Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Descendent genealogy


 * 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   delete.  Sandstein  05:49, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Descendent genealogy

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Neologism used as coatrack for webspam. &mdash; RHaworth 10:08, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  —Tom Morris (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete - neologism, has no reliable sources that actually use the term; two of the references use a different term right in their title. There is a long history of genealogical projects tracing descendants, the idea is far from novel, yet it is portrayed as a unique, new, different way of doing things. The figures are meaningless - they could be representing anything and are not the least informative.  The page seems as much about efficiency in a global project, which has the same benefits independent of technique, so has nothing really to do with so-called 'descendant genealogy'.  It is far from neutral. 'This is a better way to do genealogy' is the take-home message of the page. It looks like marketing, making something standard look unique and insightful, but it's just marketing and not appropriate for Wikipedia. I don't see anything here worth saving considering the term is a neologism to begin with . Agricolae (talk) 15:37, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I see that it is not a neologism, just so uncommon that with decades of experience in the field I had never heard the term (I guess I don't go to the right conferences). I also note that it is 'descendent', and not 'descendant' genealogy - different etymology, same take-home lesson. Response below suggests that the intent of the page isn't even to explain descendent genealogy, but rather to promote one particular implementation of it. Given its rare usage, I don't think this merits anything more than a Wiki dictionary entry.  In Wikipedia, I would still favor deleting, but could be convinced it should instead be a redirect to genealogy. If it is retained, then it needs to be stubified to about two sentences explaining that it is a subset of genealogy that involves tracing the descendants of a person or persons. There is no inherent connection between descendent genealogy, per se, and most of the article content, the rest is just one person's vision of the perfect way to do genealogy via a global descendent genealogy project. The current content is still WP:SOAP/marketing. Agricolae (talk) 19:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment ""descendant genealogy" gets 493 ghits. spelled as this article indicates, we get 135 ghits. neither is very common, but doesnt appear to be a neologism. Content of the article seems excessive. not sure yet if i think it should be deleted or improved. too bad the supporter below (single purpose account) doesnt get the process here and overstates their point. if the articles spelling is related to a patented product, delete as not notable yet.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 04:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Retain
The most basic problem here appears to be that neither one of the two editors actually understood the article or its technical significance. I don't know whether to fault the article, or to fault the editors, or both. From their reactions, I have to assume that they know almost nothing about today's genealogy industry and its problems, and so see no value in the (patented 2004) solution.

I think it is interesting that one of them was so sure of his computer and database and genealogy industry experience that he could make this statement: "The page seems as much about efficiency in a global project, which has the same benefits independent of technique." "Independent of technique?" How about if I ask this editor for a reference for that rather sweeping statement? I would love to read it and respond. If one method costs hundreds or thousands of times more than another, that might seem like a difference worth noting. It might be correct as a theoretical statement that, to the end user, getting the result one way was as good as getting a result another, assuming there was no cost difference. However, today it is simply impossible to finish it the way it is being attempted because of the exorbitant costs involved.

Here is an item which I should add to the article to help clarify the situation: "The LDS Church has had an active genealogy research program going on for more than 100 years, so they can provide some interesting statistical experience. Within the last few years they have discovered that the genealogy research which has been assembled in their central systems has been duplicated an average of 30 times, with 200 times being common, and 10,000 times being perhaps the largest case. This illustrates the staggering duplication, and thus waste, of valuable researcher time. Of the 1.5 billion entries in the database, only about 50 million names are unique. Looking at this another way, if there were 1.5 billion unique entries in the database, that would easily cover the entire United States and all of Western Europe, instead of just the tiny portion of it represented by the 50 million entries."

Today's genealogy processes use mountains of computers, but use them in the most inefficient way imaginable. Perhaps the editors assume that with the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent on genealogy research, especially in recent decades, we are using the best possible methods. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The "standard" or traditional ways of doing things are absurdly inefficient in today's technological world, but those traditional ways are tenaciously clung to nonetheless. If the editors want to key in on profit and greed, they will find that the current methods are retained because they are profitable to the research firms and database firms now embedded in the industry. But those methods are extremely expensive and thus "unprofitable" to the genealogy hobbyists and other kinds of enthusiasts who desire to use these professional services to research their families.

Of course people have been tracing descendents for thousands of years, as one editor mentions, but with the Internet, and proper procedures, it can be done literally hundreds or even thousands of times faster. And it doesn't matter which organization decides to actually implement these ideas. This article could serve equally as well as an "ad" for the LDS Church with its large genealogy activities, or as an "ad" for some generic secular genealogical society, or as an "ad" for me if I were somehow able to implement these ideas.

It would seem a bit silly if Wikipedia never put up an article which benefitted anyone in any way. What, then, would be the point of having Wikipedia? Who is the target audience, after all?

Musings on Wikipedia content
The whole general question as to what material should be in Wikipedia seems to be pretty slippery and subjective. You say you don't want anything new, or of any commercial value to anyone, but does that mean that you don't want the "Lady Gaga" article (it is there) to be written until after the end of her career or her life? As long as she is alive and performing, the article about her has at least a small potential economic and marketing effect.

As an example, the 2 Wikipedia editors who have taken a look at my article seem to be saying that there can be no US money or commercial interests in anything which is placed on Wikipedia. Perhaps they would like to only see articles about quinoa in South America, as spoken about by the illiterate indigenous natives who have nonetheless recorded annual quantities of production by knotting ropes as the Incas did.

I noticed that the Intel Corporation and IBM Corporation who sell computers, and Ancestry.com who sells online databases, and the National Genealogical Society who sells very large genealogy conferences (4000 people at a time) multiple times a year, all have their entries in Wikipedia. Yes, they are of general interest, but one has to assume that most of the data presented there came from internal sources with a low-key marketing impulse behind it. (If it didn't come from internal sources, I would have reason to doubt its accuracy). If you say nothing with any actual or potential economic effect could be placed on Wikipedia, you would have an almost perfectly blank database.

This genealogy article is related to a patent which was issued in 2004 and another improved version of that patent which was filed provisionally this year to be granted next year. Are industry-changing patents and related methods of no interest to Wikipedia? Do I need to wait 10 years and then publish the exact same article, and it would be fine? Let's say that I invented the lightbulb 10 years ago, and now I am explaining the lightbulb to the world. There have been and will be billions of dollars tied up in lightbulb economics, and whoever invented the lightbulb would have a good reason to make sure people had accurate information about it. So because there is a sliver of economic interest in getting an article into the public mind-share, does that mean it is not suitable for Wikipedia? Would you delete a lightbulb article? See Wikipedia article "Incandescent light bulb."

The editors are not too consistent here. First they say it is as common as dirt to find people researching genealogies in descendent sequence (perhaps I should write an article on dirt --oops, somebody already did write a Wikipedia article on "Dirt," complete with photos of dirt), and then they seem to say that I'm describing something that is unknown to the genealogy industry. I don't think it would be a big problem to find other references which use the term as I use it, if that is all that the objection is about. I will look into that. I just never anticipated that that sort of thing would be a basis for deleting the article.

Perhaps the real problem is that these editors actually are not very familiar with the genealogy industry, and therefore are not aware of the massive productivity problems that exist in the industry, and therefore are unaware of the value to that industry of getting these massive problems solved properly. It appears that they do not grasp the consequences of the little bit of mathematics included in the article. Perhaps AFTER the entire industry is restructured by this new insight, then it would be okay to write about the new industry as so reconstructed, looking back on history? Must all of the articles on Wikipedia be at least a lifetime's old, only recording things that happened at least 90 years ago?

I should mention that the article could conceivably be slightly rewritten with the title of "genealogy mathematics." There are some other interesting theoretical mathematics articles available on that topic, that could be joined with the practical methods shown in my article for how those mathematics can be put to work. Perhaps that would improve the appearance of novelty, if that is what the editors are looking for. The question then becomes whether the article should emphasize the cooperative power of using descendent-sequence genealogy research, or whether it should emphasize the related mathematics. Maybe we ought to wait a little while and get some real genealogists to vote on which is a better way to present the exact same material, and then perhaps adjust the title. Or perhaps we should put in two titles, with one pointing to the other.

Extract from the article talk page
Charge: "neologism used as coatrack for webspam"

I plan to remove the proposed deletion markings as soon as I finish this little explanation. Obviously I am a newbie (does that require hazing in the Wikipedia culture?) and have only gotten through the first layer of complexity on how to do the basic editing and fit an article into the apparently rather complex and somewhat arcane methods which have grown up around this very useful public knowledge resource.

There doesn't seem to be any good place to mention one's qualifications for doing any particular article, perhaps because of the (questionable) assumption is that anyone can do it. But I am 70 years old, have worked most of my life as a computer consultant on extremely large systems, such as a billion-dollar communications system requiring 900 programmers. I also have two law degrees and have worked as an attorney. (I can only hope you will not use that against me. :-) )

I am already aware of numerous formatting problems, including the use of adequate in-line references, etc. As soon as I finish reading the material on those topics I will make those changes. My first goal was to make the article intelligible and not too long, with a minimum of external references, and then I will gradually work in more references to outside material. There are mountains of material available, and the trick is to select that which would be most appropriate. By putting this on the web I might be able to get some of my associates to help me a little bit on this project.

The major claim is that this is a "neologism". I did spend quite some time trying to decide what the title of the article should be, and looked to see if there were other articles or titles where this material might better be placed. But, unfortunately, similar charges of unsatisfactory labeling might be made against many of the genealogy-related articles which are now in Wikipedia. Although it would be a rather large job, it looks to me like someone needs to look at all of the genealogy related articles and give them a little bit more consistency. I am going to look into that, but even if it seems feasible, it will take weeks to complete. If, in the end, it appears that I have chosen poorly on the title, I will certainly consider changing it.

Among those hundreds of thousands of serious genealogists who attend public conferences, I expect that almost every one of them would know what this topic means without further explanation. There is another term in common use called "reverse genealogy" which means somewhat the same thing, although it is a rather amorphous term since it mostly is a set of research workarounds rather than a concept of its own. I expect that the man in the street would better understand "descendent genealogy" rather than "reverse genealogy." He might say "What in the heck is 'reverse genealogy?'," especially since he would probably know almost nothing about non-reverse genealogy.

As to the "spam" charge, I think that is completely overcome by both the public service, nonprofit intention and the "notability" aspects of these new insights into genealogy research and data recording. As I note in the article, there are about 4 million people in the United States, and millions elsewhere, who spend hundreds of millions of hours each year doing highly duplicated and highly repetitive tasks. If we could save the equivalent of $60 billion a year in duplicate work, someone might think that was an effort worth doing. Whether I can supply those needed facilities or not, or only some religious or governmental body would have the resources to carry out the project, if some of these working genealogists come to realize the extreme inefficiency of the methods they are using, and the enormous increase in productivity which is now potentially available to them, they might adopt these cooperation methods and greatly improve the entire genealogy research industry.

If that informing process is "marketing," and thus condemned on Wikipedia, then we might wonder whether the entire nation's education and publishing systems should be shut down as being informative and therefore "marketing." Huffkw (talk) 02:43, 25 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment: Wow. WOW!  See WP:SOAP - Wikipedia is not a soapbox.  (I am just not up to reading through a 12,000 character manifesto, so if you want individual points discussed, please raise them more succinctly.) Agricolae (talk) 19:14, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
 * You harp on the massive gain in efficiency of a duplication-free globally integrated descendent genealogy on-line database project. However, there is nothing about descendent genealogy that inherently reduces duplication. Duplication comes from not looking for duplicates or not recognizing that they are there, and that happens tracing in either direction. Likewise there is nothing about descendent genealogy that inherently requires or facilitates a globally integrated project, and there is nothing about it that facilitates on-line database construction or access - again, the advantages are similar whether one is doing descendent, ascendent or some sort of horizontal prosopography. Maybe combining these 4 things: descendent genealogy, global inegration, online databasing and replication avoidance, will produce what you view as the 'perfect' genealogical project, but such speculation and personal desires are out of place in an article about just one of the items. I may think that a fast car with zero carbon footprint, a monstrous amount of money, a library ten times the size of the FHL and a limitless supply of rootbeer floats would make my life perfect, but that doesn't mean I should create an article, Rootbeer Float, to convince people how much better their life would be when they add the car and the money and the library to the rootbeer and ice cream. No, an article on Rootbeer floats should limit itself to rootbeer floats and since there just isn't that much to be said about rootbeer floats on their own, Root beer floats redirects to Ice cream soda. That's descendent genealogy in a nutshell. You remove all of the irrelevancies and you don't have something that merits a stand-alone article. Agricolae (talk) 11:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment for closing admin: The essay posted above has numerous WP:ATA issues. For one, the comparison between this topic and obviously notable topics is very close to a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Would we deleted the article on lightbulbs? If it were just after they had been created and there wasn't sources to establish the notability of lightbulbs, sure. Would we delete Lady Gaga? Yes, if nobody wrote about her and there weren't sources, sure. I must reiterate the simple and fundamental premise of AfD: it is pretty much exclusively concerned with one thing - are there reliable sources available to establish notability of this topic? If the answer is yes, most other problems can be resolved amicably; if not, there's barely any point discussing the topic. Long essays do not do that, links to sources do. The issue of coatracking also was not addressed in this lengthy response. There are plenty more issues with the article: large quantities of unreferenced, original research and original synthesis.
 * Further, there is the implicit assumption in the article that getting a patent means the subject of that patent is notable or original: given that the US patent system granted a patent on the doubly-linked list back in 2002, despite it having been around since the mid-50s. If we are trying to establish notability, trusting the US patent system to tell us something is notable is highly suspect, given they think that an idea created in the 1950s that is now considered an elementary data structure that is usually taught in first-year computer science textbooks is a novel and useful, non-obvious contribution to the science with no prior art! —Tom Morris (talk) 08:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I would further suggest that the patent in question should not be viewed as a source independent of the editor who created the page and is about a computer system for recording and selling genealogy arranged by descendant groups, not about the genealogy itself. Agricolae (talk) 00:17, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   05:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)




 * Comment. Much of this article appears to be editorializing in favor of a certain method of genealogy. While the practice of starting with a past individual and tracing their descendants is worthy of coverage somewhere in Wikipedia, I don't know whether this merits a separate article assuming that all the opinion is removed. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:45, 1 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete per Nom, and I don't see this term has significant coverage in reliable sources.--Pontificalibus (talk) 11:42, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete - This appears to be pure Original Research.  A strong clue is the fact that there are no secondary sources on the topic.  Although there are citations in the article, they are to primary (raw data) sources.  --Noleander (talk) 14:24, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete: Unsourced and poorly sourced essay based on OR and SYNTH. Insufficent coverage in secondary sources to establish notability or the widesread consistent use of the term. The Cooke and Taylor references look like spam, as do the Progenylink links. Worst of all, the article appears to have been created by the person who applied for the patents cited in the article. This would be blatant self-promotion and spam. Nothing worth much saving here. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 15:24, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete - Per Dominus Vobisdu above.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 03:10, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment - I noticed that has moved onto another unreferenced article, Genealogy information systems, which he created two days after this AFD was commenced. It features the above-mentioned "Genealogy registry system" patent by "Kent W. Huff". Maybe someone can take a look at it. I'm certain WP:COAT applies.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 03:10, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Yep, the new article is a personal essay, not based on any independent sources, and gives superficial coverage of the concept in question, with the apparent sole goal of setting a context upon which the editor can introduce their own patented product to Wikipedia. The unfinished 'Comparison' section is clearly there to herald the advantages of this product. It's probably too late to roll this into the same AfD, but it appears at heart to be the same thing - coatrack spam created to promote the editor's obscure product (or perhaps to promote their personal vision, which amounts to the same thing). Agricolae (talk) 14:45, 3 September 2011 (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.