Talk:XiaoFeng Wang (computer scientist)

Xiaofeng vs. XiaoFeng, and difficulty finding Google Scholar page

The ACM 2023 Fellows announcement, the University's corresponding announcement, his Google Scholar page, the IEEE Fellows Directory, and his profile on Github.io all use "XiaoFeng", but some other sources use "Xiaofeng". IEEE's author profile page for him shows both alternatives. (There is also a different Xiaofeng Wang at the University of South Carolina, and there are also various other people with the same name, so it is important not to confuse them.)

Incidentally, the direct link to his Google Scholar profile https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pONu-5EAAAAj, which I found on Github.io, is working, but the search function at Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/) does not seem to find him (even though he has many more citations than the University of South Carolina person who does show up in the search).
—⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 08:25, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Three more examples of "XiaoFeng" are here and here, both from the ACM, and the AAAS Fellows directory. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 19:54, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it's more a matter of styling than an actual difference; both versions have ben used by sources. — The Anome (talk) 22:23, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but the Wikipedia article should use one or the other. Today's CNBC article also uses "XiaoFeng". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:43, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Also, there was a draft at Draft:XiaoFeng Wang that was merged into this article at 06:32, 31 March 2025 (UTC). It used "XiaoFeng" consistently, including its title and the body of its first version. A couple of the next edits after the merge (here and here) changed the merged content to use "Xiaofeng". And then later, at 04:15, 1 April 2025 (UTC), i.e., after the comments above in this section, an IP editor with no edit history changed changed "Xiaofeng" to "XiaoFeng" in the opening sentence and infobox heading. One of those two instances was changed back at 16:33, 1 April 2025 (UTC) by MecaniqueCelesteP, saying "capitalization was nonstandard", but the infobox heading is still "XiaoFeng" currently. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:56, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

And now, about 7 hours ago, MecaniqueCelesteP changed the remaining "XiaoFeng" to "Xiaofeng" in this edit (with no edit summary), possibly in response to my comment above. However, my impression is that most sources (and the subject himself) are primarily using "XiaoFeng". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 14:21, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I lean towards XiaoFeng based on BarrelProof's findings and my own read of naming convention guidelines. Although this is not an instance of a name change, the guidance at WP:NCBIO § Self-published name changes seems relevant: For minor spelling variations (capitalization, diacritics, transliteration, punctuation and spacing after initials, etc.): when a consistent and unambiguous self-published version exists, it is usually followed. It would make sense to give weight to the style he has used on his personal site (his Github) and his Google Scholar profile (if I understand correctly, scholars create and maintain their own profile). His LinkedIn page has been taken down but the available profiles we have both use XiaoFeng. His archived faculty page at IU also used XioaFeng. Also relevant is the guidance at WP:ZHNAME which calls for using the common name in English-language sources even when these differ from the rendering that results from an application of standard rules for transliterating Chinese characters. This would all argue for XiaoFeng although admittedly we don't have a large volume of self-published material and the preference shown in independent sources is not overwhelming. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 19:48, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Citizenship?

It's unclear from sources whether Wang is an American-born US citizen, naturalised citizen, or permanent resident. He must certainly be one of these, because he's clearly lived in the USA for at least 20 years and been the recipient of major government grants relating to cybersecurity that would normally involve at least some level of vetting. Do we have any indication of which he might be? — The Anome (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

The best indication I currently see is that his bachelor's and master's degrees are from universities in China. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:05, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The Ars Technica article says "Their resident status (e.g. US citizens or green card holders) is currently unknown." The Motion to unseal search warrants refers to him as a "Chinese immigrant". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 23:56, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

For what it's worth, his wife said they are "loyal Chinese-Americans and lawful immigrants". —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Disappearance?

Is there any actual source for the idea that he is missing? His union states they were in contact with him as recently as Friday. Additionally, it appears a high profile defense lawyer was waiting for the FBI at his home, as would be expected when the FBI notifies you that they're going to execute a search warrant.

Given the relative recency of this reporting (and this page), declaring him missing when no law enforcement agencies, labor unions, employers, or friends publicly has seems premature and the source seems to be this page itself or (maybe) an unsourced Twitter post. -- 2601:143:8101:A025:213B:B874:DB99:19B9 (talk) 20:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The Ars Technica article does state that "Attempts to locate Wang and Ma have so far been unsuccessful." They also cite some Tweets which mention that he has not been in class - not being in class isn't totally unexpected, as his union has said he wasn't allowed access to his university resources during the initial university probe . I think there's some discussion to be had about whether or not the Ars Technica quote means he has disappeared or if it meant they couldn't locate him for comment, but there does appear to be some sources that could be used to justify the language here. I'd personally like some stronger sources than just that article. -- Seemlyable (talk) 20:43, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

His lawyers made a statement on his behalf today - he hasn't disappeared. -- Seemlyable (talk) 21:22, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I disagree. He did disappear, at least for a while (a week, or two? – when did his students and neighbors last see him?). "Disappear" doesn't mean that nobody knows where someone is; it just means that a person isn't where most people would normally expect them to find them, and the general public can't figure out where they are, and no clear single reasonable explanation is available. He wasn't showing up for his work, and his students didn't know where he was, and he clearly wasn't at either of his homes, and no explanation was being provided by the university or the investigators or anyone else. Major news organizations were trying to find him and were reporting that they couldn't and that no one was telling them where he was and no one was telling them why. A disappearance can be voluntary or involuntary. A kidnapped person has disappeared, even though the kidnappers know where they are, and a person who has gone into hiding from the public without explaining why has disappeared. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I think there's obviously some debate to be had about what constitutes a true disappearance and I don't actually disagree with your general barometer (entirely), but I do think you're a bit misinformed. His employer and his union knew where he was. He wasn't showing up to work because he was suspended. His union knew he was suspended. His students hadn't seen him because he had been suspended. Major news organizations said they had reached out to comment from him for one to two days before the Wiki made the bold statement that he had disappeared, which was not widely reported as fact, even in the sources cited here. All of this information was reported on in the sources that were cited here initially.

We don't know when his neighbors had last seen him and, to my read, it hadn't actually been reported on at the time. It was reported that a woman was at his home and her phone was seized during the search - if we're reading whatever we personally feel is logical into the news article (not what we're supposed to be doing here), I'd wager that was his wife. If we're making assumptions, one of the pair had reasonably been assumed to have been seen on the day of the search.

To address you general barometer, I do agree that "disappear" is a somewhat vague term. When I lose my keys, I might say they disappeared. When my spouse walks away from me in the grocery store unexpectedly, I might tell someone that they disappeared. These situations, however, are obviously not what we're talking about here. In the context of a law enforcement action, "disappear" generally means forced disappearance, and, indeed, the disambiguation pages for both Disappear and Disappearance lend credence to that interpretation. The general internet chatter about this phrase clearly understood it to be that and, in fact, the reason why I became involved in this subject is because a family member cited this page to me as proof that he had been extrajudicially kidnaped by law enforcement when I asked where this idea was coming from (it wasn't in the article I was initially sent).

Finally, we are not investigative journalists and it's not our job to give spin to the reporting we're summarizing here. This was not a commonly used phrasing in the source materials and, even when I asked for it, nobody could provide a source that used it. Given how charged the phrase is and the general political environment at this moment, it seems irresponsible (and gives a strong impression of bias) for us to be using this kind of wording when there's no sources to back it up. -- Seemlyable (talk) 17:09, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I personally think "disappeared" does not imply a forced disappearance. The word "disappear" (initially with a typo) was already in the first draft of the Wikipedia article. The Herald-Times article published on 28 March focused on a house search and said "None [of the neighbors] knew the status of the Chinese couple who has lived there for around 20 years." That article did not mention students. The Ars Technica article also does not use "disappear". It provides a lot more information, including aspects of timeline. Both of those articles seem to show that some aspects of the timeline described in the Wikipedia article are not accurate, such as exactly when he became unexpectedly absent from student interaction, when the information was deleted from the university website, and when the house search(es) happened. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 18:57, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I notice that this Wired article of April 2 says that he and his wife "disappeared" (the word is in the headline and in two places in the article). —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:28, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Another Wired article with "disappeared" in its headline was published on April 14. I don't know what the article body says, due to paywalling. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:42, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I genuinely fail to understand how articles that came out after we poisoned the well with that language are relevant. This is why WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V and friends all exist. Anyway, the language is gone, so I'm not sure that continuing the debate is helpful - we have better things to edit than this talk page, at least until new publications about this subject are released. Seemlyable (talk) 17:16, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

References

DYK?

This article was created less than 24 hours ago, so it has six more days for potential nomination to WP:Did you know?. I think it is long enough, or at least close to the 1500 character minimum. I don't recall whether I have met the WP:QPQ requirement. A possible hook could be something like "Did you know ... that the prominent cybersecurity professor Xiaofeng Wang and his wife disappeared in late March 2025, and Indiana University Bloomington deleted their profiles and contact information from its website without explanation? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:35, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

That suggested hook now seems obsolete in light of Today's CNBC article. How about "Did you know ... that the faculty union at Indiana University protested the firing of cybersecurity professor Xiaofeng Wang in March 2025, saying his sudden dismissal violated the due process requirements of the university's policy? (See this and this for confirmation of the identity of the union.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:56, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

IU or IUB

The article was initially written to refer to Wang's employer as "IU" (Indiana University). Someone then edited the article to refer to it as IUB (i.e., the Bloomington branch of IU) rather than simply as IU. As noted in relevant articles, the Bloomington campus is clearly the "flagship" campus, and is often referred to simply as IU. My impression is that most sources refer to the university as IU rather than IUB. Do others have a different impression? —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:58, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Good point. For what it's worth, the WP page is titled "Indiana University Bloomington" but it uses "IU" as the shorthand throughout. I agree it would make sense to change it to IU for this article. Jameson Nightowl (talk) 03:53, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Requested move 17 April 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 03:45, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

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Xiaofeng Wang (computer scientist) → XiaoFeng Wang (computer scientist) – As has been discussed on the article's Talk page, most sources (and the subject himself) seem to capitalize the 'F' in this professor's name, at least most of the time. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:15, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

• Support per prior discussion. WP:NCBIO § Self-published name changes calls for following a subject's usage in self-published sources for minor spelling variations such as capitalization. This is not a case of a name change and we don't have a large body of his writing to draw from, but the principle should still apply and give weight to his preferred styling, XiaoFeng. As summarized in the prior thread, a preponderance of independent reliable sources also use XiaoFeng. WP:ZHNAME does not address this specific scenario but calls for following the spelling and capitalization in reliable sources. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 15:03, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose Support The assertion that the subject himself prefers the proposed style is not supported by evidence (ie no evidence of the assertion has been provided). The assertion of most sources is clearly contradicted by sources used in the article and by this search. Their university profile does not use the proposed name. Looking at the results for the first ten articles from this GS search, the name in full uses the existing capitalisation six times. I would need to see better evidence, not just that the capitalised variation is used but more consistently used or clearly falling to WP:NCBIO § Self-published name changes, to be convinced to change my vote. Cinderella157 (talk) 01:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

@Cinderella157: Please take another look, and see the prior discussion that was linked in the proposal rationale, in which such evidence is found. What you called his "university profile" is a Google Scholar profile for a different person with the same Chinese name who lives in China and works at a different institution from the one where this professor works. There seems to be relatively large number of people with that name, including another computer science scholar in the United States at University of South Carolina as well. The correct Google Scholar profile uses the uppercase 'F'. Here is his university profile page, and another one, and an announcement from his university and another one. Here is his Github home page, his CV, his ACM Award page, the page of the SIGSAC group he chairs, the NSF group he chaired, a guest lecture announcement, and even his termination letter and the subsequent protest letter from the department faculty. Among independent sources, see the articles by Indiana Public Media, CNBC, WTHR, NBC. It's not 100%, but I think it's enough to show that he prefers it that way and that many (I think most) others go along with that. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:22, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Sufficiently convince now per WP:NCBIO § Self-published name changes, and correct profile, CV and github. Cinderella157 (talk) 03:02, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.