Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dehn plane

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 keep. Discussion of renaming or merging can continue on article's talk page. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:04, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dehn plane[edit]

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Non notable - no source found other than Wikiclones. The book sources talk about Dehn never finishing a paper on it, indeed it seems only "indications" exist [1] Chaosdruid (talk) 22:55, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am beginning to think that the page should be renamed then. It seems that the method is notable enough, though not named as the page title currently suggests. Perhaps we could rename to "Dehn geometery", "Dehn planar geometery" or "Dehn non-Legendrean geometery". Chaosdruid (talk) 15:35, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 23:34, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Max Dehn BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 07:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~Weak~~ keep, ~~possible~~ Rename Hilbert (given as a ref.) goes on for several pages about Dehn's geometry and that should establish notability. WP criteria don't specify that the primary source has to be published, only that a reliable secondary source exists. The books search turns up a precedent for the name as well, but this is in an exercise. However, most of the material in the article is apparently not covered in Hilbert so additional sources need to be found to support the content of the article. Perhaps a more inclusive subject title such as "Nonarchimedean geometry" can be found, but without the neologism.--RDBury (talk) 13:00, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Hang on, "Nonarchimedean geometry" is not a neologism and there are plenty of notability refs. Expansion is still needed though.--RDBury (talk) 13:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually it seems to be mentioned in a book by Rudy Rucker ([2]), but i'm a bit wary about the cited reference in the article as Hilbert's book doesn't seem to use the term "Dehn plane". I find it neither in my German nor in my English copsy of the book. Moreover Hilbert's original book (without later extension) has less than 100 pages, so the given page 129 looks kinda fishy.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If it's not mentioned by a particular name, that might mean only that that name seldom if ever appears. Notability of the topic isn't about notability of the particular name. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:50, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- well there's notability for both the content/subject matter itself and the name for it. We don't want to push "neologisms". If that plane is (almost) nowhere called Dehn plane, we shouldn't have an article under that name (implicating that it is a common/established term). In such a cse merge or rename might be the appropriate course of action.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:33, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I once created an article titled how Archimedes used infinitesimals. Sometimes the title of an article is a verbal description of its topic rather than a proper name. I don't think people would call it a neologism because of that. The term Dehn plane might be viewed the same way. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Well I agree that your first example has no neologism issues, but that's because you've picked purely descriptive article name rather defining a new term/name. The analog approach here would be something like "How Dehn constructed a non-Legendrean geometry". But if instead of a descriptive title you pick a very rarely used name, then it might pushing a neologism. Or worse if you simply make up a name then it could be seen as WP:OR (regarding the name). It's not up to wp authors to come up "appropriate" new names/terms, they either go with names being already established in literature/external sources or they pick a descriptive title (being recognizable as such).--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This scanned copy of Hilbert's book (in English) should show the pagination correct; the full reference should be pp. 127-130. (Hilbert does not call it "Dehn plane"; but it is a model for the axioms of plane geometry less parallels.) Keep or merge, either non-archimedean field or projective plane should be reasonable targets for merger. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- See also [3]. Hilbert cites a paper by Dehn in Math. Annalen.--RDBury (talk) 14:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Dehn's paper is here.--RDBury (talk) 14:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or Merge -- I think the term 'Dehn plane' is used at least in Rudy Rucker's book. You can search for that phrase in a partial preview of Rucker's book at Amazon's entry. Dehn's work is also cited in Roger Hartshorne: Geometry: Euclid and Beyond (2000), Springer. Since I can't view the full text of Rucker's book, I speculate that he may just have found a catchier way of expounding Dehn's original paper from 1900 in the Mathematische Annalen, "Die Legendre'schen Sätze über die Winkelsumme im Dreieck". Whether to keep Dehn plane as a separate article or as a redirect to Max Dehn could be up to editor discretion. Make it depend on whether anyone has time to expound Dehn's non-Legendrean geometry at proper length. I think notability is clearly met. See also this Google Scholar search for 'non-Legendrean.' There are four hits in that search that look like they might be used as references (or further reading) for the Dehn plane article if it is kept. If someone does have time to work on Dehn's idea, they might wind up renaming the article, since 'Dehn plane' gets no hits in Google Scholar and obscure titles are not the best. EdJohnston (talk) 04:36, 5 February 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.