Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/History of wood carving

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. I've read through all of the comments (naturallly) and the only consensus I see is that this article needs some attention from a knowledgeable and competent editor. There is enough support for Deletion that I can't close this as Keep and I doubt that relisting would help as this discussion has lost momentum. So, I'm closing this as No consensus as I believe that reflects the entirety of the discussion. Here's hoping this article draws the attention of an editor interested in the art of wood carving. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:32, 8 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

History of wood carving[edit]

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I am nominating it on behalf of User:Drmies and User:Uncle G (the former has redirected this a while back). I think it merits an AfD discussion, and I restored it, an action that has been criticized by them. Their criticism of the article can be seen here. I am not convinced this needs a WP:TNT myself (IMHO the topic seems notable, and the article needs a rewrite, since it has been noted it is significantly based on dated Britannica 1911 content, and contains some problematic statements), but clearly, we need more opinions, and I dislike redirecting things without even a PROD. So here we go. PS. Unreferenced content can be removed per WP:V. Perhaps someone interested could try to rewrite it, even into a referenced, neutral and up to date stub? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:18, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Arts and History. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:18, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete there is an article that could be written about the craft's history, but dated Brittanica copy isn't it, and it would be easier to start over than try to fix this, which folks have tried for a decade. Since the copy is accessible, there is no need to preserve the history as a redirect either. A redlink may also help encourage creation Star Mississippi 03:52, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Indeed this is an important artistic medium (not a "craft"), but nobody seems interested in doing it up on WP; it should be much more than a "stub" Piotyrus. In what ways (other than prose style) do think the "Brittanica copy" is "dated", User:Star Mississippi? Johnbod (talk) 05:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Read my comments and the 13 years of additional criticism on the article's talk page. We were having a further such talk page discussion, and no-one wanted deletion. I explicitly suggested a rewrite, and even started looking around for sources on the same, and this deletion nomination in my name is dishonest. Drmies did not advocate deletion, either. This is abuse of AFD, and a dishonest nomination. Uncle G (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That ~ 75% of the article is about Europe and barely touches on anything contemporary or outside of the West. Someone reading this would easily think it's a dead art (no offense meant by craft, bad phrasing on my end) or that it's exclusively western, neither of which is true. It is important, and this article doesn't come anywhere near our standards. So yes, TNT. Star Mississippi 13:33, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If the majority of the article is about europe, lets remove the parts that are not and rename it to The history of wood carving in Europe. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 15:08, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as this 10,000 word article cites a whole one source, and admits that its in large parts lifted from Encyclopedia Britannica. The history of wood carving deserves an article, but not this piece of open plagiarism. Cortador (talk) 09:17, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It has always been tagged as using EB1911; most of Wikipedia on arts subjects started this way, this has just developed less than most. This vocab is inappropriate. Johnbod (talk) 03:03, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is an abuse of AFD, and far from this being on my behalf I pointed out beforehand that AFD isn't for this. AFD is not "votes for rewrites". Rewrites we just do, just like this text was just rewritten in 2005 once before when it was our wood carving article; with normal talk page discussion, which we were having. It doesn't need the administrator deletion tool, Drmies didn't use the administrator deletion tool, I simply started a discussion of a rewrite (a middle path between an editor who redirected this text back to the article that it came from and an editor who reinstated it in toto) and pointed to Wikipedia:WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica#The good, the bad and the ugly and didn't even edit the article (but simply asked whether we should rewrite it because it is really bad), and AFD is entirely wrong for this. This is dishonest. Uncle G (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Hang on a moment, no. The discussion appears to be whether there should be a TNT deletion based on the extent to which this article is derived from the Britannica material. Uncle G commented "I am strongly tempted to just kerrrzappp! this one."Special:Diff/1187674965 and kerrrzappping sounds like an admin tool deletion to me. For the record, I'm very much of the opinion that the appallingly lazy "One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain" which is cropping up more and more in Wikipedia articles, is going to be the death of Wikipedia. It is an unreference, a comment that some (but what??) of the above text is probably, but not guaranteed to be, a cut-and-paste plagiarism. It's an excuse rather than a source, a get-out-clause that in this case it's okay to plagiarise. And if all we're going to do is partially-plagiarise stuff that's conveniently not a copyright violation, why would anyone come here rather than simply Google? Go to Wikipedia, the place where humans who haven't even got the brains of an AI application will indiscriminately show you stuff that they possibly didn't even read, let alone write! Not a great look. So yes, there's a case for TNTing, but basically Uncle G is also right: it'd be a darned sight better if someone simply trimmed out all the copied material and got on with writing a better article. It didn't need AfD, but it was valid to bring it here. Elemimele (talk) 11:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - Not in my name it was not. And not when no-one wanted or said anything about deletion it was not. No-one did, and this is abuse of AFD. I even used the word "rewrites" twice in that very diff, alongside "editing, not deletion", so it's abundantly clear what I'm talking about even if one doesn't know the jargon. kerrrzappp! has been this sort of edit since 2005. This is not deletion, nor is it "TNT", coined years later by someone else for something else. It has been that way for approaching two decades, and I am mildly well known for this. Even to the point that someone made a WP:KERRRZAPPP shortcut after about 7 years of my doing this. Please catch up. Uncle G (talk) 13:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Then rewrite it. The article was ~~stealthily~~ boldly redirected. I reverted the redirect since I believe this merits a discussion (also given my experiences with proposed deletion - I do not believe deletion or redirect here would be uncontroversial). You objected to my actions, clealry implying you would prefer a redirect over the current article. Since I am not sure about that (this article is poor but it is not obvious to me it is so poor as to merit a WP:TNT treatment), we need to discuss it what to do (keep, delete, redirect, merge, rewrite, etc.). This is what AfD is for. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - Piotrus, I hope your reply was to Uncle G. I don't have a problem with you bringing the article here for discussion. I agree with your assessment; I don't think it's poor enough to merit TNT. I personally would delete the blatant copying because I personally don't like blatant copies even if they're legal, but I haven't done so because I don't currently have anything better to substitute for what I'd be deleting, and I think deleting legally-included text might be controversial without some consensus. Elemimele (talk) 13:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - You should have a problem. This is "Articles for deletion." It's not a hammer for rewrite discussions, which we were happily having. Uncle G (talk) 13:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - ... on reflection, it might have been better had all concerned discussed this at Talk:History of wood carving instead of Piotrus' talk-page. Elemimele (talk) 13:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        It might even have got there, although there's 13 years of discussion there already in the same vein, as well as some more discussion by Scope creep (e.g. "imperial bias") prior to that back on Talk:wood carving when it was that article. It was a perfectly fine discussion amongst the three of us, trying to find agreement on what to do (or at least I was) until this dishonest AFD nomination. Sometimes these happen on user talk pages. Sometimes they move into discussions on WikiProjects and article talk pages and RFCs. Sometimes they just get agreed and get done. Uncle G (talk) 13:40, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Elemimele It was (in reply to Uncle). I think you and me are on the same page. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:10, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - No, it is not. It is for deletion. It's in the title "Articles for deletion". There was nothing unclear about asking "Should we start again?" and talking of rewriting rewrite this from scratch. Nor was it unclear that it was Drmies, not me who asked about starting again and said "rewrite" several times, who made the redirect. This is an outright abuse of AFD, and to do it falsely in my name when I explicitly said beforehand that it would be wrong is worse still. Uncle G (talk) 13:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - Uncle G, I don't dispute for a moment that it was wrong of Piotrus to bring it here in your name. If you've got a problem with that, and Piotrus can't settle it with you, then ANI is the place to go, and it's certainly worth an enormous trout and an apology. The problem I have with the discussion that was supposed to be going on is that I can't find it. That might be my stupidity, but all I'm seeing at the article's talk-page is a few people complaining over a long period that it's a rubbish copy, with no suggestions what to do about it. Elemimele (talk) 13:31, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - We have a whole WikiProject at Project:WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica#The good, the bad and the ugly with suggestions, the problems of 1911 Britannica text not being at all unknown to us for many years, and rewriting is one of the tools. "restructure and rewrite the whole article" is the very first item. You even just linked to one person making a suggestion — me! I quite clearly suggested starting again and rewriting from scratch. And on the other side I was at the same time talking to Drmies about sources that I had found. I have even linked to where this was already rewritten once, years ago, above. (I'm not seeking administrator tool use of that form, either, by the way.) It's wrong to seek administrator deletion tool use in my name here, but it's doubly-wrong to just throw editorial discussions at AFD at all. Articles for deletion is not a general discussion forum for cleanup, rewrites, and editing 18-year-old EB1911 dren. It is for deletion. AFD is not Project:cleanup is another long-standing piece of jargon. Uncle G (talk) 14:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        @Uncle G: I'm sorry, I seem to have caused offence. I'm sorry, I was unaware that this Britannica project existed, nor that it was discussing the History of wood carving article. I linked to you only because I came across this discussion at AfD. I think it possible that there will be other editors who are interested in wood-carving but not in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, so the question is how to arouse their attention to do something about the article? Yes, AfD is not clean-up, but AfD is a reasonable place to bring things if TNT is a reasonable and justifiable outcome. Unfortunately it can be very difficult for those of us who are fairly recent editors to know about the multitude of projects. So far as this AfD is concerned, my !vote is Not bad enough for TNT, so carry on the discussion in an appropriate place. Elemimele (talk) 15:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Uncle G AfD is for deletion as well as for estabilishing when deletion is not appopriate. Since I objected to this being deleted without a discussion, we are here to judge the consensus for deletion or retaining the article. It's as simple as that. And yes, I brought it here for you because you said on my talk page that this article... should not exist on Wikipedia. If you were not asking for an AfD, think more carefully what you write next time. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:14, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Johnbod and the fact that Wikipedia uses the eleventh edition of Britannica as a valid source. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Is there really any doubt that ~20 minutes good searching will turn up good sources? Hyperbolick (talk) 00:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, we're now in a bit of a mess because we've got a rapidly-forming keep-consensus on an article that no one actually likes. There is a discussion about it on Piotrus's talk-page, User_talk:Piotrus#History of wood carving in which no one likes the article, Uncle G writing "This is biased, myopic, tripe from the British Imperial era; and shouldn't stand in Wikipedia", while Drmies writes "This article is a piece of crap and you know it". Uncle G has reasonably suggested starting again, but I think doesn't want a TNT deletion. The article's own talk-page has no concrete suggestions what to do (except changing AD to CE). If we close this as "keep" at the moment, all we end up with is a few discussions buried in places where no one will find them, and no actual change, and still an article that no one defends (I believe the keep-!votes are based on the subject being notable rather than the quality of the current article, but feel free to contradict me!). I will start a discussion on the article's talk-page asking for concrete suggestions about how we can proceed. Elemimele (talk) 14:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Elemimele The best outcome would be if someone were to boldl rewrite this. Or at least remove unreferenced/dated parts. But it is easier to vote than to (re)write, and sadly it is not a topic that motivates me. As for nobody liking the article, the related issue is whether we like not having that poor article more or less. I.e. is the current poor article better than the redirect would be? We don't need to like what we have to like not having anyting even less. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:29, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's not that bad - the topic has hardly moved on since 1911, & the text from then complains that there was little to report from the 19th century. None or very little of it is "unreferenced". The basic story is covered, & most concerns relate purely to ye olde prose style, although if you do know anything about the subject there are some odd omissions - where are Tilman Riemenschneider and Veit Stoss? The non-Euro coverage is very poor, sure. Imo the current poor article is still much better than the redirect would be. I agree a full rewrite is best, though some sections like Italian_Renaissance_sculpture#Wood can be slotted in. The article tries to cover wood as a material in sculpture and practical woodcarving for furniture, choirstalls etc together, which is probably a mistake. Most of the article really covers the latter. Some or all of this should probably be split off/left and a new Wood sculpture done. The furniture etc could be restricted to "in Europe", vastly reducing the extra work needed. But the Afd needs to close as keep first. Johnbod (talk) 08:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Clearly a notable topic based on the mammoth Britannica article, which is almost all history. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 05:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 11:13, 5 December 2023 (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.