Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Make a mountain out of a molehill (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   no consensus. Cirt (talk) 16:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Make a mountain out of a molehill
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Previous result was "keep", however, this is a perfect example of a dictionary entry, as it offers nothing other than the meaning of the phrase, the etymology, usage examples, and equivalents in other languages. This entry already exists in Wiktionary, and it should be deleted from Wikipedia according to WP:DICTIONARY. The arguments used in the previous debate were invalid appeals to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS or "this is interesting". Bueller 007 (talk) 07:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete and switch yah, dictionary style entry, --Quek157 (talk) 07:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete because Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Armbrust  Talk  Contribs  07:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. WP:NAD. Daa89563 (talk) 07:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Obvious dictionary material, and yet we are an encyclopedia.  Interesting that this was kept last time.  JBsupreme (talk) 08:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete I can't see any compelling reason to keep. In theory, we could make a mountain-sized article out of any molehill-sized cliché -- one could just as easily write an article called "making a big deal out of nothing" or "blowing things all out of proportion" or any other euphemism for overreacting.  I wouldn't even make this a redirect to anything, because it doesn't even work as a search term.  Mandsford (talk) 13:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep This is more than just a dictionary entry. It is a full article. It goes beyond an initial article with reliable sources explaining its origin and other info, thereby establishing notability. And yes, words and phrases can be notable for articles.
 * WP:NOTDICDEF states that:
 * 1.)"Although articles should begin with a good definition and description of one topic, they should provide other types of information about that topic as well." This article does just that. It is indeed an encyclopedia article.
 * Item #1 also states "Articles that contain nothing more than a definition should be expanded with additional encyclopedic content, if possible." One thing it does not say here is that they should be deleted.


 * Item #2 states that "in some cases, a word or phrase itself may be an encyclopedic subject."That is the case here.
 * Reply. It says "An encyclopedic definition is more concerned with encyclopedic knowledge (facts) rather than linguistic concerns." There is NOTHING in the article at present that is not a "linguistic concern". It gives the meaning, the etymology and similar phrases.  ALL of these are "linguistic concerns", and ALL of them are part of a dictionary.  If you can add something like the HISTORICAL IMPACT of the phrase, as in the case of mokusatsu, THEN the word becomes an encyclopedic subject. Bueller 007 (talk) 03:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * 2.)So far, I am the only one who has stated this should be kept. There are several other deletes. But deletion debates are not based on voting. All the deletes so far have been people who have said the same thing over and over, just varying the words - that it is a dictionary entry. Pretty much like the same old "just not notable" or "just a policy" arguments. So far, no one has elaborated like this why it should be kept. Hellno2 (talk) 14:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * On behalf of all of us who say "the same thing over and over, just varying the words", I'd point out that WP:NOTDICDEF supports putting this type of article in Wiktionary rather than in Wikipedia. Quoting from that page, a Wikipedia article is about "a person, or a people, a concept, a place, an event, a thing etc. that their title can denote. The [Wikipedia] article octopus is about the animal: its physiology, its use as food, its scientific classification, and so forth" while a Wiktionary article is about "the actual words or idioms in their title and all the things it can denote. The [Wiktionary] article octopus is about the word 'octopus': its part of speech, its pluralizations, its usage, its etymology, its translations into other languages, and so forth".  There are thousands of common phrases that are used in English and that should be explained somewhere, and the preference is in the dictionary counterpart to Wikipedia (which, unfortunately, is not easily accessible).  "Don't have a cow, man" is the same concept as "Don't make a mountain out of a molehill", but it's a (unnecessary, in my opinion) redirect.   Mandsford (talk) 14:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "Don't have a cow" is not quite the same, nor is hyperbole. The concept is distinct and that's why it persists over the centuries.  A closer equivalent is to strain at a gnat but we don't have an article on that Biblical (mis)quotation which is itself the subject of much scholarship.  There is much to say about such classical wisdom and to prefer the Simpsons seems ludicrous. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. I've known you a long time Colonel, don't always agree with you, but I consider you a friend and I respect your stand on issues.  Perhaps it wasn't your intent is to portray me as some type of buffoon, but that's the inference I'm drawing.  Mandsford (talk) 01:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete not a dictionary. Dlabtot (talk) 20:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per WP:BEFORE. While notable by itself, merely because of its common useage, this has also been the subject of volumes of scholarship about metaphors, as this is one of the oldest ones used in the English language.  This is an easy rescue, folks. Bearian (talk) 23:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I hate to make a mountain out of a molehill, pardon the pun, but I've done a bit of work on this article. Keep per WP:HEY. Bearian (talk) 00:17, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Reply. You are not at all being honest when you say that it has "been the subject of volumes of scholarship". Your Google Scholar search returns all hits that USE THE PHRASE, not those that STUDY THE PHRASE.  Hits include papers just because they include sentences such as "Minorities are most commonly accused of exaggerating (they are making a mountain out of a molehill!)" and papers about spirochaetes: "A mountain out of a molehill: do we treat acute leptospirosis, and if so, with what?" An ISI Web of Knowledge search looking for articles with a title or topic containing "mountain out of a molehill" returns precisely zero relevant hits.  See also my detailed rely below to your many highly questionable and misleading "additions" to the page. Almost all of them are misquoted or taken WAY out of context.  Bueller 007 (talk) 08:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep The article is already well-sourced and goes beyond a dictionary entry in several ways. In particular, there is much scope to develop our account of this common behaviour type which is so often found here on Wikipedia.  For example, I recently encountered a silly battle about passport/visa articles in which the degree of animus seemed out of all proportion to the point at issue.  Aesop commented on this in his fables but such foolishness still abounds.  As Wikipedia is first and foremost educational in its mission, it should provide a good account of such folly.  I shall develop the topic further from a selection of the many good sources which we have yet to add. Colonel Warden (talk) 00:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep - This article is well referenced and goes way beyond a simple dictionary definition. Certainly not all idioms warrant their own article, but this one does, as it seems to have been studied in depth. PDCook (talk) 01:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Ridiculous. The depth to which something has been studied is irrelevant. Encyclopedias are not "collections of things that have been studied in more depth than would be found in a dictionary". Look at the OED (or most other major dictionaries for that matter) for collections of phrases that have been studied in far more depth than is offered here.  It doesn't matter how well an article is sourced if it simply doesn't belong here.  Encyclopedias are collections of concepts.  They are emphatically NOT collections of phrases.  The fact of the matter is that this is an idiom that does not have a unique meaning.  The phrase "making a mountain out of a molehill" carries ZERO conceptual weight beyond that of "exaggeration".  The only way in which the two phrases differ are precisely in those ways that are captured by a dictionary, NOT an encyclopedia, namely: spelling, pronunciation, etymology, and usage. Bueller 007 (talk) 01:58, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * So are you going to bring all of these to AfD? Not to suggest that WP:Other stuff exists, but I was under the impression that idioms were concepts. PDCook (talk) 02:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I see your argument is equivalent to WP:ALLORNOTHING, which is invalid. Besides, the answer to your question is NO.  Some idioms do express unique concepts for which there is no other good term.  "Apples and oranges" for instance, represents a particular kind of incommensurability for which there is no other good term in English.  The phrase "make a mountain out of a molehill" and "exaggeration" express the same concept.  This is why a thesaurus will list them together.  Bueller 007 (talk) 03:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * So if sometime back in history a word that described Apples and oranges was coined, then that article too should be deleted? I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I guess I'm not seeing why just because there is a synonym for a concept it doesn't warrant an article. PDCook (talk) 03:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Reply. I don't understand your comment. Here's the rationale.  Encyclopedias are collections of concepts, not phrases.  "making a mountain out of a molehill" = "exaggeration".  The concepts overlap completely.  Therefore, two articles in Wikipedia are unnecessary.  In this case, "exaggeration" gets precedent as an article title to represent that concept because it is the more plain, common term. For example, if someone started a new article tomorrow and called it "objects that are incommensurable on account of them being entirely different kinds of things", then I would recommend that it be deleted, because that concept is already covered in Wikipedia at "apples and oranges".  This isn't about deleting things "just because they're idioms".  It's about deleting things because they represent concepts that are already covered elsewhere in Wikipedia, because the concept cannot be expanded into an encyclopedia article, or because there's nothing notable about the idioms qua idioms.  This idiom itself is not encyclopedic.  You simply will not find an encyclopedia that has an entry with this heading.  There's nothing in this article that is not properly handled by a dictionary. Bueller 007 (talk) 08:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You might be persuading me. But, let's say someone added a sourced paragraph to the article in question about the history of the phrase and its impact on language and culture. How would that information fit into a dictionary? PDCook (talk) 15:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And you're right, that was poor phrasing on my part asking if you would bring them all to AfD. I wasn't suggesting an all or nothing situation; I was trying to express that many idioms can be described conceptually and not just as the words that make them up. PDCook (talk) 04:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep needs sourcing but that is something that can be provided, (maybe you could stubify the article, moving unsourced information to talk?) like the history of the word. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Make_a_mountain_out_of_a_molehill is a mere stub compared to this, with little history of this colorful term Ikip 02:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. Much of the information that has been added since this nomination was made is absolute rubbish, and I hope that people aren't making their decisions based on this misleading stuff.
 * First, the paper supposedly claiming that linguists find the phrase particularly notable does not actually state this. The phrase is mentioned ONE TIME in passing, as one of many examples of an idiom that arises from certain flexible verbs.  "Mountain out of a molehill" is idiomatic enough that it should be included in a dictionary under "make", they say.
 * Second, the citation for the notability of the phrase with respect to imagery and familiarity. Further demonstrating the fact that the person who added this information didn't actually read any of it, the phrase is ranked 58th ALPHABETICALLY. (Although it does still place within the top quartile, the commonness of an English phrase doesn't matter.  An encyclopedia is not the place for phrases unless those phrases represent unique concepts or can be shown to have had historical impact qua phrase, as in the case of "mokusatsu", for example.)
 * Third, the number of Google hits is greatly inflated. There is a discrepancy, well-known among lexicographers, between "apparent" and "real" Google hits.  The numbers that are returned are often greatly inflated compared to their real values.  Often the number of apparent Google hits is orders of magnitude greater than it appears.  When you see something that anyone with a wink of common sense realizes is ridiculous, like 3,000,000 Googits for such a long idiom, then you have to try it again on a different Google site or confirm it with Yahoo! or "Bing". Both of these sites confirm 40-50,000 Google hits.  (This is not to deny that it's a commonly used phrase, just to point out that it's NOWHERE NEAR AS COMMON as the article stated.  And again, the commonness of the phrase is irrelevant if it simply doesn't belong here.
 * Fourth, another sickeningly misleading claim is that the idiom has been the subject of significant scholarship, based on a laughable Google Scholar search. The results returned include books and open-source articles that merely happened to USE the phrase.  An ISI Web of Knowledge search for "mountain out of a molehill" in the title or as the topic of the article returns ZERO relevant results.
 * Fifth, the claim that it is used as "the primary example" of accentuation is completely wrong. The reference merely happens to list it first among eight such idioms that are listed in no particular order.  Others include "nobody loves me" and "everything gets on my nerves".
 * Sixth, the idiom is not "used ... as an example of how to teach English as a second language", and none of the articles cited claim anything of the sort. One reference mentions it in passing as a SINGLE EXAMPLE of many idioms that one might wish to teach to ESL students in a sample exercise. (May I suggest that a dictionary is a great place to find other such idioms?) The other mentions it as a single passing example of a dead metaphor they see as having potential for English-German language play.
 * Conclusion: The misinformation that has been added to this article merely so that it will not be deleted is an absolute disgrace. I do not attribute it to malice, but rather to exceptionally shoddy research. I encourage ALL of the people who voted "keep" above to reevaluate their votes in light of the fact that a large portion of the article consisted of nonsense until I cleaned it up.  The fact remains that this idiom does not represent a unique concept, is not historically significant qua phrase, therefore it is unencyclopedic and it should be deleted. Bueller 007 (talk) 03:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Guilty as charged. My work was shoddy.  I was just trying to be helpful.  I will stand by the community's decision to Delete if need be. Bearian (talk) 16:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep Don't beat a dead horse with this. Its a fine article, more information than a simple dictionary entry, and almost no one ever uses the wiktionary anyway, nor is it likely ever will.  Did the starting delete voters discuss this together somewhere?   D r e a m Focus  05:51, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Reply. No.  Closer to the opposite, since a "Rescue" template (basically a sign crying out "come !vote keep at this AfD discussion") was posted on the article after TONS of incorrect and misleading information were added to the article to inflate it.  This is the source of all your keep votes above. Bueller 007 (talk) 08:45, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've removed the rescue tag that I placed on it. Bearian (talk) 16:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The was restored by User:Colonel Warden, who removed the  tag in . Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 21:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Wikipedia is not a glossary of idioms.  Powers T 13:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete - Definitions and usage examples belong in a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 21:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment as anyone notices, while there are about an even number of keeps and deletes, the delete have said little more than "delete" and "dicdef" and other simple things like that. The "keeps" have given more elaborate multi-paragraph arguments in favor of keeping. Hellno2 (talk) 00:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed, which tells me the arguments for deletion are much more straightforward, while the arguments for keeping require convoluted logic to get around the plain wording of WP:NAD. Powers T 12:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep: From my reading, this article is about idioms describing the Cognitive distortion referred to as "Magnification". I would suggest keeping this as a section of a new article about the phenomenon itself. Then let "Make a mountain out of a molehill and the other similar idioms refer to this new article. Jojalozzo (talk) 00:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, the term has substantial cultural and historical currency. Everyking (talk) 07:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, exceeds WIKT Agathoclea (talk) 15:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have Flip-flopped again, and while my efforts failed, others have done a much better job of rescuing this article. Bearian (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, already an encyclopedic treatment of the phrase. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Major idioms of this sort have enough usage and information about them to be notable, and with the possibility of far more information than Wiktionary will include.   DGG ( talk ) 03:48, 3 February 2010 (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.