Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of human blood components


 * 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 - the good issues raised by nom can be fixed through the normal editing process. Bearian (talk) 16:06, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

List of human blood components

 * – ( View AfD View log )


 * Suspiction of Copyright violations; lack of citation and sources; infeasibility to rely on only one source(copyright issue and neutrality; infeasiblity to rely on multiple sources(copyright issue and inability to resolve the inevitable conflict of sources). Kuphrer (talk) 08:58, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It might be useful to cite the U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE REPORT ON LEGAL PROTECTION FOR DATABASES as the final criteria of copyrightability.Kuphrer (talk) 19:16, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. If this is a copyright violation, it is probably from an offline source. The original edit cites one source, which was later removed somewhere down the line. Looking at the diffs between the original edit doesn't help much, although somewhere along the line it gained 14kb. Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:26, 4 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Copyright is an insignificant issue because basic facts of this kind are not subject to copyright under US law. The presentation of the facts is a matter of ordinary editing per our editing policy and so deletion would be inappropriate. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:19, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I question the saying that such data are not subject to copyright under US law. See 1. While it's not U.S. law, it clarifies a good principle concerning data copyright. And the exact amount of certain chemicals concerned here the determining of which requires a lot of lab works on data selection, calibration etc. is by no means basic facts. The birthdays of George Washington and his succeeding presidents are basic facts, the name and address of people in a phone book may also be basic facts because they require no original work(actually according to U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE REPORT ON LEGAL PROTECTION FOR DATABASES, the yellow pages of telephone directory are copyrightable), while here it's simply not the case. A google answer page seems to point out that the related copyright issues around here is quite complex, but that's not good enough to support the idea that such data are not protected by copyright laws. Since I literally know nothing about U.S. and Florida copyright laws I can only apply my common sense here. Therefore, 1. common sense tells me these data contain original work and therefore cannot be plagiarized; and 2. If U.S. law were in a way ambiguous as to the protection of such form of work, there should at least be a bottom line: if evidence shows that this is a sensitive copyright area, it's better for Wikipedia to maintain a sense of evasion.Kuphrer (talk) 18:37, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions.


 * Keep. The topic is obviously needed.  Neither the list of chemicals nor their alphabetical arrangement is copyrightable, at least not under US law; these things are like phone directories and maps. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 15:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Subject meets notability criteria for inclusion. While it would be preferable to cite journal articles from where these numbers must have originated, I don't see a copyright issue for a compiled list of figures. WP:NOTDIR may apply here, but that's a stretch. ~Amatulić (talk) 16:00, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I think such figures certainly contain some original research. There are different from, say, phone directories and maps and are not simply basic facts. If some researchers have spent years to carefully determine the specific amount of some certain chemical only to find their work to appear on Wikipedia the next day it won't be so pleasant. Only data extracted from a public domain source(which, phone books and maps usually are) can be properly regarded as not protected by copyright law.Kuphrer (talk) 19:21, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The cited book is available in large part on books.google.com. I don't see a copyright violation. There is no table in the book as shown in the article, as far as I can see. The article appears to provide a concise summary of 280 pages of book content. There are other books one could reference on books.google.com as well, such as Mastering Nutrition with Blood Chemistry: Quick Reference Manual. A search for "blood chemistry" turns up many possibilities. The argument that researchers spending years on some work only to find it appear on Wikipedia doesn't seem applicable; this is similar to mainstream press reporting on work that appears in academic journals. This is not a reason to delete the article. The article could easily have more sources also; the fact that it doesn't is also not a reason to delete. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:05, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The argument this is similar to mainstream press reporting on work that appears in academic journals is naive. The article here is by no means similar to press reporting, striping every important figure from a book(which I have not been quite sure which book it is). And its being a probably concise summary can in no way change the question as to whether it forms a plagiarism or not. The point here is the figures themselves are inherently original. If it's not legitimate for it to use any figures in the book as an entity rather than citation, then however concise it is can be of no use. Kuphrer (talk) 18:58, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, the premise of this AfD nomination, that this article constitutes a copyright violation is naive. If you're making an argument about original research, you may have a point, but that isn't the same things as copyvio. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:55, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. The cited book only serves as source for this one statement from the article: "Conventionally, a range of two standard deviations from the mean for each component is considered normal." This is indeed found in the cited source, on page xii. All the rest of the article is unsourced and of unclear provenance and reliability, and should be blanked (if the article is not deleted) until content can be provided that can be reliably sourced. Note further that the numbers given (whose meaning is not specified but which I assume to be the arithmetic average in the population) are rather meaningless without giving the s.d., so as it stands the article is a useless dump of figures. Also, in large parts of the world the convention is to give these values as a range expressed in mmol/L, and the conversion from g/cm3, with a different conversion factor for each component, is definitely non-trivial. --Lambiam 00:38, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. The only way to solve the copyright problem here might be to find a public domain (or some GNU compatible licensing) source covering all the components (not just the most important ones) of human blood, but I doubt if such a source exists.Kuphrer (talk) 19:34, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that's incorrect. There is no requirement anywhere on Wikipedia for sources to be in the public domain. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:52, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Strong keep - The missing citations is an argument for cleanup, not deletion. The information here needs to be cited to a reliable source, but there is no need for a public domain source to be used. As mentioned above, lists of data such as above are not subject to copyright. VQuakr (talk) 21:35, 9 May 2011 (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.