Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Herstory

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 keep. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:02, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Herstory

Non-notable subject, lacks sources after years of existence Xombie 01:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

• Weak keep, seems to be a very notable neologism as evident by all the relevant google results. [1] The term is also used by a lot of feminist and lesbian organisations [2][3]. --☆TBC☆ (aka Tree Biting Conspiracy) 01:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak Delete lots of google results, but the current article doesn't rise above the level of a dictionary definion. Delete without prejudice? BigDT 01:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, I've tidied up the entry - it is difficult to extend such a simple concept beyond a short article - however it is an important concept in feminism, evidence of academic usage is easy to find.--Peta 01:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep possibly can't really be expanded beyond a dictionary definition, but is definently verifiable and has been used meaningfully in print for a while. Might consider a move to Wiktionary. --W.marsh 02:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete/Move/Merge I agree that it should maybe be moved to a Wikitionary entry or a small mention in the Feminism article. --Xombie 02:03, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Poor etymology aside, it's notable and it goes beyond a simple dictionary definition. There's been enough debate and controversial usage of this term to make for a good NPOV article can come of it. ScottW 02:38, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, per ScottW.  -- TheKMan^talk 03:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak delete Delete If we can transwiki this, and merge the encyclopedic elements to feminism (per Xombie), that would be ideal Hobbeslover ^{talk/contribs} 04:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Notable term because of its political usage. Phiwum 04:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep, and expand. If this is deemed not notable then AfD is losing the plot entirely, so what's the point of Wikipedia? As of a few seconds ago Wikipedia had 1,164,080 articles in English. Xombie, tell me how Herstory is less notable than ALL of those 1,164,080 articles? Moriori 05:28, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Many of those articles shouldn't be on Wikipedia and the race to the bottom is not much of a standard to add articles. --JChap 06:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment: The article consists of only a definition and references for its definition. It it does not appear to be anything more than a word used within feminism to describe a type of historical revisionism rather than an important concept meriting its own article. --Xombie 12:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

• Transwiki If this really is a coherent school of thought, write an encyclopedia article on it. Now, it's just a definition. --JChap 06:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak Keep per Peta. Fluit 07:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Merge I agree it is a notable term, but I agree with Xombie, it should be in Feminism.
• Keep Notable term in Feminist politcal parlance. Pvazz 08:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to Feminism. It's a notable term, but there's not enough to actual hang an encyclopedia article on, except as a dicdef. (or perhaps a non-gender-specific-genitalia-def). -- GWO
• Merge as above - the article is essentially a definition and not really notable enough for its own page michaelCurtis ^talk+ _{contributions} 10:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep, I've heard of the term, seems to be valid. JIP | Talk 11:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per above. --badlydrawnjeff (WP:MEMES?) 11:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak keep - definitely a notable term, but I question whether there will ever be more than a dicdef here. Metamagician3000 12:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - As it currently stands, it's not much more than a dictionary definition, but if you can write a whole article on History, you can write a whole article on Herstory. In common use by feminists, academics, etc. There's tons of room for improvement, yes, but the topic merits an article. The Disco King 13:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Just a dicdef, can be mentioned in other feminism articles. Aguerriero (talk) 13:56, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per ScottW. --Terence Ong 14:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Merge to feminism, and/or transwiki as dicdef. --Guinnog 14:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, notable concept, a stub that begins at the beginning. Just because the coinage makes the eyes roll doesn't mean that the concept is not notable. Smerdis of Tlön 14:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. As painful as it is, and as lacking in citations, it is a real thing and should have an article. Kaisershatner 15:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. A pun that made me laugh once, years ago, when I saw it on a library poster explaining the Dewey Decimal System. It hasn't been funny since, but it's still a notable topic. Google Books and Google Scholar bring back some worthwhile hits. Please note that I've expanded the article to a good, full-bodied paragraph, and I'm sure there's plenty more one could do. Those who voted "merge" should consider re-considering. Anville 16:46, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• STRONG Keep. - The word is not a pun it is a neologism and an example of false etymology. I have cleaned up the article, added citations on origins and details on its usage, history etc. I believe the article is now up to standards and I thank Anville and the others for the work they did before my edits. Deleting an article on a word now in common usage and cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is silly. It is true that critics of Feminism often deride the word and other language changes brought on in the wake of Feminism but deleting a wikipedia article will not stop people from using the word. Incidentally, one of my degrees in is Linguisitics. Please give me and others time to expand this article further if others feel it needs that. I'd suggest that those who voted delete go and read the current article and reconsider their votes.Lisapollison 18:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

• Nice job on the rewrite. However, I do disagree with the notion that being in common usage and in OED makes a word inherently encylopedic. ScottW 18:36, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

COMMENT: Thanks ScottW! However, much of what I wrote has now been deleted. Even so, I feel the article needs to stay. Inclusion in the OED is significant but this is not the time or place to go into why that is. I merely suggest you google the term to see how common it is. You will find it is regularly used in feminist and/or lesbian literature. When I was a Linguistics Grad student in the early 1980s, I witnessed much of the debate over such terms. Herstory was well-accepted in Academia even then because of it's narrow application. It wasn't a word that was being promoted to displace history but rather one to be used alongside it when appropriate or in place of it when referring specifically to women's history from a female perspective. I believe it has more credability than Wymyn, Wimmin or Wombyn - 3 words often used in place of woman. Thank you SO much for your time in rereading the article. I believe the word has found its niche in terms of usage but I agree with others who state that it will never be a widely known term outside it's current usage applications.Lisapollison 18:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

• "A pun (also known as paronomasia) is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious." How does this word not qualify? Depending on which person you ask, it can be humorous, serious or somewhere in between (the last position being mine). Any which way, though, it counts. Anville 19:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

• Delete or merge to a List of feminist neolisms. There is no reason for this to have it's own article. ---J.S (t|c) 20:16, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep notable term. I remember ages ago in primary school us doing a musical of this name - a series of skits telling the history of women throughout the ages :) -- PageantUpdater 22:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• KeepProblem with article is not its notability but the fact that it needs some work doing to it. --Wisden17 23:34, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per most excellent rewrite. Fagstein 01:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
• Keep meets WP:NEO's test for articles on neologisms. As per Lisapollison, this is a neologism. It is at least a stable neologism, and it may be moving beyond that status to just be a part of the English vocabulary. (I have zero interest in the field where it is used, but I've known this term for longer than some of our admins have been alive.) I wouldn't use this term in an article myself because I wouldn't expect it to be understood, so I guess it is fair to say it is still a neologism. WP:NEO is most specific guideline to approach it on. Now that the article has been improved, including citations to reliable sources, it clearly meets that guideline. Kudos to those who did the improvement. An improved article is the best possible outcome of an AfD. GRBerry
• Keep. Notable, and not a bad article. Sarge Baldy 23:01, 3 June 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.