Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1 metre

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 No Consensus. There are some strong policy-based arguments on the side of those wishing to delete the entire bulk of these articles; these articles seem to be indiscriminate (unbounded as to what to include) which is a significant problem. However, this point is contested by several editors who feel that these articles serve an important role outside of Orders of magnitude (length). While "I like it" isn't a strong argument, and one that I don't personally buy, these editors also rebut the claim that these articles are indiscriminate. There seems to be some consensus that redirecting to related articles is an approach to consider for the future and I encourage discussion move in that direction. But here, on this page, there isn't a clear consensus on what to do with this block of articles. Lord Roem ~ (talk) 21:41, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

1 metre

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Per WP:NOT, Wikipedia is not lists or repositories of loosely associated topics. This article is an arbitrary list of objects or distances and most of them are not actually 1 metre long. The unit of length is better explained at metre and the overall concept of different scales is better explained at Orders of magnitude (length). Those articles contain illustrative examples and so we don't need ragbags of absurd and random examples too, e.g. the height of a hobbit and the height of a giraffe are both presented here as equivalent. Note that the sourcing for this is negligible and so the topic fails WP:LISTN. Note also that I am making this a group nomination by nominating all other similar articles for deletion too. Warden (talk) 00:01, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Other similar articles in this bundle:

Note further that each article is intended to cover a range of distances so that 1 metre would be more accurately entitled 1-10 metres. This means that every conceivable distance is catered for up to the size of the known universe. Therefore there aren't any distances which would not fit into one of these articles. As a set, they are therefore quite indiscriminate. The way they are currently maintained, you could put anything you like into them — the length of Jimmy Wales' beard; the size of an n-dash or a hyphen; the height of every Pokemon... Warden (talk) 01:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all as WP:INDISCRIMINATE trivia. All of these articles are multiples of 1609 meters away from notability. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:54, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The category page Category:Orders of magnitude shows dozens of individual orders of magnitude pages and 4 subcategories of sets of order of magnitude articles for length, area, volume and time for those measures that outgrew single articles. All of these involve placing disparate facts together on pages to explain and inform. And this is what an encyclopedia does--it organizes facts into an understandable whole. If these facts were distributed into individual articles, they could not easily be found and the ability to explain relative sizes and provide intuitive understanding for these measures would be lost. These order of magnitude articles are in the same category as date articles like 370 and number articles like 104.

It's true that any length would fit into one of these articles, and that is fine. It's unlikely that any of these articles are going to grow without bounds, but if any do grow too big, it is a simple matter of editing to pare them down to a reasonable size. I agree that this set of articles may not be named well; indicating ranges may be more accurate. But gaining consensus for renaming these articles is a task for the article talk pages, not AfD. These and all the other order of magnitude articles should be kept. Mark viking (talk) 03:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The relevant guideline for numbers is WP:NUMBER and this tells us to look for evidence of notability — coverage of the number in papers; interesting facts about the number and so on. That guideline tells us to be discriminating and not to include every possible number. Warden (talk) 10:29, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Somebody finds these pages useful, otherwise the page 1 metre woud not be getting 200 hits a day. I agree that they could be renamed though. Martinvl (talk) 07:26, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As you seem to concede that the titles are misleading, how do we know that any of those readers found what they were looking for? It might equally be that they all went away shaking their head and saying "that was weird — where's the article about the metre?". See also WP:ITSUSEFUL which explains that "Just saying something is useful or useless without providing explanation and context is not helpful or persuasive in the discussion."

In judging usefulness, the problem here is that the article doesn't do what it says on the tin. The ostensible purpose of the article is "to help compare different orders of magnitude" but none of these articles do this because they don't show different orders of magnitude. Instead, each article shows examples which all have the same order of magnitude.

Now at one time, the articles did compare different orders of magnitude because they were all together. You can still see remnants of this structure in the 1 metre article which still contains bold titles Distances shorter than 1 m Distances longer than 10 m. These relics also use the previous titles for the articles which were even more bizarre. 1 metre used to be 1 E0 m — how useful is that?

Warden (talk) 10:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I agree with Colonel Warden that this article just does not work, and there is no way of knowing what those who land on it are looking for or getting out of it. It is possible that they are looking for a conversion factor to feet and inches. At the moment it is just an arbitrary list of things between 1m and <10m in length. I am not unsympathetic to a merge, or a rename, because I can see some encyclopedic value in orders of magnitude, but the present article structure fails and is potentially confusing to users. If I wanted examples of things around 1 metre in length I am not sure I would look here but even if I did I would not know I also had to look at the 1 decimetre article, or for things around 10 metres at this article - it just isn't intuitive. --AJHingston (talk) 11:12, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. ★☆ DUCKISPEANUTBUTTER☆★ 12:59, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. ★☆ DUCKISPEANUTBUTTER☆★ 12:59, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The powers-of-ten articles are quite useful in aggregate. The precise structure may be awkward, and the number and selection of "representative" items in each list may need to be edited, but the articles should not be deleted until there is a consensus as to what should take their place and that replacement is implemented. There needs to be some way for a curious reader to find the relative sizes of things when reading articles. This is less important for human-scale measurements where the reader has lots of direct experience (e.g., 1cm to 100km) but is still needed for smaller or larger scales. This suite of articles has been on WP more or less since its inception and should not be removed without a lot more discussion.-Arch dude (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As noted below by Nabla there is sufficent coverage elsewhere. Also, longevity is not a valid argument since consensus can change. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:02, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is a bizarre deletion request. Each of these articles is a powerful contribution to many fields of endeavor, and they are interesting, precise, and meaningful. Fotaun (talk) 20:26, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Powerful contribution - no; interesting - sort of; precise - maybe; meaningful - not at all. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:02, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment In the interests of compromise, check out List of examples of lengths. A merge/redirect based solution may be more rational, and it preserves link continuity. Fotaun (talk) 17:59, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, all relevant information is already, and better organized, at Orders of magnitude (length), and also at centimetre, decimetre, etc. Creating or Turning into redirects also seems fine- Nabla (talk) 21:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC) PS: Still voting delete after a new article was introduced - Nabla (talk) 19:49, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep mainly for the reasons expressed above by Arch dude. These articles, in aggregate, treat an unquesitonably notable subject in a reasonably intelligible clear way. --Arxiloxos (talk) 22:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Arch dude. None of those articles should be deleted (even the ones with human-scale measurements, since they help with comparisons as well). Alphius (talk) 05:40, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. These are useful lists, as Arch dude points out. -- 202.124.89.45 (talk) 06:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all - the articles fail to provide the comparison of orders of magnitudes as they exist as single entities whereas that is what Orders of magnitude (length) does. There is no individual notability for these and any use is in aggregate and context at the Orders of magnitude (length) article. -- Whpq (talk) 14:34, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Michig (talk) 15:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, should act as a more detailed counterpart to Orders of magnitude (length). Siuenti (talk) 16:17, 20 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that Orders of magnitude (length) is sufficient coverage of the topic and the ones up for deletion are trivia. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:02, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom and Clarityfiend. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:02, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Totally arbitrary list of objects of a size. We could delete all these instances and re-populate with any other set of objects; the articles would still be useless. Totally indiscriminate. Dingo1729 (talk) 16:57, 23 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete All As indiscriminate. PianoDan (talk) 00:12, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, trivia - under WP:INDISCRIMINATE. B-watchmework (talk) 05:53, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, I landed on the 10nm page looking for an intuitive indication of what scale of objects are 10nm, and thats exactly what I found. A redirect to Orders of magnitude (length) would not have worked as well as the page is not structured as simply as being able to navigate down to 1nm and up to 100nm. The series of articles could certainly do with clean up especially at more familiar distances, but I think articles like this provide a good semantic structure to some wikipedia articles, in the same way that being able to navigate through notable events in particular years does. Rattle (talk) 18:21, 25 January 2013 (UTC) edit: List of examples of lengths is better, but I still prefer this structure.[reply]

Comment. The newly created List of examples of lengths article puts a new perspective on this AfD. We will need a lengthier discussion. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:35, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —Theopolisme (talk) 00:21, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I Reaffirm my deletion vote. Creating a fork (List of examples of lengths) of an existing article (Orders of magnitude (length)) by merging this lot only proves further that each one AND the merged are duplicates, and now also a fork, of Orders of magnitude (length). Speedy delete List of examples of lengths as a recently created article that duplicates an existing topic. - Nabla (talk) 16:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please strike this vote. No one is allowed to vote more than once in an AfD discussion. Further, if you want to propose deletion of another article, do so in a different discussion. Thanks, Mark viking (talk) 17:25, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

1) I am not voting twice, I supposed it was quite clear I am simply restating that even under the new circunstances I keep my previous delete vote. 2)I could tag the new article wid a speedy deletion template - but then we may get a admin to delete it unaware of this discussiuon, which would help nothing than confuse things further. OTOH stating it here maybe a admin reading this will delete, or not, aware of the whole subject.

I edited to try to get both clearer. Thanks. - Nabla (talk) 19:49, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Good examples of what Wikipedia can be. Rmhermen (talk) 19:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all - Good intentions, but these are not encyclopedic topics, such as meter, these are trivia troves. Carrite (talk) 06:51, 28 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note that the seperate AfD for 1 gigametre has been closed as moot due to its bundling here. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 06:06, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep , though consider merging these into larger groups. It's an expansion of the more condensed list at Orders of magnitude (length), which I think everyone agrees is acceptable content.I think having multiple objects helps understanding, & thus contributes to the purpose of the article. Though to some extent it's a matter of style, I think putting an expanded version into a single article would be confusing, but it's a valid option. the objection about sourcing is foolish, since every item on these can be sourced; it's just a matter of finding the article on it and geting the data and the source--personally, I think if the articles are linked, that isn't necessary when nothing is controversial--the link is sufficient. WP readers understand the basic concept of hypertext to that extent. The policy justification is ultimately that WOP contains elements of an almanac. Such lists are traditional features of almanacs. DGG ( talk ) 19:56, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alamanacs will commonly provide details of weights and measures such as definitions of units and conversion factors. I dispute that they provide anything like the lists of arbitrary examples we see here or group them in a similar way. No example or source is provided to back up this claim which I challenge per WP:PROVEIT. Warden (talk) 16:11, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep This is a useful feature for an encyclopedia to have. Trivia can be removed leaving sourced content. The list is not indiscriminate, and so is acceptable. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:09, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - These lists are not indiscriminate. Obviously any distance could fit into these articles as a set, but each individual article has a pretty neatly defined scope. It's conceivable that deciding what distances to include in each article could be problematic, but in the decade that these articles have been around that hasn't happened. It's not broke, so why fix it? --Cerebellum (talk) 03:01, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I randomly sample a couple of these: 1 nanometre and 1 exametre. I agree that these pages contain mostly pointless examples and are potentially indiscriminate as one can pick anything in that ballpark. I can't fathom a serious reference work having such pages. Wikipedia is WP:NOTTHERAPY for the Aspie tendencies of some editors. 188.26.163.111 (talk) 17:06, 3 February 2013 (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.