Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Online Etymology Dictionary


 * 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.  Sandstein  09:00, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Online Etymology Dictionary

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(Nominating on behalf of User:Deisenbe, copied from the article's talk page) I have some serious problems with Wikipedians taking this as a Reliable Source. It is the work of one person only, like a blog. No sponsoring organization, journal, society, university press, nothing. The author has a B.A. in History, which is useful, but no training in linguistics. (I have graduate training in linguistics.) No sources are given for anything he says. You can’t check his work. I am skeptical that he even looked at, or looked at for more than 60 seconds, many of the works in his list of sources. There are etymologies that are controversial or unresolved. There is research on etymologies. There’s a whole book _Looking for Dr. Condom_ (U. of Alabama Press, 1981), and then there's a later article taking issue with the book (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-etymology-of-the-word-condom). He doesn’t mention and I suspect has never heard of either. I've not read the book, but according to the review by L. C. Mugglestone in _The Review of English Studies_, 49 (May 1998): p196+, _An Informal Introduction to English Etymology_ by W. B. Lockwood (1995) contains "an account of the resolution of a number of noted etymological cruces" [crux=place of great difficulty]. But the author has never heard of it, or at least makes no reference to it. Bottom line: this is an amateurish, not a scholarly work. It shouldn't be taken as a Reliable Source.

I don’t think it even deserves an article. At least, the case for it deserving an article has not been made, not with verifiable cites. MT Train Talk 00:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 00:31, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. Issues of reliability (if there are any) are irrelevant here. This is the first, and probably the only, online etymology dictionary aimed at the general public, and it's now become something of a household name. Clearly notable. – Uanfala (talk) 01:55, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. – Uanfala (talk) 01:56, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment Having a Wikipedia article about something in no way means that something is a reliable source, or in any way accurate. It simply means that a bunch of other reliable sources mention it (I'm not expressing an opinion one way or the other about the topic's notability here). Nwlaw63 (talk) 02:07, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. Agree with Uanfala above. This website has received considerable attention over its long life (according to the IMSE article nearing two decades IMSE article). II  | (t - c) 20:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep Whether or not it is reliable is beside the point (we do, after all, have encyclopedia articles on tabloids and propagandists). For present purposes, what matters is that the site is both used and written about. The sources now in the article attest to this. Google Scholar finds over a thousand citations to it in the academic (and borderline academic) literature; I picked a few that looked interesting. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 21:50, 22 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Notability is marginal: if you look closely at media coverage you will see that is included in a list of etymological websites, which is factually true but does nothing to imply that it was thought of special usefulness. This is hardly surprisig since the lack of proper citation makes it effectively unusable for serious purposes.Martinlc (talk) 20:01, 23 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep discussion of this well-known resource pending the deletion of the OEtymD template and the maturing of Wiktionary's etymological components. - Jandalhandler (talk) 10:19, 25 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. The OED is clearly notable. Just look how often it is referred to within Wikipedia: in over 2000 articles. Users need to be informed about this source. – Criticism has to be included in the article. The OED is not perfect, but this is no reason for deleting any information about it. No man-made object is perfect. The OED is more reliable than the average of Wikipedia texts, by the way. Every single entry in the OED makes more sense than MT Train's arguing in favor of deleting this article, for instance. Lektor w (talk) 02:17, 28 March 2018 (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.