Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 August 18

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August 18[edit]

This is a list of redirects that have been proposed for deletion or other action on August 18, 2016.

Eric Knodel[edit]

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was delete.---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 19:06, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

delete per WP:XY Joeykai (talk) 13:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete per WP:REDLINK not per WP:XY. The latter is not relevant here as someone searching for "Eric Knodel" is not looking for two different things, but only one. Thryduulf (talk) 22:52, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not the point of WP:XY. It's for redirects which could equally point to multiple targets. In this case, there's more than 5 targets that this could just about equally point to. -- Tavix (talk) 23:32, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disambiguate per Tavix's argument. When a title could easily redirect to more than one place, the solution is disambiguation. Otherwise, we'd be off deleting tons of disambiguation pages. For example, Diocese of Chicago could reasonably redirect to Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago (Diocese of X redirects exist for the archdioceses if there aren't any other dioceses with the same name), Syro-Malabar Catholic Eparchy of St. Thomas of Chicago, and Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Chicago, because they're all dioceses based in Chicago. Since there are 5+ targets to which this title could point, we presumably can't easily decide which one's the primary topic, so the disambiguation page is the solution. Where are you getting the 4+ other targets, by the way? I'm not sure where to find any of them except the current target. Nyttend (talk) 12:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    If you want to create content, you might as well just create the article then... I don't think he's notable though. Your argument about the dioceses make no sense here. We're talking about one person who played for a few different teams. -- Tavix (talk) 13:09, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Not a notable person so this needs to remain a redlink and let our search function do its job. -- Tavix (talk) 13:10, 21 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.

Lacta-[edit]

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more redirects. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the redirect's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was keep. This looks tentatively settled, but may be worth revisiting if the content is removed from the target article. --BDD (talk) 16:49, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not present in target, and wasn't when the redirect was created. PamD 09:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep: is now mentioned in the target article. PamD 21:18, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Withdraw now that the prefix is mentioned in the target article - however dodgy the refs (one our friend Mr C., and the other, I suspect, based on his work). PamD 16:25, 25 August 2016 (UTC) as nominator of this RfD.[reply]
And I've replaced & modified the hatnote at Lacta. PamD 16:29, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lacta is relevant - and explains to me why I had Lacta on my watchlist! PamD 09:23, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Other than the single line in the single table referenced in the linked AfD I cannot find a single use of this term that does not originate with Wikipedia. I can find no (relevant) uses at all of "lactagram", "lactagramme", "lactajoule", "lactalitre", "lactabyte" or "lactametre". "lactameter" returns just one page [1] that almost certainly uses the book referenced in the AfD as it's source (and I'm not sure about the reliability of the site as a whole anyway). Thryduulf (talk) 10:20, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This discussion is not about an article, but about a redirect. Per WP:REDIR, redirects do not need to be notable, they need to be helpful. We even keep redirects from typos (something I personally find questionable, but that's how it is), so the threshold for keeping a redirect is extremely low, and lacta- is very much beyond that.
It is true that there are few references making use of it, but the very fact that it is mentioned in a few books internationally is already more than enough reason for an encyclopedia to have some kind of entry for it. As there is - at present - too little info in circulation about the prefix, it does not deserve an article, but a redirect to the "obsolete metric prefixes" section in the article about metric prefixes is a suitable solution. Ideally, it should be discussed there, but even this is not a requirement for redirects, the redirect just needs to make sense somehow - and redirecting an obsolete metric prefix to a section about obsolete metric prefixes makes perfect sense.
The fact that Google turns up only a low number of hits does not mean anything for historic topics. I have seen more than enough articles carelessly being deleted by people boldly declaring that no sources can ever be found, until (fortunately) an expert on the subject came along and proved them all wrong. In fact, in the old discussion someone wanted micri, lacta, and dimi all deleted, despite the fact that micri and dimi can be well sourced - it is just that micri was used only in a specific area of expertise and over relatively short period of time and dimi is a left-over from the original metric system in France and therefore little known in the US - a clear case of "I don't know it, so it can't be true". I find this attitude very harmful for the project - Wikipedia is not a compilation of recentisms and mainstream knowledge, but it aims to document and put into context anything encyclopedic ever in existance. From personal experience I know that it is sometimes possible to still find some historical info after unsuccessfully searching for it for decades.
So, unless someone can prove that lacta- is bogus and was made up by Cardarelli or that it is a typo for another similarly spelled prefix, Wikipedia needs the redirect. None of the reasons to delete a redirect WP:R#DELETE applies, but per WP:R#KEEP there are several reasons to keep it. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 19:47, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: one of the reasons in WP:R#DELETE is "5: The redirect makes no sense". Unless there is some mention of "Lacta-" in the target article, that reason is valid. If anyone can add information about "Lacta-" sourced to something reliable (ie not Cardarelli) to the target article, then of course the redirect becomes valid and useful and should be kept. The one mention at Wolfram Alpha looks unreliable - it's a "Computational Knowledge Engine" launched in 2009 and doesn't explain its source so may well have scraped up Cardarelli's 2003 book. PamD 22:05, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
But the redirect does make sense, Pam. First of all, lacta- is discussed in the target article meanwhile. But even if it was not (as before), there is no requirement for a redirected term to show up in the target article (you might confuse this with disambiguation pages, where we do in fact have such a requirement). And redirecting an obsolete metric prefix to a section about obsolete metric prefixes makes a lot of sense, IMO.
I don't know what's your beef with Cardarelli, but by Wikipedia standards, his book is a perfectly reliable source by one of the top scientific publishers (Springer). The book may contain some errors, but this doesn't invalidate the whole book or the author. What are your reasons to disregard this author? Has he been found to make up stuff or to deliberately make false claims in the past? Has he been involved in some science scandal? I mean, we are also citing Cajori all over the place, even though the books are full of (unintentional) errors, omissions, and misleading statements (which becomes obvious to anyone who actually has taken the time to locate and look up some of the original sources he cites). We do it, because Cajori is sometimes the only accessible source around, and some of the original sources are extremely difficult to look up, because they are not online, exist only in a few remote libraries in foreign countries, and you'll have to go/drive/fly there in person to have a look. But that's not uncommon for many historic sources. So, instead of deleting the redirect, we should try harder to find original historic sources - this, however, may take years. Is Cardarelli still alive? Perhaps we should contact him and ask him for his sources?
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 08:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have contacted the author. Let's see if he can shed any light on this and/or provide more information.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:45, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good: I'd love to hear Cardarelli's explanation of his sources for the Stupping ton or the Button. See also this lot. PamD 12:50, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the pointers, Pam. Regarding Cardarelli, he hasn't answered yet, but I'll let you know when he does. And I will also ask him for sources for the other items then.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I hazard a guess that you will not hear from Cardarelli, but let's see. Here is my (rather scrappy, sorry) assessment of the book Cardarelli. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:03, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To the contrary, Cardarelli has been very forthcoming and provided a detailed answer to my query, also providing scans.
While it is generally good to hunt down errors, I find your repeated attempts to undermine Cardarelli's integrity questionable, in particular as you do not keep yourself to documenting issues, but often make strawman arguments and draw unfounded conclusions. Basically, you are publically dissing an author and his work. At the same time, you did not even bother to contact the author to discuss the issues with him and give him a chance to improve the next issue of his book, as common courtesy would dictate. From my experience, he appears to be grateful to receive suggestions and corrections to improve his work.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:25, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. This is confusing since there is no mention of this prefix at the target article and so far I can't seem to find any reliable source for the term. -- Tavix (talk) 20:18, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You were referring to list item #2, but this discusses cases where the redirect points to unrelated targets: "For example, if "Adam B. Smith" was redirected to "Andrew B. Smith", because Andrew was accidentally called Adam in one source, this could cause confusion with the article on Adam Smith, so the redirect should be deleted." This does not apply to our case. The redirect points to the correct section in the article.
Unlike with disambiguation pages, there is no requirement for a redirect term to be mentioned in the target article. Basically, all that is necessary for redirects to exist is that they are helpful (and not harmful in some other way, of course).
Now, if someone runs into the prefix "lacta-" and wants to know more about it, it is already quite helpful, if s/he ends up at the discussion of obsolete metric prefixes, so s/he knows that lacta- is an obsolete metric prefix. The reader might be disappointed not to find more information about it, but confused?
In either case, I just added a short description of lacta to the target article, so the argument regarding "confusion" cannot apply any more. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 08:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That's all I wanted, thanks. -- Tavix (talk) 15:13, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Per JPG, the sources presented might be dubious so it might not be a good idea to mention this in the article -- Tavix (talk) 21:38, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete – Matthiaspaul speculates that Americans might be blissfully ignorant of "lacta-" but that the prefix might be well-attested in France, birthplace of the metric system. As a French-educated scientist, I have never ever heard of a lacta- prefix in the history of the metric system, either in France or elsewhere. If it existed, it would be visible in documented use of presumptive French units "lactamètre", "lactagramme" or "lactalitre". Searching for those terms yields nothing in the Gallica corpus which covers centuries of books and periodicals published in France. The closest term found is "lactomètre" which is a device to precisely weigh milk. I'm afraid the quoted source is in error and I move to delete this prefix and to remove its mention in the target article. Perhaps Mr. Cardarelli incorrectly read some documents mentioning the lactomètre? And/or he thought up the "lacta-" prefix based on the similarly-sounding Indian lakh as a 105 multiplier? — JFG talk 17:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We might as well finish the discussion here since we've started it here. Especially if there's consensus to remove the material from the article, a deletion of the redirect to go along with that is likely. -- Tavix (talk) 14:01, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as it is now mentioned and sourced at the target. I did some digging into English sources the other day. All I could find was an obscure mention in a medical word root thesaurus which I couldn't view properly. Another thing to thank the French for, besides the obvious.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 05:39, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • This basically boils down to a referendum on whether or not the content should exist within the article. If it does, the redirect should be kept. If not, the redirect should be deleted. As I can't read French, I don't have an opinion to offer.—Godsy(TALKCONT) 05:55, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete and delete the rather ridiculous paragraph from the target page, whose purpose is not to convey information but purely defensive mention of the Cardarelli entry. I have just AfDed hebdo-, a purported 10^7 prefix -- with a plausible etymology, and much more plausible purpose, since a "hebdometre" would be the original definition of the distance from pole to equator. But there is zero evidence even of the existence of this, which could only have been the French spelling. WP is supposed to report notable confirmable truth, not dubious rumour. (See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hebdo- Imaginatorium (talk) 08:02, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Either
  • (a) Delete material on "Lacta-" from the target article and Delete this redirect (and the hatnote at Lacta)
Or
  • (b) Keep redirect and Keep a paragraph similar to the one in this (current as I type) version of the target article, sourcing the mention of "Lacta-" but illustrating its ... obscurity (to put it politely), and keep hatnote at Lacta. PamD 14:43, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so it's my turn to write to authors. I just sent a query to the Wolfram website, asking where they got "lacta" from. I'll let you know if I hear anything. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:19, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have just read WP:GNG: "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention..." (I think that means more than a line in a table) and "...multiple sources are generally expected." I think that a copy of the line from the table fails the "multiple" test: the Wolfram website text adds precisely no information, and has exactly the same description "Non-SI discontinued", except that it has been converted to "non si discontinued" [sic], hardly the mark of independent responsible editing. Therefore, mention of the purported "lacta-" prefix fails GNG, and I shall remove it, unless anyone has cogent arguments to the contrary. Imaginatorium (talk) 12:33, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GNG applies to articles as a whole, not to the discussion of some individual terms or facts in an article.
See WP:NNC "Notability guidelines do not apply to content within an article" just a tiny bit further down in the same guideline, which applies to list items and similar mentionings in an article. So, for as long as we have a reliable source (per WP:RS, not our personal opinion), it is perfectly within our goals as an encyclopedia to mention lacta- as an obsolete metric prefix in a section about obsolete metric prefixes.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:48, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(Really speaking, this is about my proposal to remove the mention of the putative "lacta-" from the metric prefix article, but let's try to keep the discussion together.) Well, I don't know. I do not think there is any credible evidence of the existence of this "lacta-"; do I understand that you do? Perhaps you don't, but feel that the principles of PPB-scraping ("if it's in a proper printed book it belongs in WP") mean that we should copy it in anyway. Or perhaps you do think that the mere existence of Table 2.13 "Non-SI discontinued metric prefixes" in the Cardarelli book is credible evidence, despite the problems which have been shown both with this putative prefix, and with the level of scholarship in general of the Cardarelli book. If the latter, do you think is it then "within our goals as an encyclopedia" to have an entry for "stupping ton"? Or perhaps a mention of the putative Japanese units of mass/weight called Karus hiri-ichi-da and Komma-ichi-da? Is there any principled difference between these cases? (See User:Imaginatorium/Cardarelli for more background to this. FWIW, these putative Japanese units are copied verbatim from Washburn, E W: International critical tables of numerical data, physics, chemistry and technology (1926).) Isn't it a goal of the encyclopedia to provide information that is verifiably true, not just "verifiable"? Imaginatorium (talk) 14:40, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Article Metric prefixes has been changed to discuss "lakh-" with mention of Italian "lacta-", removing the demonstration of its non-use in French and making nonsense of the OED statement, which I've now mended. Redirect was amended to point to Lakh, but I've reverted that during this discussion. PamD 09:20, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Pam, I have meanwhile received detailed feedback from Cardarelli including scans. He has been very forthcoming and explained that one of his sources for this prefix was the 9th edition of Lange's Handbook of Chemistry in 1969[EDIT: 1956. In his letter to me, Cardarelli actually wrote 1969 (from his memory), but I checked that the 9th edition was published in 1956.]. As he mainly used the Italian translation of the title published in 1970 back then, his original notes on the prefix were Italian as well. This is how the Italian lacta- found its way into the book. He did not have the 1969[EDIT: 1956] edition in immediate reach now at his place in Canada, but found that the 11st edition as of 1973 still contained the statement "The prefix "myria" is sometimes used for 104 and "lakh" for 105." in the table "Prefixes for Naming Multiples and Submultiples of Units", of which he provided scans. I looked up the 15th edition as of 1999, which has the table replaced by a table of SI prefixes only and consequently no longer mentions myria and lakh.
Cardarelli now recognizes that using the Italian translation lacta might have caused confusion and will use the original lakh in subsequent editions of the book. He stated that there was another source for the prefix, but he could no longer remember what it was, but promised to continue searching for it.
So, all fringe theories busted. It all boils down to a language/translation issue, that's why I updated the metric prefix entry accordingly and changed the redirect of lacta- to lakh.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:25, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I really don't think that arriving at Lakh will be at all helpful for the reader who comes across some mention of Lacta-. Given the way that misinformation spreads and is copied from website to website, it would be most helpful if the redirect stayed pointing to Metric prefixes along with the information there which casts a certain amount of doubt on whether it was ever really used as a prefix but links to several sources. PamD 15:49, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good argument. I can support this as well.
We already have a link from "obsolete metric prefixes" to "lakh", so readers really interested in more details will still find them in the lakh article.
--Matthiaspaul (talk) 16:29, 29 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.
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