Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glossary of areas of mathematics

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. Consensus is to keep this article and improve it through the regular process. (non-admin closure) Natg 19 (talk) 08:05, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Glossary of areas of mathematics[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

WP:Indiscriminate: This is a long indiscriminate list of Wikipedia articles that cannot be useful in any way, as it is much easier to search directly an article than to search its entry in the list. Moreover the areas of mathematics are confusingly presented as independent areas, without any indication on their relationships (Wikipedia categorization and Mathematics Subject Classification are thus much more useful). D.Lazard (talk) 11:51, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. D.Lazard (talk) 11:51, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - That the current selection is arbitrary does not entail that the criterion for inclusion is difficult to fix: there are plenty of mathematics classifications schemes, and we could either fix a glossary to one or contrive a policy that is based on some whitelist of several of them. I think this reason can be discounted. The other part of the rationale is that the glossary is not useful: I can see that this might be the case, but in principle, having a wider choice of overviews of our content could be good. The question for this AfD, to my mind, should be whether this glossary can be turned into something that is an asset without much work. I haven't formed an opinion, but I generally lean inclusionist if in doubt, and I don't find the case so far presented at all convincing. — Charles Stewart (talk) 12:54, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I tend to agree that the lack of explicit inclusion criteria is a fixable problem in this case. Right now it's kind of at an awkward place in between the first and second levels of the MSC, but perhaps that awkwardness is not fatal. As to whether the list is useful, it could be at least interesting to see in one place the many different topics that are all called "computational" something, or "arithmetic" something, or "geometric" something, etc. In other words, the fact that the terminology doesn't always fit the conceptual relationships is itself a curiosity. XOR'easter (talk) 18:41, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep According to the MOS Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Glossaries#What_to_include, the basic inclusion criteria are "Include only specialized terms specific to or having a special meaning within the subject of the glossary. All entries must be verifiable with reliable sources, just like regular article content." Definitions should be brief and descriptive, not full dictionary entries. From my browsing, the glossary entries largely fit those criteria. There are some red-linked entries that could be deleted, but that is a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion. Regarding the WP:Indiscriminate criticism, what is and is not jargon (or an area of mathematics) does not have a universal objective criterion agreed upon by everyone. Nonetheless, reasonable editors can come to consensus on what terms/areas should and should not be included and disputes can be discussed on the Talk page. Browsing the history, there are no flamefests on the Talk page and the page history is mostly that of uncontroversial incremental additions. It seems the consensus process is working for this glossary. If the criticism is that "glossaries are useless on Wikipedia", that is a broader issue that should be addressed in another venue. The article does need a lead and linking area classification schemes like MSC is a great idea. Hence I think the glossary is fine, with no insurmountable problems, and should be kept. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:51, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the bold items that were redlinks, on the write the article first philosophy, and I wrote a lede sentence. XOR'easter (talk) 21:12, 4 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:25, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Perhaps a fixer-upper, but not irretrievably broken. XOR'easter (talk) 16:29, 16 November 2021 (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.