Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Palaeodicots

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. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 19:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Palaeodicots

Original research from User:Brya; the group as imagined in the article does not exist in AGPii or in any other literature [O uses on the ISI web of science]; the only web hits are from wikipedia and mirrors. --Peta 03:25, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete This appears to be an informal term used by a single group of researchers. Perhaps the information belongs on the page belonging to the formal term. (However, the page doesn't link to that formal term)--150.203.177.218 03:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom. - Francis Tyers · 11:57, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep (but perhaps move to original and more common spelling "paleodicots"). This is a concept that was introduced with some of the molecular phylogenies addressing the earliest branches of the angiosperms, when it became apparent that "dicots" were a paraphyletic group. The problem with the article as originally written is that it implied that this word and concept were used by APG II when it was not. I've tried to clean up the most egregious problems, and added one of the pre-APG references that did use the term, but the article needs a lot more cleanup. MrDarwin 13:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I've done a major edit to the article (and moved to Paleodicots to reflect the more common and apparently original spelling); please check it out and see if that helped. MrDarwin 17:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep The term is widely used and well-understood by those interested in angiosperm phylogenetics. The group itself warrants an article.--Curtis Clark 13:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - as per Mr. Darwin and Curtis Clark. JoJan 17:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. --Stemonitis 17:55, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete for now, as it is, the references quoted don't define the term at all, and it's not defined anywhere else but on Wikipedia. Modern secondary sources to the large 1993 Chase articles use "paleoherb" not "paleodicot." KP Botany 21:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Paleoherb and paleodicot are not synonyms.--Curtis Clark 04:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. --Berton 21:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - keep voters seem to be ignoring the fact that this term is not in wide use, nor is an actual definition agreed on by anyone. It is, at this stage, a taxonomic neologism. --Peta 03:17, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Not so much a neologism, as fallen out of use (AFAICT) since the late 1990s, when I first heard the term.--Curtis Clark 04:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
    • A word used to describe a poorly defined group, that has been used in a total of 4 publications (google scholar search) is not an encyclopedic topic. It just creates confusion.--Peta 05:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
      • The word is not poorly defined, it simply represents a non-monophyletic group (as do many group names in plant systematics): those dicots that are not eudicot. That fact does not make it "poof" out of existence. Sure it's a neologism, but plant systematics is full of neologisms, as anybody active in the field in the last 20 years well knows. Wikipedia is full of articles about obscure and rarely-used terms and concepts. If they were all deleted, there wouldn't be much left! I would argue that Wikipedia is at its very best when it provides explanations for the obscure and hard-to-track-down subjects. Here are my tests: does the term actually exist? Has it been used in the literature? Is anybody ever likely to want to know about it? And finally, is the information presented factually? MrDarwin 13:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. IMHO palaeodicot is a useful term, denoting those angiosperms which are neither monocots nor eudicots. While it may have had less usage as yet than palaeoherb, I expect it to be more persistent - it denotes a grade/paraphyletic group whereas the palaeoherbs are polyphyletic. Lavateraguy 23:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - this is the sort of term that some poor grad student might run across, wonder what the heck it means, and later feel fortunate that someone was kind enough to write a wikipedia article on it. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 23:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep for the reasons cited. - MPF 00:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - Wikipedia is in the business of explaining existing concepts... not determining which classifications are 'right'. This term gets used and requires more than just a dictionary definition to explain so it is reasonable for inclusion here... as it would be in any encyclopedia of taxonomical terms. Knowledge is good. --CBD 12:25, 19 October 2006 (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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.