Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ape index


 * 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The result was   Nomination withdrawn/Keep. Although I am personally not convinced that the article should be kept, the nominator's withdrawal and the number of keep !votes is enough for me to go against my own feelings. This is now just a matter of attesting to the term's actual usage. Non-admin closing. --  Blanchardb - Me•MyEars•MyMouth - timed 17:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Ape index

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Poorly sourced article, poorly defined term. No indication that this term as described here has any significant usage in reliable sources. TS 15:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. Perhaps the concept itself is notable, but the term's usage is not solidly established from the one reference that does not require a subscription. --  Blanchardb - Me•MyEars•MyMouth - timed 16:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 *  Keep  Merge The BJSM source uses it, and relevant Google Scholar results exist, even if few. However probably better in a rock climbing article --Cyclopia (talk) 18:52, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Could somebody summarise what relevance this source bears to the topic? I click on the link and get a sign-in page, which isn't helpful.  It's possible that the article might be a suitable merge candidate for an article about sports medicine or climbing. --TS
 * Sorry, I can read it from the university subscription and I didn't realize that a subscription was needed. If you do the search in Google Scholar you find the abstracts however, for example here and here. These are sport medicine papers by two different groups (no authors shared, which is a good sign) about antropometric measurements and climbing performance. I agree with the merge, changed vote above --Cyclopia (talk) 22:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Those items are correspondence, not papers.  It does establish that the term is sometimes used informally.  What concerns me is that there really are very few uses of this term accessible to google.  It's as if a very small coterie used it for a time but the term never entered general usage nor became part of the glossary of any significant group.  A merge proposa to rock climbing will probably sort out these doubts.  --TS 23:34, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually they are both peer-reviewed academic papers, where did you get the impression they are correspondence? --Cyclopia (talk) 00:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The second of those is a paper, only the first appears to be correspondence. (I stuffed up - both are academic papers). That said, there are a number of papers which have included the Ape Index when looking at determinates for rock climbing performance, at least one of which found it to be a statistically significant factor ("Biometric Model and Classification Functions in Sport Climbing", Artur Magiera1 & Igor Ryguła). I would have thought that whether or not everyone can access them isn't a significant concern for notability, given that they are verifiable. Actually, I'm currently more interested in the idea that the ratio is important, and that this may well be the only simple term used to describe the ratio, which makes it of relevance outside of rock climbing. - Bilby (talk) 00:25, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete The term is clearly just a thing made up one day. Intromission (talk) 23:11, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Guys, do you even read the AfD discussions before throwing a vote? Haven't you seen there are two academic sources using the term? --Cyclopia (talk) 23:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Correspondence does not qualify as "academic sources." --  Blanchardb - Me•MyEars•MyMouth - timed 00:16, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The "correspondence" thing is an obvious misunderstanding. Check for yourself. They are both peer-reviewed original academic papers. They list methods, results and conclusions in the abstract. --Cyclopia (talk) 00:36, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I need to check whether what you say is true. Therefore I need to know how to access them without a subscription. If it can't be done, they cannot be used, period. "Check for yourself" is impossible here, so please tell me how to access the paper without a subscription. --  Blanchardb - Me•MyEars•MyMouth - timed 01:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but that's not required here - you don't need to be able to check the article yourself, it only needs to be verifiable, in the sense that anyone could get a subscription (or access them through a library) and confirm the sources. - Bilby (talk) 01:26, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The fact remains that one of the papers mentions the term "ape index" only in passing, and the other one makes no use whatsoever of this term. At the very least, the article needs a change of title. --  Blanchardb - Me•MyEars•MyMouth - timed 01:41, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * What you see is only the abstract. One of the abstracts doesn't use it, but Google Scholar indicates it's in the text. When I arrive at university I can download the article and produce the relevant quotes.--Cyclopia (talk) 08:48, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I gotta say, it's a pretty gutsy (flattering?) move to pin the creation of ape index concept on me or people I know. But if it's so clear, I would be quite pleased to see you produce the evidence. Strad (talk) 02:34, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep or merge, even if only as a single paragraph in another article. As evidenced by the multiple academic sources in the references section, accusations of ape index being a hoax are not in accordance with reality. Strad (talk) 00:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you to all, especially to Bilby who has put a lot of effort into improving the sourcing and writing of the article during the discussion. My opinion has certainly changed as a result. I won't suggest closing the discussion because I think the exposure resulting from this discussion is good for the article and the subject. --TS 02:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If you have changed your mind, it would however be nice to have it stated at the top, and withdraw the nomination if you feel like that. Otherwise admins will be confused. --Cyclopia (talk) 14:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep, or merge as second choice In google books I can count 16 climbing-related books using "ape index" with the meaning described in the article (there is only one false positive, the Yosemite book). A magazine called "Climbing" described a competition where one of the prizes went to the climber with the highest "ape index".


 * Looking in google scholar I can find not one but two papers from the BMJ and another at British Journal of Sports Medicine, also one paper from European Journal of Sport Science  (appears on pages 5, 6 and 7 as one of the measures employed), and in a journal specialized in sport International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport , it appears on a thesis for a title of Master of Science in Exercise Physiology . Also, I found one newspaper article  (the term appears in the google summary although it can't be seen in this link) and a climbing gym in Arizona that is called "Ape index".


 * This is a technical term of its own, with both scholar and informal usage. I think that this sort of technical terms deserve its own articles, the same way as we have separate articles for very specialized mathematical and physical terms like D-module or Minkowski's_question_mark_function. I think that this level of detail for technical stuff is expected from a comprehensive encyclopedia. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:31, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep I think I would have said to delete, if I had judged only the article without looking for references. That's why an appropriate search for refs should be required before nominating for deletion. I cannot see what basis the nom might have had for "lacks any significant usage in RSs" if he didn't look, and if he looked, he would have found, just as Enric Naval did.  DGG ( talk )


 * Speedy Keep The nominator has tacitly withdrawn and AFD is not cleanup. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
 * 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.