- Outline of natural language processing (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)
The nominator and delete supporters appeared to lack an understanding of what an outline is. I have not seen the page, so I do not know what is on it, but I ask you, how can a list of links violate WP:NOR? Outlines are helpful resources that may aid readers and editors to find articles in specific and sometimes broad topic areas. I ask that the AfD decision be overturned and, if necessary, the page moved to Draftspace, so that it may be reviewed. Regards, GUYWAN ( t · c ) 20:31, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment from closer: "so that it may be reviewed"? What do you call a 7 day AfD debate if not a close review of the article? --Randykitty (talk) 21:31, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Another question: I'm puzzled. As far as I can see, you never edited this article, nor did you participate in the AfD. What prompted you to take this to DRV 6 weeks after it was deleted (and without discussing it first with me, I might add)? --Randykitty (talk) 21:39, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I've never seen the page, I have no idea what's going on here either, but I agree with the nominator. A list of Wikipedia articles organised as an outline for navigational purposes cannot be WP:OR. It's possible this outline should have been deleted on other grounds, but are we really going to require an outside source to show that a Wikipedia article is on a specific topic? SportingFlyer T·C 07:16, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn The close adequately judged consensus, but there's no way that's WP:OR. SportingFlyer T·C 16:10, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn. I've tempundeleted this. I'm frankly befuddled by the discussion. One of the recurring themes in the comments is that this is WP:OR. I don't see that at all. It's largely a curated collection of links, with some text to give it background. How is that OR? There's another comment, Delete as a shadow article. I don't even know what that means. Another commenter called it link-spamming. That's a term I reserve to SEO. Surely nobobody's claiming this is some attempt to drive NLP traffic to some external site? Yet another person said, This is not a subject that has been independently the object ... of outside sources. Huh? Natural language processing is one of the major topics of research in computer science. How somebody can say it's not the object of outside sources is truly mind-boggling.
- Most of this appears to be part of a larger war against outlines and portals in general. The most cogent remark in the entire discussion was, all outline of pages are contentless link collections that duplicate the topic. Link farms are so 1995. That may, in fact, be true. We have better technology today to navigate large bodies of information (and, ironically enough, Natural language processing is one of them). But, if you're going to argue that outlines are obsolete, make that argument in an RFC to ban all outlines. I doubt that RFC will get any traction, however. We've got lists, categories, portals, outlines, DAB pages, and probably a few other navigation tools I can't recall offhand. Many of those overlap in functionality, and I personally think several of them are obsolete. But, current consensus is that they're all useful in their own way. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:04, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- PS, to be fair to the closer, Overturn usually means, The closer made an error, but in this case, what it really means is, The whole discussion was off in the weeds. I can't really blame the closer for doing the best he could with what he had to work with. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:40, 7 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse I've thought long and hard about whether I wish to disagree with Sporting and Roy, both of whom I respect. I especially thought hard given that this deletion seems at least partly driven by the frustration editors at the time were experiencing with Transhumanist at the time, which while understandable manifested in some less than great ways. However, I just can't find a PAG basis for overturning a clear AfD consensus. The existence of outlines, at least as I track it at WP:OUTLINES seems to have no explicit community support behind its creation or existence, unlike Portals which is a namespace and had a well discussed RfC reaffirming its existence in 2018. There are no real criteria, let alone community endorsed criteria, that I can find which define what is and isn't appropriate to have in outline form. Discussions handwave towards lists at points so perhaps it's some version of LISTN? If so my personal opinion would have been that this outline demonstrates notability as the topic is discussed as a set with some regularity. However, I didn't show up to that AfD and cast a !vote. And at least a couple of !voters did address the concept of notability rather than just merely comment on the fact that it's unreferenced. Our encyclopedia would be worse off without outlines, and unlike Portals they do seem to get real traffic (e.g. 18k+ views for Outline of India & 8k+ for Outline of human anatomy) so we shouldn't make a practice of deleting them all but I think some !voters applied criteria, such as they poorly are, and the closer fairly judged that consensus and implemented it. The person filing this appeal (who really should have discussed with closing sysop first) suggests that no one understood the purpose of what outlines were. This seem clearly true but says more about our lack of agreement about what they should be, not a failure on the !voters part to apply PAG or the closer to discern consensus. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:23, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- There's a bunch of history on the topic of outlines, and it appears as if this could be the next great deletion debate following the whole portals debacle, but it's not as if this is a project without any explicit community support. Here's a RfC from 2011 which ended in no consensus, but ended in a consensus for defining what an outline is in the alternative proposal: [1]. Also see [2]. And I understand nominating the outline after the deletion discussion here, but an outline's notability doesn't have anything to do with its Wikiproject's viability. Perhaps we are at a point where we need to look closely at outlines, but consensus has been for years outline articles don't invalidate WP:OR, even if the consensus has been made through custom. I'd be willing to listen to an argument this specific outline article violates WP:OR, but it was not clearly made in the deletion discussion, and it's not obvious on its face. SportingFlyer T·C 04:08, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks I looked through OUTLINES archive and if that RfC was posted there I'd missed it. It's a shame that criteria was never clearly incorporated into OUTLINE. Indeed while there are sections of what Outlines are and aren't those sections' information doesn't correspond as well as I'd like to the RfC. While the RfC was closed as no consensus for closing down OUTLINES I'd suggest consensus was probably closer to against that and thus an endorsement of their existence. As such we now have substantial new information, which would justify a DRV in the first place, and more weight needs to be given to SmC and Transhuman's keep !votes and much less (or perhaps no) weight given to the OR delete !votes (including the nomination). This lands us in either No Consensus or Keep territory and as such I'm convinced to Overturn with no prejudice to renomination now that we all know what we should be discussing. Alternatively a well publicized RfC could establish consensus behind eliminating outline articles as a type of Wikipedia article but that's beyond the scope of a single AfD/DRV. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:41, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn I'm glad this DRV nomination has been made and I think in this case to properly review the AFD discussion required the article itself to also be reviewed. Until I saw the undeleted article I was utterly bemused by the AFD. I have found it very hard to spot any policy-based or guideline-based argument for deletion or even a coherent justification for deletion outside our guidelines. And, unfortunately, some of the contributors have not even tried to hide their antipathy towards the creator of this article. The only aspect of WP:OR that might be relevant is WP:SYNTH but I can't see what conclusion is being reached improperly. I certainly think it can reasonably be argued that the article is sadly deficient in references (and sometimes lack of references can mislead reviewers into thinking there has been "original research"). "Random", "spam", "shadow", "functional gradient", "unruly listing". The arguments look so poor to me they should have been disregarded. There was one good keep argument so that could have carried the day or the thing could have been relisted with advice that participants should advance relevant arguments. Thincat (talk) 10:45, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Endorse the close as an accurate rough consensus call for the discussion. Note that participants are not constrained to argue standard policy rationales, most deletion guidelines and policies are mere predictors of what AfD will do. The authority to delete comes from the consensus of the participants. That said, the consensus was only “rough”, there being opposition, and here the nominator of this DRV raises significant new argument, so Support resisting the AfD, and recommend better advertising of the AfD, WP:CENT for sure. WP:Outlines are similar to Portals, and a better participated discussion is highly desirable. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:04, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Resistance is futile! -- RoySmith (talk) 16:21, 8 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn the arguments offered for deletion are either explicitly arguments against outlines in general or arguments which would lead to the deletion of basically every outline on Wikipedia if adopted. There does seem to be a general consensus that outlines are OK, at least some of the time, so these arguments ought to be downweighted per WP:LOCALCON. As with RoySmith above I can't really blame the closer here, the problem is that the entire discussion is misguided. Hut 8.5 16:36, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn with optional relist. At thevery least, thereiwas no consensus to delete, and if the delte arguments were to be accepted as even relevant, the appropriate close would have been No Consensus. But they were not relevant. This was an Outline of a subject, a special type of WP artic;le intended for purposes of overview and navigation. The requirement for having one is that hte topic by so complex that such an outline is needed, and that we have sufficient articles that an outline is possible. The concept need not meet GNG any more than othr navigational devices meet GNG: what needs to meet notability are the individual linked articles. DGG ( talk ) 06:04, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Overturn without prejudice to a new nomination that is based on matters relevant to the specific outline and without any of the completely unnecessary ad hominems. I could have seen a no consensus closure, or a keep closure but I disagree that there was a consensus to delete this outline. Thryduulf (talk) 09:42, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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