Talk:Aaron Titus

Aaron Titus is currently an Education good article nominee. Nominated by Johnson524 at 06:09, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

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@David Eppstein: I know your both an admin and have been on the encyclopedia far longer than I have, but I'm not new either. I seriously appreciate a lot of the work you did on the page, and as you see I only reverted very little of it, but your most recent revert is really a my-way-or-the-highway type action, and I said I wanted to discuss. Some of the information you removed made sentences start very abruptly, so I added back some wording that would lead into it better. Besides that, the only changes I made to the article were 1. Adding back that he has a doctorate in the first sentence because that's some of the most need to know info to have about a professor, and 2. The three physics societies he was a part of (You mentioned something about those being only honorary memberships which I don't quite understand, but I want to discuss with you if I'm misunderstanding the source). We're both ultimately trying to improve the article, so please look at the work that I did before reverting. I believe these specific transition words help the article flow better, but if you believe they are non-neutral, puffery, etc, please let's talk about it first because I want this article, like any article, to be the best it can be. Respectfully, Johnson524 20:23, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

This article is heavily larded with bullshit prose like "These ventures in physics helped Titus create" (verging on WP:SYN), redundant writing like "Titus then began to teach physics, beginning", and non-accomplishments like joining societies (these societies have open membership: anyone can join). That is the sort of thing I removed. I am not wearing an admin hat in doing this, but rather using my experience as a regular at editing academic biographies and at nominating and reviewing Good Articles, which you have put this article up for. If I reviewed it instead of editing it, in the state before my edits, I would probably quickfail it for violating WP:GACR 1b (WP:WTW) and 3b ("stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail"), also noting problems with 2c (original research in the claimed connections between some of his activities). For that matter, it is unclear to me whether the subject even passes WP:PROF: any significant accomplishments that might count towards that criterion are buried in fluff making them difficult to discern. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:40, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

The physics societies were never claimed to be an accomplishment, its just something he's a part of, but if you think it's unnecessary detail then done, I agree with you, I genuinely do believe you know better when it comes to policy. But conceding on nothing and threatening to delete the article? 😭 WP:DISENGAGE. Johnson524 20:53, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

Bullshit. They were the first line of the "awards and recognition" section. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:04, 12 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that WP:PROF is satisfied, either. For example, being one of four co-authors on the most recent edition of Matter and Interactions isn't enough for WP:PROF#C4, which asks for writing multiple widely-used textbooks. None of the awards look comparable to being elected an APS Fellow, being elevated to Distinguished Professor status, winning the Oersted Medal, etc. On a first reading, and trying to sift through the fluff, this looks like a respectable but overall unremarkable career. And certainly no Wikipedia article should contain puffery like Inspired by his parents' professions, Titus wanted to become a teacher since childhood, and developed a passion for physics after his first physics class in high school. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 02:02, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

Likewise, language like this is problematic: The paper and its findings have been cited by multiple academic journals and universities.... Yes, that is the function of a paper, to be read and then cited. The fact of a paper having been written and then cited a few times is not remarkable. Look at some books that are standards in their fields and see how often they've been cited: Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods over 5,000 times; Griffiths and Schroeter, over 11,000 times; Quantum Computation and Quantum Information almost 66,000 times; Jackson over 70,000. OK, maybe we should be more modest. What about individual papers, published in a journal oriented to physics education? Mermin's "Bringing home the atomic world" in the American Journal of Physics has still been cited over 200 times. By comparison, a conference proceeding that has been cited all of 10 times is just not influential. Moreover, the phrasing (The paper and its findings have been cited by multiple...) oversells how much emphasis those other publications put on it. They did not treat it as the definitive work in the field; they noted its existence and summarized the gist of it in a couple lines. That is entirely unremarkable for academic writing. The article reads like it is selling Titus hard, stringing together everything he did rather than starting with a clear-cut reason why he is notable and building the text from there. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:49, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

@Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction:

Done for both of your individual concerns. I completely agree, and truly thank you for taking the time to write out your reasoning. It is my joy to make articles on all kinds of topics, with this being the first and only one I've made about an academic 🙂 If you have any more ideas on how to reduce puffery or other issues you find in the article, I'm typically just as eager to implement the changes as you, I just preferably like to know the 'why' behind major changes before they're implemented so I know why they're necessary, and so I don't make the same mistakes in the future. Thank you again. Respectfully, Johnson524 05:18, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Removing a couple examples does not change the overall situation, i.e., that it's very hard to tell why the subject of this article merits an article by Wikipedia's standards. He did outreach work through science fairs, fine; he won a grant, fine; he ran a training workshop, fine. These are all run-of-the-mill things that people who work in physics departments do. It reads like a puff piece in local news, collecting a list of things that a person did without any sense of whether any of it makes them stand out among their fellow scientists. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 04:29, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

January 2026 page improvements

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