Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Political change (2nd nomination)

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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 Delete. @pple 17:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Political change

AfDs for this article:
Articles for deletion/Political change Articles for deletion/Political change (2nd nomination)
Political change (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Page earlier deleted. Recreated with near-empty content. Concept per se does not exist as a subfield of political science; all political science is the study of political change. Please note that a google test obviously will not work for something which is a common phrase but a non-notable subject for an article. In the absence of a common definition or field of study that this article would encompass, any contributions would obviously be OR, like it is now. Has been a stub since creation 10 months ago. Prod removed by creator. Hornplease 06:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Neutral. It does appear to be a common term in political science. I don't see how contributions would be OR when Google Scholar alone finds 91,400 uses of the term (examples[1][2][3][4][5]). I'm sure it can be reliably expanded. Part of the problem seems to be it wasn't tagged as part of any Wikiproject (I have now done this). Dbromage [Talk] 06:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Err, I did mention that Google is not a reliable indicator for a common phrase, right? Hornplease 07:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Err, I did mention its use in Google Scholar which is a good indicator of scholarly usage rather than overall Ghits. Dbromage [Talk] 08:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Naturally, I include Google scholar in my concerns that "hits" are an inappropriate indicator. Using a phrase is not an indication that that phrase deserves an article. For example, "full strength" gets a similar number of google scholar hits. But naturally, it would not be a reasonable article title, as there is no coherent article that can be formed around all the uses of this phrase. "Political change" is a similar problem. Article titles in the social sciences are completely devoid of information in some sense; a doctoral thesis I just read was titled "three articles on structural change", but of course that was a catch-all phrase and one of the articles was about decolonisation in Algeria, one on postcolonial theory, and one on linguistic modification. Hornplease 08:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
And every single book you cite will have a definition of political change for the purposes of the book. It is the sort of phrase that is a free-floating signifier which people use to clarify their arguments. For example "a conception of political change" should be read as "a useful concept, which I shall henceforth refer to as 'political change'". The author would be surprised to learn that we think it has external validity. Hornplease 08:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
That still doesn't support your assertion that some hypothetical future contribution to the article would "obviously be OR" when it hasn't happened yet. Any OR can be dealt with editorially. Putting it another way "If the article contains OR, trim it."[9]. You also haven't explained why the subject is not notable (see WP:JNN) or which (if any) Wikipedia policies the current article violates. The nomination seems rather flawed. Dbromage [Talk] 08:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
No evidence has been provided that there is a coherent article that can be formed under this heading. The first line of WP:N is that "..no original research is needed to extract the content." This is a poster case of where the only way that content could be 'extracted' is to write OR. Political change is too amorphous a phrase to be a reasonable article title. Any content - like the current stub - would be OR.Hornplease 08:40, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
No evidence has been provided that there isn't a coherent article that can be formed under this heading since it hasn't been written yet. As I said above, any OR can be dealt with editorially. We still only have your assertion that "any content" would be OR. "If the article contains OR, trim it"[10] seems reasonable. Dbromage [Talk] 08:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
No evidence has been provided that this subject is notable. You've provided google hits. I have explained at length why, for a common phrase, that is an unreliable indicator. You have to make the case that an article can be created here; you have not demonstrated notability for the concept, or even demonstrated that a concept exists. "Definition of politcal change", as you linked, has less than ten results in Books; and those, as I specify, can each be seen to have no external validity. Consider one of the results, which says "...it need not be assumed that Easton wished to come to such conclusions but these examples do reveal a lack of care in his definition of political change..." What this means is (a)the author of the review recognises that a definition of political change is mutable (b) the definition of political change can be chosen to aid the formation of an argument,in this case Easton's. Further, there are no definitions of political change that have been studied as definitions in themselves; there are no secondary sources for it. Implication: we will choose definitions that are in themselves primary sources; we will be creating original research. That is not our purpose here.
Sheesh. Occasionally I worry about Wikipedia. Hornplease 09:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Pwned. :) Thin Arthur 08:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Whatever that means. Hornplease 09:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Procedural keep. It's only a stub and not POV. Enough with the crystal ball gazing about content that doesn't exist yet. Thin Arthur 08:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
It's been a stub for a year. And the point I am trying to make is that any content would be OR, given the nature of the title. Hornplease 09:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak delete WP:WINAD; if you believe there's something more to write here than a circular definition, you've got five days to demonstrate your belief. I'm really unclear as to what could be written here. Theories of how and why political change happens? (Can anything be said about this in general, divorced from the specific political system?) A bunch of examples which eventually get split off into List of political changes and Political change in popular culture? Per User:Hornplease, this is just an unremarkable combination of two English words which doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. cab 11:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per the above - this does seem to fall under WP:WINAD. This is just a definition and at best is a blanket, generic term for any number of concepts. ɑʀкʏɑɴ 15:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Although I try never to do "per nom" !votes, I don't think I can come up with a better reasoning. That title is clearly a common phrase and the nominator has demonstrated that a universal definition for it DOES NOT EXIST. Secondly, WP is not a dictionary. Also, procedural delete because thirdly, any article on "political change" would be accommodated FAR BETTER on a country by country (or constituency by constituency to be pedantic) basis. There is simply no need for an over-arching article under this title. Seriously, what type of content would go in here besides the definitions by numerous different authors? Zunaid©® 16:12, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Wikipedia is not limited to articles on subfields of political science, we also write about notable concepts from such sciences, and political change, with close to 2 million Google hits and 7,000 in printed sources, including hundreds in book titles is certainly notable (just as social change); just browsing some of the above printed academic sources shows well that much effort has gone into defining this concept. The fact that the article is substub/dismbig is no reason for deletion; there are ample sources to expand it.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  16:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment:article's creator, with two edits, to create in October 2006 and deprod. Hornplease 00:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete: per Cab. (1) We have a stub that hasn't been improved in nearly a year. (2) We have a premise that violates WP:OR. (3) We have neither references nor sources. (4) The stub consists of the puerile statement "Political change refers to the concept of change in politics." No, really? (5) We have a dicdef of sorts without a particular widely recognized definition. (6) This is a classic example of the limitations of Google hits. "Red balloon" by the same test gives three and a half million Google hits ... should we on that basis alone have a Red balloon article?  RGTraynor  17:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Comment. Nobody has yet provided any conclusive proof that the premise violates OR. So far there is only one assertion and echoes. Only one other user picked up that "If the article contains OR, trim it" are the nominator's own words from another AfD. Since it's only been tagged as part of a Wikiproject for less than 24 hours of its 10 month history, why not let some actual experts see what they can do with it? Dbromage [Talk] 23:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Comment. As I actually mention in the other AfD, there is a difference between being inherently OR and containing OR. I'll pass over the snide implication that I'm not an 'actual expert'. I do expect that people will read the argument (which differs from an assertion) that I have made and decide whether or not it is indicative. Expecting "conclusive proof" of a negative is perhaps an exercise in futility. Hornplease 00:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Reply: Agreed. That aside, Dbromage, while you're fighting the this-isn't-OR corner hard, that's far from the only severe issue about this article. Given that, the premise being OR is simple: we dispute (and do not believe there is evidence to support) that this is a widely-recognized phrase with a generally accepted definition. Everyone knows what Manifest destiny or Gunboat diplomacy mean, and there's no dispute as to the particulars.  RGTraynor  14:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete An article that has nothing to say, and it says it. Appointment, resignation, elections, inheritance, revolution, social change. That's it. Mandsford 01:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete the question here is whether any decent article could be written that wasn't just a huge OR-synthesis or "quote farm" of all these google hits that people have mentioned.. Eleland 22:55, 24 August 2007 (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.