Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Health effects of electronic cigarettes


 * 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. I see a consensus here for two factors: a) that the article should be Kept and b) that the article is in bad shape and needs a lot of work. But apparently, there is enough good content in it that the majority of editors are not arguing for TNT. Liz Read! Talk! 02:53, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Health effects of electronic cigarettes

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

Horrible article. Primary author is now deservedly topic-banned from medicine. The encyclopaedic content is already in Electronic cigarette; this is just that plus immense amounts of repetitive trivia, hilariously rated as "mid-importance". The very first edit to this article's talk page described it as "bloat". Proposed for a merge by others, but I don't see any useful content to merge.

If deleted, then for WP:PATT reasons, the deleting sysop will need to preserve attribution with Nicotine, Nicotine poisoning and 2019-20 vaping lung illness outbreak. I expect the simplest way to do this might be to make a page like this. —S Marshall T/C 04:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 04:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. —S Marshall T/C 04:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Electronic cigarette: I agree that this page is awful, but the content is important. I'd say that the redirect name is useful too. Capsulecap (talk • contribs) 06:40, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete or redirect per TNT. Draken Bowser (talk) 12:43, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge/redirect. First, just as a point of order, DocJames is not topic banned from medicine as stated in the nom, just from the narrow topic of drug prices. That said, I agree with the part of the comment above that "the content is important". The solution for notable and encyclopedic information that is badly written is revision, even if the revision should start with a major blanking – but the solution is not AfD. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * After considering more recent comments, I've also struck the merge/redirect part, because I'm now persuaded that this is a straight-up case of keep. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:53, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't say Doc James was topic banned. He started the article but the lion's share of the text is by QuackGuru, who is topic banned. To the extent that the article consists of encyclopedic information, that information is already in Electronic cigarette. Nothing of value will be lost in its deletion, and the solution most definitely is AfD.—S Marshall T/C 22:42, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clarifying, and I struck that part. It would probably be simplest to blank the page and redirect it, then. Still no need to delete it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:49, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't see the purpose of a redirect, because that's not a plausible search term and the daily page views are vanishingly small even though it's wikilinked from better and more prominent articles, but if you insist then we can redirect and after a polite interval I'll list it at RfD.—S Marshall T/C 23:38, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still not convinced that it needs to be TNT-ed. There are graphics that should be removed, and it's obviously too verbose. The talk page shows very little effort to engage with fixing the page after QG was banned. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:54, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, to be fair to Beland, he's had a pretty good go at fixing some of it. I appreciate Beland's effort there quite a lot.  Fixing QG's prose is incredibly time-consuming, as I've learned by slogging away at it at the main article on this topic: electronic cigarette (which should be the only article we need).The reason why it's so hard is because it's not just QG's phrasing that's the problem: he also doesn't seem to use the source material in the way that you and I do.  You or I would read the sources, understand them, think about them, evaluate which was the best, and then summarize their conclusions in terms that are accessible to the general public -- right?  But I don't think QG does.I think that QG's writing method is firstly, to find an impeccably reliable MEDRS and cite it very carefully and precisely; secondly, to cherry-pick the single sentence in that source that most closely supports QG's personal view (in this case, the most skeptical or negative sentence in that source); thirdly, CTRL+C/CTRL+V; and fourthly, to group the resulting sentences by topic.I know that's a pretty harsh thing for me to type, about an editor who's topic banned and doesn't have the right to reply.  I've said exactly the same thing to Arbcom when he did have the right to reply, and he didn't engage with me on it.But, Tryptofish, I would be genuinely delighted if you could prove me wrong on this!  You're very welcome to try to fix this article right here during the course of the AfD.  A WP:HEY level rescue is within your grasp if you wish, and I solemnly swear that I will strike my own nomination and type out a heartily apologetic "keep" !vote if you do it.—S Marshall T/C 02:40, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. This is a big and important subject that deserves a separate sub-page, while the corresponding section in Electronic cigarette could be made a little shorter. I do not think anyone really objects this. The argument here is different: this page is very difficult to fix, hence the WP:TNT. However, after looking at the page (it is very big and well sourced), I think it should be fixed rather than deleted. I think some people did way too much work here for a TNT. Yes, it is excessively detailed, but it does not warrant deletion. Is it promoting some POV? I do not see it as non-expert in this particular subject. My very best wishes (talk) 21:15, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think it's POV, largely through being out of date now. There's a recent Cochrane review which postdates QuackGuru's topic ban. It could be fixed but (a) the effort involved is far greater than it would take just to write a decent article from scratch and (b) the fixed version would look a lot like the several paragraphs about health effects we already have in Electronic cigarette, so it would just be duplicative.—S Marshall</b> T/C 02:08, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
 * <p class="xfd_relist" style="margin:0 0 0 -1em;border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 2em;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Strong keep 300+ citations from peer-reviewed journals, the article is great; it's almost too long and needs a split into further topics. This is a well-documented medical issue. Oaktree b (talk) 14:52, 3 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Just as a comment, the number of citations alone isn't enough to prove notability. The topic should have coverage from independent secondary sources generally to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia. Not saying that this is not a good article to keep only the argument that number of citations => notability, is not wikipedia's notability policy. EvilxFish (talk) 01:05, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. The proposal to delete the page is more or less the nominator's distaste for the current state of the article. But the article subject is notable, its contents are well-referenced, and the primary complaint is that this needs to be trimmed down. The deletion policy notes that [i]f editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page. And, frankly, the only complaints here are ones that can be solved by ordinary editing and discussion—that a page is excessively detailed is not a valid reason to outright delete it. I also do not see a convincing reason that this is a time whereit is better to cover this notable topics as part of a larger page about a broader topic. Rather, much like Health effects of tobacco, it seems like this page is warranted in its own right and that it should not be merged. — <span style="background: linear-gradient(#990000,#660000)"> Red-tailed hawk (nest) 21:40, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Did you propose to fix this page soon, Red-tailed hawk? Or shall we redirect it until you've finished?—<b style="font-family: Verdana; color: Maroon;">S Marshall</b> T/C 22:27, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not how this works. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:08, 9 January 2023 (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.