Talk:Night/Eight in Indo-european languages

Delete it or discuss it?
Dear Angr; about your proposal of deleting this article, I think I understand your point, but I would like to discuss it a bit more. Although I concede that the two PIE roots look only vaguely similar (maybe their proposed roots should be questioned?), I believe nobody could deny that the coincidences in many of their modern derivatives are too striking to be ignored. It should be pointed that the coincidences go far beyond the mentioned examples (take Irish, Albanian, Old Norse, OCS and Sanskrit, among others). I think that this definitely deserves some attention. After all, were not intriguing coincidences like these that led Wiliam Jones to propose the IE theory back in the XVIII century? Since I am not an expert, I would be very glad to hear your (and other) opinions about this. Antonio Prates 12:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The first question is, has this issue been addressed anywhere in the published literature? If so, please cite reliable sources so that others can verify the information. If not, it's original research and as such cannot be used at Wikipedia. The second question is, if it has been discussed in the literature, what conclusions were reached? At the moment, it just basically says "In a lot of Indo-European languages, the word for 'eight' and for 'night' sound sort of similar", leaving the reader wondering "So what?" Angr (t • c) 13:47, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, I see your point. I will do some additional research and also consult with some linguistic experts of my knowledge. Now, just for my understandig (since I am rather new to Wikipedia contribuitions): How much time do I have for that? How and by whom will the "delete it or not" decision be taken? Antonio Prates 15:36, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If you don't remove the PROD tag, it'll be deleted in five days. If you do remove the PROD tag, it won't be deleted unless someone nominates for deletion at WP:AFD, in which case there will be a five-day long discussion about whether to delete it or not. Angr (t • c) 15:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, Angr. I've read more carefully the Wikipedia deletion policy, and it became clear to me that this 'article' does not fulfill some of the content policies. I will just let the 5 days limit expire, waiting to see if there is any valuable contribution to the discussion. Thanks for your remarks. Antonio Prates 03:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

this is a casual remark, not an article; move it to talk space and delete the subpage; nothing should link here. dab (&#5839;) 20:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Dab, I can also understand your rationale and motivation, but I am sure you could find less imperative and more friendly words for your comments/instructions above. After all, it seems to me that Wikipedia should be a place for pleasant cooperation. Am I wrong? Please also read my last answer to Angr above. Antonio Prates 03:10, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is indeed a collaboration. A collaboration with a purpose, and not a discussion board. You will be extremely welcome to help us work on the project. Creating an article just because you feel like talking about some idea of yours is not helpful. All you are saying is that in PIE, the words for "eight" and "night" sounded similar. We know. They were okto- and nokts-: They both contained the letters -okt-. But why start writing an article about it? This is like writing an article about the fact that "meet" and "eat" sound similar in English: If you are a good writer, I am sure you can make an entertaining column out of such a fact, but this has nothing to do with writing an encyclopedia. dab (&#5839;) 13:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, Angr and Dab. Let us wait the article automatically vanish as soon as its grace period expires. Thank you both for all the explanations. And congratulations for your effort of keeping a high and consistent linguistic standard in English wikipedia.