Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Russian language topics


 * 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 (no consensus). There are good and valid arguments for deletion here, but arguments have been presented by Mikka among others that we have a number of other lists which bundle together topics related to a particular subject and that the list might be useful for navigation. I find that the people arguing for "keep" have sufficient merit in the arguments that I will call this 12d/9k a no consensus. Sjakkalle (Check!)  07:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

List of Russian language topics
Per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not a "Mere collections of internal links, except for disambiguation pages when an article title is ambiguous, and for structured lists to assist with the organisation of articles." This is obviously not a disambiguation page and the list's theme seems to be "things that might mention Russian and if they don't they should." In addition, while the article states that doesn't overlap with category:Russian language, anything that is appropriately linked to Russian could easily go into that category, thus making this article redundant. AEuSoes1 02:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete. There could be an infinite number of such topics, no basis for a coherent article. Important topics couls either get articles in their own right or simply be part of Russian (language) -- no need for having a separate "topics" article, and plenty of potential for harm. --Shirahadasha 04:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, a list is not a indiscriminatory collection of articles. If it lists all Russian language topics, it becomes by definition unmaintainable. I like lists, but I'd be happy to see this one gone. - Mgm|(talk) 08:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. What this is even doing before the marked articles have information added on Russian is beyond me, although even then it's significantly unmaintainable and superfluous. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 10:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep - ugh, needs severe cleanup and reworking, but AfD is not cleanup. Topic is very reasonable given WP:LIST. WilyD 12:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete - what type of list? Michael 19:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete No need for such a list. Borders on original research as well: it's pretty much someone combing through Wikipedia linguistic topics and making a list of those that have (or, in the author's opinion, should have) information about Russian. -Elmer Clark 22:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. This vote is outrageous.
 * This is a list of grammar topics that discuss Russian language, not an "indiscriminate collection". You keep List of sexual slang, yet you delete list of Russian language. Mind-boggling. We have List of basic archaeology topics, List of mathematics topics, and hundreds of other topical lists.
 * "plenty of potential for harm" haha very funny. Russian language is going to inflict harm.
 * This is not supposed to be a "coherent article", this is a list.
 * And there is no "infinite number" of topics. Grammar books are of fnite size, you know, and perfectly maintainable.
 * "Combing thru wikipedia" is how such lists are created.
 * "unnecessary" is personal POV, not an argument.
 * Not superfluous. There are quite a few esoteric topics that are not discussed in the main Russian language article. This list helps to keep trak of them.
 * No cleanup necessary. This is list, and well-defined, too, for God's sake!
 * "(or, in the author's opinion, should have)" What's wrong with author's opinion? Is the author inventing Russian grammar?
 * etc.
 * `'mikka (t) 04:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * What I find outrageous is your accusation that "unnecessary" is POV while asserting your own POV such as "well-defined" and "no cleanup necessary." Is your POV better than other people's? AEuSoes1 04:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * "well-defined", as opposed to "indiscriminate collection" is a fact, not POV: it is list of topics that discuss Russian language. It does not include porn stars, gay rights, pokemon and other popular topics. "no cleanup necessary": if a cleanup is necessary, please explain which exactly. I may be wrong here, but still I don't see why it must be "severe". Are you going to delete 5/7 of entries? In summary, yes, my POV is better, because I can argument for it. And it is not an accusation, but a statement of fact: "unnecessary" is a POV, not an argument. The voter who thinks it is "unnecessary" must provide arguments by which rules there is "no need for such list", out of simple courtesy to fellow wikipedians. We are not discussing deletion of a vanity page here. Lists are tools for search information. And like I said, we have hundreds of them. Why don't you go and try to delete List of songs whose title includes a phone number? If the operson who says "no need" provided a solid argument, there could have been a fat chance I agrreed with him. The issue is not like inter-ethnic conflict, where people just stand for their political POV. I will not die or kill for Russian language, you know. `'mikka (t) 05:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Rationale for the list. It comes to my mind that those who hastily voted to delete probably do not know the reason why all these List of mathematics topics, etc. have been created. There is a useful link "Related changes". If you click it, you will see something like this, which is very useful for monitoring articles that cover a certain topic, in addition to "My watchlist" tool. `'mikka (t) 05:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Example of usefulness: did you know that Russian is stress-timed language? Did you know at all what the heck it is? I bet my beard that 90% of native Russian speakers do not know it (and 99.8% do not know now to translate this term into Russian (or whether the corresponding Russian term exists), and 999.8% would not know where to find this fact). `'mikka (t) 05:53, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, the reasons for there being no need have already been listed in the nomination. Your POV is not better than others.  Your comparative examples are poor ones because they're lists of (arguably) non-notable trivia while the argument against this article is that it is not a "structured list."  Linguistics pages that mention/should mention Russian is not a well-defined or discrete topic.  Why, for example, are alveolar trill and voiceless velar fricative listed but not any of the other phonemes?
 * That you use the list as an addition to your watchlist to monitor pages is not a compelling argument.
 * Apparantly 99.99% percent of users named Mikkalai don't know to put important information about Russian in the Russian language article. AEuSoes1 06:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Aren't you the one who thinks that grammar issues of Russian language are trivial and do not deserve separate article, such as Reduplication in the Russian language? Now I remember you. I am no longer talking to you. `'mikka (t) 07:13, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * No, I'm the guy who thought Reduplication in the Russian language should've been merged into the Russian grammar article. Nice diversion, though. You've effectively countered my arguments with a number of fallacies.  AEuSoes1 08:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment At the risk of getting my head bitten off, surely the place for the fact that (for example) Russian is a stress-timed language is in the article on stress-timed languages (which it already is) and the article on the language itself (which it doesn't appear to be). While the argument that "other equally large lists already exist" doesn't really get us anywhere (they might simply exist because nobody's got around to nominating them here yet), I'd argue that the difference would be that the articles linked in that list actually talk about "archaeology" or "mathematics" or whatever else it's a list of. When this list links exclusively to pages which mention the word "Russian" or "Russian Language", it might - and I do stress might - be a useful analogy. BigHaz - Schreit mich an (Review me) 07:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I suggest you to try to count the number of pages that mention the word Russian language before jumping to weird analogies. For all others: precisely because "Rus Lang" page is linked to countless articles that say nothing about the language this list is highly useful: it points to linguistics pages, in other words, it is not "an indiscriminate collection". (Of course, you are free to maintain that "Linguistics" itself is an indiscriminate collection. .)`'mikka (t) 07:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * What I meant was that not all of the articles on this list here mention Russian. This is admitted on the list itself and is (I would suggest) not the case in the other "List of X Topics" lists, which presumably link only to articles which do mention "archaeology", "mathematics", "dog-breeding" or whatever value X has. BigHaz - Schreit mich an (Review me) 08:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a list of articles that discuss peculiarities of Russian language, period. When, say, the artile Mondegreens in Russian language will be written and placed into category:Russian language, then the entry "*Mondegreen" may be deleted from List of Russian language topics. When the list becomes empty, I swear delete it myself (I pledge to delete it even earlier: when it will contain less than 6 items). `'mikka (t) 15:24, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * In that case, why not move this to a subpage of your userpage for your own reference? BigHaz - Schreit mich an (Review me) 21:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Because this is a reference, not "my own reference". You don't like it, don't use it. `'mikka (t) 22:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair cop, but might it be a valid suggestion in case the list does get deleted? It seems as though you're saying that the list serves two purposes - it can provide links to topics connected in various ways to Russian and it can remind you (or another user who's interested in doing the same thing) to create articles about "X in Russian". I would respectfully suggest that if it's deemed to be unencyclopedic to do the former, userfication would make a lot of sense to achieve the latter. BigHaz - Schreit mich an (Review me) 22:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually this discussion gave me an idea how to make this list into something "bullet-proof" against deletionists. And such lists wil be useful for other languages as well. My observation (which triggerred the creation of this hapless list) is that it is nearly impossible to quiclky find out whether a particular feature exist in the language. For example, is Russian an agglutinative language? The corresponding article gives "examples" of languages only, and it may well be that Russian is agglutinative, but simply was not among handpicked examples. Further, if it is not agglutinative, then which kind is it? Luckily, there sits the Linguistic typology topics template, and I can try and find Russian language in articles from the same category. OK here we go: it turns out it is synthetic language. But is it fusional or olygosynthetic (listed as subcategoeries in the template)? Dunno. Stuck. And this problem is especially acute with more obscure topics, such as does Russian have frequentatives? Right now I noticed that Russian grammar article has a statement that there is no Nominative absolute it modern Russian, which is false. My list is an attempt to add some search structure to the chaotic presentation of linguistic topics. And here come some deletionists who cannot tell  ablaut from umlaut and tell me that this list is useless. Of course you don't need it when you write pokemon articles. Just take a look into the category:Lists of songs. How much effort is put into this songcruft, and all are happy. But my list useful for searches in a serious topic somehow makes someone sleepless. Sheesh! `'mikka (t) 00:21, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * So you're saying that this article is useful for people who prefer not to look in Russian language to find out of Russian is agglutinative or not? AEuSoes1 19:29, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Strong keep per mikka. Sure, it needs cleanup but it's not a reason for deletion. -- Grafikm  (AutoGRAF)  11:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep and move to List of Russian language topics. Once it's there, editors working on Russian language articles can use it as they see fit. Fg2 00:28, 7 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete. The title is fraudulent.  What we have here is a list of articles on general linguistics.  Lazybum 03:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Logical fallacy. We have a list of articles in general linguistics that are releted to Russian language, not the list of all articles in gen ling. Besides, wrong title is a reason for renaming, not for deleting. `'mikka (t) 15:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * What would you rename it to? "List of general language topics"?  I'm sorry, a List of linguistic topics already exists.  Lazybum 05:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom.-Kmaguir1 08:06, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. Lead could use a bit more clarification about the linguistic part, but the idea is useful organizationally.  LotLE × talk  16:50, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong delete. The article doesn't describe what should be included, nor (apparently) can it do so.  &mdash; Arthur Rubin |  (talk) 00:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * keep. Although the list requires some structuring. Some entries are related to language, i.e., of linguistic character. Some others (Palindrome, Paschal greeting) are articles on important topics where examples are given in several languages. This list somehow resembles me article like List of English words of Turkish origin, only vice versa. Since this is English-langauage encyclopedia, certain topics which may be interesting in Turkish or Russian langauge cannot have an article of reasonable size in English wikipedia. And it makes sense to have a kind of "table of contents" for them. Mukadderat 17:57, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Will it be reasonable to expand this article with the full list of topics related to Russian language, with indications where they are discussed? for example, Dialects of Russian language (and make a redirect to Russian language for now), Cases in Russian langauage, etc. Does it make sense? The two my examples clearly have a potential for large articles. Mukadderat 17:57, 10 September 2006 (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.