Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brithenig

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep -- Francs2000 | Talk 12:46, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Brithenig

• Keep. I am not an absolutist about keeping every possible piece of knowledge on Wikipedia, but in this instance it is not clear to me how to make an objective decision about which conlangs to include and which to exclude. I mean, just look at the following three things I discovered with the randomizing function: Rohtas Fort, King of Arms, and Wellsville, Ohio (population: 4,133). Should every fort in Pakistan, every member of the hierarchy of heralds, or every city in Ohio, no matter how small, have an entry? Well, maybe. The decision is ultimately about counts as important, and nobody can predetermine what will count as important before it actually becomes so. Brithenig is a small conlang, but one developed by a number of people, and has drawn some attention in the online conlanging community; it is equivalent to a town slightly more important than Wellsville, Ohio. But Wellsville has an entry. Why not Brithenig? Trwier 26 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. This article is about a conlang. I believe that it is not notable for inclusion in Wikipedia. – ishwar  (speak) 15:35, 2005 July 23 (UTC)
• Keep - inventing fake languages might be a goofy way to spend your life, but it's certainly a worthy topic. - DavidWBrooks 15:37, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - inventing fake languages might be a less goofy way to spend your life than quite a few others, but that does not make every fake language a worthy topic. --Thorsten1 10:03, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - If you delete this article, please proceed and remove all the constructed languages that appear in this list. If you delete this one, but keep the others, it'll be unfair. I think this kind of articles is worth enough, and they hurt no one. Thanks. Assdl 15:42, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
  • "There is a lot of worthless crap in Wikipedia" isn't an argument for keeping this article. User has made less than 50 edits. Wile E. Heresiarch 19:36, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm not sure about the notability of Brithenig in particular, but constructed languages cannot all be eligible for Wikipedia. If it is judged that this one is not, others, such as Esperanto and Languages of Middle-Earth, still are, so I disagree with Assdl about treating all conlangs the same. As regards the comments of DavidWBrooks on the worthiness of the topic in general, that is why there is a constructed language article. --Joel7687 16:16, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - pretty good article, not sure about notability, but does no harm. I could not call it vanity (as in music bands). -Renata3 16:25, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - Brithenig is highly notable, in fact it was the first of its kind. Ishwar, have you listed every conlang on wikipedia for deletion? Whence the sudden zeal? Dewrad 16:55, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

hi. no, i havent listed every conlang for deletion. i have only listed a few that user Assdl brought to my attention. my covert question here is: What constraints are there for the inclusion of conlangs in an encyclopedia?. thats it. i just put these up to let the community decide about this. peace – ishwar  (speak) 19:23, 2005 July 23 (UTC)

This in my view is uncomfortably close to the behaviour of GRider in the schools deletion debate . . . Ask the question explicitly, rather than covertly. Hopefully these votes will build consensus rather than provoke antagonism, which was what happened with GRider. Slac speak up! 21:42, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

i dont know what you are referring to (you could explain on my talk page if you have time). i dont mean to provoke antagonism. peace – ishwar  (speak) 22:02, 2005 July 24 (UTC)

• Delete. First off, I find this very interesting, privately. However, the article itself admits that this "language" is nothing but a "thought experiment" conducted as a "hobby". We must draw a line somewhere, and I think that private thought experiments that have not gained any wider currency should not be included in Wikipedia. --Thorsten1 17:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Nonnotable. mikka (t) 18:20, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - I think that if someone would like information on a conlang, there's no reason Wikipedia shouldn't be a place to start. -Firespeaker 18:22, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
  • User has made less than 50 edits. Wile E. Heresiarch 19:36, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - fairly notable as conlangs go, especially with with having spawned Ill Bethisad. -- pne 19:01, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete: vanity, advert, nonnotable. Wile E. Heresiarch 19:24, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Heresiarch, you are making me very angry! Where did you get the godforsaken arrogance to state these things? I have been in contact with Andrew Smith at numerous occasions, and I can testify that he is an extraordinarily gentle and modest person. I hate to see him accused of "vanity" by someone who obviously doesn't know him, doesn't know his creations and doesn't know anything about conlangs in general. For the record, he did not create the article himself, nor did he contribute anything to it. Likewise, your accusation that this is an "advert" is ridiculous! I've nothing against a little healthy polemising, but ad hominem attacks like this one, so deeply under the belt, are really out of line. By all means be ashamed of yourself! --IJzeren Jan 22:45, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
    • I see your comments are all about personalities -- yours, mine, and the gentle and modest Andrew Smith. Feel free to come up with some arguments for preserving this article. Wile E. Heresiarch 03:06, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
      • And so are yours! Why otherwise would you be counting the edits of everybody who votes "keep" and complain about the fact that someone made a note of these VfDs at ZBB? What counts is that people are wikipedia users. There's nothing wrong with notifying other wikipedians that a VfD has been made in a field of their interest. Since you are so interested in the personal background of the voters, consider this (from Wikipedia:Votes for Deletion): You don't have to vote on every nomination; even consider not participating if: a nomination involves a topic of which you are ignorant; [...]. For the record, I have no problem with the status quo. It's you who want to delete these articles, so if anybody were supposed to come up with good arguments its you! Frankly, I haven't seen any yet. All you could come up with is: non-notability (not a real criterium anyway, see here); vanity; and advertising (both evidently are complete nonsense). I must say, in related discussions in other wikis I've heard much better arguments! Now I'd love to give you a whole list of arguments in favour of all those articles that are currently under attack, but I wonder if it wouldn't be worth the effort to have all these discussions in one place. So for now I'll limit myself to this: language construction is a serious, full-fledged artform, and most of the languages that have attracted your wrath are excellent, important and representative examples of this artform. Therefore, their lemmata are warranted. For the record, I'm nót proposing that every conlang have its own entry in the wikipedia. --IJzeren Jan 07:41, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, this one's just over the bar of notability for me. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 20:00, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Without any irony whatsoever, I'd be interested to learn what your criteria to measure the notability of fictional languages are. What is it that sets Brithenig apart from Wenedyk, where you voted delete, IIRC? --Thorsten1 13:24, 24 July 2005 (UTC) actually from earlier this morning, forgot to sign
    • I think it was the fact that "Brithenig is respected among the conlang community, being the best-known example of the altlang genre. It is the first known conlang to extrapolate a real Earth language through an alternate evolution, and as such can be considered the grandfather of the genre." (emphasis mine) --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 05:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep How many conlangs are widely known anyway? --malathion ^talk 21:08, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
• Strong keep. It's sooo tiring: every once in a while someone pops up who claims that all conlangs are non-notable and who want to limit the pages about it to Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua. Why can't those people accept that language construction is a form of art like any other? That the audience is smaller doesn't make it insignificant IMO. Now I agree that it is important to distinguish between notable and non-notable conlangs. But being a conlanger myself and knowing my way in conlangland, I assure you guys that Brithenig is an extremely notable language: it has been an immense source of inspiration for many other conlangs, it is the first known and most notable language of its kind (the "altlang" genre). It's a true masterpiece! --IJzeren Jan 22:52, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. ...someone pops up who claims that all conlangs are non-notable and who want to limit the pages about it to Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua: Sorry Jan, but I think there is a huge distance between languages seriously designed for real-life international communication, and languages that form part of some work of fiction someone pursues as a hobby without any evident audience. "Klingon" or Tolkien's invented languages are special cases as they have established a huge audience. Further, see mine and others' comments on Wenedyk's VfD. No offence, --Thorsten1 10:03, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
    • There ís such a distinction, Thorsten. Brithenig and other artlangs have not been created with the purpose of building up a community of speakers. So, you can't judge them by that criterium. That's my entire point here! As for the hobby element: yes, that is at least an argument. But if you ask me, virtually every form of art starts out as a hobby and in many cases never ceases to be one. Admittedly, the audience for artistic languages is a rather small one. But that conlanging is not the kind of artform people make a lot of money with does IMO not render it insignificant. --IJzeren Jan 11:14, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
    • NB if you insist on using the number of speakers as a criterium, we might as well delete at least two third of the auxlangs listed in International auxiliary language#Auxiliary languages. In fact, their case is even worse since they serve no other purpose than being used by "the world", while in reality they never gathered a community with more than a neglectable number of speakers. --IJzeren Jan 11:14, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
      • Jan, I do not at all insist on the number of speakers, but I do agree that a significant proportion of auxiliary languages on Wikipedia probably are, at best, of borderline interest to anybody but their creators or smallish fan communities. But as I tried to explain on Wenedyk's parallel VfD, two wrongs don't make a right, and neither do two thirds of wrongs. "every form of art starts out as a hobby and in many cases never ceases to be one" - that is true enough. But for me, the decisive question is not what something starts out as, but what it ends up as - and Brithenig has yet to transcend the status of a private hobby, at least I see no evidence that it has already accomplished that. Once it has, I'll be glad to renegotiate my vote. To use a Dutch example, had Van Gogh not posthumously received the recognition he was denied during his lifetime, we would rather not have immortalised him here, either, even if the paintings were the same. "conlanging is not the kind of artform people make a lot of money with does IMO not render it insignificant". Not by itself, no. But, like it or not, the way our society is structured, making a lot of money with something usually proves that it is of significance. Of course, if something isn't making lots of money, this does not mean (yet) it is insignificant by definiton. But then there have to be other, objective signals to indicate significance. Even though I might subjectively agree with your opinion, I still fail to see what the objective indications might be in this case. --Thorsten1 13:24, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Strong Keep: I'd disagree that Brithenig hasn't transcended the status of a private hobby. It did, after all, spawn a highly active community developing the world around it (Disclosure: I participate in Ill Bethisad, and handle Ireland and a few other small sections). It's also notable amongst conlangs as one of the prototypical examples of the altlang genre. While there's few reasons I'd add an article on a conlang to the wiki, Brithenig and Verdurian are, because of their influence upon the art and their completeness, some of those I'd deem notable enough to keep. (And Wile E., don't post up the number of edits I've made. If anybody's interested, they can find them out for themselves. It's childish and demeaning to your fellow Wikipedians. Quality of edits is far more important than quantity. The same goes for anybody on either side of the argument doing this.) --Kgaughan 16:13, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. Per CONLANG, no points of notability (#105 in Langmaker is closest to notable). Almafeta 01:34, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Strong keep. Brithenig has a code in ISO 639-3 (namely, bzt) which apparently means (according to their conlang inclusion criteria) that "The language has a literature" and "The language is designed for the purpose of human communication". —Muke Tever talk (la.wiktionary) 02:35, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Whoever decides such things, this only proves they can make mistakes (at best) or simply cannot be trusted to tell truth from fiction (at worst).--Thorsten1 10:03, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Possible. But our job here is to describe things that are, not things as they ought to be. --IJzeren Jan 11:05, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
      • ...and neither things as they could have been had the Romans invaded Poland or stayed in Britain for longer. :-P. --Thorsten1 13:28, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

  (comment - the latter criterion, of course, wouldn't serve to keep it; my main argument was the inclusion in ISO 639-3, but I got sidetracked. —Muke Tever talk (la.wiktionary) 03:54, 24 July 2005 (UTC))

• Strong Keep. Per Muke Tever -- ISO codes prolly should be in CONLANG. And speaking of, heya, Muke, long time no see! Almafeta 04:04, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Weak DeleteNo indication of having, now or ever, been a vernacular for any sized group of people. No pop culture notability, as per Klingon. No academic notability, as due to the fact that I couldn't find a reference to it after searching over a half dozen scholarly journals' online editions. I suppose one could say that the fact it seems to have spawned some other conlangs nobody seems to speak and nobody who studies languages cares about could be called notability, but the first lemming off the cliff isn't encyclopedic either. The Literate Engineer 06:15, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• (very) Weak keep. Brithenig just creeps in over the line of notability to me (as a conlanger). It's spawned a lot of copycats as well as Ill Bethisad and members of the conlanging community generally know about it. Nothing less notable than Brithenig should be included, though, which is why I voted delete on Venedic and Breathenach. Felix the Cassowary 14:06, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. As a conlanger, and much as I would like to make public the art of conlanging to the greatest extent possible, I really don't see the need for grammatical treatises and descriptions of individual conlangs here on the Wikipedia. There is already a good Wikipedia article, Artistic language, which should serve as a central locus for this particular art form and has already got a quite a long list of conlangs there. I think it vèry meet and right for conlangers to link to their own pages or to some other conlang oriented source, if they wish to do so. I wouldn't create a Wikipedia article for any of my conlangs, even though at least one of them ìs "notable" per these criteria, and if I found one, I'ld delete it for the reasons stated. Elemtilas

Comment: User has five contributions, all of them VfD votes: [1] Slac speak up! 21:44, 24 July 2005 (UTC).

Response: So what? I was invited to "speak up", so I am speaking up. Elemtilas

• Weak Keep -- having found and read the deletion policies, I have to reconsider my opinion. I still don't think most conlangs warrant individual articles, but they are works of art and as such should not necessarily be removed simply because some people don't get the artform or can't think of anything better than personal attacks against the artists that create languages. Anyone who wants to create such an article on a conlang should be responsible enough to really consider whether this piece of artwork warrants an individual and unique article of its own. If possible, this article should be merged with Constructed languages or Artistic languages or Ill Bethisad. Elemtilas
• Keep Personally, I don't understand why "notable" should even be a criterion. I can understand the "vanity" thing, but there are a lot of obscure topics in Wikipedia, and that's a good thing, IMO. Nik42 21:37, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, as with other votes above, just over the bar of notability. Nominating multiple articles for VfD is not as productive a way to build consensus on notability as some others. . . Slac speak up! 21:42, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. No hits in Proquest Research Library. No hits in Google Scholar. Compare: Interlingua, 12 hits in Proquest Research Library, 2400 hits in Google Scholar; Solresol, no hits in Proquest Research Library, 9 hits in Google Scholar Dpbsmith (talk) 22:10, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: and how many does Krypto get? How about Sonic the Hedgehog? Google Scholar and Proquest are not standards that you can compare the entire Wikipedia to.--Prosfilaes 21:06, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. If a few artistic languages deserve to be in Wikipedia, Brithenig and Verdurian should be in. Chlewey 01:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Can easily be combined with the Ill Bethisad page, if it's that important a part of IB; otherwise, it need not be mentioned. (Since Ill Bethisad is one of the larger collaborative conworlds, it certainly deserves mention.) However, the language's significance predicates on Ill Bethisad's significance, so it should only be mentioned as part of Ill Bethisad and in that article. (Compare The Scream, which is a significant work apart from its artist.) Dhasenan 03:55, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. In that small, perhaps rather sad, section of the world that whiles its days away making up imaginary languages, this is one of the better-known examples of the art. Of course, that doesn't make it of note to the luminaries who spend their time so much more valuably here but if you cannot find it in Wikipedia, where can you find it? Grace Note 05:20, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Note that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Wile E. Heresiarch 14:42, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Brithenig is a highly regarded creation in the Conlanging community - in fact, it's a conlang which has insipred other conlangers. It's one of the great works of the art.
• Keep. Brithenig is not just any old conlang! BenctPhilipJonsson 19:27, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
  • User has no other edits but voting for keeping conlangs.mikka (t) 19:40, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete notability not established. JamesBurns 04:09, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. I am not an absolutist about keeping every possible piece of knowledge on Wikipedia, but in this instance it is not clear to me how to make an objective decision about which conlangs to include and which to exclude. I mean, just look at the following three things I discovered with the randomizing function: Rohtas Fort, King of Arms, and Wellsville, Ohio (population: 4,133). Should every fort in Pakistan, every member of the hierarchy of heralds, or every city in Ohio, no matter how small, have an entry? Well, maybe. The decision is ultimately about counts as important, and nobody can predetermine what will count as important before it actually becomes so. Brithenig is a small conlang, but one developed by a number of people, and has drawn some attention in the online conlanging community; it is equivalent to a town slightly more important than Wellsville, Ohio. But Wellsville has an entry. Why not Brithenig? Incidentally, I find the argument that conlangs are ipso facto unworthy of an entry, as ishwar does, a little bizarre. Does Super Mario Brothers deserve an entry? Surely that's considerably more fatuous than conlanging (8P), but Wikipedia has devoted it a whole set of pages just to the characters in that series. (unsigned contribution by Trwier)
• Keep. The article provides valuable information about a well-known artistic language. arj 12:47, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - Being a conlang is not enough reason to delete the article. This gets 9,350 hits on google, and 4,150 if i include the word language. Please consider growing up. --Phroziac (talk) 19:53, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. While I am impressed that people out there can actually do stuff like this, it is not notable enough for an encyclopedia. Indrian 20:48, July 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • For a print encyclopedia, perhaps... Almafeta 03:36, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. After reading through the deletion policy in its entirety, it seems clear that this article has a place here. SamuelRiv 16:49, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Brithenig a notable example of the science of applied linguistics. The applicability to theoretical anthropology also makes it important. I agree that anything less notable shouldn't be included in Wiki, however. Tygertyger 17:59, July 27, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. One of the best-known and most influential artlangs, with many people involved besides the creator. --Jim Henry | Talk 03:20, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we should consider discussing and voting on a Wikipedia policy on criteria for inclusion of conlangs? Almafeta's conlang notability criteria might be a good starting point. Where would be the appropriate place to propose/discuss such a new policy? --Jim Henry | Talk 04:29, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

An excellent idea, and a far better solution than shooting at random. I agree that Almafeta's page provides a good starting point for a discussion, even though I don't agree with it on every point. Where should such a discussion take place? Well, definitely not here! I'd say that either User:Almafeta/Conlang, or Talk:Constructed language. --IJzeren Jan 06:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know Talk:Constructed language is a good place to discuss the draft policy, but I'm not sure about how to go about proposing it as a policy and getting it voted on, once the people discussing the draft have some consensus on what policy to propose. Maybe we should copy Almafeta's conlang notability criteria to Talk:Constructed language/Conlang notability criteria or Talk:Constructed language/Conlang article inclusion policy draft, and then let people revise the draft and comment on the reasons for their proposed revisions, etc...? --Jim Henry | Talk 16:51, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. As others have mentioned before, Brithenig is notable for being the first known conlang of its kind (an altlang). - irisheye 23:44, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Its seminal status puts it just over the bar for me. Hv 11:51, 1 August 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.