his son, but finding works by him is turning out to be very difficult. Undead Warrior (talk) 21:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per DGG and Eric Yurken. Why would the BEMON site be relevant here? It's only about marine organisms and Koch worked mostly on spiders. --Crusio (talk) 09:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

its relevant because it happens to distinguish the names, because the man's son appears to have been a malacologist & there is, as we've seen. some confusion about the people. There are in any case many marine arachinids--see that article. DGG (talk) 10:03, 31 December 2008 (UTC).[reply]

Sorry, should have been clearer in my comment. I meant, why is the remark from Undead warrior that not much is found about father Koch in BEMON relevant: given that the vast majority of arachnids are not aquatic, Koch will probably have worked mainly or even exclusively on terrestrial species. --Crusio (talk) 11:45, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Question. Quite some detective work! But is it really necessary? According to the German Wiki he is included in Stadtlexikon Nürnberg (found him here). I believe this fact alone would suffice for notability at his own lifetime and hence also inclusion in Wiki, even if he should turn out to be only a minor scholar by modern yardsticks. This is a principal question, as it eases the resolution of notability issues. Power.corrupts (talk) 14:59, 31 December 2008 (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.