Talk:John A. E. Pottow

Extraneous facts

Pottow may be notable - though the article is very short on 3d party sources to establish that - but in any case the article has a lot of stuff grafted onto it that really don't go to the things that have made him notable; there's a lot of filler that tends to obscure what he's actually done. I'm going to whittle away the excess and see what's left at the end. JohnInDC (talk) 12:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Some of the material that has been restored is barely better than trivial, particularly things that anyone who attended Harvard or another school with abundant notable faculty. It is - interesting that Pottow attended Skinner's last lecture, but it's not encyclopedic. Likewise the names of professors under whom he studied is really just a form of puffery unless the named notable and non-notable (so far) faculty had some sort of identifiable influence on him. JohnInDC (talk) 12:17, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I removed the "National Entrance Scholarship" from the article because I can't tell what it is. It's sourced to a faculty bio piece at Michigan and does not describe it beyond that; Googling "National Entrance Scholarship" for Harvard brings up nothing meaningful; indeed the reference in this very article is the third highest hit. When we can figure out what the scholarship actually was, and what it was for, then perhaps it can be restored. Otherwise it's not really meaningful. JohnInDC (talk) 12:23, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

The scholarship item I am fine with removing. But I have restored the material on (A) Skinner, (B) Brown, and (C) the professors Pottow studies under, for the following reasons. (A) The Skinner item is interesting and colorful and one element an element of biography. You can characterize as "extraneous," "collateral," not encyclopedic," etc., but those are merely conclusory labels. No policy supports excising it. (B) Brown is cited as his mentor and advisor; indeed, if you look at the link it says Brown suggested he study law. (C) The various professors he studied under are those he has specifically mentioned or cited as influences. If we were to post all of his instructors from a copy of his transcript or something, then yes, that would be an indiscriminate collection of information. But citing these five or so is fine, especially as he has coauthored works with at least one of them (Elizabeth Warren).

In any case, all of this material constitutes a grand total of three sentences. It's not a trivia section, it's not given undue weight, it's not an "indiscriminate list of information," it's properly sourced, and as a proper biography does, it puts the subject's life in context. There is simply no policy-based rationale for removing it. Lawnaut (talk) 07:05, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Here are my concerns, more clearly articulated (and they covers the template too). We've got an article with a lead that describes Pottow as a law professor at Michigan specializing in X, Y & Z. Okay - what's notable? It needs to say. See Wikipedia:OPENPARAGRAPH#Opening_paragraph. The article goes on to describe Pottow's achievements and interests as an undergrad, some of which demonstrate that he was a talented and remarkable student; some seem an effort to establish what I've elsewhere described as "gilt by association" (see all the famous people he encountered!); and others are trivial (he played the tuba). The reader now knows a lot of stuff about Pottow's formative years but is still uncertain why he is notable. It's the same for his early career - a description of one or two plum positions (proud accomplishments but again not every 2d Circuit clerk is notable) and then a couple of fairly routine, just-out-of-law-school jobs.

The first sentence in the article that might qualify him under WP:Academic is the L. Hart Wright Award but the article doesn't say what that is or how (un)commonly it is awarded. The article goes on to describe Pottow's professional emphasis on bankruptcy and consumer financial issues but - again - does not say why any of this is notable; or, turning to the template issue, who says he is notable. He is a busy and engaged professor, but writing a lot of articles is not sufficient. Maybe, being a former director of the consumer bankruptcy project a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute does does the trick under Academic criterion #3 but neither entity is described. Are those positions really substantive, or nominal? Can't tell. Now - Congressional testimony and and the TARP report is getting meatier. This is the stuff, i think, that should be in the lead, particularly the TARP report. I dug into it a bit - parenthetically you really shouldn't put it on other editors to read through your citations to find notability - and I found where the intro to his testimony described him as one of 3 "experts" or "leaders in the field" - some such thing. (I don't feel like going back to it right now to be sure.) Repeated testimony before Congress, and being specifically tapped to research and report back on an major economic issue - that's it. But it's almost literally the last couple sentences of the substantive portion of the article and doesn't put it in context at all.

I am not going to get into an edit war with you about a primary source template, but this article relies heavily on them. Heavily. I went through them quickly and found, I think, two describing Pottow that qualify as reliable, third party sources - the Ingham County law article and the Congressional testimony lead-in I've just described. Most of the article consists of related sources and it would be a better article if it went beyond those.

To sum it up, the one or two things that do establish Pottow's notability are buried in the middle of the article. Not only that but they're surrounded by a good deal of fluff that substantially outweighs - in volume and in citation - the reason the article gets to be here. None of the material I've tried to remove is "prohibited", no, but to my eyes it's disproportionate, and on purely editorial grounds should be pared down. Here too I'm not going to get into an edit war but the article would be a better one, more useful to the reader trying to figure out why s/he should care about Pottow, if it had less of that.

I hope you'll consider these observations as you go forward in contributing to Wikipedia. You'll write better articles. Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 13:04, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

November 2012

I've added a template asking for more third-party references to support the article - not so much because the facts are in dispute but rather because the extensive citations here lend an air of notability to the subject yet the great preponderance of them are from the law school itself or are just his own documents reproduced elsewhere. In addition, the third-party sources that are offered up really don't do much more than confirm one or another fact, e.g. he wrote this paper or testified on this thing. It would be good to see some reliable third-party sources that affirmatively discuss Pottow's contributions to and importance in the field, to shore up claims for his notability that at this point that are supported here really only by inference. JohnInDC (talk) 17:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I've restored the template, because the issue remains. Nearly every source establishing what Pottow is or does is either 1) from his employer, 2) something he has supplied to someone else (e.g. a biography or CV), or 3) something he wrote himself that was published elsewhere. I am not necessarily saying he's not notable, but rather there are really no third party sources here yet that establish it. Hence the template. It's appropriate, finding those sources would improve the article, and it should not be removed again without discussion here. Thanks. JohnInDC (talk) 12:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I am removing the tag for the following reasons. That template is used almost exclusively for where an article only cites references affiliated with the subject. That is, obviously, not true here. In this article, primary sources are properly used "to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source." And even if we consider a CV as a self-published sources (I don't consider a bio published by a university "self-published"), we can and should use it as it meets the five elements here (it is not unduly self-serving, it is authentic, and so forth). The fact that these facts may come from a bio or CV is irrelevant. He is notable. If you really feel that "there are no third-party sources here that establish" notability, take it to AFD. Lawnaut (talk) 06:51, 23 November 2012 (UTC)