Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mile Standards

 This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Delete --Allen3 talk 18:56, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Mile Standards

 * Keep, Valuable, well researched, well cited, interesting, informative. Rktect 7:25, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

dispute is in mediation

Lots of original research from what is believed to be the same author. Most of it is irrelevant for the suggested title, copies of his contributions that is constantly being added to a number of other articles. This article is not needed. If there is anything of value here wrt. Mile Standards, it should be entered into Mile. -- Egil 15:05, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Burning of books?
As the votes-for-deletion hopefully have shown, Wikipedia is not the right place for the type of material you are producing. I have given you a number of reasons before, and other Wikipedians have now also expressed their opinion.


 * rktect 8/7/05 The votes for deletion are ultimately reviewed
 * by a competant administrator who will probably decide
 * what to do with the articles based on their overall content.


 * You have made a number of false statements about them
 * which a competant administrator will probably pick up.


 * You have claimed they are original research when the articles
 * cite sources that are in their fifth printing and
 * in some cases date back to classical sources.


 * You have claimed they are just lists when in fact they are tables


 * You have claimed they have no value or are covered elsewhere
 * which is far from the case because they are comparative tables
 * which restore the comparitive nature of having lists of unit
 * values on the same page that you removed by putting them
 * on separate pages plus adds the utility of putting them
 * in a table form for comparison


 * What amazes me is that the articles were not even complete before
 * you began demanding their deletion. What that tells me is that you
 * are afraid of discussing their content.


 * Egil, your massive edit changed the whole nature of
 * the Ancient Weights and Measures Page


 * You proposed to "cleanup" the page by catagorizing
 * by culture rather than measure
 * On your own, over protest, you unilateraly did so
 * Then you decided to delete all reference to the original version
 * which preserved the comparison of units between cultures on a single page


 * What is up with the
 * writing line by line like this?
 * This text will wrap around
 * automatically based on window size.
 * I mean, it looks poetic and all,
 * but it's not quite the
 * Wikipedia standard.
 * Explodicle 22:30, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

We are not taking of burning of books. The Internet is full of places where you can put your content. Very many free of charge. I defintely suggest you move your material to other such locations before your valuable material is deleted.


 * I seriously doubt it will be deleted as I can see that others
 * are now aware of your activities

As you may have understood, in Wikipedia, discussions are resolved by consensus. It does not matter if you can read Sumerian, and understand hieroglyphs. Probably the common masses, i.e. Wikipedians, are not capable of understanding nor appreciating material of such extraordinary intelligence and knowledge that you are producing.


 * I expect that despite the tone of irony you do understand
 * that having studied and familiarized yourself with an area
 * of research before you comment on it makes it less likely
 * that you will claim as original research a quotation from
 * the standard reference works.

Whatever the reason, I suggest you go elsewhere. -- Egil 12:11, 7 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually if you read the deletion page it informs that the
 * votes are used as a guideline but that it is up to the judgement
 * of the administrator what action if any should be taken.


 * Particularly when the page is just being created and is still
 * being actively worked on every day it would be the normal
 * policy to keep it and wait to see how well it is ultimatly
 * polished and perfercted.


 * Delete barring MASSIVE cleanup. Explodicle 16:33, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete per Explodicle. Ken 17:11, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. Non-verifiable, confused beyond cleanuppability. And I add original research to the reasons. Taking massive amounts of data from a number of sources, letting the rest of the world figure out what piece of fact comes from which source, and rearranging these bits of information to reveal patterns previously undiscovered is (bad) original research. --DrTorstenHenning 17:15, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Rktect 6:03, 5 August 2005 (EST)
 * No portion of this collection of source material is original research
 * All of it is directly relevant to the topic
 * All of it is easily verifiable
 * The cited material is widely available on the web and
 * discussed on the ancient weights and measures page


 * For those who object that it should be entered into the topic Mile
 * That topic appears to be concerned with the statute mile which did
 * not exist until it was redefined by statute in 1593.
 * The Mile standards under discussion here go back six millenia.


 * For those who object on the grounds that massive cleanup is required
 * the appropriate place to raise those issues would seem to be the discussion page


 * For those who are confused about definitions of the mile or are
 * experiencing cognative dissonance or would like to state what they find confusing
 * the discussion page would seem to be the appropriate place to do so.


 * Looking at unit standards of measure comparatively by cultures
 * makes it much easier to see who shared measures with whom.
 * Mile standards are used by cultures going back to the Sumerians.
 * The documentation of this is not original research just a collection of facts
 * cited by both classical and contemporary experts.


 * Miles are always related to stadia and stadia are always related to degrees.
 * Miles are divided into stadia which are generally used as the sides of fields
 * They are further divided into ropes or cords, chains, rods, paces, fathoms, yards
 * all with primary agricultural or nautical measuring and navigational function
 * used to define large distances and areas.


 * At the level of the cubit,remen, foot, hand and palm the larger units are
 * corelated to the units used to measure bread and beer and other commercial
 * consumables. Those are two separate but related sytems.


 * Iron age standards are probably the best place to look at the consensus of opinion
 * about how to define the Mile because iron age standards are different than
 * copper age, bronze age or medieval standards in that their relation to the degree
 * is discussed in classical documents in considerably more detail.


 * Because this is the period when the Greek and Roman and for that matter
 * Phoenician empires are heavily engaged in trade with Europe and a period
 * when traders moved overland, up rivers and along coasts which they surveyed.
 * Many Greek, Roman and Phoenician geographers of the period have data
 * which they provide about the distances between places in Europe.


 * As the Greek and Roman traders moved into into Germany well in advance of
 * any conquering armies they carried with them standards of measure for
 * commerce and agriculture.


 * These Greek and Roman units are already well established in the popular literature
 * as opposed to obscure technical publications written in dead languages
 * for copper and iron age units so they are much easier to document
 * and have much more accessible web sources.


 * As to giving their values to the nearest whole mm rather than to several
 * decimals of mm, iron age standards are not precise to decimal mm
 * or variant to 10's of mm and generally best established to +/- 1 mm per foot.


 * For those cultures for whom there is a written contemporary primary reference
 * to sharing a standard (as with Ptolomy;s geography) which was cited on the
 * discussion page for ancient weights and measures, there are long term
 * investigations of the units involved and the results
 * are now considered basic historical fact.


 * In the past many people have applied an ethnocentric perspective
 * to "their measures" stating that they are "Anglo Saxon", "German",
 * "Danish" French or "English" when they actually have much longer
 * histories that have been explored in the literature.


 * Being able to see the connection broken down by conventional archaeological
 * period rather than simply lumped to gether as ancient makes the similarities
 * and differances much clearer


 * The objection that these studies are original research is invalid
 * as their original sources have been cited on the discussion page and
 * in some cases transcriptions of the original ancient language with
 * translations given in English


 * Delete, original research. Nandesuka 16:43, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Delete original research. Ken 15:58, August 8, 2005 (UTC) Striking out my second vote, just to be clear... Ken talk 20:39, August 9, 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.