Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of biomedical terms

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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 of the debate was Deleted I will create a short article at CRISP to link to the original source Stewart Adcock 20:55, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of biomedical terms

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information.

The cited article is just a placeholder for 27 long articles containing nothing but lists of terms:

  • List of biomedical topics (numbers)
  • List of biomedical topics, A
  • List of biomedical topics, B
  • List of biomedical topics, C
  • List of biomedical topics, D
  • List of biomedical topics, E
  • List of biomedical topics, F
  • List of biomedical topics, G
  • List of biomedical topics, H
  • List of biomedical topics, I
  • List of biomedical topics, J
  • List of biomedical topics, K
  • List of biomedical topics, L
  • List of biomedical topics, M
  • List of biomedical topics, N
  • List of biomedical topics, O
  • List of biomedical topics, P
  • List of biomedical topics, Q
  • List of biomedical topics, R
  • List of biomedical topics, S
  • List of biomedical topics, T
  • List of biomedical topics, U
  • List of biomedical topics, V
  • List of biomedical topics, W
  • List of biomedical topics, X
  • List of biomedical topics, Y
  • List of biomedical topics, Z

all of which I'm proposing for deletion. I only put the {{subst:vfd}} tag on the first one, because doing it 27 more times was too painful (and seemed rather pointless).

This is a huge list of terms imported from a thesaurus found on an NIH web site. They appear to be keywords culled from research grant applications. The problems are several. The vast majority don't link to anywhere. Many of the concepts have corresponding articles, but not under those exact names. It appears that the source is updated weekly, which means this list is out of date almost immediately. This is a mindless import of data, with no added encyclopedic value. See Talk:List of biomedical terms for more info.

This was on VfD recently in a slightly different form, and was voted to keep, but it appears to have been largely by default with little or no discussion and almost no voter input. I think it's worth another round, if only to build a strong consensus one way or the other.

RoySmith 4 July 2005 15:02 (UTC)

  • Delete All. What a dump. --Alex12 3 4 July 2005 15:30 (UTC)
  • Delete and someone teach him about categories. Elfguy 4 July 2005 15:42 (UTC)
Hi Elfgy this comment may refer to something I did when I broke up these pages. Could you clarify what you mean so I can learn how to do it correctly in the future? David D. 5 July 2005 17:08 (UTC)
I answered off-line at User talk:Daycd --RoySmith 5 July 2005 17:17 (UTC)
  • Delete all Groeck 4 July 2005 16:05 (UTC)
  • Move to Wikipedia namespace. A lot of these articles could still be encyclopedic, and as with other lists may serve as a guide for editors. I do agree it should not be in article namespace. JFW | T@lk 4 July 2005 16:40 (UTC)
  • Merge with medicine and (bio)chemistry WikiProjects in Wikipedia namespace. - Mgm|(talk) July 4, 2005 16:46 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with these; can you provide a link to them? --RoySmith 4 July 2005 16:54 (UTC)
To be fair to the whoever started this, it's almost certainly not a copyvio, since it (apparently) comes from the NIH web site, and the US government doesn't assert copyright. RoySmith 4 July 2005 21:38 (UTC)
  • Delete all or move out of article space. DoubleBlue (Talk) 5 July 2005 01:01 (UTC)
  • Merge as per Mgm. JamesBurns 5 July 2005 01:25 (UTC)
  • Delete all. I originally split these into the separate pages (original sizes were huge) but realised that they were worthless as I proceeded through the job. As i said on the talk page for these lists, many of the topics in these lists are red links since they are not articles or stubs and never will be. Unless someone is willing to manually fix the links to the appropriate pages these lists will never be a useful indexing aid. For example the topic antisense nucleic acid should be a redirect to Antisense mRNA. We certainly do not want another antisense page yet these lists are almost invitations to start a new article. David D. 5 July 2005 02:47 (UTC)
  • Move per JFW. Sietse 5 July 2005 04:46 (UTC)
  • Delete. Useless pages. Why would anyone consult this page? DanMS 5 July 2005 06:30 (UTC)
  • Purge the lists of the existing articles and turn them into something like Wikipedia:List of missing biomedical articles - Skysmith 5 July 2005 09:22 (UTC)
But are they missing articles? I think this is the main problem with this list. Do we want these articles? Why invite people to create articles that will eventually become merged or redirected? Why don't we focus on the important gaps. There are already wanted articles lists in wikipedia. The difference is that those articles have been requested for a reason. David D. 5 July 2005 15:58 (UTC)
  • As per the above, as a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, I am happy to volunteer to purge, reformat and create Wikipedia:List of missing biomedical articles. Rather than deleting these outright, they can be moved either to Wikipedia space or alternatively to subpages of my user page. OpenToppedBus - My Talk July 5, 2005 13:50 (UTC)
I think that would be a mistake. I just took a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. It says (in big friendly letters), The main goal of this project is to ensure that Wikipedia has a corresponding article for every article in every other general purpose encyclopedia available. That may be a laudable goal, but wholesale importation of this list isn't going to advance it. This isn't a list of somebody else's encyclopedia articles, it's a list of keywords from a database of research grants. It's not even clear that they came from a controlled vocabulary, such as MeSH. What if somebody created List of every professional athelete who ever played in any sport? What about List of every license plate number ever issued in the US? Would those be worthy of becomming List of missing encyclopedia articles? RoySmith 5 July 2005 14:41 (UTC)
You know what - you're right, and I should have done more research first. We should certainly be looking out for a medical encyclopedia, and looking to match its coverage, but this list isn't it. It's more than just keywords, if you look at CRISP, but it is only a thesaurus, a controlled vocabulary. There are a huge number of terms in there that we should have articles for, but probably at least an equal number that we shouldn't, and there's no way (without specific knowledge of the topics, which I don't have) to tell which is which. Changing my vote to delete, unless anyone more knowledgeable wants to take it on. OpenToppedBus - My Talk July 5, 2005 15:29 (UTC)
  • Delete all for more reasons than I can count. I have faith that Wikipedia will soundly tackle the universe of necessary articles on biomedical terms without these eternal redlink monstrosities. -- BD2412 talk July 6, 2005 04:31 (UTC)
    • Addendum, I just went through "G" and deleted entries for: garlic, grain, gravity, great ape, green tea, Greece, Greek, grief, ground water, ground hog, and ground squirrel. These are simply not biomedical terms. -- BD2412 talk 23:05, July 9, 2005 (UTC)
      • You can't do that! 'Garlic' and 'green tea' have well know medicinal properties. The 'greeks' have healthy food and 'grief' can be stressful leading to real medical issues. Not sure about great apes, are they model systems for medical research? OK I hope it's obvious I'm being sarcastic, ground hog, and ground squirrel for real?????? Let's just get rid of it. It is a worthless list. David D. 00:06, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
  • No vote, but if this is deleted, add the red links to Wikipedia:Requested articles first. -Sean Curtin July 9, 2005 01:44 (UTC)
    • I mentioned this above but here it is again. They should definitely not be requested articles. Why invite people to create articles that will eventually become merged or redirected? Why don't we focus on the important gaps? There are already many requested article lists in wikipedia with some very important topics that need to be started. The difference is that those articles have been requested for a reason. This is just a random list. Most of them are not missing articles. David D. 22:35, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

This should not be deleated. It does provide a great way of redirection of definitions not found elsewhere.


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.
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