Talk:Ostap Korkuna

Notability template

Please do not remove the notability template until the issues discussed at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1201#Notability questioned for Ostap Korkuna have been resolved. I appreciate that the specific discussion is difficult to find, because it is located at the teahouse rather than on this talk page, but I am not satisfied that the concerns raised by the editors there have been satisfied. Better to improve the article now than risk a deletion, especially when previous versions of this article have failed AfC processes, most recently for reasons of notability. The notability template has been removed more than once without an edit description; please explain your reasoning on the talk page before removing the template next time, or at the very least in your edit summary. Thank you. Handpigdad (talk) 07:01, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Handpigdad Notability due to WP:ACADEMIC #2.

• 5 Career Benefits of Competitive Programming

Максим Огородник (talk) 11:10, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

If the argument is that he is notable because of his academic accomplishments, then that should be the focus of this article. The blog post that you linked to a career advice page demonstrates (fairly self-serving, given the publisher) demonstrates why it might be desirable for a person to participate in an collegiate competition, but it does not make an argument for notability. If undergoing something that is useful for career development was enough to justify notability, then there would be a thousand-fold more biographies on wikipedia. Handpigdad (talk) 17:28, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Please see WP:NNC (Notability guidelines do not apply to content within articles or lists) and WP:CONTN (Article content does not determine notability). Therefore, your argument about the focus of the article does not seem relevant to the discussion of notability. But if you suggest that Korkuna's ICPC gold medal should be separated into a section, that's indeed a reasonable suggestion. Is that what you meant? Максим Огородник (talk) 19:08, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Handpigdad Your hypothetical argument about thousands more biographies seems off. If notability guidelines (not only WP:GNG) allow for thousands new biographies, then that wouldn't prevent all those biographies from being added. Why don't we just follow the rules? Максим Огородник (talk) 06:47, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@Handpigdad Thank you for your suggestions on improving the references for notability. The article now includes several additional secondary reference articles about Korkuna from Ukrainain media (2008 in Russian with a photo, 2016 in Ukrainain - with TV footage) and US media (2023, Slavic Sacramento, in Russian). In-browser translation works reasonably well on those (but otherwise, the language shouldn't matter). Hopefully, we can resolve this discussion of notability (the article has already been rated Start class, although that doesn't help with notability). Thank you Qq8 (talk) 21:00, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Qq8, the article looks to me like it's really coming along. I will try to take a closer look at those new sources in the next day or two. Apologies, I am having a bit of a busy time right now. Handpigdad (talk) 21:07, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

@Handpigdad- no rush on my end, and happy to take additional suggestions. Qq8 (talk) 02:32, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Qq8, thanks again for your patience, and for reminding me that I wanted to return to this. Clearly a lot of work has gone into it. Unfortunately, I still don't think the notability concern has been resolved. The page continues to read a lot like a resume, most of the sources are about Nova Ukraine, and not Korkuna himself. Over-citation is still present, which indicates a lack of understanding of how notability is established. The page fails to indicate what its subject is most notable for. I'll explain why I think so.

Consider the lead sentence, which first presents his position as a software engineer and executive. That position is otherwise covered in only one short sentence, "in 2019, he joined People.ai and later became a director of engineering there." That sentence has two sources, one of which is not appropriate as it was published two years before he started at the company, and the other of which is his Nova Ukraine bio, which gives no information about the significance of People.ai, what the company's product is, and doesn't say when Korkuna joined the company. From the information provided, Korkuna doesn't meet a notability standard as a software engineer and executive. That he was one of the first Ukrainian employees at Facebook is a piece of trivia that would be appropriate to this page, but is not a criteria for notability, Facebook already had from ~900-1200 employees by 2009, depending on what part of the year. And the cited story was written seven years later, and despite how its framed in the headline only because of the later context of his work founding Nova Ukraine. I find it odd that there is no mention of the information from that 24 Kanal article that Facebook was a sponsor of the ICPC the year Korkuna's team won, which would present a more informative narrative flow for this article: how a college experience with competition lead directly to an opportunity at a major social media company, which provided him with the experience to make contributions to a social movement, and finally, to launch a non-profit.

OK, next we have his collegiate award, which I'm not convinced is enough to establish notability. It's obviously relevant to his biography, but an award has to be very major to confer significant notability. There's one small article about the team winning the award cited and it includes no detailed information about Korkuna, the rest of the team, or even specific anecdotes about the contest. I don't that is enough establish it as significant. I do wish Wikipedia had clearer standards on award notablilty, but it's best used as an indicator: an award-winner is *likely* to have notability, but that's not guaranteed. And a college award is something very early in someone's life, that may set them up on a strong path (which frankly, it seems to have in this case) but that doesn't mean that it really counts as an indicator of significant and sustained accomplishment in and of itself.

Finally, we come to the end of the opening sentence and we get what is probably the best argument for his notability, his role in Nova Ukraine. For some reason, five citations are provided for his being the cochair. Ideally, I think there would be no citations in the lead, because it's a summary of things which are described and adequately cited within the body of the article. But I really think their presence is an indication that there is a misunderstanding of how notability and reliability are established. That's a very simple, non-controversial piece of information, that is cited later in the article, without needing 5 citations (now, it does unfortunately have 3 citations when it's brought up later, which is only slightly better). Adding all of that is making the information look controversial, forced, and makes it more difficult to fact check. Perhaps all those citations are up front because they were gathered in one location as a writing aid when the article was being drafted. I have done similar things with my drafts. But this page is not a draft, it's a published article, so that's not appropriate. Now, as for what's in these citations and how they are used. Most of them are still articles about Nova Ukraine primarily, not Korkuna. The only one I could see that was perhaps approaching a detailed profile of him was the interview with the Taiwanese television station, but again, the subject of that article wasn't Korkuna, he was the interview, he was a prominent and featured source, but the subject was the street protests a, so I don't know how much notability that represents. Please see WP:INHERITORG for the policy on whether an organization or a member inherits the other's notability.

I understand how it looks like all of these roles give him tiny bits of notability that could add up to being enough. I don't think it's working out that way here. I also want to say that this article is much poorer to read since the last time I looked at all. There are more typographical and grammatical errors—the page probably deserves a clean up tag at this point. The last time I looked at it I thought it was very readable, even it felt like a bit of a list. Furthermore, all of the information in the body of the article about the news organizations being cited—perhaps in an attempt to explain why they are reliable indicators of notability—is totally counterproductive both to the reading experience, and to a reader's confidence that the sources are worthy. If it's good information, just state it, link to the source, maybe put a comment in the citation or on the talk page if it's not in English to clarify or translate a quote, but that's not appropriate for the body of the page, and is another thing that indicates that this is being treated like a draft and not like a published page. There appear to be more poorer quality sources added too. That dumptruck approach of just hauling in every possible source and piling them all around the article doesn't build confidence.

I don't understand how the article for deletion process works yet, but frankly, if I did, I would at this point feel pretty comfortable nominating this article for deletion. That doesn't give me pleasure to say, knowing how much work has gone into this article, but I would hope that then at least you could put your hard work towards a more useful project. It looks like Korkuna does important work, and I don't think that's diminished if he does not have a wikipedia page. When thinking about pages, I like to ask myself what a reader might *do* with the information on a page. Why they might be checking it, what it can tell them, what work or hobby can be helped by taking a look at the page. It's not clear to me what useful information one gets from this page. It's just a collection of facts, and I'm not convinced it's going to be able to get to be much more with the coverage of Korkuna that currently exists. As far as I'm concerned, Korkuna's isn't the story someone's probably looking for, but Nova Ukraine's. And that page is extensive, lengthy, but not very good, and there's virtually nothing about Korkuna there, which would probably be appropriate. I think a lot of pages about business people, non-profit founders, academics and activists of various kinds end up reading like resumé and they get that "this reads like a resumé" tag at the top of their page. I think the page on common AfD outcomes is pretty helpful in thinking through some of this stuff, and specifically this short section on executives: Wikipedia:BUSINESSPERSONOUTCOME

I'm sure this isn't the feedback you were hoping for, but I hope its helpful in understanding the objections of myself and others to this page as it currently stands. I would strongly suggest reverting this page to a draft, and moving on to something else for a while—if you want to use some of this work, I think that Nova Ukraine article would be improved with some information about its founding and founders. I wish you the best. And thank you again for your patience. Handpigdad (talk) 08:54, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Handpigdad thank you for looking into this article carefully and providing your feedback. I appreciate it and am trying to learn from it. You pointed some deficiences with content and glitches with refs, which should be easy to fix, and I plan to read your suggestions carefully (ditching this article and refocusing could mean making mistakes in other articles, let's avoid that). However, I see a disconnect between your comments and WP:CONTN. You criticize the article (reads like a resume) and the referencing in it, but the guidelines say: "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article... if the source material exists, even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability."

Korkuna was covered in depth by several reliable, independent secondary sources for his work and accomplish. Lesser references are helpful to show sustained coverage over time per WP:SUSTAINED.

However, I also see a fundamental disconnect between younarrative s and WP:ARTN. You are criticising the article and the referencing in it, but the guidelines say: "Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article... even very poor writing and referencing within a Wikipedia article will not decrease the subject's notability." So, please allow me to take your suggestions constructively and see if they can be addressed before we pull the plug on the article. Korkuna wacovered in depth

A relatively minor point is that some of the issues you raise make no sense to me and betray a misunderstanding of the subject matter. This may be a flaw of the article text, and I could use help with that (my experience with AfC has been negative). For example, ICPC is a massive worldwide competition sponsored by the ACM (the largest professional organization in computing). Why would you gripe that 24 Kanal didn't say that ICPC was sponsored by Facebook? - it's like complaining that the Olympic games aren't sponsored by some company. Yes, it would make a nicer story if Korkuna was hired by the sponsor of the contest, but the contest is so well-known and the win is so significant by itself that recruiters at many tech companies seek such candidates.

Qq8 (talk) 06:48, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for reading. This might be a good time to try to bring in some more experienced editors to help out with some of this article. I'm sorry to hear that your experience with AfC was not helpful; the one that was previously for this page seemed reasonably generous, but perhaps there was something I missed. The focus of my recent critique was not directly the notability question. Rather, it was the way that efforts to to draw attention to the supposed notability within the text of the article without actually producing better sources or arguing for how exactly they meet notability, indicated a very brute force way of dealing with the concerns raised. Why was the same Voice of America clip (which is about Nova Ukraine, not Korkuna, again reference Wikipedia:BUSINESSPERSONOUTCOME—notability isn't inherited) provided as two different citations? That may be an error, but it can also be seen as an attempt to Notability Bomb the article. This suggests that the notability concerns aren't being taken seriously. Excessive citation also makes it more difficult for someone to assess notability, because they may miss the best ones because they have to wade through other inadequate ones.

I understand that poor quality writing on a page doesn't directly count against notability, but the notability wasn't being challenged because of poor writing, but because the notability of the subject wasn't clear. My argument was never been that this page is not notable because it is not written as well as others, but recent edits have not tried to prove notability, and instead massaged (and in so doing, worsened) the text to make the citations appear to be more significant or reliable than they actually are, which does not indicate to me that real arguments in favour of notability or better sources are forthcoming. I still disagree about the sources in question, I don't see them as in-depth enough, I don't see them as mostly focused on Korkuna.

I don't agree with your interpretation of Wikipedia:Sustained; points out that a burst of coverage around their participation in a single event doesn't usually quality a subject for notability, but that sustained coverage is more likely to do so; it does not however state that sustained coverage makes up for low quality sources, as you implied.

On your last point, you misunderstood my point. The memory of the 24 Kanal article is that is does say that Facebook sponsored the event (or another event that Korkuna competed in—my translation is a little bit wonky), and that Facebook did then hire Korkuna. My comment was that information is interesting, creates a narrative, and should have been integrated into the article to help things flow. While that wouldn't directly lead to notability, I really think that showing than an article has a direction, is a good piece of writing, or could be interesting will motivate other editors to help you out, including tracking down better sources, or presenting a more compelling argument for notability.

I really think that this page still needs improvement if it's kept, but I'm not very interested in making further contributions to a page that I'm not sure is going to survive an AfD process. I still think you are more likely to learn the skills not to make these mistakes by spending time working on pages which are not burdened by notability issues. I wish you the best of luck. Handpigdad (talk) 08:43, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifications - they are helpful (this entire discussion started with notability, but diverged). Yes, Facebook sponsored some other event, and maybe that can be added to the narrative.

And apologies for the text of my response messed up by mobile editor.

Quick answer: The two VoA refs - one is posted by VoA (authenticity), the other improved accessibility for English-speakers. No ill intent here. If one can be removed, then which one?

Anyway, thank you for your thoughts. I have to read the WP refs carefully. Qq8 (talk) 09:25, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest reading more about secondary sources, it's not the easiest concept to understand sometimes, but it's the main notability problem with this article: the lack of independent secondary sources. Most of the sources are compromised by being largely interviews of Korkuna which are mostly about Nova Ukraine's work. If the main text is Korkuna's words, and he's speaking about his organization or a protest he organized, then it should be treated basically as a primary source—which doesn't really help for verification. What you want is a reliable secondary source independent of the subject, something that is not mainly based in his own words, and gives context for why he is important by synthesizing information from other sources. It's tricky to find that kind of a source for someone who isn't very well-known, which is why these notability challenges can be difficult to overcome. And in fields like business and non-profit, individuals are less often the subject of these sorts of sources, whereas a reasonably minor musician, for instance, is more likely to discussed as the subject of a review, or as one subject in an essay about an trend in music, or in a piece of peer-reviewed scholarship. The business and non-profit press generates fewer high quality sources which discuss individuals in depth.

Learn more here: Wikipedia:Secondary, Wikipedia:P&P

BTW, I found some info about university competitions on Wikipedia:Notability (academics). That page asserts that awards at that level of someone's academic career do not contribute to academic notability. (still a relevant piece of biography, but not contributing to notability).

1. Victories in academic student competitions at the high school and university level as well as other awards and honors for academic student achievements (at either high school, undergraduate or graduate level) do not qualify under Criterion 2 and do not count towards partially satisfying Criterion 1.

Good question about the VoA refs—I don't know of policy specifically for this situation, but I would try to make it one citation, with a link to the other appended as a comment. If you can verify that the translation is acceptable, I think it's probably preferable to link and cite the English version, credit the translator, but the author can stay the VoA. I think as long as you include both links, that seems totally acceptable to me.

Ha! Something always goes wrong when I'm trying to write on talk pages via the mobile editor.

Good job with those edits earlier; cleaning out information about the news sources from the body makes it read much more confidently. Handpigdad (talk) 10:25, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice, the patience and the copy-edits. Even if we view the current improvements as an exercise, I find the process useful. I'll think what can be done with the dual VoA refs (sampling the translation suggests that it is accurate), they were certainly not intended to count as two separate refs.

As far as reliable secondary in-depth refs go, the 24 Kanal ref in Ukrainian [7] seems to fit the bill (especially the video, but hopefully even the short summary in text, which can be auto-translated). Even the photo there apparently includes a very young Korkuna. The Korrespondent.net ref [5] in Russian also isn't far off. It could have restated some additional well-known material about what happens at ICPC, but that seems unnecessary (regardless of ICPC gold medal being a notable achievement by itself).

Speaking of the ICPC gold medal, I realize that this is a hopelessly uphill battle, but my personal interpretation is that the exclusionary wording in WP guidelines about student competitions was intended to rule out numerous graden-variety schoolwide and regional student competitions, whereas ICPC is worldwide and so competitive, career-defining, and otherwise significant that it should merit notability by itself. The "too young" counterargument is debunked by notable national spelling bee champions such as Anurag Kashyap (contestant), Jody-Anne Maxwell, Pratyush Buddiga, Zaila Avant-garde. Even if the ICPC gold medal isn't notable enough by itself, perhaps combined with other contributions, such as advocacy for Ukraine and founding/leading a notable charity, and at least some solid refs would help reach a "critical mass." We also see sustained media coverage of Korkuna's career over the years in four languages: 2008, 2016, 2018, 2022, culminating in a Ukrainian state award in 2023. Qq8 (talk) 08:24, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

On the ICPC award, I should have been more specific. My prior objection was to whether or not it establishes notability as an Academic, which was what you had mentioned previously as how you wanted to use it (which the Notability of Academics page is quite clear about). Indications of future success (and thus notability) are not significant enough to argue for it at the time. Besides which, and this relates to my previous comments, you're not really trying to argue that he is notable as an academic. His career has not been as an academic, none of the sources discuss him as an academic.

I was actually looking at the spelling bee pages the other day, when I was looking into competition winners. I would argue that the inclusion of National Spelling Bee champions comes down to two things: 1) that competition receives a lot of media attention in the US, with contestants regularly being the focus of local TV and radio programming, the competition itself being broadcast on major networks; 2) Wikipedia has a broad bias towards inclusion of American topics which, while frustrating to those of us not in the US, is not in and of itself a reason to lower standards otherwise. Furthermore, when I look at the list of winners, the vast majority of them don't have pages, and those that do exist are generally poor quality because the sources, frankly, don't provide enough information which would be relevant to an encyclopedia.

Your arguments will be more persuasive if you can focus on putting your best foot forward, prioritizing the strongest points rather than bundling together all of the little pieces and hoping they add up (which just serves to emphasize how insubstantial many of the sources are). Again, I don't see those media sources as sustained coverage of his career exactly, despite the fact that he's quite present in those stories, they mostly aren't about him directly, and he is presented largely in his own words. You're not winning me over with the argument about the state award. It doesn't really convey prestige if it doesn't translate to attention in terms of sources. Wikipedia summarizes sources, and we don't, as of yet, have one that conveys the level of prestige of his award in its context. I actually have a relative who won a major state level award awarded by the head of state for services during war time, but no one ever wrote about my relative, so there's nothing to build a Wikipedia article on.

From Wikipedia:ANYBIO: "[People are likely to be notable if] the person has received a well-known and significant award or honor", emphasis mine. Note that a qualifying award doesn't guarantee inclusion which still requires meeting Wikipedia:BASIC. And the award must be proven to be notable. There unfortunately don't exist more specific guidelines about assessing the notability conferred by an award, but if we reference the page for assessing whether an award itself deserves a page, Wikipedia:Notability (awards and medals), it mentions that "The award is granted by a nation or international body, therefore the award must be notable" is an invalid argument for the notability of an award. Another passage you might find useful from that page:

The award may be presumed notable by meeting general notability guidelines when:

1. It is granted by a nation and the award is at the level of the highest and most prestigious awards that can be granted by that nation.
2. The award is usually granted in a public ceremony that is regionally or nationally well-publicized by independent sources.

The award in question doesn't satisfy consideration 1 (its not at the highest level), but it may satisfy criteria 2. As always, presumed doesn't guarantee inclusion, but if you want to argue that an award is notable against disagreement, you'll need to back it up. If you want to lean on this award, you'll need to research it more (which might be lead to helpful information you can contribute to the award's own page).

As always, I hope this is helpful. Handpigdad (talk) 04:33, 9 November 2023 (UTC)