Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/English words with uncommon properties

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2011 November 7.
For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:12, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rationale added by implied request at DRV. The policy based delete arguments here surround a lack of an encyclopaedic scope with unsourced original research being added as a result as well as suggestions of SYNTH content. Deletion arguments were backed by reference to policy such as LSC and OR. The keep side mostly relied on assertion and failed to effectively rebut the deletion arguments and where they did refer to policy misinterpreted it - for example arguing that LSC isn't a reason for deletion negates the fact that it is a content guidelines with a clear inference is that content that doesn't meet the standard can be removed. If you did that here the whole list disappears, which = delete. In such a situation the solid policy based reasoning wins and the outcome is therefore to delete. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

English words with uncommon properties[edit]

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This is inherently WP:OR and WP:SYNTHESIS. Its only inclusion criterion is directly contradicted in the second sentence for "interest" which also makes it inherently WP:TRIVIAl. A quick survey of what's included in this list is an arbitrary—almost random—list of words which could include or exclude tens of thousands of entries. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:31, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:16, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This article was previously nominated for deletion, albeit under a different name, here. Joefridayquaker (talk) 21:33, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Very interesting and entertaining. However an encyclopedia is for more, how shall I say it?, factual information -- not someone's opinions (however erudite and clever). -Steve Dufour (talk) 22:35, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -

a list of words with unusual features is definitely encyclopedic. Also keep because it is the primary Article of the Category of the same name. Although there may be an element of OR in it, WP:COMMONSENSE tells us "Even if a contribution "violates" the precise wording of a rule, it might still be a good contribution." Exit2DOS ^{• Ctrl • Alt • Del} 00:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete for failing WP:LSC. It doesn't even spell out the criteria except in the title. "Uncommon properties" is neither unambiguous nor objective. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
keep—the subject of the list, as a grouping in itself, has an entire journal devoted to it: Word Ways. that ought to settle WP:LISTN for this list, which strikes me as the only guideline that's relevant to deletion of the article. whether or not it fails LSC is a matter for editing, not for deletion. the same is true for complaints about OR or SYNTH, and i agree that there is some of each in there. if the subject of the list is notable, then failures of those guidelines should be hashed out by editing the article, not by bringing it to afd. the same goes for complaints about the title of the article. fix it if you don't like it, but delete only articles about NN subjects.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 03:25, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the relevance of Word Ways. Word Ways is not listed as a reference in the article. That makes it seem like it's not a periodical that regularly publishes lists of crazy words, which is the only way I can see that it even arguably supports the article's appropriateness for inclusion. Second, even if Word Ways was a magazine that published, say, crazy words with lots of vowels one month and bizarro words with lots of consonants the next, that doesn't mean "english words with uncommon properties" is an appropriate list article for wikipedia. I don't think "unusual cat Halloween costumes" (with subtypes: pirate, supermodel, etc.) would be an appropriate list, but there may well be a regular feature in Cat Fancy about that.

Your second point is stronger — revise the article rather than delete it. But I see two problems with this. First, the overwhelming majority of this article is completely unreferenced. Is the shortest words with all six vowels (including y) ... oxygeusia as the article claims? Is tsktsks the longest word without any vowels? I have absolutely no idea. (I can't come up conflicting examples, but that's not the point.) So I don't know that it's feasible to (1) leave the article until references are provided or (2) expect that 90% of the article will be deleted. The second problem is that even if references were provided to substantiate all these things, that wouldn't change the fact that the list topic itself is inappropriately vague, boundless, and subjective.

Clearly, a lot of work went into this, and the article is interesting and kind of fun in a certain way. But I don't think it's an appropriate list. YMMV. AgnosticAphid talk 02:38, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

well, ok. the important point is that word ways publishes articles about kinds of "crazy words" rather than lists of them. if it published just lists of them, i think it'd be a primary source for our purposes. the point of it is that the fact that it publishes articles about kinds of "crazy words" is that the subject "crazy words" is notable as a list topic, since it's covered as a group in reliable sources, which is what listn requires. anyway, here is the latest table of contents of word ways so you can see roughly what i mean. the articles aren't available online right now, unfortunately. the fact that it's not a reference in the article now is irrelevant.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per alf.laylah.wa.laylah, and shows many of the notable idiosyncrasies with the English language. Lugnuts (talk) 07:53, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete because it's (1) inherently subjective (2) impossible to complete (3) inherently trivial and (4) mostly unreferenced. What is and isn't an uncommon property? This list cannot be completed or subjected to any sort of rational limiting principle. I could think of another 30 possible categories for this list off the top of my head. But let's consult the talk page for some ideas:

Words that contain consecutive alphabets and nothing else ( obviously the alphabets' order is not preserved.)
"Words containing both Q and W"?
Words ending in -jun
Last word in dictionary
???

I certainly find this list interesting, and it seems like it might come in useful if you were playing Scrabble. But I don't believe it's encyclopedic because its entirely subjective and mostly unreferenced. AgnosticAphid talk 22:07, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per alf.laylah.wa.laylah. I've worked on several lists like this and so I appreciate the arguments by LSC and I have a strong distaste for "unbounded lists". Nevertheless, when the topic is notable then I find that strict editing is the best solution in the end, not deletion. The examples in this article have been the subjects of numerous logological puzzles and challenges through the years. Many have appeared in print and in reliable sources. I consider this article to be the linguist's analog to mathematical puzzle - another rough list of recreational applications that have appeared in the RSes within the field of math. -Thibbs (talk) 23:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per WP:TRIVIA. Stuartyeates (talk) 05:58, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Split There is suitable content for a number of articles here. However, the overall subject has no common characteristic and cannot really be supported as an article topic. It would amount to either OR or total vagueness. Many or perhaps even all of the sections , as self-contained entities, would be another matter, DGG ( talk ) 20:42, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - This seems to have problems with both WP:OR and WP:NOTE. I cannot find any sources, and none have been provided, which specifically mark these words as notable. Moreover, the properties chosen seem to be completely arbitrary - why is it that "Words with not vowels except w" is a notable property when any other property of words is not? There is no attempt to demonstrate what make a property 'uncommon'. For any of this article to be kept, each property would need a reference to demonstrate that the property is indeed uncommon and worthy of mention in Wikipedia. ItsZippy ^{(talk • contributions)} 21:56, 6 November 2011 (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.