Ideabender

AfD nomination of Chris McGrath (computer engineer)

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is Chris McGrath (computer engineer). We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Wikipedia:Notability and "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chris McGrath (computer engineer). Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

• Reply from Author: I have responded to both editors regarding the deletion and do not disagree. One has suggested Userfication, and that's fine by me. I have saved all versions and will work to make the article better, while the subject works on notability. Thanks! Ideabender (talk) 13:42, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Where to go from here?

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As for the "citation needed" notes, these are normally put in to indicate that this is a contentious statement, and that a WP:reliable source needs to be cited; it the case of WP:Biographies of living persons statements such as these might be stripped without notice. Just click on the little "citation needed" link for a brief explanation about citation, and links to policies on verifiability, citation and reliable sources. It can be very easy to make rough-and-ready citations, or you can go all out with WP:Citation templates. I've copied had the article moved into User:Ideabender/Chris McGrath (computer engineer) and tagged the article space with CSD:G7 Josh Parris 23:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

• Reply from Ideabender: Thanks for all the help, Josh. I appreciate it. I will work on getting this article fixed, and I'll make sure McGrath works on gaining notability. We may not be able to do anything to reference some of the past, but I suspect that in the coming months his notability will skyrocket. Watch for references to McGrath and Pneural in the computing and mainstream press... Ideabender (talk) 13:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

• • That move is so you can continue editing the article; once you think it has become a viable article, feel free to give me (or practically any other editor) a holler and I'd be more than happy to run an eye over it. Once it looks good, we'll take it from there! Josh Parris 01:49, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Citation needed

The Chris McGrath (computer engineer) article makes some astonishing claims which need a published source to verify them.

• While running black ops teams out of Saigon, he also broke the Xinjiang code, using computers for analysis for the first time. - Very romantic, but unreferenced. What's a Xinjiang code? The link is useless. Where does some third party credit him with the breaking of the code? You are aware that computers were used for codebreaking since Colossus computer in WWII, so it's unlikely McGrath was the first.
• he developed the first-ever interactive financial forecasting system - needs a published reference; again, computers had been around for a long time by the '70s and it seems unlikely this was not already available by then.
• Concurrent to finishing his MBA program at ... counterpart at Digital Research. Again, all kinds of names and places, but no documentation. I couldn't find a book on him in Google Books, some interview in a magazine or newspaper to verify all this is necessary.
• He stripped down the RSX-11M operating system to its runtime components so it would fit on the largest disk drives available at the time – a whopping 10k - I don't understand this, I"ve seen RSX 11M work and it doesn't need a lot of resources, and 10 K for a disk is absurd - even a floppy holds more, this was never the largest drive size.
• McGrath took his first shot at running his own company in 1985 - What was the name of the company? Publications describing it?
• ...GE Answer Center, which McGrath helped turn from a $20 million a year cost center to a $36 million a year revenue generator - a reference is needed. An annual report, a newspaper or magazine article, etc.
• In 1995, McGrath founded Computer Enlightenment, delivering a new approach to computer-based training A document outlining what was new since PLATO (computer system) was invented is essential.

And so on. Every time the subject is believed to have done something new, exceptional, or the first of its kind...you'd best have citations to back it up, and the citations must come from what Wikipedia calls reliable sources. Blogs and personal websites are out, scholarly books and journal articles are great, respected industry trade publications are usually good, newspapers are variable (New York Times good, Springfield Shopper no good .) Sometimes it also helps to list the patents the subject has obtained, or industry or academic awards (relevant to his work, of course). Good luck. --Wtshymanski (talk) 04:48, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

• Reply from Ideabender: Thanks for the comments. This is way more help than I am used to getting! I am going to direct McGrath to this page to see how he responds. Your comments are perfect starters for addressing the holes. For what it's worth, I challenged quite a few things in this article and my hope was that some of the other people referenced would Google Alert themselves and re-edit. No such luck and probably not the right approach. Again, thanks for the direction... Ideabender (talk) 13:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a policy Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons that applies here. It's never a good idea to rely on the subject of a biography for biographical information aside from correcting obvious errors - it's much better to refer to published sources. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)