Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Evolution and creationism

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was - redirected

[edit] Evolution and creationism

The Evolution and creationism page has served its time and its function has been replaced by the Creation vs. evolution debate page and the associated pages to which the Creation vs. evolution debate page links. The material on the Evolution and creationism page has already been merged into the Creation vs. evolution debate page. Accordingly, the Evolution and creationism page should be deleted and made into a #REDIRECT to the Creation vs. evolution debate page. ---Rednblu | Talk 02:19, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Delete. ---Rednblu | Talk 02:19, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Delete and redirect. Gazpacho 06:47, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Delete (and redirect). Philip J. Rayment 14:47, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Why does it need to be deleted first? Can't it just be turned into a redirect?--G Rutter 16:13, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Perhaps. But I would prefer that the various parties get a chance to consider and discuss whether the Wikipedia discussion should appear under the title Creation vs. evolution debate or under the title Evolution and creationism. It seems to me that the discussion can be clearer if considered in the light of deleting the identity of one. This is a time for everyone to consider whether "Evolution and creationism" is a POV to be preserved separate from "Creation vs. evolution debate." ---Rednblu | Talk 17:37, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • We don't keep POVs separate, just topics. These look like identical topics to me. — Ливай | ☺ 18:36, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
      • Haven't we many times kept POVs on separate pages? --mainly for the reader's convenience. I refer you to keeping the Lagrangian POV on a page separate from the Hamiltonian POV. Different POVs can be compatible and convertible, can they not? The question I think would be: Does putting the different POVs on separate pages make it easier for the reader to understand the overall picture in which the different POVs are only parts of the picture. Would you agree? ---Rednblu | Talk 19:00, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Yes if material has been merged "delete and redirect" is a violation of the GPL. Kappa 16:59, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • By my understanding, GPL requires access only to the "source code" of the final released version but does not require access to the prior versions of "source code" used in development of the final released version. How is "delete and redirect" a violation of GPL? ---Rednblu | Talk 17:37, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • GFDL, not GPL! The GFDL requires that attribution for an article is preserved, so if user X copies user Y's contributions wholesale from article A to article B, then deletes article A, attribution to user Y is lost, which is in violation of the license. I believe admins can fix this by fiddling around with edit histories, but being nontrivial, it should generally be avoided. Merge and delete just isn't an option. (Unless user Y is someone like me, who has multi-licensed his or her contributions into the public domain.) JRM 20:52, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)
      • If you do a compare, you will see that there are no exact quotes remaining--except for the one reference from Evolution and creationism which has been unchanged in the edit and re-edit fury 8)) on the Creation vs. evolution debate page of the last months, so there is no GFDL problem with "delete and redirect" either--no more than there would be with a paraphrase of an uncited scholar. However, all the points in the Evolution and creationism article are covered in the Creation vs. evolution debate page. This discussion is an example of why I wanted to submit this page to VfD--so that we could discuss all the issues, thank you. ---Rednblu | Talk 22:11, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect, naturally. — Ливай | ☺ 18:35, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Be bold and redirect. No need to delete first (and some good reasons not to - many take a stricter read of the GFDL attribution requirements than Rednblu proposes). Rossami (talk) 00:49, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as a dodgy PoV fork, then Rename the whole mess as Dr Zen suggests below and Redirect this to it. Giving the religious, untestable PoV of creationism "equal" balance with evolution in the main article title is unencyclopedic and misleading in the extreme. Wyss 02:59, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Move the contents of the other article and rename the whole nonsense Science and creationism. Redirect this to it. Evolution is an observable fact, by the way, and even God believes the theory of evolution by natural selection is substantially correct.Dr Zen 03:16, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  Zen, having an article is not an endorsement of views. Gazpacho

  You're absolutely right but a title can be POV, don't you think? Compare America's crusade against Islam with Views on America's war on Iraq, for example. I merely suggest avoiding the former sort.Dr Zen 04:59, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  Contrasting creationism and science, as per your suggested title, is POV. Philip J. Rayment 14:54, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  Erm. Only if science in fact includes creationism, which it doesn't. Because science is an enterprise, not an object, it gets to decide what is or isn't part of it. In the same way, Jacques Chirac could dispute whether he is an American citizen, but the USA actually gets to decide.Dr Zen 05:30, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Redirect. If C vs. E is the "successor" of this article then its history is part of that article's editing record. Gazpacho 03:50, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect Same reasons as Gazpacho's. PMLF 05:18, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Rdirect The question should be how near one could get to NPOV with an article named as above; 'debate' relates this conflict quite well Lectonar 08:50, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Redirect , obviously. Carioca 00:07, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for helping me think through this. Let's see if I have correctly summarized the community consensus here.  :)

Summary of opinion

1. In this case SourcePage = [ Evolution and creationism ] and TargetPage = [ Creation vs. evolution debate ].
2. Where the substantive points of SourcePage have been paraphrased on TargetPage such that there remain on TargetPage no direct quotations of SourcePage, still the contributor edit history of SourcePage should be preserved by a "Merge and redirect" rather than a "Delete and redirect."
3. The "Merge and redirect" shall be accomplished by the following. After the substantive points of SourcePage have been at least paraphrased on TargetPage:
   1. Replace all of the text of SourcePage with the #REDIRECT [[TargetPage]] line, and
   2. Put in the "Edit summary" a statement like the following: "Replacing text with a #REDIRECT where the substantive points of this page have been at least paraphrased on [[TargetPage]].

Does that accurately reflect the comments here? ---Rednblu | Talk 19:47, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.