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. Consensus is that there is insufficient coverage in independent reliable sources for this to pass the general notability guideline. T. Canens (talk) 09:27, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Earl Killian (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log) • Afd statistics

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I came across this new article as the author started adding random links to it from other articles. Every attempt has been made to make this person look notable. I've removed some of the obvious attempts to imply notability by association (such as link to an comment he made on an NY Times article or him getting an honourable mention in an NY Times competition). The remaining content looks solid enough at first glance, but if you read it carefully and consider the sources, it simply does not add up to notability. Most of the sources are the subjects own website. Other sources are papers he has written, or brief acknowledgments in projects he has worked on, or mentions in lists of alumni and project workers.

There is not one independent source providing significant coverage about him as required by WP:Notability.

Ultimately, this guy is clearly an active political writer and computer scientist whose name crops up all over the place. But has failed to achieve notability in and of himself. GDallimore (Talk) 14:40, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Academics and educators-related deletion discussions. —GDallimore (Talk) 14:43, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong keep. An inventor who has 26 patents. Twenty-six. This, in itself, is HIGHLY NOTABLE. A patent is the best secondary resource possible since it's validation by the US government that a software method or process is a new and worthy addition to human progress, worthy of legal protection. In addition, Killian was the chief of software architecture at several prominent software firms, particularly MIPS. He's one of America's top computer scientists. He's mentioned in the second line of Wikipedia's article on Quantum Effect Devices as a co-founder. My bet is he doesn't like talking to reporters so maybe he's not quoted much in ComputerWorld, but that shouldn't be construed to mean he's not notable. Further reason: the firm of which he was a co-founder, Quantum Effect Devices, went public after only a few years, and was valued at over $2 billion according to the New York Times -- this is further evidence that Mr. Killian is not just some programmer, but a major force in the computer industry; few people can have such a powerful effect. Further evidence: Mr. Killian was one of a handful of computer scientists asked to participate in a roundtable discussion about industry trends in 1998 -- the discussion was covered in the journal Computer with an inline citation reference -- Mr. Killian's views were published in two pages; this is a prominent and respected journal within the computer industry.----Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:30, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• 26 patents is not remotely notable and no evidence to support this highly dubious supposition has been provided. If it were notable, an independent source would have noted it. I, on the other hand, can provide evidence that I am correct: take a look at List of prolific inventors. He's not even close to being on the list. And being quoted in computer world would not make him notable either - being talked about by computer world might, but you have provided no evidence of this. GDallimore (Talk) 17:40, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • And I note that Quantum Effect Devices has no sources at all. Being a founder of a non-notable company hardly makes someone notable.GDallimore (Talk) 17:44, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note added two sources from New York Times regarding Quantum Effect Devices which, at one point, was worth several billion dollars.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • And this is blatant canvassing. GDallimore (Talk) 17:44, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • In all fairness I think persons in the software industry and elsewhere have a right to know when you're calling one of their chief scientists just "some guy" and when you're planning to nix his article.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:54, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep seems a notable enough person for wikipedia to me. Who is to say some random sports figure "deserves" a page, and this person doesn't, because he is in a field which contributions are less well known, (and published about) for the average public. Mahjongg (talk) 16:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Because he has no significant coverage in reliable sources? I thought that was a requirement of WP:Notability. GDallimore (Talk) 17:40, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an argument. GDallimore (Talk) 20:48, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The argument is that certain types of fields such as entertainment get excessive coverage while other worthy fields such as computer science get minimal coverage. This is a fair argument. It is fair to apply common sense and judgment and to be tolerant of fields where there typically is not much public interest, but which are important, such as computer science, in contrast to baseball.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:16, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 20:22, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Guidelines and policy dictate multiple, reliable, third-party sources as the baseline for notability. None of the sources provided show this. Ironholds (talk) 21:10, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep. One reason I hate wikipedia is that there're people who come to a page, look into WP guidelines and say "hey it's not notable, can I delete it?". People come to wikipedia searching for information. It's extremely frustrating to find information deleted, especially when someone has put work into it previously. And this page is not about average Joe who only himself is interested in.1exec1 (talk) 21:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Would you mind providing some kind of policy support for your position? Ironholds (talk) 22:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Here's Wikipedia's description of secondary sources: Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely on primary sources for their material, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them. In the Earl Killian article, the primary source is the inventor and the invention; but the patent office is one step removed -- it's like a judge, like a newspaper editor, it has to determine whether a given invention is new, worthy. The patent office has to make analytic and evaluative claims about the inventions to rule whether they are worthy of protection. So I think patents are clearly ideal examples of the best secondary sources that Wikipedia requires.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 22:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that's seriously mixed up thinking. Patents are sources about an invention. They are not sources about an inventor. They do not provide significant coverage about an inventor. They do not support notability of a person on there own and cannot be the basis for an article about that person. As you say yourself, the role of the Patent Office is to assess a patent application as to whether the invention is new and iventive, not to say anything about the inventor. GDallimore (Talk) 20:45, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please be civil; comments such as "mixed up thinking" don't help this discussion. Please assume good faith. We are disagreeing about whether patents are acceptable secondary sources. You are saying patents are primary sources; I am saying that the patent (since it is done by an independent agency -- the USPTO -- which must make a ruling on whether a given application is worthy of a patent) is an acceptable secondary source since it's one step removed -- requiring an independent authority to render a decision. We have a matter of disagreement about this, essentially.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 01:16, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Saying it's mixed up thinking is not being uncivil. It's a statement of fact that you have made a serious error. I did not say patents were primary sources. What I said is that patents say nothing at all about an inventor so cannot support notability of an inventor. They are documents about an invention. This is nothing to do with primary or secondary sources. GDallimore (Talk) 09:47, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. He is notable in several areas of the climate movement: (1) electric vehicles (board of directors of the Electric Auto Association), (2) policy, especially EVs and California regs, e.g. prolific policy blogging on Climate Progress, and (3) anti-coal organizing (advisory committee of CoalSwarm). Also originated the concept of organizing anti-coal activism around wiki software; his role described in Climate Hope, chap 10, p. 102Tednace (talk) 23:14, 27 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Where is there any significant coverage about Killian? There isn't any, so it still fails notability.

(1) only mentions his name, definitely not significant coverage.

(2) is a list of blog articles he has written, so self-published, not reliable and not providing significant coverage.

(3) only mentions his name, definitely not significant coverage.

(4) Your suggestion that he "originated the concept" of an activist wiki is laughable and not supported by the source. The source provides no significant coverage about Killian just name-dropping him and referring to a conversation the writer had with him. GDallimore (Talk) 20:45, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Note; Tednace appears to be a single purpose account with few or no edits outside of this AfD. Ironholds (talk) 23:41, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. In assessing noteworthiness, key questions include: 1) What constitutes a reliable source? The Rock of Gibraltar among "reliable sources" (the New York Times), has been notoriously unreliable in recent memory, as it was when breathlessly publishing "W" & Co's fairy tales about WMDs in Iraq. 2) To whom is it notable? Just because an article about a person does not appear in a mainstream publication like People magazine does not imply that he or she lacks distinction. There are many people who are celebrities in their own fields but are unknown to the general public. This should not disqualify them from being considered notable; au contraire. Earning 26 patents is no small feat. I would like to have just one! Having submitted a patent application for review in 2006 -- only to learn that if I'm lucky it will come up for review in 2013, I think this achievement is spectacularly notable. saraw1 03:27, 28 November 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Auroraz7 (talk • contribs)

The issue is not one of reliable sources, but that there are no secondary sources at all which give any significant coverage about him as a person. 26 patents is not a great achievement worthy of note, as I have already discussed and shown above. If it is worthy of note, where is the source noting it? GDallimore (Talk) 20:45, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. How do you explain your article on Arthur Paul Pedrick? A British inventor with over 150 patents. Why is Pedrick notable? According to your Wikipeidia article, second line, his patents were for useless insignificant inventions. That's why he's notable. So he's a curiosity, an eccentric. Well, I agree Mr. Pedrick belongs in Wikipedia, a creator of useless inventions, clearly you'd agree that Mr. Killian belongs too -- for creating 26 useful software inventions.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 03:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OtherStuffExists is still not an argument. But in the case of Pedrick, the article is based on sources including a Reader's Digest book, a CIPA Journal article, and some BBC News articles. That's why he's notable enough for an article because seconary sources have noted him. GDallimore (Talk) 09:51, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Rebuttal. I disagree there are no secondary sources at all. I continue to believe 26 patents is an impressive accomplishment which suggests strong notability and that patents are, in and of themselves, secondary sources. In addition, here are other prominent sources conferring notability:--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• 1. Stanford University -- prominent mention of Killian joining and leaving the MIPS project--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- described Mr. Killian's endowment of Science scholarship (actual amount $500K btw but the article doesn't mention it)--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Journal Computer -- roundtable conference; two-page article by Mr. Killian about industry trends 1998--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Who's Who in Computer Architecture -- Mr. Killian is mentioned prominently. Solid source.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  5. The New York Times -- describes Quantum Effect Devices being worth $2.3 billion in 2000. Mr. Killian was a co-founder of this firm several years earlier. Significant accomplishment. NY Times article --Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Clemson University -- whole section describing Mr. Killian's work on the S-1 Supercomputer--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Mr. Killian published five papers on computer architecture and software issues. His article on Hardware/Software Instruction Set Configurability was cited by 28 other software scientists (citations are a secondary source -- his paper wouldn't have been cited if it was worthless or irrelevant). Here's a list of his publications List of publications.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Let's look at those sources. I've numbered them for ease of reference if you don't mind.

1. So he has been involved in a project. Mentioning his name is not a prominent mention adn certainly isn't significant coverage. There is no mention of what he actually contributed to the project, for one thing.
2. This one wasn't in the article originally. This one actually helps support notablity, I think. So we have one source so far.
3. So, he's written an article. So what? That's not a secondary source about him. I've published articles, too, as have many non-notable journalists.
4. No, he is not mentioned prominently. His name is mentioned (and nothing more) on a list of hundreds of other names.
5. There is no mention of Killian at all in this article. So it doesn't support notablity of him. There is nothing to suggest that Killian had anything to do with the success of the company. I find it interesting that the article dates from 2000, the height of the dot.com bubble when everyone was paying crazy prices for high-tech firms.
6. This is not a significant mention and gives nothing about what he actually contributed to the project. I'll quote the relevant bit: "One and a half years into the project Earl Killian joined in the midst of the switch to Pastel as the implementation language". It's also clearly not a reliable source as the author is looking for people to make corrections and one of the people who has apparently made corrections is Killian himself, so it's a partly self-published source as well.
7. Again, publishing papers does not make someone notable. That they are cited shows that they are interesting papers, but says absolutely nothing about Killian.

So, in total, we now have one (semi-)reliable secondary source. Can you find one more? That might establish notability. GDallimore (Talk) 10:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete 28 citations to a paper is rather trivial. Patents can be hugely important, but many are for small, incremental discoveries. If they're important, the inventor is bound to have coverage beyond the patent applications. Despite the passionate defense, I don't see enough here to satisfy WP:PROF or WP:GNG. --Crusio (talk) 10:23, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete The more we go into the available sources, the more obvious it becomes that none of them provide significant coverage of Mr Killian, with only passing mentions of his name at best. The only exception is the MIT source, but we need multiple such sources for an article, not just one. Patents are irrelevant in this context as they also provide no coverage at all of the inventor. Miremare 12:16, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Patents are not secondary sources as required by both WP:N and WP:BIO - they are effectively self-published material regardless of the patent office's approval. Ergo, having a lot of patents is not anything related with notability unless secondary sources have commented on that. --MASEM (t) 14:38, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I agree with this remark: patents are in this respect very much like journal articles. They are primary sources, even though reviewers and editors have vetted the manuscript before it got accepted for publication. In these AfD discussions, we never establish notability based on number of publications or some such thing, but on the impact that those publications have had. (Such as by generating a couple of hundred citations). --Crusio (talk) 15:34, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete patents are primary sources. They're written by the inventor. It would be like using someone's letter to the editor of a newspaper to confer notability. You need someone independent to talk about the significance of the patents in order to WP:verify notability. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:38, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Slight correction. Patents are almost NEVER written by the inventor but are essentially ghost-written by an agent or attorney based on information provided by the inventor. I'm not sure where that leaves them when it comes to primary or secondary sources and don't think it really matters since the only thing they provide reliable information about is that particular invention and shouldn't be used as sources for anything else. GDallimore (Talk) 18:47, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Not true. I've two patents to my name; language in both is 90% the original text me and colleagues wrote with some discretion of company IP oversight. The other 10% is lawyers fine tuning the claims section. My understanding and reading other patents is that most of these are primarily written by the inventors with a bit of finalization by legal. But even if the lawyer is drafting all the text with information provided by the researcher, there is no transformative quality to this, and the patent text still remains a primary source to the inventors' names on it. --MASEM (t) 23:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Is it possible that a patent application could be rejected? If this is the case, which I believe it is, then the patent office when it approves a patent acts like a judge (a second source) verifying that a given invention is new, worthy, different, a creation adding to human capability, and therefore notable.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment a person of this name -- likely the same person in at least some of them -- is mentioned in a number of books and publications: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], others. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Wtmitchell, Boracay Bill, wow, you are amazing. How did you find those? Each reference above is an academic, researcher, or computer scientist who is acknowledging, citing, thanking or in some other way paying mindful respect to Mr. Killian's contributions. Each mention is a secondary source. These secondary sources have been added to the article. Thank you, Wtmitchell.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment As I already stated above, such citations only show notability if you have hundreds of them, at the very least. A couple of dozen? Every postdoc 3 years after the PhD has that. --Crusio (talk) 23:22, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Rebuttal Where does it say that hundreds of citations are needed before they're considered notable? Each citation is a secondary source. It's not Mr. Killian. It's a second authority acknowledging Mr. Killian's work, and it meets the test of secondary source.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:27, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Under the General Notability Guidelines, I cannot see any way that publishing papers and having them cited by others can establish notability. A citation simply does not give "significant coverage" of the author as I have repeatedly said in this discussion - this is not about primary and secondary sources, despite your insistence that having multiple secondary sources which simply mention his name is enough. Read the GNG and you'll see it really isn't. Wikipedia:Notability (academics) extends the notability guidelines for academics to give an opportunity for "highly cited" academics to achieve notability under very special circumstances. I'm new to that particular guideline myself but "highly cited" certainly appears to require a lot more than 20 or 30 citations. You need to start reading and understanding the guidelines in full (and not just cherry-picking words like "secondary sources" that you think support your arguments) or you're going to get nowhere with this discussion. GDallimore (Talk) 11:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Rebuttal. Killian is not an academic; he's a computer scientist, a software architect. Even though he's not an academic, the fact that he's published countless papers in academic and scientific journals speaks to his notability.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:11, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(←)

• Rebuttal. Here is a detailed reference in a published textbook.Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

“

The challenge from Earl Killian, formerly an architect of the MIPS processors and at that time Chief Architect at Tensilica, was to explain the significant performance gap between ASICs and custom circuits designed in the same process generation. The relevance of the challenge was amplified by Andy Bechtolsheim, founder of Sun Microsystems and ubiquitous investor in the EDA industry. At a dinner talk at the 1999 International Symposium on Physical Design, Andy stated that the greatest near-term opportunity in CAD was to develop tools to bring the performance of ASIC circuits closer to that of custom designs. There seemed to be some synchronicity that two individuals so different in concern and character would be pre-occupied with the same problem. Intrigued by Earl and Andy's comments, the game was afoot. Earl Killian and other veterans of microprocessor design were helpful with clues as to the sources of the performance discrepancy: layout, circuit design, clocking methodology, and dynamic logic. -- Kurt Keutzer, 2003[1]

”

• This source is the author of a textbook on computer design talking in detail about Killian's contributions. Let's analyze the above reference in terms of your General Notability Guidelines:Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Significant coverage means that sources address the subject directly in detail. Comment Here's a detailed account by a published author describing a significant moment in the development of computer software. -- test satisfied.Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Reliable means sources need editorial integrity to allow verifiable evaluation of notability, per the reliable source guideline. Sources may encompass published works in all forms and media, and in any language. Comment. Keutzer is a reliable source; he wrote a textbook on ASIC design. The source is a textbook, not just a newspaper article or web cite. --> Closing the Gap Between ASIC & Custom, by David Chinnery and Kurt Keutzer -- test satisfied.Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Sources, for notability purposes, should be secondary sources, as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. The number and nature of reliable sources needed varies depending on the depth of coverage and quality of the sources. Multiple sources are generally expected. Comment there are 80 references to Killian's work in the article so far; we disagree about whether many of these qualify as sources, primary or secondary, or whether patents qualify as sources -- still, 80. Patents. Acknowledgements. Papers cited. The pattern suggests a significant and respected player in the computer industry. -- test satisfied.Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Independent of the subject excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject including (but not limited to): self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, autobiographies, press releases, etc. Comment. Keutzer is independent of Killian. -- test satisfied.Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Presumed means that significant coverage in reliable sources establishes a presumption, not a guarantee, that a subject is suitable for inclusion. Editors may reach a consensus that although a topic meets this criterion, it is not appropriate for a stand-alone article. For example, such an article may violate what Wikipedia is not. Comment I'm not sure what this guideline means exactly, but the fact that Killian's papers are routinely cited in numerous publications, that at IEEE conferences he's usually a featured speaker, that he's prominently featured in this textbook head-to-head with the founder of Sun Microsystems and being given credit for spurring a development of significant improvements in computer processing regarding ASICS -- this works for me. -- test satisfied.Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Hardly significant. The author of the book is thanking Killian for giving him some ideas for places to start a research project. There's no significant coverage and no sign that Killian had any input into the project at all. To the contrary, the next paragraph of the book talks about how the author signed on graduate students to actually work on the project. GDallimore (Talk) 14:39, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak delete. The article suffers from a very high degree of Wikipedia:Wikipuffery; that's not a reason for deletion, but it does make it harder to find reasons to keep. I don't think he passes WP:PROF: the only possible case is for criterion C1, but he has only one paper with a significant number of citations ("Hardware/software instruction set configurability for system-on-chip processors" with 73 in GS; patents aren't papers), and he does not appear from author ordering to be its primary author, so I don't see the substantial impact that criterion C1 describes. There's a better case for notability through his inventions, patents, and corporate activity, but that would be via WP:GNG, and the only reliable coverage I can find of this in Google news archive is a single story that mentions him only trivially. As for the references actually cited in the current version of our article: [1,9] are fine for verifiability but not useful for showing notability, [2-8] are not secondary sources, [10] appears to be a direct copy of a source equivalent to [1,9], [11-13] are not about Kilian, [14,21] is a vanity press, [15-20,22,23,55-80] are not secondary sources, [24-35,37-54] are not about Killian and mention him only trivially. [36] is actually nontrivial, and about Kilian, but lightweight; it's the only source that actually hints at notability, and if it weren't there, my delete opinion would be stronger. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:13, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Rebuttal. Here's an additional secondary reference which describes Killian as "notable" in a respected secondary source publication, the EE Times:--Tomwsulcer (talk) 14:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In 1999, the EE Times reported that Mr. Killian was hired by Tensilica and was described as a "notable" and "MIPS and SGI veteran and multiple patent holder Earl Killian as chief architect."^[2]

• Delete - There is not enough secondary reference material to maintain a stand-alone Wikipedia biography article on the topic. Earl Killian paid a lawyer to write the text of the patents and publication of that text is guarenteed if the lawyer gets the patent office to allow the invention and Earl Killian pays the government fee that gets the material published. Citations to a patent would go towards making the patent Wikipedia notable, not Earl Killian. Even if Earl Killian is notable, the topic Earl Killian is not Wikipedia notable. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 14:22, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per Crusio, David Eppstein. Ray^Talk 14:54, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• IAR Keep I work in this field. Looking at his work, jobs and the company he co-founded he's darn notable. There are clearly enough sources to write a reasonable article about him (there is one, but it has way too many cites). Does he meet WP:N? That's not clear. But if we were to create a WP:COMPUTER_ARCHITECT he'd meet any guidelines we'd set up for that. It's clear he's had a major impact on the field, biographical information is readily available and he's published a bit (some important works) and patented a lot (at least one of his patents appears to invent an idea I teach in class). I'm good. Hobit (talk) 22:45, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Founded a company that was sold for dot-com-boom Monopoly money that never shipped any product (and to a company that later dropped out of business). Worked on some really obscure famous computers. Has an armload of patents on things you've never heard of,and that you won't be able to explain even after reading the patent disclosures. Worked for a lot of famous obscure companies you've never heard of. "Thanked for explaining how his program worked" is weak -it's called documentation, programmers do that all the time. The guy who shaved 2 1/2 pounds off the 2010 Ford Focus is a hero of automotive engineering and probably has many papers published and cited too, but he didn't put a flivver in every garage and isn't generally notable outside his own industry. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:36, 1 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Note. Additional vote for Keep is located on the talk page of the Killian article at Talk:Earl Killian.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:01, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as per Hobit.JHatts (talk) 23:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak Delete: The patents themselves do absolutely nothing to demonstrate notability, per Wikipedia's guidelines. At most, they indicate that an invention is probably something that has probably not been patented before. They do not judge the inventor, filer, and they certainly don't indicate notability--actually, they don't even verify that the person had anything directly to do with the invention, merely that they are the one to have filed the patent. Many of the other sources don't meet our standards for significant coverage. And, of course, the bios on him in various companies/advisory boards not only don't establish notability, they shouldn't even be in the article because they don't meet WP:RS as self-published sources. The mentions of "thanks" in a number of articles definitely mean nothing in terms of notability. A few of the sources seem to be what we usually look for (Closing the gap between ASIC & custom (currently #37) and Understanding RISC microprocessors (currently #39) seem to be the best on a quick read through), but it seems to be not quite enough to establish notability. To be honest, it would be much easier to evaluate if all of the chaff was removed, then we could see more clearly exactly how much "significant" coverage (per Wikipedia's standards) there really is. If the article is not deleted, all of the patent links should be removed, all of the "Thanks to ..." should be removed, and all of the non-RS should be removed. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:42, 3 December 2010 (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.