Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drill commands


 * 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 speedy keep. Nomination withdrawn by the nominator. In addition to the withdrawal, there is a consensus that the article should be improved rather than deleted, to be suitable enough for inclusion per the standards of Wikipedia. Unsourced content shouldn't be added back without reliable sources and such additions should be dealt with via the usual methods (revert, warning, block, etc). (non-admin closure) The editor  whose username is Z0  10:36, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Drill commands

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Ugh, what a mess. In theory, this is probably a valid topic for an encyclopedia article, but this is the dog's breakfast. It's been tagged for better sourcing for ten years, and for OR for three. I just went through and looked at the four references that were in the text; I ended up eliminating all of them as useless. Two were to a blog which in turn cited us as its source. One was a link to a movie. The last was a reasonable looking source, but didn't address the statement in the text it was supposedly a source for; I moved it to external links. So, now it's 100% un-sourced. A massive pile of WP:OR. I suggest we delete this under WP:TNT and hopefully somebody will come along and write a useful, well-sourced, article to replace it. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I have removed all the unsourced material from the article, per the emerging discussion below, and withdraw my deletion nomination. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:08, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Tyw7  (🗣️ Talk to me • ✍️ Contributions) 10:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Tyw7  (🗣️ Talk to me • ✍️ Contributions) 10:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep Ugh, what an awful nomination. The suggestion that this is original research is nonsense.  Drill commands such as present arms are common knowledge for any well-informed person and are well documented in drill manuals such as this or that.  WP:TNT is not policy so, instead, please see WP:ATD, WP:BEFORE, WP:CLEANUP.  At the double! Andrew D. (talk) 22:55, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Common knowledge is fine for some things, but it's not what you base an entire highly detailed article on. The sources that were added do nothing to verify the vast majority of what's in the article.  One is a chapter in a book.  The chapter is titled Teaching the Marching Percussion Section and appears to have nothing to do with military drill commands.  Maybe somewhere else in the book, but certainly not the chapter cited.  The second is the preface of a book that doesn't appear to have anything whatsoever to do with the subject at hand.  The third, Styles of Command in Seventeeth-Century English Armies looks like it might indeed be a useful source, but unfortunately I don't have access to the full text so I can't tell for sure.  It would help if you could provide some more detail about what this source says.  In any case, the article goes into detail about drill commands in a dozen different languages; none of that is sourced in any way.  -- RoySmith (talk) 14:32, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Please refrain from making comments like Ugh, what an awful nomination. I've seen you make such comments before (at 08:04 [UTC] on 28 May 2018, for example, you wrote Talk of WP:TNT is a good cue for ARS action though I'm not sure we should encourage the use of such a disruptive essay., at 16:27 [UTC] on 9 February 2018 you wrote The nomination is absurd, and that's not even touching this out-of-nowhere insinuation that I was defaming a well-known scholar); they are not helpful. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:44, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Andrew D. (talk) 22:55, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep, prune vigorously, and cite the remaining core elements of this certainly notable topic. As Andrew D. rightly observes, there are plenty of military manuals that can be cited reliably. I doubt very much whether we should be trying to catalogue all drill commands of all armies (WP:NOTCAT); instead, the history and principles should be brought out. But that is a matter for editing, not AfD. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:04, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:SOFIXIT. There is no problem here that cannot be fixed through editing. V and NOR only allow the deletion of unverifiable content. They do not allow the deletion of verifiable content that merely lacks citations. There are plenty of sources that verify the stuff in this article, such as this and the other sources that come up on searches for "drill commands", "words of command" and cognate expressions and searches like this. All you need to do is add the sources that plainly do exist in GBooks etc. I might have more sympathy for this nomination if the article were replete with errors, but none have been identified by the nominator. James500 (talk) 17:21, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:V says, Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed. If I removed everything which needs a source but doesn't have one, at this point we'd be left with one sentence.  -- RoySmith (talk) 20:21, 21 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep but blank per WP:TNT (and have that stated as the established community consensus to prevent disruptive edit-warring and reverts of the blanking like happened after Articles for deletion/Korean influence on Japanese culture) The nominator, User:RoySmith, is right in everything he says, but he is also an admin and so perhaps doesn't appreciate the value to the rest of us of having the unsourced, possibly-unverifiable, content visible in the page history in case any of it is worth keeping and can be sourced. The blanking should not be reverted without reliable sources that actually verify the content, and editors who attempt to do so should be warned, then blocked if they continue; deleting the page history to preemptively prevent such disruption is unnecessary and probably technically a violation of AGF as there doesn't appear to be any evidence that this would happen. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 01:54, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - This is not the article improvement workshop. Clear and obvious keep; drill is actually a competitive sport, believe it or not. I suggest splitting the article into individual national sections with a short "index" article might be a good play stylistically, if anyone is so motivated. Here's one source: Infantry Drill Regulations, US GPO, 1904. And if that's not enough, here's an entire WorldCat category for "su:United States. Army. Infantry Drill and tactics Handbooks, manuals, etc." Now, multiply that by other countries. You get the point... Carrite (talk) 01:56, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * What about blanking the unsourced content, which per Roy's comment above is policy-compliant? With your !vote and all the other un-nuanced "keeps" above, this AFD runs the risk of closing as Consensus is to KEEP, so don't even think about mass-blanking all the unsourced content or, worse, Consensus is to KEEP [and don't even think about mass-blanking all the unsourced content]. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 02:12, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Edit the piece properly and nobody will scream. Drive-by blanking is a no-no. Carrite (talk) 04:40, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Drive...by...!? Are you joking? Did you read any of this discussion before !voting? Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 04:52, 22 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete WP:NOTDICTIONARY, and a definition is all that this is. --Bejnar (talk) 04:43, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * See RoySmith's and my comments above. There's non-DICDEF content in the page history (such as a bunch of stuff about monolinguality in the Irish armed forces that is definitely WP:TRUE but I doubt any of the state-sponsored primary sources alluded to by the other keep !votes will ever admit to) but it was all unsourced. Preserving it in the page history, as long as Carrite doesn't carry out the above implied threat of disruptively reinserting it, should do no harm. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 05:02, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I see no reason not to TNT this one. Any effort should be made on a "Military drill" or "Drill (military)" article. --Bejnar (talk) 06:27, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * But the article already has been TNTed. To delete the page history just because someone might start edit-warring the unsourced content back in would be contrary to AGF; if there were a reason to do so (like Carrite's above comment being anything more than an implied threat) I could definitely agree (again, see the fustercluck that was caused by the bogus close at the "Korean influence" AFD), but I don't see one here. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 06:41, 22 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I've reverted your non-admin closure. There definitely is not "consensus to keep", and your choice of words indicated you had not read my comment but simply tallied up the !votes as expressed in the first word of each editor's comment. Plus, you really should wait the full 168 hours, not exactly 150 hours, before non-admin closing except in cases of speedy keep. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:28, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * The nominator withdrew the nomination so that's why I closed it.  The editor  whose username is Z0  10:33, 22 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.