Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of redundant expressions (2nd nomination)


 * 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. Note that you may contact me or any administrator to request a copy of the page. Cena rium Talk  23:22, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

List of redundant expressions
AfDs for this article: 
 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

This is an arbitrary collection of phrases which are redundant. Nonencyclopedic original research. Non-maintainable. It survived AfD two years ago when wikipedia policies were lax. Laudak (talk) 18:21, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete No OR, and policy is better now. Shapiros10  contact me My work  19:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Indiscriminate list of non-encyclopedic information, plus apparent original research. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 19:44, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: The nomination in invalid as it concerns the article's current, rather than potential state; likewise the above !votes errantly cite problems with the current article as reasons for deletion. Why would a referenced list of redundant expressions be worthy of deletion, given that the topic the list pertains to is notable? Skomorokh  20:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * First, I did not mention issue of notability. Even if I, notability is not inherited in wikipedia. "Synonym" is notable. All your synonyms are not belong to us. Second, wikipedia lists are lists of articles rather than indiscriminate collections of information. Third, it is inherently non-maintainable. There are many ways to say something right, but infinitely more ways to screw it up. Finally, nomination is both about current and future state of the article. Mukadderat (talk) 23:03, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You might note this passage from WP:NOTINHERITED: "In addition, notability of a parent entity or topic (of a parent-child "tree") does not always imply the notability of the subordinate entities. That is not to say that this is always the case (two of the notabilty guidelines, for books and music, do allow for inherited notability in exceptional circumstances), or that the subordinate topic cannot be mentioned in the encyclopedia whatsoever. Often, a separate article is created for formatting and display purposes; however, this does not imply an "inherited notability" per se, but is often accepted in the context of ease of formatting and navigation, such as with books and albums." I consider this akin to a discography of a notable band. There is nothing indiscriminate about this list: it is to include cited redundant expressions, the nature of which is narrowly defined in the Redundancy (language) article and in the academic literature. It is not non-maintainable; there is no reason why sourced expressions cannot be added and unsourced expressions challenged in a non-arbitrary fashion. Skomorokh  23:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * "List of expressions" is not "child topic". It is not even topic. Discography of a band is finite inherent part of band. List of redundant phrases is not part of "redundancy". 2-3 examples in the main article is enough. There is joke and stupidity and baldness, but there will never be list of jokes, list of stupid people or even List of bald peoiple.  The rules in WP:NOT precisely answers your "there is no reason why ... cannot". We don't have List of expressions used by Shakespeare, nor list of trees in the Sherwood forest, neither List of teen champions in biatlon.  Mukadderat (talk) 23:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete, canonical example of an indiscriminate list. WillOakland (talk) 21:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep somewhere. Maybe not in the article space, but we shouldn't just throw out useful information like this. Zagalejo^^^ 21:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe somewhere off Wikipedia? WillOakland (talk) 21:25, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Can this be transwikied somewhere? Zagalejo^^^ 21:27, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I meant off Wikimedia entirely, like, on a personal web site, because this article is original research with a dash of how-to (for writing) and therefore is not appropriate here. WillOakland (talk) 23:57, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Wiki-How, maybe? Zagalejo^^^ 00:08, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Wiki-Zagalejo. And I don't mean your user page. WillOakland (talk) 00:10, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Why can't I keep it in my userspace? I can tag it as an essay or something, and maybe reduce the list to items that are described as redundancies in external writing guides. Zagalejo^^^ 01:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Does Wiktionary do lists of examples? Alternatively, this could make a useful WP:MOS subpage! Skomorokh  21:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Tranwikiing an unreferenced heap is gross disservice. Wiktionary is not a dumpster for arbitrary wikipedia lists. Mukadderat (talk) 23:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not useful information. It is useless, because it is unreferenced and hence not reliable. I bet half of it is erroneous interpretation and original opinion and half of the remaining half is for language purists. Mukadderat (talk) 23:15, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll admit that a few of these are debatable, but many of these are self-evidently redundant (eg "ATM machine", "I personally", etc). Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Much of this content can be salvaged. Zagalejo^^^ 23:41, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ATM machine is not "self-evidently redundant"; it is ""genetically redundant" and only in a given strict context. If people (not all of them are illiterate morons) say and write "ATM machine", this means the live language needs this and hence it is not redundant. Hey, man, just look into the "ATM" page! Mukadderat (talk) 23:49, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * What am I supposed to find at the ATM page? The phrase "ATM machine" is never used there. And are you arguing that if people use an expression, it isn't redundant? Zagalejo^^^ 23:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I wrote. In the ATM page you were supposed to find that the word "ATM" alone is insufficient to identify the thing called "ATM". I am arguing that your usage of "self-evidently" is not so self-evident. The whole stuff about the "ATM machine" in fact may constitute a good piece of "redundancy" article. And I am further arguing that this indiscriminate list taken out of context is more harmful than useful. But this is not my main point for deletion. Mukadderat (talk) 00:13, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ATM is usually good enough by itself. If you're worried people will confuse ATM with "active traffic management", then you can just use the phrase "automated teller machine". There's no situation where you'll have to use "ATM machine". Zagalejo^^^ 00:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of sources that specifically mention "ATM machine" as a redundancy:,.
 * Hehe you shoot yourself in the foot: the first ref specifically says "for those of us who consider these phrases redundant as wrong", meaning that redundancy is opinion rather than ironclad rule. Mukadderat (talk)
 * Still, if enough people consider something wrong, it's best to avoid it when possible. Zagalejo^^^ 00:27, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just for fun of the argument per se: nope. Earth moves, you know.:-) Mukadderat (talk) 00:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * LOL, fine. Zagalejo^^^ 01:03, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. Completely Mostly unreferenced, with many of the listed items either so uncommonly used as to be not worth mentioning (e.g. "and etc.") or, even worse, flat-out wrong (e.g. "approve" does not mean the same thing as "approve of").  I'm sure someone put a lot of work into this, but I don't see how anything encyclopedic can be salvaged from it. Klausness (talk) 00:05, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not completely unreferenced (see also the References section), as dozens of the examples have references to their source. WP:SYN maybe, but not unreferenced. Skomorokh  00:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, not completely unreferenced -- there's a handful of references (though there are none for most entries), but many of those references are just attributions of quotes (rather than indicating that the expression in question is, in fact, considered redundant by a reliable source). And, as you say, it's definitely WP:OR. 00:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * So we are agreed that the current state of the article violates our core policies, but again, I would ask why it is that no improvements could be made to resolve the issues? Is there no possible form the article could take that would avoid OR? If there is, then there is no reason to delete; we can simply stub it to the references and build from there. Regards, Skomorokh  00:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I just don't see how it can be turned into a decent article without scrapping the whole thing and starting again from the beginning. But if someone wants to turn it into a stub with only referenced content (with the references indicating that an expression is considered redundant, not just that it's used by someone), I'll change my !vote to a "keep".  I do generally try to err on the side of keeping articles, but this article seems to have so much misinformation in it (not to mention the mostly unspoken assumption that redundancy is a bad thing) that none of it can be trusted as it currently is.  So I'd say it should be kept as a stub or deleted. Klausness (talk) 01:46, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is my suggestion. The current article redundancy sucks. If you find good references, you will have an occasion improve this article and add well-referenced cases as examples for various types of redundancy. and various opinions about redundancy. This suggestion is in line with the common approach in wikipedia towards various "In popular culture" and "Trivia" sections. See WP:TRIVIA:  Avoid creating lists of miscellaneous facts. Mukadderat (talk) 01:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just because it's mostly OR and and POV doesn't mean we should delete it. Judging from the title alone, I think it would be encyclopedic to have an article with this title (although it could perhaps be moved to List of expressions considered redundant). So yes, I personally am very absolutely sure that we should totally keep this.  J kasd  05:49, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If we keep it, I think it needs to be stubified, getting rid of all unreferenced expressions. In most cases, I'd only insist on referencing everything for controversial topics and articles that fall under WP:BLP, but this article has enough misinformation in it currently that we need to do something to make sure that it's not just a list of people's pet peeves.  Also, wed need to get rid of the "eliminate all redundancy" POV (including all those recommendations done with strikethrough text). Klausness (talk) 10:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep subjects such as weasel words are highly notable these days, with books and much discussion on language about. It would then strike me that a comprehensive sourced list of such a notable topic would be encyclopedic. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:09, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * But this article is not about weasel words -- it's about redundancy. Klausness (talk) 10:34, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Move This list could be very useful indeed (especially to contributors looking to improve their writing skills), but certainly not as an article. I suggest moving this to userspace or WP:space and linking it from User:Tony1/How_to_satisfy_Criterion_1a as this list is highly relevant to that particular subject. Bettia   (talk)  13:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Or more specifically, this section of my 1a page and my redundancy exercises. I've copied the list onto a Word file, and may use parts of it to expand the exercises at a later stage. Some of the examples are useful, but some are dubious, especially without a larger context. In my own tutorials, people have pointed out these issues in a few places, and I've had to make changes or deletions in response. The OR factor renders this inappropriate in the main space. Although well-meaning, I think it should be deleted and reconceived as part of a writing tutorial. Citations would be irrelevant, which kind of proves that point. TONY   (talk)  13:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I absolutely do not understand why people think that the list being "useful" in their opinion is any reason to keep it on Wikipedia's servers. WillOakland (talk) 17:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * They mean useful for Wikipedia editing, like everything in the Wikipedia namespace. --Itub (talk) 17:59, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 *  Shamelessly plagiarise Tonyfy and Delete. I reserve the right under GFDL to copyright Tonyfy. I know, I know, but I'm very proud of it. Seriously, irredeemably OR city, even if quite entertaining and educational. --Dweller (talk) 14:50, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.   --  Fabrictramp  |  talk to me  16:28, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete per Malleus Bulldog123 (talk) 20:44, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep Undeleted and Highly Aggressively Source It or - better yet - Transwiki Move to Wiktionary. Okay, I admit it, I commented here just for fun, but I think I have a point. =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:08, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete (Changed my mind) as OR. Too little sourced content. Perhaps userfy. Weak keep for not deleting. Some source references are included and cited. The article could be cleaned up and unsourced/unreferenced OR edited out and removed. The external links include more information. Not an indiscriminate list, since expressions lacking redundancy are excluded and not incorporated in the article. Useful to English teachers or anyone working in the Department of Redundancy Department anywhere. Edison (talk) 20:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Many, if not all, of these expressions can be sourced to reliable sources indicating that they are considered redundant. Even if an expression's redundancy is a matter of opinion, it is notable and sourced opinion, which is allowed under both original research and neutral point of view policies. Multiple reliable sources have lists of redundant expressions which independently cite some of the same examples, such as "ATM machine" and "PIN number", making this list quite different than the various hypothetical non-encylopedic lists given above. For examples, see The American Heritage Book of English Usage, pp. 59-65, and Write Right!: A Desktop Digest of Punctuation, Grammar, and Style, pp. 156-158. The books Words You Thought You Knew: 1001 Commonly Misused and Misunderstood Words and Common Errors in English Usage also include many examples of redundant expressions. Given the wide availability of sources, any problems with this article are solved by editing, not deletion. DHowell (talk) 21:24, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * A list ought to have well-defined criteria for inclusion. What are the criteria for inclusion in this list? I'm not saying that the material isn't interesting or worthwhile, simply that it has no place in an encyclopedia. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 21:33, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The same as for any other list in Wikipedia: It must be verifiable and attributable to a reliable source that the expression is redundant. If a reliable source says the expression is redundant, then we can include it. If this for some reason becomes unworkable (e.g., it turns out there are tens or hundreds of thousands of expressions which can be attributed in this way), then we can revisit the criteria (e.g. we could limit the allowed sources for this list to academic or professional sources written specifically about the subject of English usage, and exclude things like newspaper editorials). This would be decided by editorial consensus, as with other Wikipedia lists and articles. I'm really at a loss to understand why you think that a useful, worthwhile, and interesting list, similar to lists which appear in multiple academic sources, and which can be written to violate no Wikipedia policies, would have "no place in an encyclopedia", a "comprehensive written compendium that contains information on ... all branches of knowledge." DHowell (talk) 22:23, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you misunderstood my comment. A well-defined criteria would also define what was excluded. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:32, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * By logical inference from my statement above, any expression which is not described as redundant by a reliable source should be excluded. DHowell (talk) 23:21, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete Violates numerous policies such as no language guides, no trivia and no repositories. I think arguing about sourcing is irrelevent, this is after all a list of facts, or can be. But we have more than enough encyclopoedic coverage of this topic at Pleonasm and Redundancy (language), with examples. I like the analogy above to List of jokes which would be similar in terms of interpretation and scope, but of course, other stuff doesnt exist is no defence. MickMacNee (talk) 14:55, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete as above, and unmaintainable OR.Yobmod (talk) 17:07, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete - even if sources are found, this should not be the basis of an article --T-rex 18:53, 24 June 2008 (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.