Talk:Dieter Fensel

Notability

Fensel may work with the Semantic Web, but is he a sufficiently large player that he passes WP:BIO or WP:PROF? As with Seekda itself, some significant national media coverage, magazine articles, even major journal articles might work, but google turns up lots of links to DERI but few to news or business mags. Sources must be independent, reliable, and in-depth - single mentions, being an attendee of a conference, presenting at a conference, or having his name on an academic paper are not sufficient, there must be some indication that he stands out from collegues who also work with the Semantic Web. WLU (talk) 14:53, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I took the freedom to remove the notability template, as it seems no one is discussing it. I hope I am not breaking current rules here, if I am, sorry on that and feel free to re-add it. In the spirit of full disclosure, I know Prof Fensel, since I also work in the Semantic Web field, and in my point of view he does stand out in this research area. --denny vrandečić (talk) 12:20, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

I can only agree with the comment from 2007, that Internet does not give us much links regarding Fensel's notability. He is one of thousands professors working in Computer Science, one of many that have had some influence on the development of the Semantic Web (other people developing that domain does not have their entries at Wikipedia at all). The article itself is in a very poor shape. The major research domain of Fensel seems to be dead (e.g. the last entry at WSMO working group is from 2008 [1]), his current research activities seems also much limited comparing to times, when that article was added to wikipedia (e.g. his last invited talk took place years ago [2]). I was initially quite amazed finding out that User:Denny removed notability template. Actually from the quality of the article and from the provided sources, as well as from the lack of interest of the general public in that topic, I would expect that the employee of wikipedia should propose to delete such an article. From the quick search over Internet I did understand that two guys are strongly related through common research and joint projects, but it does yet make Fensel notable. I am recreating notability template. @Denny, please provide notable links first, improve article and only after that go for removing notability template. 19:15, 09 January 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.32.221.170 (talk)

Neither have I been an employee of Wikimedia when I did before-mentioned edit, nor am I doing any of the current edits as an employee, but with my private account. As I disclosed above, I know Prof Fensel, and this is the reason why I am tracking his article (I track the articles for most people I know). For the same reason I do not contribute to these articles normally (there are a few exceptions), and this is why I am not expanding the article. The notability template was removed one and a half years ago after it was there without any discussion for four years. The template should either lead to action (e.g. deletion or expansion of the article), or be removed, but having it simply sit there for years is not useful, but it can be regarded as unfriendly to the subject. --denny vrandečić (talk) 22:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Public Funding

Another issue permanently deleted by User:Denny is an extravagance of Fensel in spending public research funding, which was for example very well documented by Shane Phelan Investigative Correspondent of Irish Independent (Academics rack up 108 000 taxpayer bill for private jets). This is actually one of a very few Internet resources regarding Fensel, which would qualify as wikipedia notability sources. This fact makes also the article regarding Fensel more notable pulling him out of crowd of thousands of professors of Computer Science. While it might be a little unpleasant to User:Denny (who seems to be closely related to him), it is a well documented and referable fact, and as such qualifies for wikipedia entry. I proposed the most neutral sounding to summarize the source Irish Independent article as (please propose a better formulation if you still find it too strong): "He was responsible at DERI Galway for several cases of an inappropriate spending of public research funding.". The formulation "inappropriately-claimed expenses" was used by Science Foundation Ireland - Irish research fund, who provided 12 Mio Euro funding to Fensel to establish DERI institute in Ireland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.32.221.170 (talk) 20:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

The IP came here to solely add that note, and then later to reinstate the notability template. Otherwise no contributions to the article, or Wikipedia, can be seen. I admit that it is hard to assume good faith in this case, i.e.to assume that the IP wants to improve the article: the first edit by the IP actually used the term "unethical", which in the contexts of scientists has a very specific and much more serious meaning. In order to improve the article, I suggest to extend the article significantly, so that the suggested addition does not give undue weight to a single newspaper article, that has not been picked up and that had no follow up. Considering the article: what was the resolution to the story by the "investigative correspondent" from a few years ago? Was Prof Fensel charged? What does "inappropriately-claimed expenses" even mean? Does this mean they were not fulfilling formal requirements? I mean, they gave him 12 Mio Euro to establish a research institute (by the way, that does sound like something that might go towards his notability), and then they report that less than 1% of these 12 Mio are "inappropriately claimed?" I am not sure that this is worth inclusion on an article about a relatively unknown person, as it might, in my opinion, skew the article.

Since I can be assumed biased due to the fact that I know the subject of the article, I pinged the BLP Noticeboard, and hope that someone there will help us resolve this issue. I might very well be the bad guy here, and I would be happy to let an uninvolved and experienced Wikipedian offer their opinion here, and resolve the case before we even start huge, and basically unnecessary discussions. --denny vrandečić (talk) 22:14, 10 January 2013 (UTC)