Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The good doctor (phrase)


 * 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 delete.  MBisanz  talk 01:15, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

The good doctor (phrase)

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bog-standard dicdef, no sourcing found Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 14:04, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:33, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:33, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. North America1000 09:16, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. North America1000 09:17, 21 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:NOT and WP:NOR. The one source provided simply quotes Shakespeare; there's no analysis of the phrase. This isn't a subject for an encyclopedic article. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 09:24, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge to The Good Doctor. A Shakespearean allusion from a major play like MacBeth is beyond the usual popular culture trivia which we normally delete.  This will make an appropropriate introduction to what is otherwise a dab page.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:25, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * delete basically, NOTDICTIONARY. Jytdog (talk) 02:51, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NOT and WP:NOR. The one source provided simply quotes Shakespeare; there's no analysis of the phrase. This isn't a subject for an encyclopedic article. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 09:24, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge to The Good Doctor. A Shakespearean allusion from a major play like MacBeth is beyond the usual popular culture trivia which we normally delete.  This will make an appropropriate introduction to what is otherwise a dab page.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:25, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
 * delete basically, NOTDICTIONARY. Jytdog (talk) 02:51, 23 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Soft redirect to Wiktionary for the time being—without prejudice to revival of the page as a separate encyclopedic article later, if suitable secondary sources can be found. I've created the Wiktionary page the good doctor that would be the target of the soft redirect. I believe the honorific expression the good doctor meets Wiktionary's idiomaticity criterion for inclusion.
 * The real obstacle to immediate expansion of the Wikipedia page into something encyclopedic is not WP:DICDEF, or WP:NOT, or even an absolute lack of sources—it's WP:NOR, and more specifically, the section WP:SYNTH. There are numerous primary sources out there with implications for this honorific's cultural significance, but it would take a lot of synthetic original research to put them together in a way that would meet the standards of WP:WORDISSUBJECT within WP:DICDEF. I haven't seen any secondary sources yet that do this, although some might have been lurking unnoticed in the sheer volume of the Google search results.
 * Should suitable sources be found later, soft redirection using the template Wiktionary redirect will place fewer obstacles in the way of revival of the page than would straightforward deletion, or even merging. The section WP:POINTWIKT within the policy WP:DICDEF recommends this procedure for Wikipedia articles "which could potentially be proper articles but are dictionary-like stubs at the moment"—a precise description of what we face here.
 * —Syrenka V (talk) 10:32, 23 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Update on Wiktionary: since the Macbeth quotation only includes the form of address "good doctor", which by Wiktionary's standards is distinct from "the good doctor", it is ineligible for citation in the Wiktionary article the good doctor. So I've created a separate Wiktionary article specifically for the form of address good doctor, and cited the Macbeth quotation there; at this point, no information will be lost by a soft redirect. Another good thing about a soft redirect, as opposed to a merge or a hard redirect, is that it can be given more than one target; the template double soft redirect makes that easy. So the soft redirect can lead to both Wiktionary pages. (There is of course only one encyclopedic concept here, so if secondary sources can be found later, the soft redirect can still be replaced by a single Wikipedia article.)
 * —Syrenka V (talk) 11:43, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  A  Train talk 06:58, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
 * delete everything that needs to be said is said at The Good Doctor, which reads: The good doctor (phrase), a cliché referring to any physician.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:21, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Not even a soft redirect to Wiktionary? Just delete? Really? Even the dictionary entries I've written for Wiktionary say more, and need to say more, than the above one-sentence summary—which isn't even correct, although it is taken from the current dab and main articles here on Wikipedia. The one person most closely associated with the phrase "the good doctor" is Samuel Johnson, who was not a physician. —Syrenka V (talk) 10:12, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete The Good Doctor is a perfectly fine disambiguation page, but The good doctor (phrase) is not a plausible search term so there's no need for a redirect. Possibly add a Wiktionary link to The Good Doctor. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 00:30, 2 November 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.