Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FM 5-31 Boobytraps

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 redirect to U.S. Army Field Manuals. --Sam Blanning^(talk) 16:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FM 5-31 Boobytraps

Listing after failed prod. I don't see any reason to have a page for each field manual, especially since I don't think there will ever be any real content in there (anything on the content the manual may talk about should go into an article about that subject, no an article about the manual) Hirudo 16:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. This book seems to be a popular reference on booby traps and is certainly essential reading for modern soldiers. Good chance it could come up in discussions of current events like the US Army Field Manual on Interrogation has. AKADriver 19:53, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
• Comment - could you elaborate a bit, specifically on what information currently in this article would be useful for that, and what information do you think can be added here? Wouldn't it be better to just add this manual as an external reference in the booby traps article ? -- Hirudo 20:17, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

  The current article is sparse and poorly-written, to be sure. But it seems to be the reference on practical booby traps and IEDs (and not just according to the poorly-worded sentence in booby trap). Other Wikipedia entries, such as S-mine (in both English and German) reference this book. AKADriver 20:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

  Those articles reference it without actually linking to it though. I think they'd be better off linking to either the full text (if available) or a place to get the manual. What type of information about the manual do you think should be in this article? -- Hirudo 20:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• Redirect to US Army Field Manuals which doesn't now exist, but should be a parent article for others such as US Army Field Manual on Interrogation. I see that some other articles have titles starting with their FM number. These should probably be retitled, and in some cases should be merged into US Army Field Manuals or subarticles on the types of field manual. Barno 22:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: I doubt that this manual's content (not its description) should appear in Wikipedia; but if Wikipedia/Wiktionary use of the text is valid, it should be on Wikicommons. Barno 22:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I support the spelling used by AKADriver; "US" and "U.S." and "United States" are all used in various WP places, but "U.S." is preferred per Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Acronyms and abbreviations. Barno 13:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Changing vote to Redirect to US Army Field Manuals per Barno. — AKADriver ☎ 04:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  I just created it as U.S. Army Field Manuals (since wikipedia seems to prefer U.S. with periods). — AKADriver ☎ 05:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Redirect per Barno. Some guy 04:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Delete for the time being. I'd prefer a merge, but the preferred merge target doesn't exist. Stifle (talk) 00:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
• Merge or Delete. It appears to be something you'd cite in a general article on boobytraps.In1984 23:18, 29 April 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.