Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kryder's law (second nomination)

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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 weak consensus to delete - if the term is successful enough by itself to continue existing and being used without the article, then eventually someone will re-create it. For now, it goes. DS 18:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kryder's law

This article violates WP:NEO and WP:NOR, at the very least. The concept is identical to Moore's law and has not been given its own name by anyone outside of Wikipedia. The article itself states that "Kryder's Law probably wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Wikipedia". One of the first Google results for the term "Kryder's law" (of which there are less than 500) is a blog criticizing Wikipedia for inventing the term. The rest are mostly mirrors of Wikipedia or the Scientific American article.

Delete and mention the concept of hard drive density and the appropriate numbers in Moore's law without using the neologism "Kryder's law". — Omegatron 13:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Weak Keep or Merge, Perhaps when that wikipedia quote was written it was lightly used, but at this point I seen enough references and cites that it exceeds WP:NEO. I don't think WP:NOR applies here either; there are references cited and anything that isn't referenced can be removed without nuking the article. WP:ASR is a concern, but that can be remedied through editing.--Isotope23 15:04, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
The only "reference" which uses the phrase "Kryder's Law" is the original Scientific American article, in the title. The other references are about disk space, but are not references for the term. Ken Arromdee 17:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Comment I see sources that use this term in relation to disk space. That to me justifies the article.--Isotope23 17:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Except in the Scientific American article title, the references cited in the article do *not* use the term. Ken Arromdee 17:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but there are other references out there that do use the term. I did some due dilligence and investigated outside just what is linked in the article.--Isotope23 19:45, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
But they got the term from this article; it did not exist previously. — Omegatron 21:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
but it exists now... where it came from is irrelevant. The time to delete this would have been before external sources picked it up and began using it; when it was still a Wikipedia-only protologism.--Isotope23 00:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
That's what it is. No one is using this term outside of our article, and when they are, it's to criticize us for inventing it. Omegatron 04:00, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
Exactly. You're trying to save WP face, but your VfD is the equivalent of a cover-up.
Wikipedia must pay for its crimes. The time to have prevented this thing was months ago, and the cat, nor those criticisms, are never going back in the bag again. Yeago 05:49, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Err... huh? WP:AGF, but that made no sense.--Isotope23 16:47, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Huh? — Omegatron 17:21, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
No significant number of outside sources use the term. Ken Arromdee 17:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong keep, This has come up before and been defeated. The underlying phenomenon, rapid growth in disk storage per dollar, is real, important and distinct from Moore's law, which deals with ICs and CPUs. However tentatively, SciAm coined the term, not us. That we picked it up and added credence does not violate NEO, indeed if we tried to make up a different name on our own, that would be NEO. If the industry settles on a different term, a simple move is all that is required. ASR is an editing issue. Deletion is totally inappropriate.--agr 15:39, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
    • The term was not coined by Scientific American; it was coined by Wikipedia's article. It was used only once, as the title of an article, without even the implication that the term had a real meaning of its own, and no mention or definition in the text. The Wikipedia article was the first instance of the term being used as if it referred to a scientific law. Even if the term is now in widespread use (which it is not), it is only due to the Wikipedia article. We can't create articles for made-up terms and then deem them notable after others start mimicking our article. — Omegatron 16:17, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
      • It's not a scientific law, it's is an empirical observation and rule of thumb, as is Moore's law. The SciAm article identified a distinct phenomenon and gave it a name. If they didn't define it precisely enough, you have a beef with SciAm. --agr 16:49, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
A scientific law is an empirical observation. That's what "scientific law" means. We define it as "a scientific generalization based on empirical observations of physical behavior". SciAm did not define the term or claim anywhere that it represented the law that they spoke of; they simply used it as the (whimsical) title of their article. Wikipedia was the first to use it as if it were an actual law, and it is therefore a Wikipedia-created neologism that needs to be killed. We are not in the business of creating new terminology; we only report on terminology that already exists. — Omegatron 21:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
See scientific law and rule of thumb. There is a big difference. By claiming it is a purported scientific law you are setting up a straw man. It's not being proposed at that level any more than Moore's Law is. And SciAm did use the term first. You are pushing a point of view that they weren't serious. That is your interpretation. This critique is already mentioned in the article. There is no basis for deletion.--agr 02:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Rules about not pushing points of views apply to the content of articles. Decisions *about* articles, like deleting them for non-notability, are not subject to the NPOV rule. Otherwise, we could never delete any articles, because all deletions imply a point of view that the subject of the article isn't notable. We must decide whether the use of the term is a real use; we can't avoid making that decision. Such decisions don't violate the rule about points of view. Ken Arromdee 05:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

From WP:DP "Please ensure that nominations to delete an article which was previously voted "keep", are carefully considered, and are based upon policy and not opinion." The article proposed for deletion is based on an article of the same name in a reputable, indeed highly regarded, publication. It's subject, the rapid improvement in disk capacity is notable, arguably earth-shaking. Other sources are cited. The bottom line is that you do not agree with the subject and, especially, the name. But it is SciAm's name, not ours. --agr 11:31, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Are you seriously suggesting that since whether something is notable, or whether Wikipedia invented a neologism, are opinions, they violate the WP:DP rule about deleting articles based on opinion? Ken Arromdee 15:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong delete. The Scientific American article didn't give anything a name. Just because the title reads "Kryder's Law" doesn't mean the article is actually proposing Kryder's Law. It's as if I wrote an article about Wikipedia titled "The National Enquirer of Web Pages" and we later had an article which stated that Wikipedia was also known as "The National Enquirer of Web Pages". The article's title is a form of rhetoric which is phrased as if it's naming something; but it isn't really suggesting a name at all.
It's true that disk space growth is a real phenomenon, but it's a real phenomenon that is not in any meaningful sense associated with the term "Kryder's Law". If you want to keep this article because you think we need a disk space growth article, then rename it to "disk space growth" and take out the references to "Kryder's Law". (But I suspect nobody would even think the article was worth creating if it wasn't for the name.)
(Incidentally, this doesn't violate WP:ASR. A self-reference is saying something like "In this Wikipedia article..." Claiming that something is connected to Wikipedia isn't automatically a self-reference, and you're allowed to say "Wikipedia's article about..." as long as you aren't implying that the reader is reading the text on Wikipedia. Ken Arromdee 17:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
It used to violate ASR. I reworded it. — Omegatron 21:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Ayeum. Yes, but you seemed to have smudged the intent behind WP:SELF. Yeago 05:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong delete. Agree with all the points Omegatron has made. Suggest that it redirect to Moore's law, and that article have a short mention of so-called Kyrders Law. --Snori 19:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
What you are suggestiing is a merge. There are other mechanisms for that. It is not consistant with deletion, which destroyes edit histories, talk pages and the like.--agr 02:59, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per omegatron. Redirection is fine. BrokenSegue 20:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per Omegatron. --Interiot 20:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep and comment Omegatron, the article does not state that wikipedia invented the word, as you lead me to believe. You have misquoted the article. In fact, it was someone else claiming the article has created the word. The article includes this claim, per NPOV I guess. I do not see it as violating "neo". The article explains the word, making it "understandable and clearly defined". It is not violating OR because of the other article that the information is cited to. If anything, this article needs to focus more on the LAW instead of the origin and acceptablity of the word.-- ¢² Connor K.   20:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I know Omegatron said it, but whether the article itself states that Wikipedia created the term isn't really relevant. We need to figure that out for ourselves. And Wikipedia did, in fact, create the term as a name for a law. The Scientific American article is titled "Kryder's Law", but that's an attempt to write a clever title, not an attempt to name a law.
Even if you insist, beyond all sense, that Scientific American created the term, it just isn't a widely used term. It's still a neologism, all you've done is insisted that it's Scientific American's neologism rather than Wikipedia's. There's still no reason to write an article about it unless a substantial number of people actually use it. Ken Arromdee 23:30, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Shorten and delete the self-referencing, and merge the decent bits from "Origin" and "Future of Kryder's law" into Moore's law as a seperate section (e.g. call it "variation of Moore's law" or "Moore's law in regards to hard drives" or sth.) --`/aksha 02:27, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep I think the sentiment behind deleting this article is, in a sense, an attempt to right a wrong (if one believes that hasty WP editors were to blame for this coinage). Unfortunately, the foop happened and is done. While the actual term may never be used in reality, the event was newsworthy and relevant to anyone, and the term itself has been discussed in contexts besides WP.
    If it were actually notable or newsworthy, I might agree with you, but it's not. I haven't seen any evidence that anyone significant is using the term except a blog and Slashdot entries that criticize Wikipedia for inventing it. And no, the criticism is not notable or newsworthy. The Siegenthaler Wikipedia controversy is notable and newsworthy; this is not. It's silly and pointless to have this article when most of the content is going to be about how the article itself created its own notability. That's like saying we should create an article about Willy on Wheels. If you really really really think that this needs to be covered as an example of Wikipedia inventing a term and subsequent criticism, then it should be merged with Criticism of Wikipedia; it should not have its own article.
    Of course, the concept of hard drive size increasing should definitely be covered, but probably in Moore's law. If the concept of hard drive size is given its own article, that's fine, but it should not be called Kryder's Law. — Omegatron 17:21, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for another version of your headless rant, but you haven't said anything new.Yeago 18:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

If it is deleted, please consider updating Wikipedia and public opinion, or please archive this page and discussion in the WP namespace as it is a prime example of WPs exogenous influence (regardless of how ashamed some editors are of this particular instance). Yeago 05:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Request for clarification. I see a lot of people are claiming Wikipedia created this term, but the article states that "Mark Kryder of Seagate Technology, a former Carnegie Mellon University professor, named the law after himself." Which one is correct? Hiding Talk 14:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I can't find the claim that Kryder created the term anywhere in the Scientific American article. The other two online sources don't even mention Kryder, let alone Kryder's law. So I think the article is wrong, and Wikipedia created the term. Ken Arromdee 15:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia created the term, and it has not yet been picked up by anyone else significant. The article needs to be deleted for violating WP:NEO. — Omegatron 16:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Scientific American was the first to use the term. I've edited the article to make that clear. The claim that Kryder named it after himself was added in a rather contentious edit on Sept. 12, 2006 [1].--agr 17:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Possible compromise?:I have no problem with a move or merge as Omegatron proposes above. ("Of course, the concept of hard drive size increasing should definitely be covered, but probably in Moore's law. If the concept of hard drive size is given its own article, that's fine, but it should not be called Kryder's Law.") I think the SciAm article should be mentioned, but there is no need to imply that Kryder's Law is the accepted term for this phenomenon. If the material is merged into Moore's Law, it should be made clear that this is not part of the original Moore's Law, but an extension to other technologies. Bandwidth might be included as well to make this clear. The present article should just redirect to wherever the material ends up.--agr 18:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
    "I think the SciAm article should be mentioned"
    Of course.
    "but there is no need to imply that Kryder's Law is the accepted term for this phenomenon"
    I'd say we shouldn't use the term at all, except when referring to the article by name.
    "If the material is merged into Moore's Law"
    It's already there: Moore's law#Formulations of Moore's Law. Also, see Rock's law. It might be good to give it its own article; I don't know. Depends how much relevant content there is. It can always be split back out to some other name.
    "The present article should just redirect to wherever the material ends up."
    I think deleting the article would be the best solution. It represents to the world "we recognize that we made a mistake and we have corrected it". — Omegatron 18:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I understand you think that deleting the article is the best way to go about this. I'd agree with a merge, but the point of this isn't to right a wrong. Wikipedia is never out there to "save face". Wikipedia is not trying to win over billions of people. It has not once made a press statement about it's "credibility".
All that aside, what do you suppose would happen if the law becomes will known by that name? Would you then want wikipedia to never have that article, because it would send the "wrong message". What is the point of deleting this article, Omegatron?
Generally speaking, neologisms should be avoided in articles because they may not be well understood, may not be clearly definable, and may even have different meanings to different people. Determining which meaning is the true meaning is original research — we don't do that here at Wikipedia. Articles that use neologisms should be edited to ensure they conform with the core Wikipedia policies: no original research and verifiability. Where in there does it say that we should delete all "neologisms". I am not asking for the term to be defined. That would be against WP:OR. I am asking for the article to state it's sources, and say what it is. If "Kryder's Law" is a copy of another law, state it. State your sources. If I say it is a new word, I have to state my sources.
Support for article contents, including the use and meaning of neologisms, must come from reliable sources. Wikipedia is a tertiary source that includes material on the basis of verifiability, not truth. To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term. Lets not state the term is THE term. Lets not justify the word. Lets be the middle ground on what the term is generally accepted as, and where it came from.-- ¢² Connor K.   18:52, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Can we try to cool this down? I don't agree anyone made a mistake. The original editor chose the same name as an article in a respected publication. But Omegatron has a point that we shouldn't imply the name is widely accepted when there is no citable authority that says it is. Should that change in the future, we can adjust. In the meantime, if Omegatron and his supporters can live with a move or merge, I think it is time to move on.--agr 19:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"if Omegatron and his supporters can live with a move or merge, I think it is time to move on."

Depends what you mean by "move or merge". Of course I have no problem with the concept of increasing hard drive size being presented; it's already presented in Moore's law#Formulations of Moore's Law, and it would be great if it was expanded with the relevant content from this article (but not including the term). If people really want to keep the stuff about Wikipedia inventing the term and criticism of Wikipedia, it should be moved to Criticism of Wikipedia (though I imagine the locally-active editors will delete it pretty quickly for being a trivial/unimportant example).
And yes, I would still like Kryder's law deleted. Turning it into a redirect gives the impression that it's a real term, when it's really just the title of a Scientific American article.

"All that aside, what do you suppose would happen if the law becomes will known by that name?"

Create an article about it, of course.

"What is the point of deleting this article, Omegatron?"

It's not a real term. Wikipedia doesn't have articles about made-up terminology. — Omegatron 19:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
The full title of the above "made-up terminology" link is Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day. That is not what this article is about. No one, including Omegatron, seems to deny that this article has content that belongs in Wikipedia. We are only arguing about the name. That is not what AfD is for. Also see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion which gives wide latitude for redirects and specifically suggests redirects be retained if there is a useful edit history attached. If Omegatron insists on deletion of this article, we still have a disagreement. I guess we simply have to let the process run its course and let the moderator decide if deletion is the appropriate course, as opposed to a move or merge, and if there is a consensus for deletion.--agr 20:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The relevant text:

Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Many articles of this nature describe new words or terms coined by a small group of friends. But Wikipedia is not a dictionary, it's an encyclopedia. Meanings of words and phrases go in a dictionary, such as Wiktionary; however, adding your own new words and phrases to Wiktionary is also unacceptable. Wiktionary requires evidence that a word or phrase has been attested before it will accept it. A new word that one person or a small group of people have made up and are trying to make catch on is a neologism, and isn't acceptable at Wiktionary. Take a look at Urban Dictionary instead.

WP:NEO is actually mostly about words made up by other people. We're not even supposed to include those, yet this article is about a term made up by a Wikipedia editor. It has even less validity.

If you agree that the term was invented by a Wikipedia editor and is not in wide use or defined anywhere except our own article, then you agree that it should be deleted:

Articles on protologisms are almost always deleted as these articles are often created in an attempt to use Wikipedia to increase usage of the term.

...

To support the use of (or an article about) a particular term we must cite reliable secondary sources such as books and papers about the term — not books and papers that use the term.

Neologisms that are in wide use — but for which there are no treatments in secondary sources — are not yet ready for use and coverage in Wikipedia. They may be in time, but not yet. The term does not need to be in Wikipedia in order to be a "true" term, and when secondary sources become available it will be appropriate to create an article on the topic or use the term within other articles.

– Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms

— Omegatron 21:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The article in question is not about the term Kryder's Law, it is about growth in disk drive capacity. That is a notable and verifiable subject. You are proposing to delete the article and its edit history because you don't like the title, which I am willing to change, even though the term was used first by Scientific American, a respected secondary source, not us. That is not a valid use of AfD. --agr 22:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
It was first used by Scientific American *as a title for an article*. It was *not* first used by Scientific American as a term for a law.
And while disk drive capacity is a valid topic for Wikipedia, pretty much everything about it worth salvaging from the Kryder's Law article is already in other articles. Ken Arromdee 01:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
The article in question is about the term Kryder's law.
The growth in disk drive capacity will still be in Wikipedia. The article can be moved to a new title or merged with the info that's already in Moore's law, as we've already said several times. — Omegatron 02:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
AfD is not the mechanism for moves and merges. I think I have made that point often enough. We'll just have to let the process go forward.--agr 10:58, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • It isn't? When did that change? Hiding Talk 18:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
In theory any useful information in the Kryder's Law article should be merged into other articles that refer to disk space, but there really isn't much, if any, information that doesn't already exist somewhere. So there isn't anything to merge. Ken Arromdee 17:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
A recommendation to merge is often the outcome of the AfD process, but if that is all that is needed there was no need in the first place to waste everyones time with an AfD. Just do the merge. There is no need to destroy edit history and the like. --agr 18:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Um, you're making presumptions here that don't sit well with assuming good faith. Many a time people bring articles here because they want to form a consensus on what to do with them. A consensual decision on merging made in an afd is also more likely to be respected than a being bold edit. The outcome isn't always obvious at the outset and shouldn't be used to prejudge the nominator. Consensus is something formed through discussion, not observation. Hiding Talk 19:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Your point is well taken, maybe we did need this discussion, but I don't see the justification for insisting on deleting an article and its history when the result of that discussion appears to be agreement that the useful content should be merged or renamed.--agr 19:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Take the point and support the Merge and redirect. Hiding Talk 20:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
"Kryder's Law" and the concept behind it are already mentioned at Moore's law. I think a redirect from Kryder's law to Moore's law is a reasonable solution with a continuing discussion of whether or not there are enough external sources to satisfy WP:NEO and keeping the term in the article.--Isotope23 20:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as per Omegatron. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:29, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as per Omegatron. Xdenizen 01:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Isotope23 and now support Merge and redirect. Let me make one more comment on why deletion is not the way to go. This article has been criticized externally. One of the strengths of Wikipedia in response to criticism is the transparency of its editing process. If someone wants to verify that the term "Kryder's Law" first appeared in Wikipedia only after the Scientific American article, they currently can. If they want to know when criticism of the term first showed up in the article they can look that up too. If they want to follow the debate on the talk page and see who took what postions when, they can. However once the article is deleted all that edit history will no longer be accessible to the public. It will look like we have something to hide.--agr 11:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep While it may well be true that the term was invented by Wikipedia, and that invention did in fact violate Wikipedia's rules, the fact remains the term does now exist and is used. You can't unring the bell. The topic now warrants inclusion in Wikipedia, even if it is Wikipedia's doing that made it so. This sort of thing happens. The OED accidentally invented the word syllabus, but syllabus is now a sufficiently common word to warrant inclusion in any dictionary. --Llewdor 18:00, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. While I don't object to an eventual merge (which seems to me the most likely outcome of this discussion) I still would like to see hard evidence that the term was coined by Wikipedia. However, I'd strongly object to an actual deletion of the edit history, especially if content is merged into Moore's Law, per GFDL concerns. I may also point out that the term has been indexed by both Web of Science and PubMed (giving as only hit the SciAmer article, but still) so I'd seem contrary to logic to nuke the article completely. It would seem that, if this is indeed a neologism we created, that it is beyond our reach to stop its spread (Google "Kryder's law" -wikipedia). So much for that. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 17:56, 27 October 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.