Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grounding (punishment)


 * 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The result was Keep as Withdrawn as there has been enough comments to suggest this can be closed, with there only now being 1 Delete vote (NAC). SwisterTwister  talk  15:58, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Grounding (punishment)

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A mixture of a dictionary definition (WP:DICTDEF) and unsourced (WP:V) original research (WP:OR) content, which might be what the writer experienced as a child but can't be generalized to all families in all time periods and in all places.  Sandstein  14:11, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Withdrawn following improvement and sourcing. Thanks!  Sandstein   10:27, 12 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep The topic is notable and so should be improved rather than deleted, per our editing policy. See The Science of Grounding, for example. Andrew D. (talk) 16:20, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Though I'm probably going to end up on the keep side of this for lack of decent merge target so far, that book was self-published via iUniverse. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 17:14, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * That book was first published in 1984 and again in 1991. I suppose that iUniverse edition is an online reprint.  In any case, the author, Kenneth Kaye, is an expert in the field.  Andrew D. (talk) 17:30, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Found it in the frontmatter. Walker & Co. (since acquired by Bloomsbury) published it first. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 20:39, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing the topic isn't notable. It may or may not be. But the article as it is requires deletion for the issues explained above, because it consists entirely of unusable content. This does not prevent others from recreating it in a sourced form.  Sandstein   18:17, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * No, that's not our policy. Our actual policy is that, "Even poor articles, if they can be improved, are welcome. For instance, one person may start an article with an overview of a subject or a few random facts."  Per WP:V, such content only requires a citations for "...quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged".  The material here seems quite anodyne – a general overview which has been around in much the same form for about 10 years without being seriously challenged.  Per WP:BLUE, this seems to be a case of common knowledge.  Furthermore, we know that deletion is not appropriate for such uncited material because we have a different policy for BLPs.  In that case, the WP:BLPPROD process may be used to force a citation.  Per the principle that the exception proves the rule, the existence of a higher bar for BLPs demonstrates that we have a lesser requirement for material of this kind. Andrew D. (talk) 19:28, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, this material here is challenged, by me, and unless it is referenced it must be deleted, see WP:BURDEN. BLPs are not an issue here. We are extra careful with them, but verifiability applies to all content, not only to BLPs.  Sandstein   20:05, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Sandstein has not challenged any of this material specifically. His complaint is just a series of WP:VAGUEWAVES which make not the slightest reference to the actual content and which could be addressing any topic at all.  It just seems to be a mechanical form of drive-by disruption.  Please state some specific objection which relates to the actual text which we are considering. Andrew D. (talk) 21:49, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * My objection is that I want to be able to verify in reliable source that what the article says is true. No other objection is needed. Dubious passages include such statements as "It has been suggested [by whom?] as an alternative to corporal punishment", as though corporal punishment would be something a decent person might even consider, or that it is a "common punishment for children" - common where, when, and in which social classes? Is this just another case of what I presume are Americans writing something up that happened to them as a child and assuming it is universally valid across the world and in all time? It should be obvious to any educated person that this content is worthless as an encyclopedia article, in addition to being unsourced.  Sandstein   22:01, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The first sentence of the source I cited above was "Grounding seems to be the punishment chosen most often by American parents". Looking for a source which compares it with corporal punishment we soon find a paper by the American College of Pediatricians which states, inter alia, "Straus, Sugarman and Giles-Sims concluded in a 1997 study that there was a causal relationship between spanking and antisocial behavior in children.  In controlling for the child’s initial behavior, they argued that their results should indisputably compel professionals to oppose all spanking as a disciplinary option for parents. However, an independent reassessment of the same data found that all four alternative disciplinary tactics in the study (grounding, privilege removal, allowance removal, and sending children to their room) also predicted higher subsequent antisocial behavior."  We see from these examples that there is plenty of scope to expand and qualify the existing text but that there's nothing so wrong about it that we need to delete it all and start from nothing.  The essence of the wiki method is incremental improvement.  Expecting a perfect first draft is not our way and so deletion is disruption.  Andrew D. (talk) 22:29, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Yes, expecting a perfect first draft would be unreasonable. However, we are now a decade and hundreds of drafts past that first draft. Sometimes deletion is "our way". So far, we have one bare mention (along with other stuff} in a paper about spanking. Rather than asserting that there must be reliable sources for substantial content, how about some of that content? - Sum mer PhD v2.0 02:01, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * The "actual policy" indeed says that even poor articles can be improved and are welcome. It doesn't say "anything someone contributes is immune from deletion" or even "anything someone writes about a notable subject is immune from deletion". You seem to think that BLP is an exception that creates some sort of inverse rule by virtue of it being singled out for specific guidance. Not sure I even need to say this, but that's an obvious fallacy. We have specific rules for BLPs, but that's not to say that none of those rules can apply to any other content. After all, the BLP rules are just more specific/explicit/strict versions of content policies already in place. Regardless, it is obviously not the only case in which unsourced material can and/or should be removed. WP:EP even defers to WP:V just a few paragraphs down from there, under "problems that may justify removal", for "handling unsourced and contentious material". In this case it is both unsourced and contended, so it seems an awful stretch to claim a monopoly on "actual policy". &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 20:56, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Soft Delete &rarr; Keep without prejudice to recreation with sources, and without an objection to a Redirect, although I'm not sure what the best target would be. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 20:57, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with that.  Sandstein   17:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Update: Switched to keep based on article improvements. &mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 02:19, 12 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete that an article has existed for x years is no reason to keep. That a book has been published which discusses "grounding" is no reason to keep. Books have been published about different types of bird shit but I'm not expecting Wikipedia to cover that soon.  Wiktionary exists for a reason, and this kind of thing should redirect our dear readers over there.  After all, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, or a thesaurus.  The Rambling Man (talk) 21:37, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. Major child-rearing practice. Besides the book, there's discussion in a great many places, and hundreds of uses in literature, film, etc.  Alll of that is proper content to expand an article."Inadequate" is not a reason for deletion.  DGG ( talk ) 17:41, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * But it is you who will need to supply this content and references, see WP:BURDEN. We're not discussing whether to delete a potential rewritten and sourced article, but the one with the current unsourced and dubious content.  Sandstein   17:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * I have done a quick Google Scholar search, and I agree with DGG that it's a major child-rearing practice. From my search, I found Maternal violence, victimization, and child physical punishment in Peru. I can't view it but here's an excerpt: Other disciplinary methods such as food deprivation, grounding, [...]. So it seems that it's not solely an American phenomenon. says Parents punish children by [...] "grounding," revoking privileges. This says adolescents from intact families and stepfamilies identified loss of privileges and grounding as the primary discipline methods used by their families. This one even goes into detail about exactly what grounding is.  The German article (linked to in the interwiki section. interestingly, it links to house arrest as its English translation, not sure why) appears to be about house arrest ("a ban from leaving one's house", says the first sentence). Other than that, the Danish, Dutch, and Portuguese articles don't really have much content (I can't attest to the Arabic or Farsi ones) at a first glance. So the WP:DICDEF argument, as such, isn't entirely wrong.  That said, I'm inclined to agree with Rhododendrites. I'd actually suggest Wiktionary redirect over deletion, if the decision comes to that. But if we ever write more than 1.5 paragraphs about it, I don't see any reason not to keep it. → Σ  σ  ς . (Sigma) 03:22, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 01:00, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep significant practice that is sufficiently covered and worthy of its own article. Lepricavark (talk) 03:36, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep per DGG and Sigma. Sources are there and it's hard to believe this is controversial. --Sammy1339 (talk) 00:38, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:BEFORE and above comments, esp. and . Assuming it's kept, the closing admin or some other editor should add in at least three sources. Bearian (talk) 16:09, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. I just added some academic sources and expanded it a very little. It's a hard thing to search because "grounded" can have so many meanings, so FYI, I used a lot of search terms at once, like "parenting discipline grounding adolescents review" to try to filter out unrelated results. —PermStrump  ( talk )  01:56, 12 August 2016 (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.