Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oil reserves

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 Oil & gas reserves and resource quantification. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 04:08, 14 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oil reserves[edit]

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Proposed on behalf of Guy WF Loftus as I happen to have the ‘twinkle’ utility installed which perhaps he has not. Unlike me he seems to be a subject expert and says Oil & gas reserves and resource quantification supeceeds this article. I’ll leave him to justify why. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:40, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:40, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn by nominator, as the discussion with 3mi1y proposed a more elegant solution to preserve value but achieve the overall aims by redirecting.Guy WF Loftus (talk) 09:31, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Chidhk1 - the only twinkle I am aware of comes from the realisation that I have done it wrong - again. But I think you may have sorted that for this instance. Hopefully I've left a long enough discussion trail to deliver the right intent even if my (cognitive/Wikipedia) processes are in error... Guy WF Loftus (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all you and your expert helpers time in writing the new article. But I doubt people who read this have the patience to follow the discussion trail. Could you possibly summarise here why this article should be deleted rather than merged? Chidgk1 (talk) 14:53, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Justification for deletion[edit]

The article has been rewritten (and retitled Oil & gas reserves and resource quantification) to remove ephemeral content (obsolete numbers based on changing oil prices and subjective country-based reserves) and broadened to include gas reserves, which occur naturally with oil (sometimes referred to jointly as Petroleum, liquid fossil fuels or hydrocarbons) and follow the same economic accounting protocols. The article has also been broadened to distinguish between "reserves" and "resources", which form part of the same commercial scale but are often inappropriately quoted in the media because the relationship is not clearly defined in any encyclopaedic offering. Deleting this article will allow me to redirect commonly searched synonyms to clear a path to what is really sought for when searching for information on Oil reserves, expressed in the replacement article.Guy WF Loftus (talk) 16:46, 6 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

comment First revision of oil & gas reserves and resource quantification is a reduced copy of oil reserves. I.e. should not be deleted per copyright (WP:Copying within Wikipedia). Christian75 (talk) 10:31, 7 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed @Christian75: - there is much in common because the original article was fundamentally sound - it just needed updating, which is why I originally petitioned for a merge but review editors had other ideas. Can you recommend how to reconcile this (with thanks)?Guy WF Loftus (talk) 06:54, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to the new article with Template:R with history. The page history stays there in case people want to see it, but we don't have to keep the live page. 3mi1y (talk) 07:14, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@3mi1y: that is exactly the sort of thing I need - thank you - I will investigate. I want to preserve the history on the original article because the fundamentals and contributions made by past editors have been excellent - but the new version is so pervasive, I couldn't trust myself to make the changes without corrupting the original (if that makes sense). This would in effect then be a merge on deletion do you think?Guy WF Loftus (talk) 07:49, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

...stupid question - so if I redirect to the new (target) article, what happens to that if the original is deleted? Or is the transfer of history just a one-off up to the point of deletion? Guy WF Loftus (talk) 07:58, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I think I see your confusion from this: what you may be missing is that a redirect is just a normal page that starts with #REDIRECT. You can edit an article to be a redirect, or vice versa, by just adding or removing that from it as part of a normal edit. That's a separate thing from deletion. Does that help? 3mi1y (talk) 08:21, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So "deletion" has a specific meaning - removing a page and its history, leaving nothing - which is explicitly not what we want here.

In this scenario, nothing would get deleted. There would be one more edit in the history of oil reserves, and the contents of that edit would be to remove all of the text on the page and add a redirect in its place. See Mythology for an arbitrarily chosen example: it used to be a full length article, and then it became a redirect. But the history is continuous through all that, because the page was never actually deleted. 3mi1y (talk) 08:11, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@3mi1y:which in effect means if someone wanted to revert to a pre-redirect version, they could (that is correct - they should be able to). Would I then (in an edit) replace the contents of the article with the redirect (with the R with history line - although I'm not sure what the Rcat shell is)? Or just add it as a header? Please forgive the idiot questions :(... You have been very helpfulGuy WF Loftus (talk) 08:41, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You'd replace the whole contents of the article with:

#REDIRECT [[new title]]

{{R with history}}

The {{rcat shell}} thing is ignorable, I think.

3mi1y (talk) 08:56, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@3mi1y: - elegant - and how do I close out this discussion and remove the application for deletion - just remove that line item?Guy WF Loftus (talk) 09:13, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#Withdrawing_a_nomination

As a procedural thing, I'm not sure you're supposed to, but as the only one who's supported it, I won't be bothered if you do it anyway. 3mi1y (talk) 09:21, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@3mi1y:Done - I hope... I will have to wait until the withdrawal is approved before I can take down the banner, then redirect the article... I guess... Thank you for your patience and guidanceGuy WF Loftus (talk) 09:42, 8 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect sounds good Chidgk1 (talk) 12:52, 8 November 2022 (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.