Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Railway and tramway terminology in Europe


 * 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.  Sandstein  07:15, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Railway and tramway terminology in Europe

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Contested PROD with quite a lengthy rationale which can be found on its Talk page. My concerns when the tag was added remain, though. This is an indiscriminate and uncited list with some unusual choices of language (particularly, although the article creator addresses this, the inclusion of US English in an article about Europe). The rationale as provided makes the comment that there may not be a source along these lines, which further raises my concerns regarding this being potentially original research and/or a synthesis of data beyond what should be included. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 09:42, 21 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The nominator called the article an "indiscriminate list of terms", which I disagree with. The article in its current form contains tables of terms in select languages relevant to different distinct types/variations of railway vehicles or railway service (in a broad sense, see cable car). Probably this is one of the rare articles on Wikipedia that is not about a topic in itself, but serves a meta-role, I specifically intended it to be a multilingual complement to articles such as Passenger rail terminology, with a wider scope, including freight service. Talking about notability in both cases is futile, because such articles aren't covering a singular encyclopedic topic per se, railway/tramway terminology, especially on how they relate to each other in different languages is not the usual kind of coherent topic that most articles on Wikipedia deal with. I have checked the glossary articles which I have linked in Railway and tramway terminology in Europe, and while most of the terms are sourced to some kind of reliable source, unfortunately not all are, of these, pretty much all are wikilinks to their respective articles.


 * It's one thing to find a source to support the description of a term in a language, it's another thing to support that indeed, term A is term B in another language, but not term C in English, as commonly believed. As explained on the talk page, my intention was to ease the railway/tramway terminology confusion which is most evident by the frequent mix up between motor coach (rail), railmotor, railcar and multiple unit. This is because the US railway terminology and the rules of otherwise similar phrases diverged significantly from the European (British and/or UIC) terminology. An outlook on how these terms correspond to each other would help both the accuracy of Wikipedia articles and the understanding of railways/tramways in the general populace. The languages represented were based on my rough ideas on which countries had contributed to the specific concepts the most in the era of railway electrification and the expansion of city tramway systems in the late 19th, early 20th century. Therefore the languages represented are pretty much ad hoc, but these choices seemed reasonable while keeping table width in mind.


 * I fully understand that this kind of article might not be sourced in a way that other articles are, but I welcome any suggestions on how to do so. Alternatively, instead of deleting the article, I would suggest making it either an appendix in Wiktionary or a project page to aid editors involved in railway articles. Of course, the best would be if the article could be in article space much like Passenger rail terminology. I hope that my concern is clear and a solution for the concern will be offered. --Rev L. Snowfox (talk) 11:29, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * "Indiscriminate" may have been a less than helpful term on my part, and if so I apologise. The point that I was making through using that word was that the selection of languages (not so much the terminology itself) was more arbitrary than appeared clear. While you've addressed this in part on the article's Talk page with the explanation that these are the languages of countries where the technology was in significant use, it still reads as being more arbitrary than that. English, German, French and Italian are all major languages even now, but the inclusion of Polish and Hungarian is less immediately clear, as the former was a language spoken within 3 larger empires and - depending on your exact timeframe - various smaller states at the time, and the latter was the language of what was essentially a sub-national unit of one of those larger empires. There's also the inclusion of US English, which again you address in part in your rationale, but which really doesn't have much to do with European terminology for anything at all. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 22:31, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:53, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:53, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:53, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Europe-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:53, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Note that additional commentary about the article's purpose exists at Talk:Railway and tramway terminology in Europe.
 * Keep, tentatively. I appreciate the collegial tone so far of discussion here.  It's not my area at all, but I kind of like the tables in this article.  Given the existence of similar articles mentioned in its "See also" section (Glossary of rail transport terms, Glossary of United Kingdom railway terms, Glossary of North American railway terms, Glossary of Australian railway terms, Glossary of New Zealand railway terms and Passenger rail terminology), I don't see how this one article can be singled out for elimination.  Perhaps there is a big editorial question about treatment of railway terminology in Wikipedia which could be addressed by some big RFC discussion, leading to a big consolidation or to splitting out many new country- or continent- or empire-specific articles.  But I think that this AFD is not that big discussion. -- do  ncr  am  20:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 14:03, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is not a translation service. Should we have lists of every conceivable topic translated into a random selection of other languages? If not, why should we have this list? What is special about railways that we need an article giving terms in Italian but not Norwegian? Regarding the British and American English terms, these are not sourced, and perhaps the reason for this is that many of them cannot be. The idea for example that "cable car" is American usage and "aerial tramway" British is not supported by any references. A bit of digging will reveal that an aerial tramway is a certain subset of cable car systems. For many terms there may not even be a definitive American vs British usage. I contend it's not possible to construct a definitive table either for US/British usages or other languages, so the article should be deleted. --Pontificalibus (talk) 12:42, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I already voted "Keep" above, but redirection to, say, Glossary of rail transport terms is a better alternative than outright deletion. This is a perfectly legitimate attempt to create encyclopedic knowledge.  You disagree that it succeeded, okay, that's your point of view. -- do  ncr  am  15:07, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   09:23, 6 August 2017 (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.