The result was Delete. The BLP problems cataloged by the Delete votes are persuasive. Also those opining Keep have alleged the existence of sources, but have not produced usable biographical ones. This deletion should be considered without prejudice towards a neutral, sourced biography if one can be written, but this is not usable or acceptable as it stands. Eluchil404 ( talk) 06:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Autobiography, non-notable, fails WP:BIO Tan | 39 14:13, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply
For example, GS does not do a good job of finding citations in books or contributed book chapters. The great majority of hits in this targeted GoogleBooks search are mentions that discuss or reference his work on Chichen Itza; allowing for false positives and duplicates there'd easily be 400+. And if you skim through the two-line extracts given, you'll see a lot are actively discussing his work, more than just trivial or passing mentions. but
Citation metric searches are also quite sensitive on the search terms/methodology used. For eg, even if a GS/PoP search on "Charles E Lincoln" turns up only 62 citations total, if instead you search on the title of what PoP says is his most-cited work (the contributed chapter "Chronology of Chichen Itza: a review of the literature") PoP finds 49 mentions for this work alone. Similarly a search for the title of his dissertation "ethnicity and social organization at chichen itza" pulls in 43 mentions.
Harzing's other caveats apply here too—'small' field size (there are only so many publs. per year on Mesoamerican archaeology, and even fewer on specific sites); under-representation of non-english sources (a great deal of mesoam. archaeology is written in spanish, as are about half of Lincoln's works); publishing mainly in books not journals (half of his publs.)
Really, the better approach is to investigate and read up on the content and assess context in the literature sources that discuss the scholar and his works. That's what I had tried to do in my earlier 'keep' comment, above. In that I identify three particular contributions to significant and ongoing questions in the research field, that Lincoln has made and which have been reasonably widely discussed and commented upon in the literature. To be more specific, I would suggest that these satisfy WP:PROF criterion 1, and also note 2 ("person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea"). Consider this selection of excerpts from the relevant literature:
"as early as 1980...archaeological work had begun to revise our understanding of the Toltecs and their role in Mesoamerica. The work at Tula and Chichen Itza (Lincoln), has enhanced our ability to make such a revision.." --Society for Latin American Anthropology (1983)
"At once the most thoroughgoing and radical discussant of this problem, Charles Lincoln challenges the conventional assessment [of Chichen's chronology].." --Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales (1995)
"The work of Charles Lincoln (1986, 1990), however, challenged the traditional sequential view of Chichen Itza..." --Jessica Christie, Maya Palaces and Elite Residences (2003)
"Por una parte, nos parece interesante la teoría de la contemporaneidad de los vestigios "mayas" y "toltecas" que sostiene el arqueólogo Ch. E. Lincoln..." Piedad Peniche Rivero, Sacerdotes y comerciantes (1990)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting Lincoln was a giant of the field by any strech of the imagination, but neither were his contributions merely workaday ones. His work and proposals did attract a fair amount of interest, commentary and debate, & he's been much more widely cited and mentioned than those H-index scores & GS data indicate. The more I've looked into it the more I can find multiple notable RS's devoting some decent space to his ideas, that could be used to construct a reasonable & informative article. The current text would need to be scrapped in the process, and written afresh. But I think as a wikipedia article's subject, WP:PROF threshhold would be satisfied.-- cjllw ʘ TALK 06:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply
And to make my position even more clear, the text of the article as it stands right now should be scrapped. It would be feasible however, to replace it with some much more balanced and reliably sourced text that fairly describes his works & proposals in archaeology (including documented criticisms thereof), as meriting inclusion under WP:PROF. Not that I am particularly inclined at the moment to rewrite the article myself; if it's deleted then can I suggest that the closing admin does so without prejudice for re-creation in future, but only under terms that a future re-write not involve CE Lincoln himself, or anyone directly or apparently associated with him. They should not be contributing to the article themselves, for what I hope would be obvious reasons.
The other concern as to whether or not it's legitimate to assess WP:N on basis of raw h-index calcs alone, still stands but can be taken elsewhere.-- cjllw ʘ TALK 07:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply
The result was Delete. The BLP problems cataloged by the Delete votes are persuasive. Also those opining Keep have alleged the existence of sources, but have not produced usable biographical ones. This deletion should be considered without prejudice towards a neutral, sourced biography if one can be written, but this is not usable or acceptable as it stands. Eluchil404 ( talk) 06:17, 12 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Autobiography, non-notable, fails WP:BIO Tan | 39 14:13, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply
For example, GS does not do a good job of finding citations in books or contributed book chapters. The great majority of hits in this targeted GoogleBooks search are mentions that discuss or reference his work on Chichen Itza; allowing for false positives and duplicates there'd easily be 400+. And if you skim through the two-line extracts given, you'll see a lot are actively discussing his work, more than just trivial or passing mentions. but
Citation metric searches are also quite sensitive on the search terms/methodology used. For eg, even if a GS/PoP search on "Charles E Lincoln" turns up only 62 citations total, if instead you search on the title of what PoP says is his most-cited work (the contributed chapter "Chronology of Chichen Itza: a review of the literature") PoP finds 49 mentions for this work alone. Similarly a search for the title of his dissertation "ethnicity and social organization at chichen itza" pulls in 43 mentions.
Harzing's other caveats apply here too—'small' field size (there are only so many publs. per year on Mesoamerican archaeology, and even fewer on specific sites); under-representation of non-english sources (a great deal of mesoam. archaeology is written in spanish, as are about half of Lincoln's works); publishing mainly in books not journals (half of his publs.)
Really, the better approach is to investigate and read up on the content and assess context in the literature sources that discuss the scholar and his works. That's what I had tried to do in my earlier 'keep' comment, above. In that I identify three particular contributions to significant and ongoing questions in the research field, that Lincoln has made and which have been reasonably widely discussed and commented upon in the literature. To be more specific, I would suggest that these satisfy WP:PROF criterion 1, and also note 2 ("person has pioneered or developed a significant new concept, technique or idea"). Consider this selection of excerpts from the relevant literature:
"as early as 1980...archaeological work had begun to revise our understanding of the Toltecs and their role in Mesoamerica. The work at Tula and Chichen Itza (Lincoln), has enhanced our ability to make such a revision.." --Society for Latin American Anthropology (1983)
"At once the most thoroughgoing and radical discussant of this problem, Charles Lincoln challenges the conventional assessment [of Chichen's chronology].." --Lindsay Jones, Twin City Tales (1995)
"The work of Charles Lincoln (1986, 1990), however, challenged the traditional sequential view of Chichen Itza..." --Jessica Christie, Maya Palaces and Elite Residences (2003)
"Por una parte, nos parece interesante la teoría de la contemporaneidad de los vestigios "mayas" y "toltecas" que sostiene el arqueólogo Ch. E. Lincoln..." Piedad Peniche Rivero, Sacerdotes y comerciantes (1990)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting Lincoln was a giant of the field by any strech of the imagination, but neither were his contributions merely workaday ones. His work and proposals did attract a fair amount of interest, commentary and debate, & he's been much more widely cited and mentioned than those H-index scores & GS data indicate. The more I've looked into it the more I can find multiple notable RS's devoting some decent space to his ideas, that could be used to construct a reasonable & informative article. The current text would need to be scrapped in the process, and written afresh. But I think as a wikipedia article's subject, WP:PROF threshhold would be satisfied.-- cjllw ʘ TALK 06:11, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply
And to make my position even more clear, the text of the article as it stands right now should be scrapped. It would be feasible however, to replace it with some much more balanced and reliably sourced text that fairly describes his works & proposals in archaeology (including documented criticisms thereof), as meriting inclusion under WP:PROF. Not that I am particularly inclined at the moment to rewrite the article myself; if it's deleted then can I suggest that the closing admin does so without prejudice for re-creation in future, but only under terms that a future re-write not involve CE Lincoln himself, or anyone directly or apparently associated with him. They should not be contributing to the article themselves, for what I hope would be obvious reasons.
The other concern as to whether or not it's legitimate to assess WP:N on basis of raw h-index calcs alone, still stands but can be taken elsewhere.-- cjllw ʘ TALK 07:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply