Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Prout patet per recordum

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 Merge. Sandstein's suggestion is the consensus here, so the appropriate close is merge. Since the proposed target is not currently in a state that would allow merging there, further work and discussion (preferably by editors familiar to the subject) is needed, so I have not added List of legal Latin terms as the "official" target. Consensus is in favor of merging this article (and the AFD is only about this article) to a list of such phrases but the target can change if further discussion favors such a change. Regards So Why 08:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Prout patet per recordum

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Wikipedia is neither a Latin dictionary, nor a glossary of legal terms. Powers ^T 13:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. --Fartherred (talk) 22:08, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The nomination rationale is incorrectly stated. Perhaps what was intended was

Wikipedia is intended—per policy / guideline—to be neither a Latin dictionary, nor a glossary of legal terms.

In fact, Wikipedia is those things. See Category:Latin words and phrases, Category:Latin legal phrases, and Category:Legal terms, which include many hundreds if not thousands of entries. ^Bongo_matic 14:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, those are categories for articles that are related to latin legal phrases and legal terms; the articles are never supposed to be about those terms, they're at most about the meaning of those terms. It's subtly different, but a really important distinction.- Wolfkeeper 14:06, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was borrowing the simple declarative form of WP:NOT. Powers ^T 20:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to a listified version of List of legal Latin terms, and merge the other stubs listed there likewise. That would make them part of a technical glossary, which is an acceptable form of list per WP:DICDEF#Wikipedia is not a usage guide, which states in its last paragraph that "Some articles are encyclopedic glossaries (i.e., more than simply lists of dictionary definitions) on the jargon of various industries and fields; such articles must be informative, not guiding in nature, because Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, or textbook." Keeping this article as a permastub is not helpful, since it does not appear that much more than this one sentence can be said about this phrase. Sandstein 14:45, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your suggestion goes far beyond the scope of this discussion. Concepts such as habeus corpus and ad valorum are not simple matters which should compressed into some concise glossary, as can be seen from their articles. Our topic here is more than a form of words; it is also a legal concept and matter of precise ritual. Explaining this properly requires more than a single sentence. I have made a start on this but don't fully grasp all the details myself yet. If we have established that the topic is notable and so should not be deleted then there is nothing more to be done here. Rewriting great swathes of legal articles is a larger task which would be ultra vires. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:47, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Any article that can grow beyond a perma-stub should indeed be a full article (in these cases, with summary in and link from a glossary article. As per the other glossaries). -- Quiddity (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge - agree with Sandstein's reasoning. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:56, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Transwiki and then Merge to List of legal Latin terms to form a glossary, I suppose. Glossaries are really weird in the Wikipedia though; really they should all be in Wiktionary.- Wolfkeeper 19:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral (as article creator). I agree that a standalone article isn't the ideal way of including this sort of information in the encyclopaedia - on the other hand, changing List of legal Latin terms from the simple list it is now to a proper glossary will involve quite a bit of work, and this AfD is not the right forum to discuss a change of such magnitude. I think the term should be in the encyclopaedia somewhere - I'm not particularly bothered whether it has its own article, but it seems like the least-bad solution at the moment. Tevildo (talk) 22:41, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
delete The "Prout patet per recordum" article functionally duplicates the entry in "The Free Dictionary" for that phrase but Wikipedia will not functionally duplicate the Legal dictionary section of The Free Dictionary any time soon. Keeping phrases like this with "requiescat in pace" and "Lebellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis" and a random assortment of odd Latin phrases serves no reasonable purpose. It is not and will not be comprehensive in any reasonable category. We should not add one more member to this mismatched menagerie. We lack the authority to deal with this mess as it ought to be handled but we can avoid making it worse by deleting "Prout patet per recordum."--Fartherred (talk) 05:28, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per Sandstein -- Quiddity (talk) 22:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per Sandstein's argument. An overall glossary makes sense, but not an article per phrase. --Malleus Fatuorum 04:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

comment Let us not give the wrong impression to someone who might read this AfD as to what the votes mean. When the AfD is closed, the decision is either keep or delete. The vote of merge can be understood as a vote to keep until the article is merged with some more suitable article and then delete the word article title; but the closing administrator will not do that work. In a recent AfD about "How now brown cow" there were votes of merge by Jujutacular, Datheisen, Ultraexactzz and Chris Johnson. It was closed as "keep without prejudice against merge" on the 27th of October, but a merge has not happened yet. An AfD is not necessary for a merge, but I hope in this case that if there is a vote to merge, those who voted that way will get together and do the work.

As to Bongomatic's contention that a few hundred word articles failing to follow the policy that Wikipedia is not a dictionary means that there is no such policy, there are three million articles that do follow policy. It seems like a case of the fly on the steer addressing the rancher and saying, "I am no longer a fly speck. I deserve some respect. Tie that steer's tail down so I can get to the serious business of producing more of my kind." I am just disappointed that so many get taken in by Bongomatic's argument. Let's hope that the policies we actually follow do not turn Wikipedia into a maggot infested corpse.

In any case some of the Category:Latin words and phrases and the List of legal Latin terms are not hopelessly irredeemable dictionary articles such as Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis and Magna Carta--Fartherred (talk) 06:03, 13 November 2009 (UTC)(minor fix)--Fartherred (talk) 16:14, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You misconstrue my point. In no way am I saying that "there is no such policy". I am saying that to the extent it applies to this sort of entry (I am not making any claim as to the extent, despite the ironic tone of my original comment) is inconsistent with policy, policy is not being followed.

I am not even making a claim about the consensus of thoughtful editors with respect to this sort of entry, though of course there is a reasonable possibility (I haven't done any of the research, nor do I intend to) that editors who opine at AfDs have a consensus that varies from policy. There could be an empirical survey done of how such articles fare at AfD to add to the received wisdom at WP:OUTCOMES. The fact is that consensus frequently differs from policy and guideline in many subtle or not subtle ways, and in some of those ways, it is consensus that matters.

My original comment was not accompanied by an opinion to keep this article, but was intended as a humorous way to point out that practice and policy / guideline may differ, and that such differences may (or may not) be instructive. ^Bongo_matic 06:35, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My thanks to Bongomatic for serving as an exemplary straw man, even if this role was unintentional. His backing away from and disowning the argument that I tried to pin on him served to discredit that argument as much as I could have hoped for. I will not require the service of a sock puppet.

To elaborate upon Bongomatic's cogent and apt analysis of the relation between policy and consensus, consensus, to the extent that it exists on Wikipedia, is policy. The written statements of policy are attempts to summarize that consensus, leaving as few exceptions as practical. The usefulness and necessity of written policy in communicating consensus is such that it can be desirable to modify the consensus to make it easier to summarize.--Fartherred (talk) 15:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep There is more to this topic than translating this phrase from Latin to English. The correct inclusion of the phrase in legal pleadings and other matters was essential. Use some other phrase such as hoc paratus est verificare and your case was toast. There are extensive legal works which discuss these fine points of jurisprudence which are almost as complex and baffling as Wikipedia's volumes of policies. The topic should therefore not be deleted purely on the basis of some blanket prejudice against Latin phrases. In the case of requiescat in pace referred to above, I found that there was plenty of scope to write upon such matters given time to properly research them and this is the thrust of our editing policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

comment Colonel Warden ignores WP:NOTGUIDE when he warns that substituting "hoc paratus est verificare" for "prout patet per recordum" would harm a person's case in court. Wikipedia is not in the business of training second rate amateur lawyers. I do not oppose inclusion of a "Prout patet per recordum" article because it is a Latin phrase, I oppose it because it is a phrase and not a thing. Phrases would ordinarily belong in a phrase dictionary. The one in question belongs in the legal phrase dictionary that it came out of. Including the warning about not using the phrase correctly does not improve the article. Even if the warning would not be included in a legal phrase dictionary, it is still about the phrase, and there is no special reason that the group of legal phrases that have been put in Wikipedia as a portion of all legal phrases should be in Wikipedia.

Colonel Warden seems to take the position that because editors have been putting a few hundred word and phrase articles into Wikipedia over the last few years without people successfully opposing them that constitutes a policy of accepting word and phrase articles. I disagree. That is a bad way to make policy. There has never been consensus for those articles all along.

Colonel Warden's butchering of the "Prout patet per recordum" article when he edited it on the 16th of November at 18:23hours does not give confidence in his good judgement. He added a reference for the warning about the improper use of "prout patet per recordum" and removed the reference for its meaning.--Fartherred (talk) 06:11, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The appeal to WP:NOTGUIDE is inapplicable because we are concerned here with the history and significance of the phrase, not just its plain meaning. See Pleading for a more extensive article on the matter. This would be the most appropriate merge target, if we were here to discuss merger but we are not. The case in question is whether this article is so lacking in merit and hopeless of improvement that it should be summarily deleted. It should not - the petition is disruption - an attempt to remove a whole class of articles for no good policy reason. Colonel Warden (talk) 08:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Please retract your claim that this AfD was opened in bad faith. Powers ^T 14:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

comment Some editors look at the exemptions to the policy that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and think that they have a loophole that they could sail the USS Nimitz through. We should have some understanding of the allowable exemptions. The exemplary articles Macedonia (terminology) and Truthiness are really quite exceptional.

The use of the name, Macedonia, for various places in the region of the Balkans is integral to the complexities of the history of that area for many centuries. The lack of a single geographical location to associate with the name makes an article on a country named "Macedonia" difficult, and the name itself have been the subject of diplomatic dispute.

While politicians have probably been making high sounding empty statements since before recorded history, the satirical use of "truthiness" was the epitome of current comedic response to such statements. It was appropriate to put the article about that satire and people's response to it under the title Truthiness.

Other word article topics might not be quite so exceptional and still rate an exemption from the Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy but Prout patet per recordum is not one of them. It is one drop in a vast sea of information that gets put into a lawyer's head in law school and in work as an associate. It is of interest to lawyers and law school professors but rates no exemption to be included as a phrase based article in Wikipedia.--Fartherred (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge Prout patet per recordum to a listified version of List of legal Latin terms, as this is especially obscure; I've been lawyer for 17 years and I've never seen the phrase. No comment on the others legal Latin phrases, but I'd lean towards keeping all of those. Bearian (talk) 01:09, 17 November 2009 (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.