Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Water (data page)


 * 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. (non-admin closure) sovereign°sentinel (contribs) 07:10, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Water (data page)

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Are data sheets within the remit of an encyclopedia? This page, and others like it, contains detailed chemical data which is too large to fit in the parent article. To me, this violates WP:NOT: "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information", specifically, the excessive listings of statistics. I would not object to moving these data somewhere outside of article space, and I suggested such a move in 2012 which met with little interest from the editors at WikiProject Chemicals. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 15:27, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * See Category:Chemical data pages. -DePiep (talk) 13:34, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment: I believe the issue is that the Chembox can become massive. To keep the size manageable on the main article page, data pages were conceived as a solution. If we delete this chemical data page there will be many other data pages to delete as well under this reasoning (e.g. Caffeine (data page), Ethanol (data page)). Sizeofint (talk) 15:34, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Are there not external collections of these data that you could link to? I know for proteins, there are plenty of databases for this kind of thing. Are these data really essential to understanding the main article? I realize that more pages will need to be deleted if my argument is valid, I'm treating this as a kind of test case, if this ends as a snow keep, I won't nominate the rest. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 15:48, 27 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment I can't remember now where the last discussion about these happened, but IIRC the result was to wait till wikidata can handle input with units and then move the information there, no? So the existing data pages should continue to exist as-is till the infrastructure and motivation exist for a migration, unless a particular data page contains unfixable errors or needs deletion for some other reason. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:59, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * A move outside article space, such as Talk:Water/Data would allow transfer of the information while being in compliance with WP:NOT. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 08:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * By the way, I found this discussion from 2014, I don't think this is the one you are thinking of, as there is no mention of wikidata. I looked in archives from the chemistry and chemicals wikiprojects as well as AfD, is there anywhere else the discussion could have been? Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 09:25, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm definitely thinking of a 2015 conversation, but I can't remember where it occurred. Possibly on the talk page of an article with a data page. In any case, I agree with what I posted, or possibly only intended to post, in the conversation I can't find :) Most of these have have existed unproblematically since 2005-6, there's a more accessible solution arriving in the near future, compliance with some WP:TLA for compliance's sake is a waste of effort. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:NOT is not just some TLA, it is among the most important content policies we have, I see no need to ignore it here. If there is a prospect of the data being transferred, move it to a talk subpage. I don't see why that option isn't a win-win, you get to keep the data for future transfer, we all get to keep non-encyclopedic pages outside article space. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 20:53, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, it's not indiscriminate. It's on its own page only for technical reasons. And we exclude 'indiscriminate collections of information' for good reasons that don't apply here. This argument sounds like trying to enforce a rule for enforcement's sake, never mind whether it actually applies or matters. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:49, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If you think WP:NOT does not apply, where are the context with explanations that that policy says should accompany data? This page is really no different from a page listing statistics about a sportsperson, one could argue keep for much the same reasons as editors are arguing here, yet these pages are routinely deleted by prod or afd. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 07:40, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:INDISCRIMINATE says "Long and sprawling lists of statistics may be confusing to readers and reduce the readability and neatness of our articles. In addition, articles should contain sufficient explanatory text to put statistics within the article in their proper context for a general reader. In cases where this may be necessary, (e.g. Nationwide opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2012), consider using tables to enhance the readability of lengthy data lists." The article linked has basically the same amount of explanation as the page in question. shoy (reactions) 12:42, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a couple of points about that. The data in the article you linked is all of the same kind, they are all opinion polls for the same election, a single explanation is sufficient. In this article, there are at least 15 different kinds of data. The lay reader does not need an explanation about what an opinion poll is. The lay reader certainly does need an explanation about what self ionization etc. is. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 09:01, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Quasihuman, if you don't see any difference in encyclopedic value between the fundamental properties of common substances and sports statistics, I'm not sure what else there is to say. Opabinia regalis (talk) 15:51, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Move outside content space is not an answer. (This was discussed for Redirects for completely other reasons. See [|this] RfD archive). -DePiep (talk) 14:01, 28 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep, I am not convinced that deletion is OK for reason of WP:NOT. WP:DISCRIMINATE gives a nice background for this argument (concluding into 'keep' here, IMO). The data is quite structured. And this being water, such lots of data may be relevant. With this, I think the data is encyclopedic (while one could consider improvement of the page). Now for practical reasons, mostly web-originated, the data is not added to the main article. That is, we have not found a sound way to manage such a big page by web means. We could use improvements in this (i.e., high end webpage design guidelines). -DePiep (talk) 13:56, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I have to say, I strongly disagree that this page is encyclopedic, the data might be encyclopedic if it was accompanied by prose discussing it and the context for it as part of an article. We have to accept that not all information about a subject can fit within its article, the solution to this is not to create a dump for such data. No other subject area does this.


 * WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE says : "To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources. As explained in § Encyclopedic content above, merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia." There are no explanations or context here, the only prose is explaining units and a few sentences at the lead. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 14:27, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It is a sub-page. Why would that require being "accompanied by prose"? (now this is what I would call an indiscriminate requirement, btw). We do not require "accompanying prose" for an infobox either. -DePiep (talk) 22:24, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Because that is what our policy at WP:NOT says, "context with explanations" implies prose. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 22:47, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So if we merge (paste) this page into Water, which has the prose, that would be OK? -DePiep (talk) 20:08, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If Water actually has prose explaining these data, yes. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 20:22, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * , OK, this is closing in. Now, the infobox at water has over 40 data entries (data rows). Only few of these are mentioned in the prose (and of course there is the wikilink in the lefthand word, which is canceled out for imo obvious reasons). The testing question is: Would you claim the dozens of not-mentioned data rows are non-encyclopedic too and should be removed? (or, a different approach, what about if we move the "triple point" from the data page to the infobox?). -DePiep (talk)
 * Are you talking about Properties of water? Water doesn't have an infobox. There are going to be non explained items in most infoboxes, most of these will be self-explanatory, we don't need to explain melting and boiling points because the lay reader would be expected to understand what those mean. The triple point is explained in Properties of water, I would have no problem moving that data there. Ideally, items that are not self-explanatory to the layman should have explanations in the text. If that is not the case, I would not immediately delete that data. I don't really have a problem with a couple of unexplained items inside an infobox if editors think the information is important, in that case, a link to an article discussing, for example, Magnetic susceptibility is probably sufficient. Quasihuman (talk • contribs) 08:45, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * re: "Are you talking about Properties of water "? - Yes I do. One of my core questions is: how or why would is matter when a data fact is in page '.. (data page)' or in the main page? You seem to discard the whole page while not addressing the individual data-points. (very bad). -DePiep (talk) 23:42, 3 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - I for one regularly look up material properties from the infoboxes on wikipedia pages and I think it's obvious that an article discussing a material or chemical compound should list the most important material properties of that compound. Water is a special case, since its material properties are known and used in so much more detail that they wouldn't fit on an infobox. I have always thought that this data-page construct was a good way to deal with the massive amount of available material properties. At least, I have used this page many times over the years. Han-Kwang (t) 20:05, 30 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:50, 1 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep this collection is certainly no indiscriminate. There is potential to turn it into a more text like form and make it physical properties of water.  Information from this is of interest to meteorologists, planetologists, steam engine builders, oceanographers and many others. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:27, 3 September 2015 (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.