Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gallup poll on creationism and evolution

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 delete. bainer (talk) 23:42, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gallup poll on creationism and evolution

• Redirect Delete to creation-evolution controversy. Someone has a genuine problem with POV forks and POV in general. How many AFD'd POV forks is this now? Amazing. FeloniousMonk 18:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Zero. It's an article spin-off, as described in the guidelines of Wikipedia:Content forking. See the third section which distinguishes between good and "POV" forks. This is the good kind. Uncle Ed 13:11, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
    • What gives you that idea? How do you describe yourself as -- what was it, "Wikipedia's foremost expert on NPOV"? -- and not realize that proportion plays a role? What you are quoting states that spinout articles are not necessarily POV forks. It was never meant to grant anyone carte blanche to hand-pick the factoids they prefer out of an overview and spin entire articles around them. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:19, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Neutral for now Delete. If it were fleshed out and could (heh) evolve into a better article it would be worth keeping. If this is all it will ever be then delete. I don't see it having any ability to expand. - Tεxτurε 18:17, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. What is this good fpr? 129.215.194.206 Pilatus 18:29, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Deletion is best. A redirect is OK by me also, if it helps build consensus. At any rate, this should not have its own article, as I've been saying on various talk pages for a while now. See Category talk:Evolution polls for more discussion on single-poll-articles in general. Friday (talk) 18:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, until and unless someone does a successful merge. This is a perfectly good example of Wikipedia:Content forking not a "POV fork" (if by that FM means a page created to promote a particular point of view). Uncle Ed 18:39, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

  You've been saying you're going to merge it for a while now. I've tolerated it so far, but how long with this go on? Please use your User space, not article space, for works-in-progress. A single poll way well be a useful source for an article, but it doesn't make an article by itself. Friday (talk) 18:46, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

  I don't recall ever saying I would merge it. I prefer it to stand alone, for easier reference. I've amended my words above to clarify this. Uncle Ed 18:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Merge/redirect. Minimal content, belongs in the context of a larger article. Durova 18:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, a redirect is useless because nobody will look it up under this name. Andrew Levine 18:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

  No, two people already have! One came all the way to my talk page just to ask me where to find this information. Uncle Ed 18:49, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Comment. Not sure why we need a running tally, but it sure seems misleading to me to count the redirect voters as a keep. By saying redirect, some editors are saying that this article should not exist on its own. Interpreting that as "keep" is extremely questionable in my opinion. I'm clarifying my comments for the benefit of whoever closes this Afd. Friday (talk) 19:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree. There is still no consensus but the "score" is 1 keep, 2 redirect, 2 delete. - Tεxτurε 19:15, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
    • If policy has changed from "redirects count as keep", then I owe someone an apology. Last time I read the deletion guidelines, the only choices were Keep or Delete. (When did it change?) Uncle Ed 19:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Lately, those who are good at closing Afds have been using actual human judgement and common sense, not simple vote counting, to interpret the results. Friday (talk) 19:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Ed, saying "redirect" cannot be read as "keep" although it is clearly not "delete". Make sense? Otherwise, you would read my "neutral" as "keep" merely because it isn't "delete", right? Of course not. The result as of now is no consensus to delete (this is "for deletion", after all and not "AfK"). You could always rework it as: "Delete: 2, Not for Deletion: 3" or some such to be accurate but I don't think adding a tally is appropriate to any AfD. - Tεxτurε 19:29, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
        • I hope the people who do close this take into consideration the nature of my vote. Gallup is a respected polling organization and its findings are usually meaningful. I don't think this is worthy of an article on its own, but I do agree the material is encyclopedic within the context of a larger piece. Durova 21:07, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Wikipedia cannot possibly list all polls on all subjects. If the material is relevant, then encorporate it elsewhere. -^demon 20:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. POV forkism is disruptive Vsmith 20:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep -- Why not an article on either this specific poll or this and similar polls? Ed, why not voluntarily withdraw it to your user space until you add enough to it to show it has value? WAS 4.250 22:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Speedy delete, the title and subject matter are too ambiguous and specific. (meaning, why is a 2001 poll notable/large enough to get an article?) It could stand on its own if moved, rewritten (expanded big time) and notable as a historical analysis of polls (not just gallup) on this subject. - RoyBoy ⁸⁰⁰ 22:13, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. The poll itself is not noteworthy outside of the article creation-evolution controversy. Polls are inately superfulous because they only gauge sentiment at one particular time. The actual votes (in Kansas, Pennsylvania, etc., where school boards have been displaced) are news, opinion polls before the fact become instantly irrelevant. Jtmichcock 22:38, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as sub-trivial, better handled in the main article and the reason for its creation is unclear (we don't have articles for most of the other polls Gallup conduct - there are thousands every year and many of them have an outcome designed in from the outset by the questions used). This seems to endow one small poll with a wholly disproportionate weight. Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] (W) AfD? 22:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. The information is notable, but an entire article it isn't. Poll results can be (and are) mentioned on the relevant pages. (forgot the sig the first time) -Parallel or Together ? 01:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. A data dump. (Wikipedia is not a collection of raw data.) Worse, a POV-selective data dump. Cherry-picked data is actively misleading. And an article on a poll suggests that the poll is particularly meaningful or pertinent. This poll has no particular meaning with regard to fact as opposed to belief. - Nunh-huh 02:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• I think this was previously deleted here, but I can't view deleted pages. -- Kjkolb 07:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete or Redirect but certainly not Keep. --Cyde Weys _talk^contribs 08:09, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Merge with the creation-evolution controversy article Cynical 12:40, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Keep only if majorly rewritten: this is actual a fairly famous poll, in that it has been given over the course of many years (starting in 1982 I think). I'm not sure why this article only focuses on the 2001 version, because there was a more recent one given (with the same questions) in August of 2005. I even updated one of the articles here on WP (that Uncle Ed was involved in) that was using these 2001 numbers with the more recent version. It might be nice to have a page that shows this poll in historical context as well, which is much more valuable than a single snapshot point in time. A page discussing creationism polls in general might be even more useful. for example, this page is nicely done, and adds some nice context to the Gallup poll. Turnstep 15:28, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete all polls. They are not votes; they are transitory states of opinion. A page such as this needs to demonstrate a specific and decisive influence on policy in order to be even remotely notable. — RJH 17:59, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

• An excellent and telling point, in my view - Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] AfD? 21:38, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• Delete per Nunh-huh. -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:19, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per nominator
• Keep. -- JJay 05:31, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. This is not an article; it is a piece of disruptive behavior. --FOo 11:32, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. At this point, I see little reason to indulge EdPoor. -- Ec5618 21:55, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, not encyclopedic and WP:POINT. Can't transwiki to WikiNews because of licence incompatibility. Stifle 00:23, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as per above. This is getting out of hand. — Knowledge Seeker দ 00:52, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as per other delete votes. CarbonCopy 15:51, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per Ec5618 et al. KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:38, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

This is already covered on the creation-evolution controversy and as I can hardly imagine anyone ever looking up this particular article name, it shouldn't be redirected, but rather deleted. --ScienceApologist 18:08, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• There were at least two different links to it, before someone saw this AFD and then deliberately deleted those links. Please be honest and not disruptive. Uncle Ed 13:12, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Note: Also consider Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/PFAW poll on creationism and evolution. Pilatus 18:37, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

What is this? A censorship campaign against any Wikipedia article which sheds doubt on the POV that "around half of Americans support evolution"? All I'm asking is that Wikipedia report EXACTLY what polls say on this subject. Uncle Ed 18:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

If you want to say that such-and-such a proportion of Americans supports such-and-such a view on evolution, the data to support this should go into the creationism article. I really don't know what you hope to achieve by continuously creating articles that do nothing but report the fact that some poll has been conducted. Pilatus 20:14, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

If you want the EXACT poll numbers, please use the 2005 poll, not the 2001 one. Better yet, write an article as suggested above that mentions all the years and why this poll is important. Turnstep 23:52, 13 December 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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.