Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of abbreviations in use in 1911

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 no consensus. An interesting and wide-ranging discussion, but ultimately there was no meeting of the minds here. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 00:47, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of abbreviations in use in 1911

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This list contains totally arbitrary criteria for inclusion (what's so important about 1911 or the Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition as a place to find abbreviations?) and appears to be composed of nothing but original research. I can't imagine any third-party sources having ever commenting upon such a grouping of information so the subject matter also fails our notability guidelines. Interesting? Yes, so perhaps a transwiki is in order, but this material is definitely not fit for an encyclopedia article. The relevant policies and guidelines include WP:OR, WP:STAND, WP:V, WP:N, WP:IINFO, and WP:NOT#DIR. Them From Space 08:18, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The nomination seems to overreach. I would be hard pressed to find a single article of WP:OR (rather it all pretty much falls under WP:CK) in this list, and it is all eminently WP:V. Yes, 1911 is a somewhat artificial legacy here. But I suggest (A) an overview of the subject of standard/classic/traditional abbreviations in English (of the kind you might happen to find in a well-edited encyclopedia for the general public in 1911) is a reasonable and important subject (if I have to give an example of the obvious existence of innumerable secondary sources on the subject: G.R. Shankle, Current Abbreviations, New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1945), (B) if it can well be divorced from the year 1911, AfD is not the place to figure out the best strategy for accomplishing that. A secondary discussion we could have here (though it seems unnecessary to me) would concern how every encyclopedia needs to give an accounting of its own abbreviations (and the 1911 EB, providing so many Wikipedia articles still awaiting updating, has left a long trail of its abbreviations in our encyclopedia). Wareh (talk) 13:59, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Wikipedia is a fun place for articles about TV shows and sports results and the like, but first and foremost, it's an online reference work, meaning that people would refer to it for information. The meaning of abbreviations is different now than it was a century ago, as can be seen from such entries as C.S.I., F.M., M.C., R.N., and S.T.D. Perhaps this serious, no fun at all information can be placed elsewhere, but the fact that it was in the Encylopedia Britannica means that there are some people who would disagree about whether it's "encyclopedic". Mandsford (talk) 14:20, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep, on condition of rename: 1911 seems arbitrary, and I think there's a risk that people start creating articles like "list of abbreviations in use in 1912", or "list of backronyms in use in 1911". It could get ridiculous. This is a valid article about past language habits, but needs to be clarified with a better name. Arskwad (talk) 16:25, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but rename - I agree with Arskwad , it seems notable but the "in use in 1911" is arbitrary, it just happens to be the year of the edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica used as a source for this article. New name should be discussed (e.g. list of English abbreviations from early 20th century?).--137.122.49.102 (talk) 18:54, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

why not "list of abbreviations used in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica"? thats what it is, right? that makes it a superbly defined list, if the lede or hidden text makes it clear you cant add any more. if this is done, im neutral on deletion. if people use it, fine. seems silly to me.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good point. While in an ideal universe we might want an encyclopedic and historic treatment of English abbreviations, what we have is an article on the ones in EB1911, and if we retitle it "early 20th century" etc., it will go from being a basically correct list to a list in need of work on a huge scale that may never be done. Wareh (talk) 15:52, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Transwiki to wiktionary seems like one of the Wiktionary appendices to me. 70.29.208.247 (talk) 06:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep Absurd nomination whose references to policies such as WP:OR and WP:V seem nonsensical. And renaming of the article, should this be wanted, is achieved by a move, not by deletion. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My references to these policies are fully within their bounds. We cannot have article that are only sourced to primary sources. This does go against WP:OR and WP:V which both state explicitly that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it." Not a single third-party source has been added to this article, so it still fails WP:OR, WP:V, and WP:N. A rename, while keeping this content, is inappropriate per WP:IINFO and WP:NOTDIR. Them From Space 21:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No, these abbreviations such as Bart. or B.A. are not original now and were not original then. The Britannica is thus a third-party source and we can readily add other sources from that year to supplement it, e.g. the Cyclopedia of law and procedure. We already divide our coverage of abbreviations into sublists per Lists of abbreviations and subdivisions arranged chronologically are as sensible as any. The example of Britannica is prima facie evidence that such lists are encyclopaedic and so there is no case to answer here and the matter should be speedily closed so that ordinary editing and discussion may continue at this and related articles per our editing policy Colonel Warden (talk) 21:36, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For practical purposes on Wikipedia, 99.99% of the time Britannica is a secondary source because it builds upon primary sources. So for an article on rock music, Britannica would be fine to cite. But in an article specifically about the contents of Britannica, citing Britannica is not good enough because it is a primary source, since the article deals with the source itself. To get secondary sourcing for this one would need to find an article in another encyclopedia, newspaper, etc. that talks about the abbreviations in use in 1911 (or in the 1911 Britannica, if you're going with the rename). Without independant referencing we could write articles about literally anything ever written just by citing the source, notability criteria be damned. Them From Space 05:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The topic here is the abbreviations, not Britannica. Britannica is being used as a source in the normal way. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:28, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note - as the "creator" of this article, I'll explain this articles presence. It was a splitting off of the 1911 EB content that originally formed the article abbreviation when created in 2001, as by 2004 when I took this action, there was enough new Wikipedia content describing the concept of an abbreviation to not necessitate this list. I split it off rather than just wipe it as at that time, it would have been a net loss to just remove it completely from Wikipedia (and at that time, removing "placeholder" content was not done with wild abandon). Really what would be logical is for someone to go through the articles linked from Lists of abbreviations just to make sure we have all the relevant ones on this 1911 list, then there would be no need to retain this list. zoney ♣ talk 20:52, 23 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:20, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and rename i suggested a rename above, but never gave my !vote, so here it is for visual clarity.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:43, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as although this list topic has a verifiable definition, there is no evidence to suggest it is notable outside of the primary source. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:05, 24 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Question for clarification. Are these abbreviations entries that are explained in the Britannica, just like "A.C.A.B." is in Wikipedia, or are these used in the running text, like "H.P.P.T." is in Richmond Royal Arch Chapter No. 3? --Lambiam 17:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to have some relation to the EB1911 article "Abbreviation". Wareh (talk) 19:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Thanks. Although I'm in favour of renaming the article, I'm against a possible renaming to "List of abbreviations used in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica", since they are generally not actually used by the EB, anymore than "A.C.A.B." is used by Wikipedia. Instead, I'd suggest "Abbreviations listed in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica". --Lambiam 20:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

However, the list contains several abbreviations I don't find in the 1911 EB article "Abbreviation": J. · J.C.D. · J.D. · S.J. · S.T.B. · S.T.D. What is curious is our lede, which – apart from the first sentence – has been taken verbatim from EB, including the wording "now or recently in use" – when was "S.T.P." last used? --Lambiam 20:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Agree with nom; why is 1911 important, and why are relying on one source for that notability? Shadowjams (talk) 09:56, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There is nothing special about 1911, and nobody has produced any evidence that this specific topic has received any significant coverage. Material in a book which happens to be published in a particular year is not coverage of the topic "so and so in the year such and such". If it were then we could extract any detail from any book and write an article about that topic in that year, thus producing thousands of new articles. Not notable at all. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mike Cline (talk) 22:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Although the Keeps outnumber the Deletes, this is an interesting discussion that can only get better when other than the usual suspects gather.--Mike Cline (talk) 22:01, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or transwiki to some other project. While the list of abbreviations used in the 1911 EB would be useful to have in one place if one were reading the 1911 EB, this is Wikipedia, not the 1911 EB. It appears that many of the abbreviations on this list already can be looked up on Wikipedia separately, either by the abbreviations linking to pages that have their definitions spelled out or to disambiguation pages or at least pages with "other uses" templates at the top linking to disambiguation pages. Thus, if one finds an abbreviation from this list used in another Wikipedia article (say, one copied from the 1911 EB), one should normally be able to look up the abbreviation directly to find its meaning rather than having to refer to this list. I would also note that the fact that an abbreviation is shown on this list with a particular meaning (say, "R.N." defined as "Royal Navy") does not mean that that was the only meaning the abbreviation had in 1911, just that it was the meaning that the EB had occasion to use; presumably the 1911 EB made more references to the Royal Navy than to registered nurses, even though the "R.N." abbreviation for "registered nurse" did exist at the time. Similarly, the absence of an abbreviation from this list does not mean that it did not exist in 1911, or even that it was not used in the 1911 EB, since the introduction to the list indicates that it was not meant to be all-inclusive. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:56, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. (Mine is the first vote above, to keep.) For me, the bottom line is this. The existence of the bulk of these in a list in the EB1911 article "Abbreviation" is confirmation (of what I believe could be shown otherwise too if necessary) that a list of abbreviations of this kind is thoroughly notable and encyclopedic knowledge of the kind our encyclopedia and others aspire to contain. Second, I think it is clear that, in the ideal world (a.k.a. the eventual state of Wikipedia towards which we work and aspire), the article does not keep any title with "1911" in it, but is instead Abbreviations in use in English-language publications vel sim. This article could serve as the root source for content ranging from the history of abbreviations, different styles of usage, etc., to the abbreviations themselves, listed according to whatever organization seems best when the subject is viewed in its totality. Now, to move to my third point, I think some caution is in order when rearranging and moving this content, because we simply have not even begun a discussion (and this is the wrong place for it) of what scheme of organization would be best. My bottom line is this: (A) I think an AfD discussion is a crude way to achieve a good renaming, and may well produce a renaming counter-productive from the point of view of the topic's future development, (B) I don't feel ready to throw out or disband what is, at least, a single coherent collection (related to the year 1911)--so that if we rename soon, I'd like to see an article with several other sections with expand tags, and the current content in a subsection that includes "1911," simply because we don't yet know how better to label and divide this material. Two final little points: (i) I suspect that this content was originally part of Abbreviation, and was broken off because it overwhelmed that article, (ii) I consider the statements "this is Wikipedia not EB1911" a bit less obviously true than they seem, since in many of the subjects I edit, a lot of our articles (say Lysias) still are essentially the EB1911 and are unlikely to evolve far beyond that soon. Wareh (talk) 18:37, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- To the extent that some Wikipedia articles are basically copied from EB1911, the abbreviations used in those articles can and should be linked to appropriate articles to explain them. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. There could be an arbitrary list for every such year. There is no point as it does not convey useful information. Xtzou (Talk) 18:43, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It hasn't been established why this particular list of abbreviations passes WP:N.Narthring (talk • contribs) 04:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you think of another case where content printed in the "article space" of EB1911 was deleted because the Wikipedia community deemed it non-notable? Wareh (talk) 03:22, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

keep This is a special case. The year is special and relevant because it is the year of publication of the source, and describes the contents. If we had such sources for every year, we could well have doubts about whether to have this particular one. But to the best of my knowledge , this is the only reasonably reliable list of the sort available for the period. I would retitle it as list of ... in the 11th ed. of the EB. ,but that's a detail. We could perfectly well do it for earlier if they have such lists, there are only a few of them really important. The next good one to do it for is the 14th, and we;d have insoluble copyright problems there. DGG ( talk ) 02:41, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Obviously this material is fit for an encyclopedia article.--Milowent (talk) 16:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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.