Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interlanguage fossilization


 * 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 delete.  Sandstein  10:23, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Interlanguage fossilization

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Every version since the start of this article has been taken nearly verbatim from a PhD thesis (pp. 3–6). This is attributed at the bottom, and the copying is said to be with permission. The evidence for this permission is discussed on the talk page, and consists of a comment on the article creator's talk page that the inclusion of the material has [the PhD author's] approval.

Per WP:COPYOTHERS, this is insufficient, as, even assuming good faith on the part of the article creator that they asked the PhD author, there is no evidence that the material has been licensed under a compatible licence (and not just, say that the author gave permission for just Wikipedia to use the material, which, as WP:DCM notes, would be insufficient). The creator hasn't edited since 2011, so can probably be assumed to be long gone from the project and unable to clarify, though I have notified them of this discussion.

In terms of WP:ATD, because every version of this article has the copyright problem, merging isn't an option, and I can't see an obvious redirect target (if redirected, I'd argue that the page history would need to be WP:REVDELled anyway, making this functionally equivalent). YorkshireLad ✿  (talk) 19:13, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. YorkshireLad  ✿  (talk) 19:13, 12 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete on the basis of copyright violation since there is no evidence of a licence for public use. Polyamorph (talk) 13:14, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't have any idea about the subjects notability, but due to copyright issues it needs to have most of its history deleted. Maybe if the subject is notable we can just recreate a stub for other people to work on afterwards?★Trekker (talk) 21:10, 16 September 2020 (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.