Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Death threat

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/no consensus (non admin)(same result) Dihydrogen Monoxide (H₂O) 11:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Death threat

Death threat (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

See Wikipedia is not a dictionary. In fact, even a dictionarywouldn't give this term its own entry. "Death threat" is a combination of two very common nouns to produce a term whose meaning is completely clear and unambiguous. -Eric ^(talk) 14:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

• Move Your right that it is a definition and shouldn't be in Wikipedia. However, the page is decent enough that it could be moved to Wiktionary [1], by means of transwiki [2]. Icestorm815 16:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. A dic def which, as the nom points out, is not required due to the unambiguous nature of the two nouns. Nuttah68 09:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - This is simply not true. Death threat has specific legal definitions in various jurisdictions. It is not unambiguous; when law enforcement receives a complaint, they have to determine whether the threat is valid, and what their response will be. --George100 16:29, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Note re "unambiguous": Nuttah68 is merely pointing out that the meanings of the two component nouns are clear. -Eric ^(talk) 17:30, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - And it is obvious that words and phrases have different meanings within different contexts. --George100 06:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per nom and Nuttah68, and/or redirect to Threat. Bearian 17:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, this can be expanded far beyond a definition. Wouldn't object to a merge, though. --UsaSatsui 21:43, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, can imagine that there's stuff to talk about in terms of the history, the role in literature etc. Not the most important article, but I can imagine that someone could make something of it FlagSteward 11:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment We can expound on any term if we want, but that does not demonstrate that the term merits an encyclopedia entry. I think Wikipedia would benefit from its editors pulling out an encyclopedia from time to time and noting what sort of entries it contains. I mean this sincerely--I'm not trying to be a wiseguy. -Eric ^(talk) 14:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - regular encyclopedias don't have hundreds of articles about Pokemon characters : p I think as far as deletions are concerned, there are other priorities. --George100 19:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Response Thanks a bunch for alerting me to those--now my spirit is broken. No more trouble from me. -Eric ^(talk) 21:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

• Merge This article should be merged into the Threat article. Meateater 13:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment The Threat article is a stub consisting of a weak dictionary definition and a small section referring to international law. After unsuccessfully trying an AfD on it, I did some searching on the int'l law reference and have been thinking of renaming the article to "Threat of force (public international law)" (deleting the dicdef part). -Eric ^(talk) 13:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

• Keep & Improve or Merge into Threat (or Coercion). "Death threat" is a widely used phrase in the news. Google news for "Death Threat" brings up over 300 entries for today.; It is in no way an arbitrary combination of words. --George100 19:03, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment As I posted on the talk page for the "article":

I'm not sure that assigning "notability" to any frequently occurring combination of words is a good basis for generating encyclopedia articles, especially when there is no ambiguity to the resulting term. If the term "bicycle tire" started appearing frequently in the news, we wouldn't need to create an encyclopedia entry for it, since the meaning of the compound noun is completely clear.

And, this just in: I just did Google News for today on two combinations of words: "car door" got 581 hits; "eat lunch" got 544. Potential new articles?? -Eric ^(talk) 19:33, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Vehicle door and Bicycle wheel are articles. I'm sure there are plenty of articles about specialized machinery like this. Encyclopedias are not about words, they are about noteworthy objects and phenomena. At issue is whether a given topic has some educational significance. --George100 08:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Stunning...I'm still tingling from mind-numbing educational experience I had reading the "Vehicle door" article. Who would have guessed that a vehicle door was a door on a vehicle?? This is great stuff! -Eric ^(talk) 12:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

So what is your point? It's a stub article. A vehicular door is obviously substantially different from a conventional door from an engineering standpoint. As I already stated, encyclopedias are about distinct objects and phenomena, not about words. Note that the article links to various styles of doors, such as Gull-wing door. Are you planning to delete the article as well? --George100 15:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

OMG! There are doors on vehicles now?! Benjiboi 00:02, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I've already made my point. As for "Gull-wing door," that is a special term for a distinct object and it makes perfect sense to me that it has an article. No encyclopedia I've ever encountered would have an entry for the term "vehicle door." That is a simple combination of basic vocabulary words to make a very general term that anyone with an intermediate knowledge of English will understand immediately without even having encountered the term before. It describes a quite broad range of objects. The difference between the two terms' validity as encyclopedic entries is obvious to me. The Vehicle door article--which, by the way, discusses only car doors--looks to me to serve no purpose other than as a portal to articles on specific terms. -Eric ^(talk) 17:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Wikipedia is not a dictionary - the guideline states plainly, "if you come across an article that is nothing more than a definition, see if there is information you can add that would be appropriate for an encyclopedia." It is clear that this article can be expanded beyond a definition, therefore this reasoning is invalid. Comments have been made on the talk page about the article's potential improvement. Also I should add that quite a bit of material was removed in the revision of August 8, 2006. --George100 15:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

See my earlier comment above on expounding. -Eric ^(talk) 17:19, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment - You had no point on expounding. All you are saying is that wikipedia whould be the same as any encyclopedia, whereas it is obvious that wikipedia has a much broader scope than a static encyclopedia. Furthermore, the basis for inclusion is WP:Notability, not what you think should be in an encyc. --George100 06:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete - I have to agree with some of the above, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and I don't think it is necessary to have an article on a term that is self-explanitory. Also what reasoning is being used to define this term as notable??? Just because a term is used on a daily basis, whether in the news or not, does not make it notable. An article on this term can not possibly provide any more information that is already provided by the term itself.EMT1871 14:09, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete per other's --Childzy ¤ Talk 15:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
• Delete as unencyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. If someone is interested enough to write an encyclopedic article on death threats (and I have deep, deep doubts that it could be done) then write it in user name space, get approval to resurrect the article name and show it to the world. Then we would have something that might be worth keeping. The idea that an encyclopedic article on this subject could actually be written in a non WP:OR way, with reliable sources, is speculation. Any reader who came upon this article expecting something encyclopedic on the subject would be disappointed. Noroton 20:47, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep. Article needs improving not deletion. "Death threat" could certainly be an exceptional article with 1400+ hits on Google Scholar[3], 270+ hits on Google News[4] and 790+ hits in Google Books[5]. Wikipedia is not a dictionary but it is a comprehensive encyclopedia and an encyclopedic entry about this term's origins, history and usage could benefit many. I had only linked another article here and was stunned that it had been nominated. I certainly hope that the article is improved rather than banishing it. Benjiboi 22:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. Yes, it is currently not much more than a dictionary definition, but it could certainly be expanded beyond that. We could list the penalties on death threats in different countries, the statistics and percentages, the social consequences, etc. It could be sourced appropriately, see e.g. [6]. There's no compelling reason to delete this article. Melsaran (talk) 10:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep. It's genuine and certainly significant. In the circumstances, we should base our decision on what the article can be, not what it is - it'll be done before the deadline, and all that - except when what it is is patent nonsense or the like, but wherever the line is drawn this should be comfortably past it. Anyone know if the Hashshashin used these? --Kizor 21:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Comment I think the question is more what an encyclopedia is and is not rather than what an given article might or might not become. -Eric ^(talk) 12:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

• Redirect WP not a Dictionary, but this could be typed in by a user. Mbisanz 07:32, 24 September 2007 (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.