Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gazza (nickname)

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 of the debate was delete. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 15:53, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Gazza (nickname)

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, in this case of people whose nicknames end in "zza". There appears to be no collective name for these nicknames, so the current inappropriate title can not be changed. Nothing can sensibly link to this article. Gazza, a disambiguation page, and John Prescott link here, but the latter article already contains the same information - that his nickname is "Prezza". This article was originally called Hezza but that was made a redirect to Michael Heseltine and the material moved here. However, see discussion on Talk:Hezza. Bduke 08:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• I have done my best on Talk:Hezza and Talk:Gazza (nickname) to help the people intere4rsted in this article to improve it, but it has just become a longer list of indiscriminate information. Let us see what the community thinks. --Bduke 08:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom, non-notable phenomenon of popular culture. Sandstein 08:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. If we keep this we'll soon have articles on the Australian boganisms Stevo, Davo etc... Nicknames are simply not notable. Peripitus 10:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per all above. Paddles 12:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• In fact it is "others" who have joined in and added to the article. There is no other reference work which makes the link from Bazza to Gazza. Gazz and Hezza both have entries in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Gazza is widely listed in British lexicons and there are plenty of reputabale works that collect together this sort of slang. The recent BBC series "Balderdash and Piffle" highlighted the interest in how words/forms came to be coined. "Gazza" is not in fact a passing fad in the UK. And there's a long article about "Gazzagate" that is far less interesting! --IXIA 13:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per above. -- Kicking222 13:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, mentioning that Paul Gascoigne (sp?) is called Gazza is enough, there's no need for a separate article about his nickname. JIP | Talk 14:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect no need to redirect to Paul Gascoigne - I didn't realise there's already a redirect from Gazza. It's a well known nickname. Tyrenius 16:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Merge, abbreviated to a couple of lines, with hypocoristic. The hypocoristic article is after improvement, and is a good location for this kind of information. Diminutive does not cover name-derived nicknames well enough. Examples of hypocoristics may be non-notable, but they're studied in ancient societies, and information like IXIA's above would be relevant in that article. As for discoverability, there's already a disambiguation page, and I'd expect most people search for Gazza rather than Gascoigne (it's hard to spell). --Mark 16:25, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• The article has now been condensed. It is not about Gazza per se, but the trend that it gave rise to and (thanks to most helpful advice from - ironically - Bduke above) details of the link to "Bazza" which is not widely known or written about). The term "not notable" has arisen before and yet lexicographers, etc deal with this sort of thing very day of the week and there are many books covering precisley this kind of usage. Could anyone think of a better title? --IXIA 17:05, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong keeep. Interesting and unique article that is of encyclopedic interest. Wikipedia is not television. —Viriditas | Talk 20:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. When I nominated I did not give a firm opinion and I'm still not sure.

1. "Delete and redirect to Paul Gascoigne". Gazza already does that. Why should anyone type in "Gazza (nickname)"? Also something similar has already been done with Hezza, but some people want a general article.
2. "Most people search for Gazza". Indeed, so why are all the others mentioned? How do people get to this article if they are not interested in "Gazza", but in "Macca"? It is wider in scope.
3. "Wikipedia is not television". I have not idea what this is intended to mean.
4. "Merge, abbreviated to a couple of lines, with hypocoristic" or even, perhaps Nickname. This is a possability, but if someone could think of a better title that covered the full generality of this page, I might support keep.
5. Yes, I did suggest the Australian connection on Talk:Hezza, but it is unsourced and only an idea. Maybe the UK useage did not come from the Oz "Bazza". --Bduke 22:31, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

• Nobody has given sound reasons to keep it and many have given sound reasons to delete. The article has not been improved, so I conclude delete. --Bduke 00:09, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
• To meet Bdukes's concern about the title a similar article has been established as Zza nicknames. There is no reason why Wikipedia should not be creative in this regard since, as has been noted above, this is a unique article. There is perhaps an argument about links, but that could be overcome with imagination. It is not true that the article has not been improved; a number of changes have been made to meet Bduke's curiously insistent concerns and he has in fact kindly helped in that regard. Earlier comments, when Bduke first proposed the article for deletion, was far from overwhelming in favour of discarding. Ultimately this is not that important - it's not quantum physics - but Wikipeadia would be the poorer if it could not accommodate articles of this kind which do contain the sort of material that gets intself into many British books about popular language. In fact this is probably the most comprehensive article on the "subject" in existence - and, indeed, had been more detailed until curtailed to meet concerns which were partly understandable. The article is not offensive in any way, not does it get in the way of anything. Still, there it is: the fact that this has generated so much debate tends to detract from the notion of its being of marginal interest. Not sure what happens now ... --IXIA 14:09, 27 May 2006 (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.