Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ISO 259-3


 * 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   merge to ISO 259. Black Kite (talk) 15:14, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

ISO 259-3

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

No reliable source: WP:RS, not notable: WP:N MisterGoodTime (talk) 20:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

This proposal for deletion grew out of a discussion on the article's talk page: Talk:ISO_259-3. Here's a short summary:

PedroLamarao searched the ISO's online standards catalogue for ISO 259-3 under "Published standards", "Standards under development", "Withdrawn standards" and "Projects deleted (last 12 months)", and there was no listing for a standard ISO 259-3, only the original ISO 259:1984 and ISO 259-2:1984. I confirmed this with my own search. I also sent the following email to central at iso dot org:


 * I'm writing to help ensure that the ISO is accurately represented on Wikipedia. There is an article that claims the ISO adopted a second revision to the 259 standard for Hebrew transliteration in 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_259-3. However, searching the iso.org online catalogue for published, under development, and withdrawn standards shows only the original standard published in 1984, and 259-2 published in 1994. I would appreciate any information you can give me on a proposed 259-3 standard and whether it was accepted or withdrawn.

I received the following reply from MBINFO at iso dot org:


 * Thank you for your message and interest in ISO. According to our database ISO 259-3 is a deleted project which never reached the stage of published International Standard.
 * Cordially,
 * [Name Withheld]
 * Information Officer
 * Marketing, Communication and Information

Since this was a personal communication, I wouldn't necessarily consider it sufficient evidence in a deletion discussion. However, the article relies on a single source, http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~ornan/maamarim/taatiq-latini/ISO.doc, a word document on the faculty site of Uzzi Ornan (http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~ornan/), a professor at the Israeli Institute of Technology. He is a an authority on Hebrew linguistics: A google scholar search brings up many publications in refereed journals with him as sole or co-author, and in some of his published papers he mentions that ISO 259-3 at least reached the final draft stage (ISO FDIS), which is not in conflict with the communication I quoted above.

It seems to me the word document is therefore not a sufficiently reliable source to base a Wikipedia article on. Additionally, a proposed and rejected standard does seem particularly notable.

On the other hand, deleting this article will have some wider consequences. The page ISO_259 cites this article as the source for its transliteration guide. That would have to be removed unless some source other than the word doc could be cited--made more difficult since the ISO does not provide their standards for free--and the article turned into a stub. I'm not clear on how it would effect Romanization_of_Hebrew, since that article cites ISO_259-2, which redirects to ISO_259-3.

Also, Uzzi Ornan's Wikipedia bio, Uzzi_Ornan, cites this page in claiming he authored a published ISO standard, and that would have to be removed.

I hope this information can spur a productive discussion. MisterGoodTime (talk) 21:25, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:12, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep Reluctantly, and in some minimalist form, "A proposed modification that was not implemented" or some such. There will be other references to it out in the world, and people will search for it when they don't find it; having the article will provide a correct closure (I hope!) to their searching. If some future ISO 259-3 comes along, then this previous attempt will have to remain referenced there anyway, as a failed proposed standard with the same number. htom (talk) 00:31, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Merge to Uzzi Ornan. Actually, whether the standard has been published or not doesn't necessarily affect its notability. If it has received significant coverage in independent reliable sources per WP:GNG then we could have an article on it, even if it wasn't published. (We should of course note in the article that it was not an accepted ISO standard if this were the case.) Uzzi Ornan is the originator of the proposed standard, so the paper by him that you mention can't be used to prove notability, as it is not an independent source. This leaves us with sources that are not cited in the article. I had a look online and found this source which has a good description of the proposed standard and which seems able to count toward notability. There were also a few mentions of Ornan's paper, and a couple of transcriptions that used the standard, but nothing else that discussed the standard itself. This doesn't quite seem like enough to satisfy the "significant coverage" clause of WP:GNG, but it is enough that we could mention the proposed standard in another article. Ornan's article seems like the best fit, so I recommend merging any verifiable material there. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 10:25, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I took some time to look at that source, and I think it makes a better case for the standard's notability than any of the sources I had found. Summarized, it says the standard is notable because it reflects Uzzi Ornan's philosophy toward the transcription of Hebrew -- that it be phonemic and that the characters be accessible to anyone regardless of whether they have access to international keyboard layouts. Considering the content of the source User:Mr. Stradivarius found, that Uzzi Ornan has been an active member of the Academy of Hebrew Language since 1979, and that he's published a ton of papers on Hebrew transcription, I can see why Uzzi Ornan's philosophy toward matters of Hebrew linguistics might be notable to his peers. So a merger with his bio seems like a very reasonable suggestion.


 * Once that's settled, however, I'm still concerned that consensus be reached about the consequences for Romanization_of_Hebrew and ISO_259, since they have a much wider audience than Uzzi Ornan's bio. My hope is that someone with access to 259-2 can verify that the character tables on those pages conform to that standard without any of the changes/additions proposed in ISO 259-3. I've posted notices about this deletion discussion on the talk page for each of the articles we've discussed (which I should have done already).
 * MisterGoodTime (talk) 22:24, 13 March 2013 (UTC)


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


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Theopolisme   ( talk )  04:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge to ISO 259 – SJ + 03:04, 21 March 2013 (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.