Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vaping

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 redirect‎ to Electronic cigarette. Consensus is that this article is a WP:CONTENTFORK of Electronic cigarette and that the latter article does a better job at describing the subject in an encyclopedic matter. ^Complex/_Rational 22:46, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Vaping

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This isn't a typical AfD. The subject article is quite old, it's extremely long and detailed, and it has 197 (one hundred and ninety-seven) inline citations to reliable sources. It's an article about a blatantly, obviously, hugely notable subject.

But the article also has huge problems that would be laborious to repair, and I propose to redirect it to Electronic cigarette. I could have done that without using the AfD process, but I'm choosing to use AfD, because this is a highly-developed article that's relatively underwatched, and I don't want to do an end-run around the community consensus processes.

I'm particularly concerned about this because in this case we're missing one of our key checks and balances against deletion-by-redirection. I think it would be unfair of me to discuss the redirection with its creator QuackGuru. He's topic-banned from everything related to medicine, broadly construed, since remedy #6 of this Arbcom case. He isn't allowed to participate in discussions like this so it would be quite unfair of me to tell him of this AfD. Note that this article wasn't created in violation of his topic ban -- QuackGuru started it in June 2019 and he wasn't topic banned for nearly a year afterwards.

The problems with this article are as follows:

(1) WP:SYNTH, and arguably, borderline WP:POVFORK. Prior to his topic ban, QuackGuru's method for building medical articles was to search for sources that scrupulously meet WP:RS, then scour them for a phrase or sentence that supported his view of the subject, and then copy/paste that phrase or sentence, citing it very carefully and precisely. The practical effect of this has been to create an article that's more hostile to electronic cigarette usage than the sources warrant.

(2) It's redundant and out of date. We have a more balanced article at electronic cigarette which is maintained, which more accurately reflects the worldwide scientific consensus, and which already contains all the encyclopaedic information from vaping.

(3) WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. This article is easily understood by an accomplished reader, but it's not accessible to a substantial part of our target audience. It would need to be fully re-written in plain, clear English, in which each paragraph introduces, explains, and summarizes what the reliable sources say about one thing. And if we did that, it would look so much like the content we already have at Electronic cigarette#Use that it's a pointless exercise.

So I do hope that the community will authorise me to redirect this content.—S Marshall T/C 12:49, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. —S Marshall T/C 12:49, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pondering whether it should qualify for its own article or have it be redirected. I'm currently leaning towards it being redirected. I don't there is anything that should be covered by the Vaping article that the Electronic cigarette article shouldn't cover, but I am open to changing my mind. Interstellarity (talk) 00:20, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect It's a shame that all the hard work has gone into this vaping article, but I'm inclined to agree with the nomination to BLAR. Regarding content that could be salvaged, I think File:Various types of e-cigarettes.jpg has more encyclopedic value than File:All e-cigarettes vs. Juul.jpg, but I suppose that is a discussion to be made on that page. For the prose, I can see a full attempt at merging as a total nightmare with not much benefit, since the redirect target is already well written and perhaps WP:TOOBIG at 11617 words.

Earwig broke when trying to run it on this article... interesting. Another remark, the e-cigarettes article says vaping 120 times compared to this articles' 84. Obviously not a good idea to use WP:A10 here but that is what it seems to me in essence- vaping is the act of using an e-cigarette, and both articles have a "use" section. It does seem a bit like a POVFORK. Darcyisverycute (talk) 05:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that File:Various types of e-cigarettes.jpg is very much like File:CDC_electronic_cigarettes_October_2015_(cropped).png, which the target article already uses.—S Marshall T/C 10:02, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star Mississippi 17:06, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: One is an article about the "thing", other is about "using the thing", but there does seem to be some overlap. I'd expect the vaping article to be more about the social aspects of the use of e-cigarettes, rather than about the physical object. Oaktree b (talk) 23:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect as suggested seems ok, largely duplicates the e-cig article. Oaktree b (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect as a duplication of electronic cigarette; subjects such as this (and e.g. telephone v.s. telephoning) where the object is only notable in its use should not have separate articles. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect per above, although I do not support a permanent prohibition on any article covering this topic to exist. Parenthetically, I will note that both this article and the redirect target seem to devote a lot of time to explaining "motivations" and "causes" et cetera, seemingly unaware that sometimes adults do things because they enjoy them. Smoking is one of a few leisure activities where most of the people who write about it in academic sources dislike it and hate the people who do it (wouldn't it be jarring if rock climbing listed ten motivations, including lack of moral constitution etc, and then made a brief aside to say that some people enjoyed it before immediately returning to a long explanation of how the equipment was expensive?) jp×g 🗯️ 08:54, 16 January 2024 (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.