Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of food


 * 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. Significant improvements since the start of AfD vitiate the delete votes. -- Y not? 14:55, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Timeline of food

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This just doesn't appear to be an encyclopedic article, to me. For one, it's heavily biased to North American (esp USA) commercial food products, and therefore ignores the rest of the world. If it were to include every food product ever created or invented, it would be a useless sprawling mass. — The Potato Hose 00:36, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. — Mike  moral  ♪♫  00:40, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. — Mike  moral  ♪♫  00:41, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Cycl o pia  talk  17:19, 16 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete as WP:BIASed and WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Ansh666 00:49, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, Speedy delete as creation by obvious sock of blocked user User:Codyfinke (WP:CSD). Ansh666 01:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I saw that it had been created by a sock, but didn't bring it up; I figured it was better to have a discussion about the merits of the article rather than invoking that rule. — The Potato Hose 02:00, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah. In that case, I'm unstriking my original !vote. Are you sure, though? I feel like this article was intended to be disruptive. Ansh666 02:03, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm sure. I know a lot of sockpuppets are deliberately disruptive, but poking through this person's contribs doesn't suggest that to me. I'm not even qualified to be an armchair psychiatrist, but if I were? It looks like someone who is developmentally delayed in some fashion, or some sort of autistic spectrum disorder, who basically Just Does Not Get It. In fact I'd lean more to the latter--enough sophistication to change IPs, make new accounts, etc. But the focus on always using 'Cody' in the name is a clue. So no, I don't think this was intended to be disruptive, I think they thought they were helping. Anyway I'm venturing far afield. Sorry. So that's one reason I think this should be discussed instead of done by fiat. Secondly, discussing (with whatever outcome) means it's transparent and clear. — The Potato Hose 02:52, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Alright, just making sure. Ansh666 03:22, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Neutral - per policy, speedy delete, but both delete and keep camps are working hard and giving good arguments. I'll sit this one out from now. Ansh666 17:29, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete This would go on forever and is highly American-centric. Also, a hattip to Ansh as I was trying to figure out where I knew from when I saw their edits, and it's been nagging me for weeks how I know that name; obviously Codyfinke.  Nate  • ( chatter ) 01:58, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Glad I cleared it up for ya! Ansh666 02:03, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete As per above. This thing looks to be no more than a half-step removed from a hoax. - Ad Orientem (talk) 02:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. — Mike  moral  ♪♫  02:26, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete. Complete nonsense. More like a random list of USA-based commercial food products than a genuine list of food. No sources whatsoever. J I P  &#124; Talk 02:56, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Merge into History of food, which needs help. The current draft doesn't have a good foundation and so has become a laundry list.  But the topic has a lot of potential as substantial sources exist: The Prehistory of Food; The Food Chronology: A Food Lover's Compendium of Events and Anecdotes from Prehistory to the Present; British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History.  Our editing policy is to preserve this imperfect draft for further development.  Deletion would instead be discouraging and disruptive. Warden (talk) 08:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. epzik 8  14:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete hopelessly goofy article from which nothing can be salvaged without a 100% rewrite. Ignores thousands of years and the entire world besides the US, but even if the scope was limited to 20th-century US it's still crap, ignoring countless major events & people (No Spago? No Julia Child?  No microwave oven???  Nothing AT ALL about wine?!?) but plenty of unsourced trivia, such as Diet Coke with lemon & Diet Coke with lime having seperate entries.  Even if someone were to clean this up--a huge undertaking, as virtually nothing from the current article could be used--timelines aren't a great way to present information that could be better presented in prose, and would be largely redundant with other, better articles, such as Cuisine of the United States. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  15:26, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Solomon  7968  21:35, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep - All the arguments above are about content, not topic, and forget that our deletion policy specifically says that deletion is not cleanup. Content is poor/entries are missing/poorly referenced? Then fix it, or wait for it to be fixed. But a timeline of foods is clearly a notable topic, as books like this show. -- Cycl o pia talk  13:26, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I cited WP:INDISCRIMINATE (part of WP:NOT) - which is what this page inherently is. Ansh666 17:58, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * WP:INDISCRIMINATE is very misunderstood. It means that we're not a data dump, so (for example) we're not a lyrics database, nor we have a page listing all known prime numbers. But a timeline of foods is a notable and very meaningful topic, and there are sources about that. That they way the content in the article is bordering on indiscriminate, I agree, but in this case it is matter of content, so we're not supposed to delete but to fix. Don't think about what the article is, think about what it should be.-- Cycl o pia talk  19:23, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Then, what do you propose this article "should be"? Ansh666 19:28, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Something like this, I would say. -- Cycl o pia talk  23:26, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Hrm. That would require a complete rewrite (relisting? and not in the AfD sense), eh? Well, I guess someone's gotta do it. Anyways, what would be the criteria? We can't include natural foods like fruits (oranges are in the current list), since those don't have a definite date. In fact, most foods, unlike inventions, don't have a definite date unless they were created in maybe the past 200 years - wouldn't a listing beyond that be rather arbitrary? I can see why such a page would be useful, but can we be sure that it's actually possible to create in an accurate manner? Ansh666 23:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Delete - I agree with TPH's rationale. This is an indiscriminate list of random factoids that really have no place in Wikipedia. No citations, no major facts, and focuses too much on minor events. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 19:05, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Again, a matter of content, not of the topic notability. If content is bad, we're supposed to fix, not delete. -- Cycl o pia talk  19:23, 14 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment: I have started refactoring content at Timeline of food. Can people have a look and see if this kind of improvement could change your mind? -- Cycl o pia talk  15:24, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Valiant effort, but no. Again, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, plus comments by others and what I have said before. — The Potato Hose 16:42, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Please explain how WP:INDISCRIMINATE would apply to an article like the one which is coming up. The first part of the timeline is now basically completely sourced and records notable landmarks from all the world in the history of human food. I'm still keeping the latter original part, but I can excise it if it makes people feel better. -- Cycl o pia  talk  17:14, 16 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Chop in half and throw the second half away. The first half is a 'timeline of foodstuffs', which seems encyclopaedic enough - though it should probably be converted from list format to text, and merged into History of food. The second half is a 'timeline of brands', which is evidently US-biased, and stands no possibility of ever being complete. If it were complete, it would consist almost entirely of brands that most readers had never heard of... AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:34, 16 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Major cleanup needed I point to History of painting of what this article should approach in terms of organization. The last 2/3rd isn't necessary (the year of introduction of branded food products is questionably indiscriminate). The first 1/3rd ccan be recovered towards what the article should be. --M ASEM  (t) 19:38, 16 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment: Removed the second half, as it seems consensual that it makes no sense in the form it was. I point to previous !voters that the article now is completely different from what it was when nominated. -- Cycl o pia talk  19:44, 16 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep per Cyclopia - notable topic, not different from Food history except for the timeline format. The current content is clearly put in context with respect to the topic, so this can't be indiscriminate. Diego (talk) 19:50, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment only. After Cyclopia's good work it appears to be the same/similar content as Timeline of agriculture and food technology. Perhaps a merge/redirect to there would satisfy all parties? --Richhoncho (talk) 19:52, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I considered that, but the other article seems to be very focused on agriculture. Also food technology is different from food as a whole. -- Cycl o pia talk  19:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment -- On 2009-20-15 the last version worked on by the article creator, User: Codyfinkepatthebunny, was proded -- perfectly reasonable, as, although the topic of the article is itself notable, the article was totally unreferenced. So there was no referenced content worth saving.  But since then references have been added.  Some people have called the article creator a sockpuppet, which I regard as irrelevant.  Even a stopped clock is correct, twice a day.  There are lots of afd started by sockpuppets, known vandals, or innocent newbies whose initial nomination is completely lacking in a policy justification.  But we don't close those afd as speedy keep if a genuine, well informed, trustworthy contributor voices a "delete" because they think they noticed a genuine policy-based justification for deletion.  Rather the first policy-based justification for delete becomes the focus for the discussion.  I suggest anyone voicing a "delete" here, solely based on allegations the article was started by a sockpuppet, should agree to speedy keeps for any poorly drafted nominations in the future.  Geo Swan (talk) 20:52, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * User:Geo Swan: An article should not be deleted if created by a banned user in contravention of the ban unless it is deemed as created with the purpose of being disruptive - basically, although it can be deleted by policy, it's not recommended. I initially assumed (incorrectly) that it was as such, because of my experience with Paul Bedson socks. However, if you read the discussion above, I was corrected, and struck my Speedy Delete !vote. None of the other Delete !votes were based on the article being created by a sockpuppet. Therefore, your long rant is quite irrelevant (and about half of it would have been irrelevant anyways). Ansh666 21:13, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I am glad you explicitly withdrew this comment at 21:13 2013-06-16. Re-reading your exchange with Potatohose it looks like the two of you clearly understood one another.  But I honestly didn't understand you withdrew the comment.  As to whether anyone else voiced that opinion, didn't one of the later respondents write "delete, as above"?  Geo Swan (talk) 23:16, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I can see where it's a bit confusing - I watchlist all the AfDs I contribute to in any way, so I know the order of things. By the time Ad Orientem made his "per above" statement, I had already struck the Speedy Delete, so they were going off of the nomination, my original !vote, and Nate's. Hope this clears things up for you. Thanks, Ansh666 23:32, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, striking something is explicitly withdrawing it, at least in my book - I did that at 02:03 on 12 June 2013. Ansh666 23:34, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep Cyclopia's substantial rewrite makes this an easy keep. I suggest closing administrator not count any "delete" arguments that predate this rewrite.  Geo Swan (talk) 20:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep both list You shouldn't erase an article while its at AFD by replacing it with a totally different one.  The original one listed notable food items by year they were first created.  This is something useful.  List of all notable brands when they first emerged would be a good list for them, and then national foods like oranges could be on a list like the article currently is.   D r e a m Focus  23:09, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I personally agree that the original listing could have had a purpose, however it was basically unsourced, and consensus was against it. I think the current state reflects much better the concept of a timeline of important events in history of food. One can go in the history of this article and try to rebuild a list of notable brands from the information there -indeed, I'd help you building that too. -- Cycl o pia talk  10:06, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:HEY. The article has been completely revised compared to its state at the time of nomination for deletion (diff page). It is now a well-sourced and formatted article of significant encyclopedic value. Northamerica1000(talk) 13:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. I fixed some of the date consistency issues. This article needs cleaning, not deleting. There's some good information here.  Oh No! It's Faustus37!  it is what it is - speak at the tone 10:29, 19 June 2013 (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.