Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tarball (oil)


 * 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. Consensus has swung to considering them notable, and the alternative would be a redirect rather than deletion. The dicdef argument doesn't seem to hold, as the article is more than just a definition and there are plenty of sources to use to expand the article. Fences &amp;  Windows  19:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Tarball (oil)

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Contested PROD, WP:NOTDICDEF GregJackP (talk) 13:35, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete dicdef, also looks to be someone's opinionated description of an uncommon formation of tar. ALI nom nom 14:38, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not that your complaint has anything to do with whether this article should be deleted, but what part of "A tarball is a blob of crude or refined oil which has been weathered after floating in the ocean." is opinionated? I don't understand what you are objecting to here. ErikHaugen (talk) 22:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * wrt dicdef - look at that page again. "One test is that an encyclopedia article's name can usually easily take many different equivalent forms, whereas a dictionary as a linguistic work is about the words in the title, and cannot usually be easily translated." dicdef is not a reason to delete here. ErikHaugen (talk) 22:06, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Tar instead. My mistake, I could've sworn the article said something different when I looked at it. I must have read it too fast. That's never happened before. ALI nom nom 03:20, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Tar doesn't look like an appropriate place to merge to (yes, merge). Read the beginning paragraphs again.  Perhaps it happened a second time? - BalthCat (talk) 06:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sigh... no, that's just me assuming Tar would be the relevant article without looking at it. Merge to wherever would be appropriate. ALI nom nom 14:10, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep or... : This is a stub issue, not a dicdef issue. Clearly the NOAA felt that there was sufficient public awareness of and concern about this "uncommon formation of tar" that it merited releasing an explanation in layman's terms, complete with FAQs and sources.  This could be merged into another article, if an appropriate one exists, and the disambiguation page tarball edited to direct readers to the appropriate place.  The existence of the NOAA publication implies that visitors should be able to get from tarball to the explanation of what they are without difficulty, especially in the wake of the recent massive spill, which will likely result in more hits.  What this article needs is an elaboration of the weathering process as per the NOAA article, second paragraph.  - BalthCat (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment There wasn't an AfD tag on the article, but I've added one now. Calathan (talk) 18:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Oil spill.—Sandahl  (♀)  19:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This is probably good, but a mention of tar balls would need to be made on the page in order to avoid astonishment.
 * Oil spill article would not be a good place for tarballs as it states they are "due to human activity". Tarballs are both man made and of natural origin, e.g. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1225/ . Of course, we could redirect Oil spill to Oil In the Ocean or something... --Rajah (talk) 04:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The tarball page is a dab page, so no need for a hatnote

I think that that the above adds up to a "keep" or at least "Merge", otherwise the noun doesn't occur in WP. In that case (i.e. a redirect), I think we miss items 3-6 above. #6 constitutes a PSA :) -- Vonfraginoff (talk) 15:41, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:NOTDIC, WP:GNG  Chzz  ►  20:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep: or redirect. I can not comprehend why someone would claim that tar balls fail GNG. Is there seriously any question that tar balls are covered significantly by reliable secondary sources? Complaints about dicdef are similarly misplaced; we do not delete stubs just because they are stubs. wp:NOTDICDEF advises on how articles like this one should evolve, it does not say to delete any stubs that only provide definitions. Redirecting to oil spill sounds reasonable, although tar balls can show up on the beach without oil spills. ErikHaugen (talk) 22:00, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect and disambiguate : Tarball has multiple possible meanings as is revealed by a google search. Tarball in the context currently being addressed would probably fit better under the existing article on tar or oil spills, and could be expanded to include additional information that is presented in its current reference. In addition, other references are available that detail tarballs including a national geographic publication about tarballs and the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. ialsoagree (talk) 23:33, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Strong keep - Definitely has sources. I've expanded it and added 6 more sources. Shadowjams (talk) 20:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - I would support a !redirect to oil spills. (GregJackP (talk) 14:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC))
 * Keep: My intended goal is for wikipedia to have at least the following to say about tarballs:
 * 1) By the way, they're not just a file format.
 * 2) they're usually from oil wells.
 * 3) Its something on the minds of the NOAA people dealing with the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, so let's show what they're talking about : maybe a picture.
 * 4) sometimes they occur naturally
 * 5) something about how they form and how they come to your beach.
 * 6) People get government grants to study strange bits of goo that wash up on the beach.
 * Keep - it's a stub. "Oil" was probably a stub once, too. Of course, you'd've found the definition for it in the dictionary, too. Xavexgoem (talk) 19:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete - Any and all of this can go on the oil page, if need be.  TN  05  20:41, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Merge (most likely with oil spill) Hellbus (talk) 22:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep or, failing that, merge to oil spill. The sources show that this is both a topic of public interest and scientific inquiry, so it is an appropriate topic for an encyclopedia.  Sandstein   13:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, merging with 'oil spill' would be goofy since tarballs also occur as the result of natural oil seeps, and the oil spill entry specifically confines itself to releases of oil due to human activity. Phanatic (talk) 20:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment: That was one of my concerns with merging, but I wasn't energetic enough to confirm if there were non-spill sources of tar ball.  If you have a source handy, you should drop it here so that we can settle in on keeping this as a stub. - BalthCat (talk) 20:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * From my above comment: "Tarballs are both man made and of natural origin, e.g. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2009/1225/" --Rajah (talk) 00:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * keep the phenomenon has risen to the level of notability following the gulf of mexico spill. de Bivort 23:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Google scholar has about a 1000 articles over the past 5 years with the terms "tarball" and "oil" (to get rid of the pure computer usages). Why don't the deletionists do a Google search of a new page's topic before crying "Not a dictionary!" ? --Rajah (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hey now, we're not all bad people. ErikHaugen (talk) 16:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per Rajah. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * keep 66.93.203.152 (talk) 09:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * keep —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.213.183.147 (talk) 15:55, 20 May 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.