Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of idioms in the English language (B)


 * 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 from Wikipedia. I note that most of this seems to exist on Wiktionary already, at the extensive category listing, and a completed transwiki is reported on each article. W.marsh 16:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

List of idioms in the English language (B)


This afd found that there is strong consensus that lists of idioms violate WP:WINAD. Additional concerns are that they are unsourced, and that there are problems sourcing them and that they contain original research. The only defence put up was the non-argument that these lists are useful. Also nominated are the lists of idioms for the letters C, D, E, and F. Transwikiing to Wiktionary, for the ones that aren't in wikt:Category:Idioms is optional. MER-C 06:58, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete this content, in this form, may well be useful for some project - if anyone wants it, they should have the opportunity to grab these before they're gone - but these are blatantly in violation of WP:NOT. It's only fair to stop this and let those interested compile the lists somewhere else, before they get past F. Opabinia regalis 07:22, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * They already have, it's going to take a while to get rid of all of them. I plan on putting another five on the chopping block each day from today. MER-C 07:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Why do them piecemeal? It's not like anyone's going to vote delete on everything but H, Q, and W. WLD below (and possibly others) volunteered to transwiki them; why not just leave them in articlespace if he's planning on doing it soon) or move them to his userspace if not? Opabinia regalis 01:47, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, WP:NOT a dictionary, this should go to Wiktionary if possible. WP:V, WP:OR. Article is unencyclopedic, not needed on Wikipedia. This better stop quickly. Move it to Wiktionary (if possible. Ter e nce Ong 07:26, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Also I would like to add List of one-letter English words, List of two-letter English words and List of three-letter English words for the very same reasons. MartinDK 08:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * They'll come later. Let's get rid of all of these lists of idioms first, there's still another 20 to go. MER-C 09:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment I believe that summary deletion was the incorrect action to take for the (A) article, and a suitable period of time should have been allowed for a transwiki to take place - preferably by placing a notice on the article "freezing" it and requiring transwiki by a particular date. There are editors still contributing to these articles, and I think it is simply rude to delete the articles from under them, so to speak.  Since the principle of removal from Wikipedia has been agreed in the AfD debate for the (A) article, there is no argument to keep the others - that is obvious.  I would ask that the good faith contributions of many editors is not simply trashed. WLD 08:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment You are free to ask any admin if he/she would put a copy of any deleted article as a subpage of your userpage. As long as the article is not offensive etc. There is no problem with that. You can work on it from there then. MartinDK 09:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Anyone can request userspace undeletion for transwikiing. As for yanking the articles out from under the editors, they have five days to save their own copy, and for the A one they had more. MER-C 09:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I thought that at one time it was actually policy for people not to save deleted articles in their userspace, otherwise I would have preserved a copy for a transwiki operation. It's possible I misunderstood, or the rules changed. Anyway, would a kind admin please undelete List of idioms in the English language (A) and drop it as a sub-page into User:West London Dweller/Idioms.  I'll copy the rest, or if whichever friendly Admin does the job, they could copy all the pages as subpages of the above and speedy delete the rest. Thanks. I'll leave a stub in List of idioms in the English language explaining that the content of the article is being moved to Wiktionary without pointing out it is in my userspace, and transwiki as and when I get time. WLD 14:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Would you want the rest to be userfied to your userspace instead of being subject to deletion debates? MER-C 04:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, yes - but I don't own the articles - I can't speak for all other editors. What I'll probably do is take a copy while the AfD debates are going on, and let the proper process take its course.  Summarily deleting them and putting them all in my userspace doesn't seem like proper process to me, convenient as it may be. WLD 09:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I userfied it, and if you'd actually read the first eleven words of my closure you could have saved yourself and us all your incivility. ~ trialsanderrors 05:01, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't understand the first eleven words of your closure notice. I had (<-note past tense) no idea what 'userfy' meant, and my reading was that I would need to ask for info idiom by idiom, when I didn't have a list to refer to - which seemed almost Kafkaesque. Thank-you for putting the entire article in my userspace. I will copy the other articles to the same place, to avoid wasting other people's time, and not participate in further AfDs on these articles. WLD 09:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a fair question to me, see above. If WLD is willing to work on/marshal others to work on transwikiing these, I don't see a problem with userfying them all at once. Breaking them up into separate discussions is useless in any case, except as a test of whether you'll get the same result nominating the same thing for deletion six times. Opabinia regalis 06:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete all, dicdefs. Demiurge 11:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete all, and I would like to pre-register delete for the remaining articles in this series, though that's probably not allowed. These are dicdefs, and although interesting, not all accurate. Emeraude 12:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 *  Delete all  per above. It's quite a shame though - this list looks vaguely useful/interesting, although it violates wikipedia policies. It looks like someone spent quite a bit of time on it.  Ultra-Loser [ T  ] [  C  ]  14:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment:The large and unwieldy main article was split into 25 sub-articles recently, so the edit history of the sub-articles A,B,C... do not reflect the level of effort that has gone into this collection. If you look at the edit history of the main article List of idioms in the English language, you will see it is not just someone's work. The article has been in existence since 11 November 2003, and a small amount of content existed before then in other articles. That is not meant to make you change your mind, simply to correct a possible misapprehension. WLD 10:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Keep until properly tranwikied The content represents a lot of research, and while lacking references, is definitely of encyclopedic value IMHO.--Ramdrake 20:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Change to Speedy delete all . Every definition from this page has made it in to its corresponding article, which means a CSD G12 copyvio.  Ultra-Loser [ T  ] [  C  ]  14:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Change back to Delete all. I've changed my mind again. The copyvio isn't that blatant, and there is a lot more text and content in the current articles than there are in the linked page. But add copyvio to my list of reasons.  Ultra-Loser [ T  ] [  C  ]  14:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete allAs dicdefs and as unsourced or original research. I hate folk etymologies, where someone sits down at the keyboard and decides what the history of a word or phrase is based on their own hunch. When no source citation is provided, that is the implied source, and it is wrong as often as not. Then this sometimes incorrect info will get cited by kids in research papers, and prank ones (made up in school one day) will get added, with no basis for judging which should stay and which should go. If each was footnoted to a reliable publiched source and did not violate a copyrighted definition, then such a database would be valuable on one of the Wikiprojects, perhaps Wiktionary. Edison 15:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep or transwiki all of them. These idiom list articles are really informative to non-native speakers, and sometimes to native speakers too. As long as they don't contain any neologisms or in-jokes, the content is encyclopedic too. They should be contained in at least some Wikimedia project. J I P  | Talk 19:24, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep/transwiki. It's sad that deletionists have become so impatient that they can't put a transwiki tag on an article and give people a few months to transwiki to the appropriate project. Do people here just not understand the concept of transwiking at all? --- RockMFR 01:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep! There is something really whacky going on here.  How can this be considered a valid AfD before the transwiki has been done?  --Connel MacKenzie -  wikt 17:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment "Transwiki" (like "userfy") is a neologism created a couple of years ago. Many of the people who contribute to Wikipedia in various ways are not computer experts, and if there is an article explaing it a reference to that might be appreciated. All I see are computerspeak jargon loaded pages about backlogs and logs and templates, with no overview. To the naive outsider it would appear that anyone could save a copy of an article and upload it to another Wiki. I suppose the cryptic transwiki process might preserve added context such the edit history comments, or history of AfDs? It is not immediately clear why an article that could be copied and uploaded in a few minutes takes months to "transwiki" and why it has to stay in the mainspace under some type of suspended sentence of deletion, or why editors should have to leave an unencyclopedic article alone and mark their calendar for some unspecified number of months in the future to check back and see if it is gone, or put it on their personal watchlist and see every minute wikilink added, or comma removed, or vandalism added and reverted for several months.Edison 19:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete All per above and per discussion in "(A)". Largely original research, and it's a question of opinion as to whether a number of these are actually idioms. Agent 86 20:08, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Transwiki to Wiktionary per above. --Czj 16:34, 5 December 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.