Talk:Geoffrey Sayre-McCord

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Sayre-McCord is widely recognized as among the important contributors to recent work in metaethics. Perhaps the most appropriate evidence here is that he showed up early on on the Wikipedia entry for moral realism. He is also the invited author of the entries on moral realism and metaethics for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and frequently cited there by other articles.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 1947DB (talk • contribs)

You need to back this up with reliable, independent sources. dcandeto 22:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The relevant notability guideline can be found at Wikipedia:Notability (academics). Aecis^Brievenbus 22:44, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Three criteria mentioned on that page are:

1. The person is regarded as a significant expert in his or her area by independent sources.
2. The person is regarded as an important figure by independent academics in the same field.
3. The person has published a significant and well-known academic work. An academic work may be significant or well known if, for example, it is the basis for a textbook or course, if it is itself the subject of multiple, independent works, if it is widely cited by other authors in the academic literature.

The Wikipedia entry probably does not count. But the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a invitation only, peer-reviewed work. That Sayre-McCord was invited to do the contributions on metaethics and on moral realism seem to count as meeting the first two. That his work is cited in a number of other entries in that encyclopedia speaks to the third. Other indications along the same lines might be his invited contribution, on Moral Realism, to the Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, and the inclusion of his "Moral Theory and Explanatory Importance" in Michael Smith's collection on Metaethics.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 1947DB (talk • contribs)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is not cited as a source in the article. The article, as it currently is, does not assert any of the three criteria. dcandeto 23:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh. Okay. Sorry for being dense about that. I was looking at some other entries (e.g. Shafer-Landau , Michael Smith, David Sosa, and Richard Boyd), and didn't quite pick up the point. I will try an edit now. Let me know if it seems the sort of thing needed.

An important pillar of Wikipedia, 1947DB (welcome to Wikipedia, btw), is verifiability. Any user needs to be able to check any piece of information for himself or herself, against given sources. That's why those sources need to be cited. If you can indicate which independent sources see Geoffrey Sayre-McCord as "a significant expert" and "an important figure", and which "significant and well-known academic work" Geoffrey Sayre-McCord has published, the notability will probably be asserted sufficiently. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:10, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Another important thing that should probably be mentioned, is that simply being notable is not enough for the subject of an article. It should be clear from the article itself how and why the subject is notable. An article with just the words "Johann Sebastian Bach made music" may be deleted, because it doesn't become clear in what way Bach became notable through music, even though we all know that Bach is definitely notable enough for Wikipedia. Btw, you can sign your messages using four ~'s, like so: ~~~~. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:13, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

This of course makes a lot of sense. I am new to this. I have made changes following what I see in the entries mentioned. Would a link to Sayre-McCord's on-line CV, which contains the list of distinguished invitations, the reprintings of his articles, etc. count as suitable means for readers to verify. It would be a bit strange, I think, actually list the grounds I mention above, although they do seem to establish that the criteria are met. I have added to the body of the entry that his Essays on Moral Realism is widely used (this follows Richard Boyd's entry) and I noted that he was the co-editor for five years of one of the most distinguished journals in the field, providing a link to the current webpage for that journal (on Blackwell's site). I really appreciate you taking the time to provide an education (and I appreciate as well the importance of the standards). BTW, back, I am not sure what you mean by signing with four ~'s. Is that a way to show one's message is done? Another possibility: I could put links to the Stanford Encyclopedia articles in the external links section. Readers could follow those, see the policies of that publication, and get confirmation of Sayre-McCord's standing from that as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 1947DB (talk • contribs)

I have decided to remove the speedy deletion tag. I believe notability has been established sufficiently to avoid speedy deletion under criterion A7, non-notability. If another editor feels that the article still doesn't meet our policies and guidelines, or that Geoffrey Sayre-McCord is simply not notable enough for Wikipedia, he or she may still nominate the article for deletion via our regular deletion process. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

If you add ~~~~ after your message, it will show your signature. Go ahead and try it :) Aecis^Brievenbus 23:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the Stanford Encyclopedia articles: do they all cite one and the same publication, or do they cite several publications? Because if all the articles cite one and the same publication, I've got something in mind that could fix that and establish his notability: footnotes. Aecis^Brievenbus 23:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added a new section to the article, "Publications", with two subsections, "Monographs" and "Publications in academic journals," so that we can add a full bibliography of Sayre-McCord to the article. Btw, if you wish to add a reference to the article but you don't know how to do it, 1947DB, don't worry, I will come along and fix it if that is necessary. Aecis^Brievenbus 00:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC) I have cut and pasted some publications from Sayre-McCord's webpage. It doesn't seem to include all publications so I have used the webpage's "Some publications". I will try to add the others later, but the CV is in pdf and I can't cut and paste from it). 1947DB 00:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC) I checked the Stanford Encyclopedia and a number of different things are cited. The Essays on Moral Realism is cited several times for the introduction, for the article on explanatory impotence (several times) and for articles by others included in that volume. Other papers, the one on Mill, one on deontic logic, another on punishment, one on coherentist epistemology and another on moral semantics are also cited. 1947DB 01:01, 28 May 2007 (UTC)