Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beard-second

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 to List of humorous units of measurement. MBisanz ^talk 05:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Beard-second

The article is a joke and does not refer to an actual term Ucanlookitup (talk) 04:49, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

• Delete Appears to be a rarely used joke measurement. Lacks significant coverage in reliable sources. Duffbeerforme (talk) 06:42, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. Older versions of this page suggest this was invented as part of a "teaching exercise," which suggests to me that this was something made up for a textbook problem somewhere if it exists at all. If so, it's unlikely to be notable. The only things making me hesitate here are a) the article's existed since 2005 and b) the cited Google calculator search does in fact work, but none of that proves anything and it's not like there aren't other obscure measurements or easter eggs on Google. Actual searches for "beard-second" failed to turn up anything that didn't appear to be descendant of the Wikipedia article. BryanG (talk) 06:51, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep. This article should clearly have been deleted as original fluff when it was first written, however it now, for whatever reason, represents a genuine unit of measurement used for teaching Fermi style mathematics. (Mr. Celery (talk) 08:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC))
  • What exactly changed in between then and now? WillOakland (talk) 10:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Delete, this is not a joke repository. WillOakland (talk) 10:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Keep. A google search for "x meters in beard-seconds" will give a result from google calculator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.237.106 (talk) 16:59, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • It also says that the "answer to life the universe and everything" is 42. Google calculator is not without it's sense of humor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ucanlookitup (talk • contribs) 2009-02-28 17:03:09
  • It also answers the question "how many smoots in a mile", A smoot was an inside joke at MIT. "recognition" by Google calculator does not make it a legitimate term Ucanlookitup (talk) 20:21, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• Keep. While uncommon, this actually is used by some physicists I know; albeit this a really a joke unit, so it should be described as such. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 22:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
  • This is, of course a common joke. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 22:55, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. Something this dubious needs coverage in multiple reliable sources. At best, Google is a tertiary source. And the citation of one out-of-print handbook I can't seem to find anywhere (not in the local library nor the university library here) is not very reliable, at least to me. Copysan (talk) 23:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
• I've just looked for sources, too. As BryanG says, everyone else appears to have received their information from Wikipedia, with many people even directly pointing to this article. So I went back to the original source cited in the first revision of the article. (The source currently cited was added two and a half years later, by another editor.) It doesn't exist any more, and is not available in the Internet Archive. However, I found an excerpt from it, quoted elsewhere. It's a question, asking whether such a unit exists. (Ironically, I discovered that here, in 2006, another person answered a copy of that question. But by that time Wikipedia mirrors had of course been repeating this very article all across the WWW for a couple of months.)

  The earliest discussion of this that I can find is Kemp Benett Kolb writing in the Journal of Irreproducible Results — a joke article, with fake citations (the "J. Of Things That Ought to Be Dn"), in a non-serious publication. There's nothing suitable as source material for an encylopaedia article there. Fiction is not fact.

  I can find no reliable source documenting this subject that doesn't implicitly rely upon the correctness of this very article, and there's nothing to support this article's correctness. It may well be a common joke, Member, but no-one has ever reliably and seriously documented it. That's a necessary step. Knowledge must be researched, published, fact checked, and peer reviewed, outside of Wikipedia, first. That includes facts about jokes and hoaxes. There's no evidence that that happened in this case, and no way for readers to check either that this article is correct or that the subject even really exists at all. Wikipedia is not in the business of parrotting science jokes as if they were actual science, nor is it in the business of documenting jokes that haven't already been documented.

  This is wholly unverifiable, and transformation of a joke into what is effectively a hoax article. Delete. Uncle G (talk) 01:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• Delete. A reasonable joke but not suitable for publication in an academic concept. Plays on scientific public image and sexist stereotypes (beards are not essential to the study of physics) and unusable in any case as a metric as beard growth rates vary widely, e.g. between European and Asiatic races. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.79.45.215 (talk) 02:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
• Merge This obviously belongs with the millihelen and I find that we have many such units at List of humorous units of measurement. Kolb's version seems an adequate source for this and I have provided a proper citation. Colonel Warden (talk) 21:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Kolb's version is a joke, as I pointed out above. You have just cited a jokebook as a source. Read its cover. That's the worst application of the Wikipedia:Reliable sources guideline that there could be. Jokes as sources support having inaccurate information in the encyclopaedia. Please go back to the Five Pillars. We aren't aiming to have an inaccurate encyclopaedia. Uncle G (talk) 12:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Many a true word is spoken in jest. See Parkinson's Law for another example of how we may present a jocular topic in an educational way. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:33, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
      • By resorting to inapplicable ahporisms, you're reaching now. This isn't a case of a true word being spoken in jest. Nor is it a case of a jocular topic that has been seriously documented, as Parkinson's Law has been. This is a case of someone writing a mock journal article, in a clearly marked mock journal (the JoIR, mentioned above), that is republished in a clearly marked book of humour, and an encyclopaedist despite all of that taking that journal article seriously. Remember where the line is. We're writing an encyclopaedia here. We don't include intentionally false information in it. That's hoax vandalism, in case anyone is unclear on this. That's exactly what you are doing, though. Think on this: There's actually zero difference between your actions here and the actions of hoaxers who make up stuff and defend it by citing fake or silly sources. Your intentions are different, but your actions are the same. And you know that the source isn't factual, just as hoaxers know that their sources are jokes. If we cross the line simply in order to support a stance at AFD, then we're damaging the encyclopaedia to make a point. Uncle G (talk) 12:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
• Merge per Colonel Warden Ucanlookitup (talk) 22:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Note that User:Ucanlookitup is the nominator, who now seems to be withdrawing his proposal that the article be deleted. His willingness to keep an open mind is commendable. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
    • Thanks Colonel. I'm not technically withdrawing the nomination because I believe the process is a good one and will lead to a good resolution. I was however swayed by the points you raised. To clarify a bit, I was concerned that Wikipedia was being cast as the butt of a joke. Identifying it as a joke eliminates that issue. The background you added (and the later additions of Googolit), add a bit of historical context. Like Smoots, I think is worth preserving.
• Keep/Merge. As an educator, I support keeping this article for the following reasons:

1. The unit appears in Nordling and Österman's oft-cited text and, as corroborated by Member, Mr. Celery, and myself, has surfaced in physics lectures through the years. Its appearance in Google calculator further documents it, and allows educators to use it in fun unit conversion assignments.
2. As implied in the article, this is a tangible example that helps students understand compound units including not only the light year, but also Foot-pound, Newton meter, etc.
3. This is one of the most intuitive illustrations of the scale of the nanometer I've come across. The typical comparisons to a centimeter, millimeter, or the width of a human hair are abstract by comparison.
4. In the spirit of the Smoot, this is a (somewhat) commonly used unit that brings some lightheartedness and accessibility to an otherwise dry subject matter. Like the Smoot, the beard-second is imprecise, but useful in order-of-magnitude determinations.

213.79.45.215, I don't see this as a sexist intimation that all physicists should have beards, but as an indication that at least one physicist either had, or was familiar with someone who had, a beard when he or she defined the unit. --Googolit (talk) 23:27, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• Weak keep A joke (I thought the Beard was clearly based on the real Barn (unit) used in nuclear physics), but one which appears to be known elsewhere too. Astronaut (talk) 03:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Only because of Wikipedia in the first place, and there's no reason to suppose that this article is accurate — a goal for which we strive here through the proxy of verifiability from reliable sources. The fact that the article now gives two entirely different values for the unit, based upon two different jokes, should be a big clue that this isn't actually accurate information from reliable sources. Uncle G (talk) 12:01, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
• Keep Maybe it was an unknown joke, but the genie's out of the bottle now. Maybe it should be kept not as a unit but as an article about the phenomenon, with a note as to what the purported value is. Just because something wasn't notable doesn't mean it's not now. Metzby (talk) 16:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
• Merge per Colonel Warden to List of humorous units of measurement. The sourcing is not really sufficient for an independent article, but it fits just fine with the joke subarticle of List of unusual units of measurement. - Eldereft (cont.) 17:23, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
  • The sourcing isn't sufficient for anything. Have you read the source? It's a hoax. The front cover of the book tells us that. It's a fake journal article in a humourous publication. This isn't an expert writing a factual article documenting established knowledge. This is someone making up counterfactual information for amusement. The sign on the door here says "encyclopaedia", not "joke book". We're not in the business of taking clearly marked joke sources and accepting them as true. We have no evidence that this is an unusual unit of measurement. We have no evidence that it's a unit of measurement at all. There's not a single non-hoax non-joke source in existence that says so. Remember the sign on the door. Uncle G (talk) 12:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
• Keep - I like Metzby's argument. We will find more legitimate sources in time. Alternately I support a merge to List of humorous units of measurement. -FrankTobia (talk) 02:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Will we? What you appear to be really saying is that whilst we have zero sources now, and this information is clearly false, yet more people will start to believe the counterfactual information currently in Wikipedia, as many clearly already do, and will accept it as true, and that, eventually, good sources will document this, based upon nothing more than Wikipedia's long-standing promulgation, popularization, and affirmation of a joke. At which point we can turn around and use those as sources. That's bootstrapping knowledge into existence from thin air. Do you really think that the purpose of an encyclopaedia is to turn falsehood into fact in this way? Is that really your conception of our task? Uncle G (talk) 12:24, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
    • This article is not false or counterfactual. This unit is, of course, whimsical and not standardised but it is not so very different to the barleycorn, say, which is a natural unit which still has some currency in UK/US shoe sizes. From what is said above, this unit has some educational usage and we may be sure that these educators are not trying to mislead their students. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:29, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
      • It is counterfactual. Come now! You've read Kolb. You cited it. You saw that it was a joke. You saw the book's cover and saw that it was a jokebook, collecting jokes from the JoIR from over the years. It says so. You saw that the joke parodied real scientific articles, with patently silly citations. You know that this is a falsehood. Please don't pretend otherwise.

        We have an article repeating what that joke humourously asserts as if it were fact. Indeed, the article goes beyond the joke. The joke says that there is a "proposed unit". (Clearly, there isn't even a proposal for such a unit. The statement that there is, is part of the joke.) The article says that this is a unit. This is entirely different to the barleycorn, which is a seriously documented real unit of measure (to be found in non-joke sources, such as Jones' 1963 book on weights and measures), not a non-existent unit of measure that someone wrote a joke article about for amusement.

        Please think about what you are asserting here, and think about the line that you're crossing. If you want an article that really is directly comparable to this, it's The Dave (AfD discussion) — a joke unit whose inclusion is being supported with fake sources by editors who like the joke. That is a direct parallel to this, not barleycorns. Think about that. Your actions place you alongside those editors there, campaigning for the inclusion of a joke that isn't true in Wikipedia. This is the line that you are crossing, simply to support a general stance at AFD. Please don't cross it. Uncle G (talk) 18:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• Merge to List of humorous units of measurement. It is only "counterfactual" if we assert that this is a real unit. Asserting that it is a joke unit in a list of humorous units of measurement seems to be the proper way to deal with this. I don't see why "joke sources" can't be used as sources to document the fact that it is a joke. Perhaps if the "joke sources" were the only sources available it wouldn't even deserve a mention, but assuming good faith, it apparently did make its way into a serious reference book: Nordling's Physics handbook for science and engineering. I agree this isn't enough sourcing to support a full article, but I really don't see why it shouldn't be mentioned in the list of humorous units. DHowell (talk) 04:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

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.