Draft talk:Peter Renz

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Submission of this draft was declined on 3 September 2025 by User:Royiswariii.

Royiswariii said the article does not meet any of the eight academic-specific criteria. Here are two such criteria that the article did meet: See Wikipedia:Notability (academics)

1. The person has received a highly prestigious academic award or honor at a national or international level.

Renz received the George Pólya Award in 1981.

2. The person has been the head or chief editor of a major, well-established academic journal in their subject area.

Starting in 1961, Renz was the editor of the journal Advances in Mathematics.

Royiswariii said the article does not meet cite multiple reliable, secondary sources independent of the subject, which cover the subject in some depth. Here are citations that do cover Dr Renz in some depth:

Martin Gardner: Defending the Honor of the Human Mind The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal, vol. 10, no. 4, 1979, pp. 227-232
Peter Renz at ResearchGate
What made 'Mathematical Games' special
Journal Article Notes on Contributors

Toploftical (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

--Toploftical (talk) 13:35, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toploftical: I can find no evidence that you have tried, let alone exhausted, any of the suggestions at WP:RFCBEFORE. For example, where have you discussed this with Royiswariii (talk · contribs)? Which WikiProjects have you asked? Please don't waste the community's time with a full-blown thirty-day formal WP:RFC. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:39, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I spent a lot of time trying to respond appropriately. The guidelines seemed to suggest that I should do it this way. Honestly, the WP guidelines are very voluminous and somewhat contradictory. I did not think to talk to Royiswariii because I assumed that would be confrontational. How can you say that there is "no evidence that I have tried," when I do so much research, added many more references, and did so many edits.
--Toploftical (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RE: Which WikiProjects have you asked?
I thought I had asked both the science and biography projects to comment. Isn't that built into the RfC template? I did try to reach out and had no intention of "wasting anybody's time"
--Toploftical (talk) 21:54, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RE: Commment that "this is *not* an RfC matter"
Then I completely misunderstood the use of RfC. For one thing, I thought it was the way that I could satisfy your question, " Which WikiProjects have you asked?" I am completely stumped. Somebody please help me.
--Toploftical (talk) 22:07, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Taking your points in turn:
  • I spent a lot of time trying to respond appropriately. - where was this?
  • The guidelines seemed to suggest that I should do it this way. Which guidelines? RfC is an instrument of last resort, not a first step.
  • Honestly, the WP guidelines are very voluminous and somewhat contradictory. I know of no contradiction when it comes to deciding whether to initiate the WP:RFC process.
  • I did not think to talk to Royiswariii because I assumed that would be confrontational. - why would you think that? One of the most important practices in Wikipedia is that if you want to know why somebody acted in a particular manner, you should ask them to explain. Every user has a talk page, or the potential of one.
  • I do so much research, added many more references, and did so many edits - That is part of making an article. RFCBEFORE is about seeking advice from others, and only actually invoking the RfC process if there is deadlock. Looking at your contributions, I see nothing recent that suggests that you have discussed the AfC submission before raising the RfC here.
  • I thought I had asked both the science and biography projects to comment. Isn't that built into the RfC template? No. The |sci|bio parameters are instructions to Legobot to add the RfC statement to WP:RFC/SCI and WP:RFC/BIO respectively. RFCBEFORE is about what you should do before reaching for the {{rfc}} tag. You inform a WikiProject by going to its talk page - for instance Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science - and leaving a neutrally-worded message. This might be along the lines of "I have started a discussion at Draft talk:Peter Renz, please take a look". Templates such as {{fyi}} and {{subst:please see}} are available for this.
  • I did try to reach out and had no intention of "wasting anybody's time" Again, I cannot find where you tried to reach out. It wastes the community's time because the RfC process calls in all manner of random outsiders who might know little or nothing about this Peter Renz person.
Once again, this is not an RfC matter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:22, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Toplofical, first of all WP:RESEARCHGATE is not reliable source as you cited in the references. It seems you just cherry picked that you said above. Google Scholar isn't reliable source either. Ref#29 that you cited from ResearchGate that I would say supposed to add in External link only. I really don't entertain this since you can ask on AfC talk page or you can just resubmit and review the other editors. Please note that I assume good faith on your offline sources and you need to address the tags maintenance that added in June 2025. ROY is WAR Talk! 00:05, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also notice here Ref#20, a website bio which is not reliable. Ref#18, Academia.edu which is not reliable per above, Ref#26 a wordpress blog which is not reliable too. ROY is WAR Talk! 00:10, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed this does not need an RFC 🤗. Thanks @Royiswariii and Toploftical: for working on it in a cordial way. A common problem with bios is that they often end up using peacock language because source materials (both autobios and bios produced by others) use that language, which comes off as promotional. That was a primary issue that needed to be addressed here.

  • I took a pass at cleaning up the article. It looks ok to me now, Renz seems notable as an editor, I was certainly aware of him as an amateur mathematician. If you have dates for when he worked for various publishing companies that would help.
  • Catalogs (Scholar / RG / Academia.edu) should be external links, not refs. Refs should be directly to a source work, not to an academic repository entry for it. Correction - I see that for one of your cites, the Researchgate page is the official cite that the DOI resolves to. @Royiswariii: Academic repos like RG are not "unreliable", it depends on context. In this case where there is no better original source they are fine. – SJ + 15:22, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • You can ask at the AFC Help desk if you want more eyes on issues with drafts in the future.

– SJ + 13:23, 21 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toploftical @Royiswariii:
  • Regarding the George Pólya Award, Peter Renz has indeed received that award. However, whether this counts as a "highly prestigious academic award" is debatable. As far as I understand, this is more or less a "best paper" award for The College Mathematics Journal — correct?
  • Do you have a proper source for the fact that Renz was chief editor of Advances in Mathematics? All I can find is this obituary for Gian-Carlo Rota, which calls Renz and editor (being an editor for a journal is very different from being chief editor).
  • I am puzzled by the secondary sources about Peter Renz that you provide: as far as I can tell, none of them qualify as such — or am I missing something? For instance,
    • Isn't Renz an author of "MARTIN GARDNER: Defending the Honor of the Human Mind"?
    • "What made "Mathematical Games" special" is not a secondary source about Renz: it is simply quoting Renz.
    • A Research Gate profile does not qualify as "a secondary source covering the subject in depth", those get generated automatically for every one who has published a paper. And you can claim them and edit them yourself.
Malparti (talk) 13:40, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]