Talk:David J. C. MacKay

Add review

• What Will It Take to Save the Earth? April 26, 2012 by Joel E. Cohen in The New York Review of Books

108.195.138.75 (talk) 05:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Why add non-notable review? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:10, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Erdős number belongs in the article

Earlier today, I restored the lost information that MacKay has an Erdős number of 2 to the article, reverting the edit of User:Solomon7968, who had previously deleted it. No question has been raised about the correctness or verifiability of this information. The article is only some 700 words long, and thus could benefit from a considerably deeper exploration of MacKay's life and work, and his Erdős number is one piece of information that moves us in that direction.

User:Solomon7968 reverted my reversion, although without explaining why on the talk page. Their edit comment read as follows:

(WP:NOTINHERITED, WP:TRIVIA, WP:PUFFERY for starters, co-author of co-author doesn't confers [sic] notability, find independent sources please; same way erdos [sic] is not notable for having MacKay number 2)

Two of the things they are citing are non-authoritative meta-Wikipedia pages, neither of which are relevant to this discussion, since both of them are about establishing the notability of Wikipedia article subjects, and neither are about judging what information should be removed from articles that should definitely exist. The third is an actual Guideline, which says that Wikipedia articles should ideally not have trivia sections, instead integrating "trivia" into other more topical sections, which is irrelevant since neither version of this article has a trivia section. This seems like an attempt to inundate the discussion with references to irrelevant texts that a casual observer might falsely believe to be relevant, and borders on WP:Wikilawyering.

In fact, the entire commentary in this comment seems to be predicated on the false assumption that I am trying to establish MacKay's WP:NOTABILITY. However, as far as I can tell, MacKay's notability is not in question — we are not engaged in a deletion debate — instead, we are attempting to improve the article on him to include more relevant and interesting information. As explained in NOTABILITY, which is in fact an official guideline, unlike most of the things User:Solomon7968 refers to in their comment:

> These guidelines only outline how suitable a topic is for its own article or list. They do not limit the content of an article or list.

All in all, User:Solomon7968's attempt at contributing to Wikipedia here falls very far short of being successful, apparently due to a lack of understanding of the objectives Wikipedia is attempting to accomplish and the lack of effort at collaborating with other users manifest in the poor spelling of their reversion comment.

For these reasons, I will restore the deleted information tomorrow, unless presented with good arguments as to why the article is better without it.

Kragen Javier Sitaker (talk) 04:24, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

This person is indeed notable but I wonder why you think having Erdős number 2 is "more relevant and interesting information". I will repeat being "co-author of co-author" of someone doesn't makes someone notable, no matter what the stature of the person is. You won't advocate adding MacKay number 2 to Paul Erdos's bio, would you? I am taking the liberty here to ping David Eppstein, a neutral editor experienced in this sort of topics. Solomon7968 04:37, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

My feeling is that if the subject of an article has a (sourced) story about their connection to Erdős, that story can be mentioned in the article, but that a bare Erdős number is not interesting enough to be worth mentioning in an individual article. (They can be listed in List of people by Erdős number, of course, for people with an article whose Erdős number is at most three.) Sometimes Solomon7968's efforts to cut these from articles go too far, and cut actual stories, but not in this case. I would however suggest removing NOTINHERITED and PUFFERY from the edit summaries — they are both inaccurately applied to this issue and lacking in good faith. WP:TRIVIA is a sufficient reason by itself. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:45, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I think "Puffery" is a better descriptor of this rather than "Trivia". Erdős number has been used in many occasions to show prove notability in case of borderline academics. See for example Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David B. Weinberger (which resulted in delete) where someone said: He also has an Erdos number of 3. WP:NOTINHERITED definitely applies there. Solomon7968 05:02, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

SEWTHA

Should Wikipedia have an article on MacKay's book Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air? I am not well enough versed in the ways of WP to argue a case that it should (or should not) but as a WP user I'm surprised there isn't one. John Stumbles (talk) 14:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Picture credit

Is the picture credit correct? It would make more sense if it was taken by Nicholas Stern rather than David Stern. Could be a typo? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.78.133 (talk) 08:30, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

No, if you follow the source on the picture, it comes from the freely released Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air where David Stern is acknowledged for both contributions to the book and specifically for the portrait.Mountain^cirque 10:11, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

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