Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Drum RNA motif


 * 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 no consensus. At AfD, we know how to deal with garage bands, self-promotional autobiographies, semiprofessional footballers and the like. What this discussion shows is that as a community we have no clue or consensus whatsoever about which if any inclusion criteria we want to apply to RNA motifs. This is apparently the parent concept for this sort of thing, but remains a red link as of this writing. There are reasonable arguments on both sides. It's a basic element of biology, which means that we could treat it like other elements of biology we seem to consider inclusion-worthy, such as genera. On the other hand, it's sourced to what may well be more of a primary than a secondary source. There's no consensus to be found here, but our resident specialists should get together and try to resolve the question at which level we want to cover this kind of concept via a projectspace discussion or an RfC.  Sandstein  19:33, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Drum RNA motif

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Primary source only. No secondary sources for this scientific claim. Too soon for wikipedia. rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 02:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Biology-related deletion discussions.  rsjaffe 🗩 🖉 02:59, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep - How is an academic journal a primary source? --awkwafaba (📥) 13:12, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: academic journals are a weird case. They are refereed and therefore carry approval by a professional independent of the author (a characteristic of secondary sources). But the first time a scientist discovers a new concept, and thinks up a name for it, it's their personal new idea, albeit approved by a referee as professional, interesting and valuable. There is no guarantee that a particular idea will turn out to be important, and there's no guarantee that the terminology used by the idea's inventor will actually be adopted. In this sense, the article that first described the idea, or introduced new terminology, is primary. When other articles write about the same ideas, and people write review articles discussing the concepts that the first author described, and the review articles use the same terminology, then we have secondary sources. The point is this: academic journals are considered reliable sources, but not everything that appears in an academic journal is automatically notable for WP. If it makes it through to review articles and genuine secondary sources, notability is much more likely. RNA structure isn't my thing, so I'm not going to hazard a guess at this one. Elemimele (talk) 14:45, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * It's explicitly mentioned in WP:PRIMARY, a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source for the outcome of that experiment. SmartSE (talk) 10:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment I'm only finding three instances where a paper cited the article that apparently introduced the "drum" term and actually used it. By itself, that wouldn't be enough to justify a page. I'm also concerned about a possible conflict of interest, since the article was created by and the first author on the only reference is Zasha Weinberg. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:41, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * And Zashaw has created what seems to be 100s of pages that are based on original research from his/her/their lab that has not been verified/duplicated elsewhere. See WP:SCHOLARSHIP. rsjaffe <b style="color:white">🗩</b> <b style="color:white">🖉</b> 18:44, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think a paper published in a journal is "original research" by Wikipedia's policy (in fact, it would seem to be the exact opposite of that, since the research occurred somewhere else, and was published after independent peer review). jp×g 09:53, 6 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment It gets worse: Category:Non-coding_RNA has DOZENS of "motifs" with the same single-author source. Either they're all notable, or NONE of them are.  This needs attention from an expert, I think. PianoDan (talk) 18:29, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I couldn't agree more. RNA structure is desperately important and interesting, but it needs to be dealt with in a balanced manner covering the global state-of-the-art, and we need one or more experts who can sort out the genuinely notable from the TooSoon and the trial-ideas that will fall by the wayside. Elemimele (talk) 20:46, 29 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment I have responded to these concerns here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Hundreds_of_RNA_motif_pages . I believe that rsjaffe added this issue at that location in response to the comments raised here in this nomination for deletion (specifically the perceived conflict of interest, and the fact that it affects multiple Wikipedia articles).  I think we might as well continue the discussion in one place. Zashaw (talk) 14:03, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment As the current head of Rfam, I would like to voice my support for keeping this article, as well as other articles authored by Zasha Weinberg (Zashaw). These articles accompany the entries in the Rfam database of RNA families that capture the data reported in the scientific literature and create computational models to enable identification of these RNAs in any sequence. Rfam staff include trained bioinformaticians and RNA biologists who carefully review all entries and provide additional verification that these RNAs are important (Rfam is not affiliated with Zasha Weinberg or his institution). For example, this Wikipedia article about the Drum RNA is part of the Rfam entry RF02958 and includes an infobox showing metadata from Rfam. Many RNAs discovered by Zasha Weinberg have been later shown to serve important functions, so it is important to have Wikipedia entries that describe what these RNAs are. Having scientists like Zasha Weinberg provide starting points for Wikipedia entries about different RNAs is valuable because these pages are then edited and expanded by the community. In fact, Rfam pioneered the integration with Wikipedia over a decade ago (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013711/), and we found that connecting the scientists and the community through Wikipedia has been very successful. Antonipetrov (talk) 14:46, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a catalog WP:NOTCATALOG. To give an example from an unrelated field, suppose we have a movie made and released, but it didn't make enough of an impression to be written about anywhere. However IMDb has information on it. Does the movie exist? Yes, of course it does, and we have good evidence that it exists. Is it noteworthy enough to be in Wikipedia? No it does not. If people later rediscover the movie and several independent articles are written about it, then, yes, it becomes noteworthy.
 * It's not the existence per se nor the potential noteworthiness that makes something notable for Wikipedia. Thus my comment when I listed this, that it was perhaps too soon (see WP:TOOSOON for more explanation).
 * The other thing that strikes me is that we have no article for RNA motifs. If motifs are important, why isn't there an overview article about them? That's what wikipedia is about; organizing significant knowledge, not listing every detail.
 * I'm not passing final judgement on this and the other motif articles, but explaining why there are concerns. <b style="color:white">rsjaffe</b> <b style="color:white">🗩</b> <b style="color:white">🖉</b> 16:43, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with Zashaw's comment below that the comparison between Rfam and IMDb is not valid. Rfam itself is very selective. We regularly reject submissions or skip papers without sufficient evidence. The fact that the Rfam team selected an RNA motif for inclusion in the database, created an accession, generated and uploaded a secondary structure diagram to Wikimedia, and added an infobox to the Wikipedia entry, is itself a testimony to the significance of these RNAs and the corresponding Wikipedia pages. Rfam serves as a secondary information source and an extra validation of importance of these molecules. If these RNAs are significant enough to appear in Rfam, the most widely used scientific database about RNA families, then I would argue they are also significant enough to appear in Wikipedia. Antonipetrov (talk) 10:46, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that Rfam (as is common for scientific databases) is highly curated set that often involves additional original research (example for the Rfam FAQs). I can see wherre people are coming from in terms of notability concerns, but it's definitely part of a wider topic in the sciencey bits of WP. To avoid too much repetition, I'll comment separately below. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 01:01, 3 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Slam dunk Delete Primary source. These scientists should not be relying on wikipedia in their work either, so any consideration of their pleas to keep, which by their nature are not Wikipolicy based, should be ignored by the closer. Lets also delete the other 250 ish spam articles too. -Roxy the dog . wooF 15:26, 30 November 2021 (UTC)-Roxy the dog . wooF 15:26, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't see how this makes sense: detectives shouldn't be relying on Wikipedia in their work either, but this does not amount to an AfD for murder or arson. Wikipedia is a reference work, which contains articles on topics with notability (i.e. relevance to some field of study or knowledge). I don't think it's any more complicated than that. jp×g 09:52, 6 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: in view of the previous post, perhaps it was naive of me to have linked to my post on the conflict-of-interest page, rather than copying it here. In that post, I specifically addressed the Wikipedia policies that were raised as grounds for deletion, but the previous post does not address my arguments at all.  (I will address rsjaffe's comment below.)  My post on the other page was:
 * Thank you for alerting me to this discussion on my talk page, rsjaffe. As I understand it, you have two related concerns.  First, these RNA motifs appear to be based only on primary literature, and not secondary literature.  Secondly, they indeed derive from my own research, and so there appears to be a conflict of interest in my writing Wikipedia articles on them.
 * What is perhaps not made sufficiently clear in these articles is that the relevant RNAs were included in the Rfam Database. Rfam (see the citations in the Wikipedia article) is a database of different types of RNAs with a conserved structure, and its content undergoes significant curation by expert bioinformaticians, both in deciding which RNAs merit inclusion and what data about those RNAs to provide.  It also provides data necessary for further scientific analysis of the RNAs.
 * With regard to the apparent lack of secondary source: The Rfam Database seems to me to qualify as a secondary source, since it is essentially a hand-curated encyclopedia of structured RNAs that meet Rfam's criteria (as I understand it, essentially that there is evidence of biologically relevant structure and function and that the data are meaningful). Therefore, I believe these Wikipedia pages are supported by a secondary source.  You can confirm their inclusion in Rfam for yourself by looking for Rfam's information box in the relevant pages, introduced with the  tag in the markup.  All data in this info box comes from the Rfam database.  Beside the term "Rfam" is the accession for the given RNA and a link to its entry in Rfam.  For example, on the Drum RNA motif page, you can click on the accession RF02958 (lower, right part of the page).  Such links should be provided for all RNA articles I have added to Wikipedia.
 * With regard to the apparent conflict of interest: The Rfam Database is maintained by a group at the European Bioinformatics Institute and this group was previously located at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. I have never had any affliation with either of these institutions, nor do I have any power to make Rfam incorporate specific RNAs into their database.  Indeed some of the RNAs I have published were not included in the Rfam Database, and these RNAs do not have corresponding Wikipedia articles.  Thus, I did not really decide to put these RNAs into Wikipedia, rather the Rfam group did.  I just did the work to create the Wikipedia article in many cases.
 * In terms of resolving this issue, perhaps it would be helpful to have an "External links" section in the affected articles that explicitly links to Rfam, although I'm not sure how to practically do this with hundreds of articles.
 * I have alerted the Rfam team to this page, in case they want to weigh in. I will also link to my text here from the Articles for Deletion entry for the Drum RNA motif page, since I see that the same issues are being discussed there.
 * Zashaw (talk) 21:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: In response to rsjaffe's comment above. (This user is directly responding to antonipetrov, but is implicitly also responding to my entry that I reposted immediately above.)  I am not sure that the IMDB is a relevant analogy.  Based on their page about adding films (https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/titles/submitting-a-completed-film-tv-show/GDWSDT4ECBJR84V2?ref_=helpart_nav_12#), it seems like they function similarly to Wikipedia, according to specific inclusion criteria that includes films that were merely streamed on the web.  This is not comparable to the curation conducted by the Rfam Database.  A couple hundred RNA motifs might sound like a lot, but if the Rfam Database were to include every RNA motif ever published (analogously to the IMDB), there would easily be 10000s or possibly 100000s if one were to really dig up every paper.  I think a better analogy would be if top film experts, like Siskel and Ebert in their day were to publish a list of movies they judged as significant.  It's a bit of a weird analogy, because obviously modern science is different from movies, but I think it's more similar to the current situation.
 * Many comments above in this deletion nomination in fact explicitly state the need for an expert opinion for these Wikipedia articles. For example, PianoDan writes, "This needs attention from an expert, I think," to which Elemimele replies, "Yes, I couldn't agree more. RNA structure is desperately important and interesting, but it needs to be dealt with in a balanced manner covering the global state-of-the-art, and we need one or more experts who can sort out the genuinely notable from the TooSoon and the trial-ideas that will fall by the wayside."  I am unclear why the curators of the Rfam Database are not considered the very experts in the field that were sought.  What kind of expert did the above editors have in mind when they called for an expert to evaluate the articles?
 * I think the idea of an "RNA motif" article is an interesting one. However, the idea does appear in Gene prediction, though not by that name.  The concept of RNA motifs also appear in other articles, e.g. the first section of Riboswitch (full disclosure: I started the riboswitch article, although many others have edited it.) and is implicit in the Rfam article itself.  The absence of a standalone article doesn't mean that the concept is deemed insignificant, it just means that no-one has written that particular article, and the content is spread among other articles.  This is a common situation in Wikipedia, because obviously editors choose specific articles to write, and there is no authority mandating that all articles in a particular area be written.  Also, Wikipedia has lots of articles on specific examples of things; there are umpteen thousands of articles on specific movies or specific small towns.  As to the question of whether RNA motifs are actually scientifically significant: A search of PubMed shows 412 results for a search of "RNA motif" (with quotes; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22rna+motif%22), which will not find scientific papers that discuss the concept using different terminology (e.g. "predicted RNA gene", "structural RNA alignment", etc) or papers that analyze such RNA motifs further.  Indeed the Rfam database itself tends to use the term "RNA family", and looking in the first-cited Rfam paper within the Rfam article, reference number 1 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC165453/), the term "RNA motif" doesn't appear at all.  Thus, the concept is a scientifically significant one, even if multiple terms are used and there is no direct Wikipedia article at this time.
 * Zashaw (talk) 21:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The question to be answered for each page, including the one here, is not whether RNA motif is significant, but whether the specific RNA motif described on the particular page is significant enough to be in wikipedia. <b style="color:white">rsjaffe</b> <b style="color:white">🗩</b> <b style="color:white">🖉</b> 21:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit puzzled by this response. The last paragraph of my comment (but not the first two paragraphs) was a response to your earlier rhetorical question "If motifs are important, why isn't there an overview article about them".  I argued that these motifs are important.  Did I misinterpret what you were saying, or was I not clear what I was responding to?  If so, I'm sorry if I contributed to us getting off topic.
 * At any rate, I agree that the question is whether the articles belong in Wikipedia. From my perspective, the essential history of this deletion nomination is that you argued that there's no secondary source, so the articles don't belong, while I contended that Rfam is a secondary source.  You then argued (in your response to antonipetrov) that Rfam is more like IMDB, and therefore not a meaningful secondary source, and I argued that that's not a valid comparison.  We can agree or disagree on these points, but I believe this line of debate is indeed addressing the question of whether these articles fit into Wikipedia.  Zashaw (talk) 09:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete / transwiki I'm sure this was created with the best of intentions, but it is a neologism that is only used in a single publication. A database such as Rfam doesn't fit well into our classification of primary and secondary sources but it certainly does not contain an author's analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources as we define a secondary source. WP:SCIRS is pretty clear that a secondary source is a review or book, which as far as I can tell, do not provide any coverage of this concept. SmartSE (talk) 10:15, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at https://rfam.org/family/RF02958 I see that the Wikipedia article is transcluded to Rfam. It would seem as if Rfam should fire up their own wiki for this and all the other articles mentioned at COIN and then move them over from here, but it is probably best discussed at COIN rather than here. SmartSE (talk) 10:32, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Listify this and all the others in a List of RNA motifs. While we seem to have a tacit agreement that species are inherently notable (and a failed proposal at WP:NSPECIES), these clearly fall below species level. This one is not notable by our standards (the name appears to be an invention of the authors of the single reference), but should be covered at least briefly in the encyclopaedia. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * : Could you say more about what you mean by "(The RNA motifs) clearly fall below species level"? It seems to me that they're analogous to species.  For example, one could essentially take the arguments made against notability of the RNA motifs and make them against new species that might have few citations ("okay, the species exists, but how do we know if that species is really important / too soon / too few citations").  Moreover, it seems to me that the requirement for a "correct name(botany) or valid name (zoology)" (quoting from WP:NSPECIES that you linked) is analogous to requiring an entry in the Rfam Database, since there is a body in taxonomy that certifies names (as I understand it; it's not my subfield) that is broadly analogous to Rfam.
 * You're right that the names of the RNA motifs were my invention, but _someone_ has to come up with a name. Species names are also someone's invention.  How could someone describe something new (species or RNA motif) without coming up with a new name / designation?  Moreover, these names are essentially ratified by Rfam, which again seems analogous to the species names, which someone proposes and is apparently ratified in either the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants or the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.  Anyway, there's a lot of different perspectives expressed here in this deletion discussion, and I'd like to understand your point of view better.  It's an interesting comparison.  Zashaw (talk) 14:56, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I can try,, but this is just my opinion and I am not a biologist. We have articles on many types of motor car, though some such pages may be a redirect to a manufacturer or a model range. We have articles on some types of engine used in some of those cars. We don't have, or need to have, an article on every specific type of washer or oil-seal used in each of those engines; those things are surely mentioned in parts-lists, technical diagrams, manufacturers' catalogues and so on, but they don't meet our thresholds of notability. We have an article on Lego, and numerous articles on various Lego product ranges; we don't (as far as I'm aware) have any page on any individual Lego kit, and we neither have nor need an article on every individual type of Lego brick. Here we seem to have got things back-to-front: we have 200(?) articles on the washers or bricks, but no page on the whole topic (unless it's under a different title?). Merging those to list is one possible solution to that – it preserves the content and resolves the question of notability. Oh, and our coverage of species is hopelessly incomplete. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:49, 4 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Transwikify per SmartSE's suggestion. While an impressive amount of effort has gone into putting all this information onto Wikipedia, it is not the function of Wikipedia to essentially be a mirror for Rfam.  If Rfam exists, then why shouldn't THAT just be the catalog?  Add an article on the concept of an RNA Motif which likely does have enough coverage for notability, and add articles for the individual motifs when and if they rise to the level of notable one at a time. PianoDan (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Nominator agrees with User:PianoDan. For most of the motifs, see WP:TOOSOON and WP:PSTS. <b style="color:white">rsjaffe</b> <b style="color:white">🗩</b> <b style="color:white">🖉</b> 21:53, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep (or merge to a list if you must, though I personally prefer short standalone articles). We have lots of short articles on Pfam entries (protein domains), why not Rfam? RNA always gets the short end of the stick compared to proteins. There was a plan awhile back in collaboration with Pfam to migrate their summary descriptions to the corresponding Wikipedia articles and I imagine that's where Rfam might have gotten the idea, though I don't know the status of that work - as a user of these databases, it seems incomplete. Contrary to the above, this strikes me as closely analogous to the situation with species where we consider inclusion in an expert-curated classification system to be sufficient for inclusion here too. More broadly, I can't help but think the correct answer to noticing all these pages was "Hey, thanks for making all those articles that improve our coverage of obscure biological topics! These might not get many readers, though; have you considered working on broader nucleic acid articles like pseudoknot, or ones of topical interest like Coronavirus 3′ UTR?" Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Whilst I agree with your sentiment, that's not really the topic at hand here and I'm struggling to see a policy-based reason for your !vote. Looking through the articles listed in template:Protein domains, they do seem to have much better sourcing than this one. It's not up to us to fix "RNA always gets the short end of the stick compared to proteins." SmartSE (talk) 12:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Posting at WT:BIOL was a good idea, thanks (though I also recommend WT:MCB) - it's too bad our processes apparently led someone looking for a second opinion to COIN and AfD to greet new expert editors with distracting wiki-jargon instead of wikiprojects where experienced editors knowledgeable about the subject can be found.
 * I think this point has been made in two places now, here and at the COIN thread, that Rfam is a manually expert-curated source. Think of it as a review article that's searchable and regularly updated. I'm unclear on why this keeps getting missed, or why we would ignore existing precedent with a similar database (Pfam), or indeed large numbers of scientific topics that fall within an expert-curated classification system (genes, species, and so forth). This seems to have come up for RNA because the subject is less familiar. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:39, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep – mentioned in two independent sources . Boghog (talk) 18:33, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless I'm mistaken, the coverage in those is limited to ... and drum RNA (RF02958) examples/ and Metagenomic-based RNAs Drum (RF02958) respectively. Hardly WP:SIGCOV is it? SmartSE (talk) 12:50, 3 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep They are well-formed, keep. Excellent framework articles.  scope_creep Talk  21:56, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. I understand the concerns raised by those above. The two main issues being notability of the articles' topics and the references cited within them. Most of these aspects affect not only the RNA motif pages, but a range of other science stubs.
 * Re: References, the Rfam database (and databases like it) should count as references in and of themselves if there is evidence of curation or formalised review/checking process. in this case, Rfam is closer to secondary synthesis than to primary research, though there are often automated original checks involved in adding database items. Conceivably something on this needs to be added to WP:SCIRS. Since refs are used to both evidence specific claims and support notability, I'll address the notability aspects below.
 * Re: Notability, I think this is the larger issue at discussion here. I totally sympathise with someone looking at one of these pages and seeing them not match WP:GNG. the same is true for most genes, gene families, proteins, rna domains, species, and plenty of other biology topics. I suspect similar discussions are held about exoplanet lists vs articles etc. I'm pretty sure there have been prev discussions on several of these (I'll add links if I find them       ). I think that inclusion in a curated database such as Rfam gives good support for notability in this case, even aside from it's transclusion of WP content as summaries.
 * Although I'm generally against instruction creep, perhaps there's scope for a short guideline on notability of science topics to cover these sorts of cases? At least something in WP:MOLBIO's resources.
 * Re: Potential organisation solutions proposed above, My initial thoughts are that lists are appropriate when info on each item is likely to be highly structured and consistent so can fit into a table (e.g. restriction enzyme cutting sites has a couple of possible relevant bits of info per item, likely indefinitely). Merging each page into a hierarchically related page can also work in some cases (e.g. significant mutations can usually be described within the relevant gene/protein article, rather than a separate article; similarly subspecies, cultivars and strains are usually kept within the article on their respective species). However, neither protein motifs or RNA motifs fall into either of these scenarios.
 * deletion/transwikification: Although I see the reasoning behind suggesting this, it creates its own issues to do with duplication of content and efforts and fragmentation of topics. E.g. separate wikis for genes, gene families, proteins, rna domains, etc. Indeed some of those early separate wikis were deliberately merged into WP to avoid those sorts of issues. CAZypedia (carbohydrate-active enzymes) is a counterexample that remains separate, but causes a bit of a mess of duplication of some topics (not helped by their decision to be incompatibly licensed, but that's another, more annoying story). Wikispecies is probably the best counterexample, but even that has frequent discussions around merging into WP. If the some (or all) RNA motif content is moved off-wiki, it'd probably still be possible to do some hybrid solution at Rfam where content is drawn from WP if present, and from a local wiki if not.
 * listification: These often have high maintenance overhead and get out of date and messy pretty fast compared to categories. For example: 'List_of_human_genes_on_chromosome_12' was created to summarise stubs (similar to this discussion), then merged to be a section of Chromosome_12, which now See also links to Category:Genes_on_human_chromosome_12. Note that this would still cause the issue of which ones had a separate page as well, and the divergence of content between the separate pages and their corresponding list sections. If listification is done, I'd recommend including the content of all current stubs as sections in a list (rather than just listing names) so that the information is retained and so that those sections can still be usefully transcluded by Rfam (less like this or this, more like this or this. However, the infoboxes will likely stack horribly, so would probably beed a at the end of each section. Again a hybrid solution by Rfam would be needed where content is drawn from the article if present, and from the list section if not.
 * merging individually into other articles: For both protein and RNA motifs, there isn't a simple hierarchical relationship to the various RNAs/proteins that they're present in.
 * So, with all that said, my preferred solution is to retain the individual articles organised by categories. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 04:25, 3 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: I am not seeing a lot of convincing arguments for deletion of the topic, but I am not seeing a lot of convincing arguments for keeping it either. jp×g 09:56, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
 * keep RNA motifs are notable by itself, deleting or moving anything to another wiki would make the info less accessible and wouldn't benefit anybody. Artem.G (talk) 16:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. notable basic biology. There seems to be some misplaced concern that there are too many articles, being added indiscriminately. I think the situation is, rather, the very rapid progress in molecular biology that makes identifying significant structures much more feasible.  DGG ( talk ) 02:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep, after some further deliberation on the arguments that have been presented here. I see a few "delete" !votes, making arguments I don't find particularly slam-dunky (citing a peer-reviewed paper and a scientific database with editorial oversight is not a violation of WP:OR). While I must confess I'm not professionally conversant in recent revelopments in RNA macrostructure, I was able to read over the paper referenced by the article (as well as the Rfam entries mentioned earlier). Whether it has been borne out by further research is unclear to me, but it seems to me like the concept certainly and obviously exists. And, again, it's an open question whether the creation of separate articles for each identified motif is justified based on this -- I'll note that RNA motif, which ought to be a parent page describing this concept in depth, is instead a redlink. However, I don't think there is a good basis to simply delete the information (which is the only realistic choice here, since a target article doesn't exist to be merged to). jp×g 10:49, 7 December 2021 (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.