Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Arab contributions to science

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. There are lots of suggestions provided for improving the article by changing its name, merging it, editing it, et cetera, that should not be ignored, but cannot be forced after this discussion. Mangojuice^talk 18:37, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arab contributions to science

Seems like incorrect original research, no citations, not sufficient to merit its own article Holdek ^(talk) 04:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Michael Kinyon 06:11, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Badly needs work, but keep. I think that this could develop into a good article. It appears that there are some partial references in the text already that could be expanded and the whole article needs to be expanded. Maybe also could be merged with a general Arabic history article. AmitDeshwar 07:59, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Whilst this may not be a good article in its current state, it has potential for expansion. I think it can be expanded, maybe if someone left a message on my talk page about it I'll do the research and expand it further. --LiverpoolCommander 12:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per above. Also, expect the improved article to become a magnet for vandalism and POV-pushing. Dave 13:48, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete. I doubt this is OR, although it is in need of citations. Looking at the first two scientists listed, Ibn Al-Nafis and Ibn al-Haitham, the information appears to be valid. My objection is that, do we really need to break down contributions to science by ethnic group? Should we also have "(Jewish / Anglo / Incan / Egyptian / LGBT / Female / etc.) contributions to science as well"? Will we need "Arab contributions to (medicine / physics / literature / poetry / engineering)" as well? Maybe many of these exist, but it just seems to me that this opens up endless numbers of possible lists. eaolson 15:05, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge and source. The point of this article appears to be to contest the standard Western attribution of some basic scientific discoveries, and as such the information has interest, if the sources for the claims are specified. However, I think it would be best served by merging it with history of science, so that the merits of the opposing points of view can be balanced; as it stands, it comes over as a point-of-view fork. Espresso Addict 16:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• The "The Hindus Did Everything (But The Muslims Stole The Credit) school of scholarship" quotation from Purushottam Nagesh Oak comes to mind. There are a lot of people who assert that religious group X, for various values of "X", invented most of civilisation. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of inaccuracy. One of the more ironic incidents relating to this particular article is that The Independent published an article about "How Islamic inventors changed the world", that caused a lot of controversy, not least this discussion where people point out several falsehoods in the article, pointing to Wikipedia for more accurate information. If there's some way to avoid people using this article as a soapbox for promoting a "religion X did everything" stance, and keeping Wikipedia accurate and neutral, it should be done. Uncle G 16:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Very poor at the moment, unlikely to became anything but battlefield in the future. Pavel Vozenilek 17:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Move to History of science and technology in the Middle East, and cleanup. There are similar articles to this one that currently exist such as History of science and technology in China and Science and technology in ancient India.--TBCTaLk?!? 20:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
• Move to History of science and technology in the Middle East, or similar and cleanup as recommended by Tree Biting Conspiracy. Delete all unreferenced material; references to meet WP:CITE & WP:VERIFY. The topic is worthy of discussion—it needs to be done with normal Wikidiscipline. Williamborg (Bill) 00:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete (allow userfication if someone has access to the sources). I don't see a good single article to merge to. Each claim, if cited, probably should go to multiple articles. To take the first claim as an example, the material should go to 1) pulmonary circulation, (already there, uncited) 2) William Harvey (already there, uncited) and 3) Al-Nafis (already there). As each claim should go multiple places, and no two claims would currently go the same place, merge doesn't seem the right answer. (That some of them are already in the targets gives even less reason to merge.) Article behaves like a POV-Fork as currently written. GRBerry 02:14, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Rename per Williamborg. Clearly POV assertions that need plenty of work. For example, certainly knowledge of refraction has been around since humans first started trying to fish. The difference was that Newton performed experimental measurements and tried to analyze it mathematically. I don't know that Newton was ever claimed to be the first person to make a statement about refraction. That is almost absurd. — RJH (talk) 17:27, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Redirect needs renaming to History of science and technology in the Middle East per User:Tree Biting Conspiracy (great name, btw) and User:Williamborg since information about Persian, Berber, etc. contributions would make this a well-rounded article. —ExplorerCDT 22:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
• Move to History of science and technology in the Middle East, or similar and cleanup as recommended by Tree Biting Conspiracy and Williamborg. --Richard 07:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
• OK, if there is really something here worth keeping, and if it can be integrated into the existing content without POV, how about merging it to History of science in the Islamic World? Michael Kinyon 03:29, 26 September 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.