Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Pioneer Trail (tour)

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2016 August 23.
For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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. (non-admin closure) Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 05:13, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Pioneer Trail (tour)[edit]

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See WP:AN/CXT for the discussion background to this; during that discussion, the community re-confirmed its longstanding view that a raw machine translation is worse than nothing. (WP:MACHINETRANSLATION dates back to about 2006.) This article is a raw machine translation from French about a cultural tour in Québec. I found the article as part of the ongoing cleanup project. At first I prodded it, but it was deprodded on the pretence that a poor translation isn't a valid reason for deletion (despite longstanding consensus to the contrary). In the meantime the community had enacted X2, a speedy deletion criterion for these raw machine translations, which User:DGG declined. So now we're stuck with a raw machine translation in the mainspace which is clearly counter-policy. Even if we do need an article about this cultural tour (and I take no position on that point), this machine translation is not a useful step towards that article. Delete. —S Marshall T/C 18:21, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Even as first entered here, this was readable. By the time I saw it, it was no longer a poor quality machine translation. There were still some unidiomatic construction and a few words were still in French. I fixed that. It took about five minutes. The only thing it still needs is the addition of some English language references to supplement the French ones. S Marshall, your expectations for the quality of English prose do not seem realistic. Anyone not liking the quality of my results is welcome to improve it. There are certainly articles to which X1 is applicable, and I have deleted one or two, but this was never one of them. Indeed, if the first version of this was a machine translation the quality of the program is remarkably high, much more than I would have expected. If X1 is going to be used in this altogether inappropriate manner, it should be removed from the criteria. DGG ( talk ) 18:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
With respect, DGG, you're fundamentally misunderstanding my case. The problem is not with the quality of the English prose, but with the fact that machine translations are unreliable. There are various circumstances in which the translation software can fail to parse negative sentences correctly, thereby inadvertently reversing the meaning of the source text. If a native English speaker then cleans up the prose, then that cloaks the problem but it doesn't actually solve it unless they can read the original and confirm that it's correct. How's your French?—S Marshall T/C 18:52, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

My French is okay and it looks okayish... more importantly, there's an official English website official text that anyone can easily check it against, for WP:V and/or close paraphrasing. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:02, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, it's probably okay-ish. I mean, it's got confused about vingtaine and it's run into the usual machine translation problems with depuis, but otherwise it isn't horrible. French is a relatively easy case because there are lots of native English speakers who know it. This project is also dealing with some considerably more obscure tongues where we really can't check, and what I'm trying to establish is the principle that X2 is enforced even when the English "translation" is plausible.—S Marshall T/C 19:09, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Visual arts-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Well, with all due respect I for one don't see an argument to delete this article. But I wasn't aware there was such a backlog. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:19, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, the backlog is these 3,602 articles. I see you speak French... fancy checking one or two? :D—S Marshall T/C 19:52, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I very strongly disagree with your assertion that speedy can be used to delete readily improvable articles. It was intended for the utter junk that came from one or two particular extremely low quality attempts to use the very inadequate WP translation function and similar material not worth the effort. The real problem with the less known languages is that Google Translate is almost useless with most of them, so the quality of the input is most likely to really be not worth the effort. DGG ( talk ) 19:57, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- I did look at the first 5 French articles I could find in the backlog they all seemed basically okay. As the nominator acknowledges, French isn't really main problem, here. I daresay WP:SKCRIT applies to this Afd and this is really the wrong forum. I suggest this Afd be withdrawn. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:10, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  - Also, >3600 isn't even a particularly big backlog, as far as things go here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:16, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep per above and WP:SKCRIT. I just don't see a valid deletion argument here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:17, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Article has been significantly improved since nomination and so complaints about this article have been addressed. ~Kvng (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as the article has been improved to a proper standard of english and is reliably sourced Atlantic306 (talk) 15:30, 20 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've just seen that as well as being a machine translation, it's also a copyvio. The original fr.wiki version is a close paraphrase of this source, which is why our now-fixed-up machine translation is so similar to the English version of this, er, "cultural tour"'s website. Which is why we have the names of "Production Team" serving no encyclopaedic purpose at the foot of the article.—S Marshall T/C 14:38, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Article has been improved and should remain on the encyclopedia as it meets all the guidelines. -- Dane2007 ^talk 19:04, 22 August 2016 (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.