Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slovio (3rd nomination)

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. There is broad agreement that the article as it currently stands is of low quality and needs (lots of) work. However, that is not a reason to delete. The suggestion to redirect can be discussed on the talk page if desired. Randykitty (talk) 14:13, 5 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Slovio

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The 2nd AFD was closed as 'delete'. For the 1st, two websites were given as evidence of notability, but one was created by the author of the conlang, and the other was Omniglot, which accepts summaries of writing systems from anyone and so is not a RS.

Slovio appears to be a personal project with no other following. A large number of sources can now be found, but they all seem to be based on WP, on one of the author's many websites dedicated to his language, or on each other. So we seem to have a hall of mirrors effect, where the topic is considered notable because it's found on Wikipedia.

A few years after the AFD2 deletion, the article was recreated by back-translating from the WP-de version, which had been copied from either WP-en or (as the WP-en article had been) from WP-eo. So, again, a hall of mirrors effect, this time with different wikiprojects copying off each other.

For the argument that Slovio is not a notable conlang, see Jan van Steenbergen, 'The Slovio Myth', Fiat Lingua, 1 May 2016, which postdates the two AFD's. This appears to be the most detailed source we have on the language. So as to not lose all the meta-info, which is perhaps now notable because it's been on WP so long, perhaps we should mention it in our article on zonal languages or other conlang articles, and cite Steenbergen and any other RS's / original sources there. Whether 'Slovio' should be a rd to one of those articles (which one do we choose?) or whether it should be deleted so they all come back as hits if a reader does a search on the name, I don't know. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 07:26, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom, or redirect to Zonal_constructed_language#Pan-Slavic_languages. Slovio had some temporary notability, as is witnessed by T. Berger's article "Potemkin im Netz: “Slovio” und die Pseudo-Panslawen", but this is clearly a thing of the past. In research, it is certainly appropriate to respond to contemporary phenomena regardless of their ephemerality, but not in an encyclopedia. And I can't escape the impression that this conlang has been only jumped on by academics experts as an object of study (and of course by non-academics in the closed conlang-universe), but not by any visible "fanbase" among its actual target group (speakers of Slavic languages). Yesterday's recentism has transformed into today's irrelevance. And I agree with kwami's observation that its current visibility is for a great part an artefact of its coverage in WP. A short mention in a conlang-related article like currently in Zonal language is fine, anything else (like the full subsection in Pan-Slavic_language) is undue and promotional. –Austronesier (talk) 09:37, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Add (partially in answer in the comment by S Marshall below): Slovio may have had some degree of temporary notability, but at no time reached the threshold of WP:SIGCOV in reliable sources to warrant a stand-alone article. And btw, the in-depth coverage in the very few secondary sources which go beyond a passing mention does in no way match the content of the article. E.g., the abovementioned article by Berger (2009) does not elaborate on details of orthography and grammar, but on the political agenda behind the creation of the conlang. Berger even does not fail to mention the instrumentalization of WP for that purpose. But fully aware of WP:NOTCLEANUP, I maintain that even this valuable information is IMO not sufficient to warrant a stand-alone article. –Austronesier (talk) 12:55, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that the preceding editors display some confusion about our rules and principles.
Contrary to the nominator, the fact that Jan van Steenbergen says Slovio is a myth doesn't mean we shouldn't cover it. Where modern myths or hoaxes are covered in reliable sources, we can have articles about them: hence slenderman or chupacabra.
When Austronesier says Slovio had some temporary notability, I would point out that there is no such thing. Our longstanding rule, which has its own shortcut at WP:NTEMP, is that if a thing was ever notable, then it's notable forever. Contrary to Austronesier, I would say that historical ephemera do have a place on Wikipedia. We have many articles about things that happened in the past but don't matter now, and in my view it's right that we do.
It is true that this article has been deleted before, because it was first created by a person with a conflict of interest. Therefore, before I re-created it, I specifically sought the community's approval to do so, which was granted here.—S Marshall T/C 10:45, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- ... and in Austronesier's reply, he makes two additional points.
  First, he criticises the content of the article in that it does not reflect the sources. This is valid: the content has radically been expanded by others since I rewrote it. This is grounds to edit the article, rather than to delete it.
  Secondly, although he concedes that reliable sources exist, he contends that they're not WP:SIGCOV. Let's examine that contention in detail. This source, in the Slovakian language magazine Zivot, comprises a few hundred words; it meets Wikipedia's somewhat idiosyncratic definition of a secondary source; Slovio is one of the principal topics; Zivot has editors; and it's editorially independent of Mark Hucko. It is hardly an academic source. But such sources are routinely used for TV episodes, biographies of sportspeople, and so forth. This source, in the Slovakian language magazine Extra Plus, comprises a few hundred words; it's a secondary source by Wikipedia standards; Slovio is the principal topic; Extra Plus has editors; and it's editorially independent of Mark Hucko. This source, which is a chapter of a book by Dr Tilman Berger, Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the University of Tübingen, is proper, serious academic stuff. Its in-depth discussion of Slovio is on page 4.
  I contend that taken together, these three sources amount to significant coverage within Wikipedia's normal usage of that term.—S Marshall T/C 13:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep It appears that the conlang has been the partial subject of this Ph.D. thesis accepted at the University of Bamberg. This thesis is written in German, so it may not add to the language's notability in the English language context, but I submit that dissertations are not written about entirely unnotable concepts. LandLing 22:44, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. To begin with, I've never said or written that Slovio is a hoax. It is as real as its grammar, its dictionary and the stuff written in it. My objective with the aforementioned article "The Slovio Myth" was quite simply to refute all the lies that circulated about it and to lay out its real scope of use. Furthermore, I have never said that Slovio isn't notable; in fact, I believe it's as notable as languages like Neo or Intal. It is true, however, that Slovio appears to owe its fame mostly to Wikipedia. The first Slovio article appeared in Esperanto in 2002, soon to be followed by translations into English and dozens of other languages - all of them based on a single and grossly unreliable primary source. By the time the first articles appeared in the press, it had already spread like a virus. Kwamikagami's comparison to a hall of mirrors is apt: journalists started writing articles that basically replicated info from Wikipedia, which in turn became evidence of Slovio's notability. It's quite possible and even probable that without Wikipedia nobody would ever even have heard about Slovio. But what's done is done, and there's no point in trying to undo it.
Anyway, my problem with the article in its current form is that it presents sources without actually using them. Instead, it goes on doing what's been done all the time: multiplying info from other Wikipedia editions without actually verifying anything. Berger, Mannewitz, Barandovská-Frank and Meyer are reputable academic sources and their coverage of Slovio is far from trivial. My own article could, in all modesty, be helpful as well. But writing an article that is not based on any of these sources is like making an egg sandwich without using eggs or bread. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 23:17, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Which raises the possibility that Wikipedia could have an article on a topic, that notes that the topic is likely only notable because it has an article on Wikipedia. I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but think it's something that should be pondered. — kwami (talk) 23:45, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

... and that's not unknown, but my personal favourite case is Clarice Phelps, who became notable for not having an article on Wikipedia (source, source, source, source).—S Marshall T/C 00:17, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I pretty much agree with Kwamikagami here: at least in its current form, the article would best be deleted, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of a decent article that is based on serious sources instead of an article that is merely based on a single primary source. As for the conclusion that it is only notable because of a Wikipedia article, that's of course a thing we can only guess, but we can't know it for sure. I've written something about the subject before, in this paper (p. 150): "The conclusion seems justified that some languages owe at least part of their current significance to the fact that they made it into Wikipedia at a very early stage of its existence, when notability was not much of an issue yet – some of them (for example Slovio, Toki Pona and Wenedyk) barely a year after their first creation or publication. By the time that reliable sources became a requirement, Wikipedia itself had already inspired researchers and journalists to provide them." —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 22:39, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pretty much. Given the large number of interslavic projects, perhaps we could have a comparison article. But this one, if we keep it, I think should concentrate as much on the politics of the language as on the language itself. Though, since it's now defunct, I suppose that promotion through WP is no longer much of an issue. — kwami (talk) 00:26, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep After reading van Steenbergen's fascinating article, I feel strongly that this article should be improved with reference to reliable sources (perhaps entirely rewritten), not deleted. Gildir (talk) 14:03, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the compliment! The question is which solution is better: deleting the article in its current form and see if someone steps up to write a better one, or keep it and just hope for someone to improve it. The problem with the latter solution is that it's probably not going to work. It happens all the time: an article is bad, but the subject is sufficiently notable, so we keep it for improvement, and after five years it's submitted for deletion once again since nobody cares to improve it. Besides, in its current state, there's really not much worth preserving: the alphabet and grammar sections are not compliant with the official grammar, full of errors and totally unreferenced. I also agree with Kwamikagami that the political aspect should be properly covered as well. My suggestion would be to draftify the article. If there's anyone willing to commit to the task of improving the article, it's mission accomplished, if not, it will be deleted automatically after some time. How 'bout that? —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 17:17, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't we just revert to one of the less crufty revisions?—S Marshall T/C 11:52, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

IMO that wouldn't solve any of the problems put forward by the nominator. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 16:24, 26 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we're pretty far away from meeting the criteria for a "draftify" outcome at AfD, which require (a) that the article is recently-created and (b) that it's not used as a backdoor route to deletion. You could apply a tag.—S Marshall T/C 17:36, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, the page you quote says that draftifying "should generally be done only for newly created articles (...) or as the result of a deletion discussion". The idea is, obviously, to give people time to improve the article while taking the current text as a starting point. The difference is that if nobody takes up the task, it will be deleted automatically after a while, but the purpose is to improve it and not to delete it. In my opinion there's nothing unreasonable about that. After all, why would anybody write an article about something without reading even a single source about it? In its current form, the article is clearly unacceptable. It's just a translation from an equally unsourced article in another language edition. Even Interslavic language and Pan-Slavic language contain more valuable information about Slovio than the article itself. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 22:32, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If your objective is to improve it, you'd be welcome to do so in the mainspace. Draftification is a way to make someone else improve it (on pain of deletion). It's not how we normally do things with established articles.—S Marshall T/C 09:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Giving my opinion doesn't make me responsible for making the necessary improvements, especially since it would be strange to use my own work as a source. Tagging is not a solution either: there are already three tags that have been here for a very long time, and until now nobody could be bothered to do anything about them. Deletion would be the logical consequence of that fact, but since there seem to be people who care about this article, I'd rather give them some extra time to work on it. Hence my suggestion. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 19:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If we decide to keep, and no-one is willing to rework the article, then I plan on merging it into Pan-Slavic language, where it already has a section, and adding a quick summary of the sources mentioned here. It could always be recreated if someone wants to do the work. (The article Interslavic language, BTW, currently covers a great deal of nicely fleshed out background material that IMO would be better placed in 'Pan-Slavic', with 'Interslavic' concentrating on the modern project dating from ca 2006.) — kwami (talk) 00:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Pan-Slavic language is in a terrible state, to be fair, and its section on Slovio is also functionally unreferenced. I could't find Interslavic language when I looked right now -- seems like User:Anthony Appleyard is doing something with it.—S Marshall T/C 11:27, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.