Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic IAL

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Redirect - Not a lot of interest in this AfD but what we got (even after a relisting) was adequate in my view to come to the view that a simple deletion of material and a redirect would suffice to cover the material (which is already in the redirected to article) and still allow others to return material from the previous version. --VS ^talk 00:41, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Germanic IAL

Germanic IAL (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Discusses a very abstract concept and sounds a lot like original research. Such an article could be written about a "Dravidian IAL", too. All the examples are non-notable, except possibly Tutonish, which the article claims to be "a famous historical example from 1902". If it is indeed notable, then an article could be written about it, but i don't think that there should be an article about this abstract concept of "Germanic IAL". Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 22:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

• In my opinion, the article in question is weak in its current form. That shouldn't necessarily be a reason to delete it, but at this moment I'd say merge and redirect to International auxiliary language would be a good temporary solution. There is definitely more that can be said about the subject, though. I disagree with the entirely subjective statement that "all the example are non-notable": that's not for you to decide, Amir. And I have to say, I feel a growing dissatisfaction with the way the word notability is being abused recently. Even if a subject may not be notable enough for its own article, that shouldn't mean that it is forbidden to mention it elsewhere. To give an example, I've often heard the argument that "Language X is not notable enough for an article on its own, so let's move this stuff to a broader article that discusses the whole genre." Subsequently, someone else says: "Hey, that article was deleted, so it shouldn't be here either." And what remains is an article without major examples of the subject. Not really worthy of preserving it either. Is that how deletionists achieve their goals? If I recall correctly, that is precisely how the article on Germanic IALs came into being. Even if the article may not exactly be a masterpiece, and even if the potential value of an article on Germanic or Dravidian IALs is questionable, I don't like the process used here. From this point of view I really regret that somebody speedily deleted an article about Slavic IAL recently, without even giving a single reason; because this is definitely a notable topic with a history long enough for a good and interesting article. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 12:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I nominated the Slavic IAL article for speedy deletion, because it was essentially the deleted Slovio article with a different opening paragraph. You may start a deletion review on it.

Slovio and Folkspraak were not cases of "delete and merge", but "delete". There is a difference between subjects which aren't important enough for an article, but can be mentioned in other articles and subjects which shouldn't be mentioned anywhere. A red link to Folkspraak in another article in the main space is an invitation to write the article; but when someone goes to write the article, he sees a big notice saying "You are re-creating a page that was deleted." I think that this shouldn't happen. It's important, however, that you'll understand that it is my opinion and not the Wikipedia party line; i'd be glad to see more discussion about it. You may bring it up at Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy.

As for merging Germanic IAL into International auxiliary language - i don't see what is here that can be merged. The main IAL article already says: "The ongoing Folkspraak project aims at creating a pan-Germanic IAL, whilst Europaio is based on the northern dialects of proto-Indo-European languages." Everything else in the Germanic IAL article is original research. If it wasn't original research, i wouldn't think that it should be deleted, and it would even be a pretty good, albeit short, article. (In the first place, AfD isn't supposed to judge how well an article is written, but whether the subject should be included in Wikipedia.) --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:59, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect as above until better sources appear. We can't hang an article on a Geocities page. This could be summarized in a sentence or two, excising the original research. --Dhartung | Talk 18:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.