Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neat tiling

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This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no concensus. I was responsible for handling that VFD back then, and considering the cirumstances I rather give the benefit of the doubt. If you wish to re-delete the article due to reasons other than undeletion/Karl-VFD reasons, please feel free to resumbit a new VFD. - Mailer Diablo 17:39, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neat tiling

This article was previously VfD'd.

  • The result of that VFD was delete all

So why does the article still exist?

  • It was undeleted

What were the arguments for its undeletion

So shouldn't it be speedy re-deleted?

  • Yes, but certain admins keep removing the tag

Why was it VFD'd in the first place?

  • Artificial original research classification (a "neologism")
  • The correct mathematical term is "continuous tesselation"
  • It was created by a user known as "Karl Scherer" who has several user accounts, and had been inserting his original research into Wikipedia, as well as about 60 spam pages advertising games he had created
  • Google search for the term returns only 118 results
  • Google search for the term minus "wikipedia" (to discount obvious mirrors) returns only 35 results
  • Google search for the term minus "wikipedia" and "scherer" (to

discount obvious mirrors and karl scherer's use of it) returns only 20 results

  • Of those 20 results, most use the term as in "that tiling is really neat", i.e. "impressive", and not in the way the article suggests at all
  • The one that doesn't is a spam-list of words deriving from wikipedia mirrors.
  • Delete ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 00:03, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comments:
  1. Delete log entry: 21:35, July 3, 2005 Mailer diablo deleted "Neat tiling" (content was: '{{User:-Ril-/Karl-Scherer-Spam}} A neat tiling is a type of tiling. A tiling {T} of a shape S is called neat if * each tile T is a poly...')
  2. Delete log entry: 19:59, August 7, 2005 Curps restored "Neat tiling"
  3. You may want to refer to User_talk:Curps#Neat_tiling and User_talk:-Ril-#Lock_puzzle.2C_etc.
  4. It seems clear that there is some sort of user conflict going on here, so I'm holding my vote until things are sorted out. -- FP <talk><edits> 01:59, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
then pages of type 1 above are obvious VfDs, pages of type 3 are not (generic term), while pages of type 2 are debatable: is "unsolved mystery novel" a generic term and subcategory of "mystery novel", or is it a neologism coined by the user? The point is, that's precisely the sort of thing a VfD is supposed to sort out: people research it and Google it and present their conclusions in a VfD vote. The current article in question Neat tiling seems to be of type 2 above: is it a neologism invented by Karl Scherer, or is it a generic term in general use among the puzzle-solving community? Such a VfD debate can now take place at last, on this page.

However, you presented your original Vfd in a careless way, or perhaps even a deceptive way if you had done it deliberately: you listed only pages of type 1 above in the VfD itself and buried the pages of type 2 and type 3 within a very long listing (200 articles!) on a completely separate page (never mentioning them on the VfD page itself) that most voters probably never looked at. It was just flat out wrong to lump pages of entirely different categories into one humungous VfD whose presentation incorrectly implied that all the pages to be deleted were of type 1 above (obvious deletion candidates).

This was a procedural error in the original VfD —it is questionable whether a page was duly deleted if it was never even mentioned on any VfD page. -- Curps 02:20, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment actually, that WAS discussed at the VFD, thus the word "all" as opposed to "only the games". ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 02:30, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
    • You would have claimed a mandate to delete Burr puzzle too... you only failed to do so because you accidentally didn't notice it the first time around. The subsequent separate VfD for that page (a "keep") clearly indicated that you overreached your mandate. -- Curps 02:36, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Neutral. When I click on your '"neat tiling" minus Wikipedia' link above, I get 61 results, not 35. Nevertheless, it is possible that you may have a point that this could be largely a neologism proposed by Karl Scherer. Perhaps other more neutral eyes could judge this. When I did a Google search I didn't do the "minus Wikipedia" refinement. I believe you are wrong in the other cases, however (the ones that are the subject of the other VfD). -- Curps 02:36, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
I still get 35, I'm unsure why you would get 61 for clicking on the same link? ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 16:29, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Google Is Not Science (tm), nor should it be the centre of VfD. 35/61 - either way, less than 100 is 'not much internet presence'/'usually has different name'. This is a very minor factor as to whether an article is worth keeping, unless we're talking an entirely web based topic (a particular message board etc). --zippedmartin 22:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm sure that this is a valid mathematical concept, and I'm sure that this is not the true mathematical term for it. Merge/redir to tesselation. Radiant_>|< 08:18, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy delete. Why are we even discussing this? It was an article that went through VfD, and which was recreated without going through VfU. It should be speedied immediately. --Nandesuka 12:12, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
    • There were procedural flaws in the VfD: this article was never mentioned by name in the VfD, so it is questionable whether it was ever properly VfD'd. -- Curps 15:41, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Curps, I read the VfD, and I think you're mistaken -- Neat tiling clearly appears on the list attached to the VfD, which was discussed at the time. Even if you are correct, though, the right thing to do would have been to list Neat Tiling on VfU and discuss the procedural flaws there. Instead, now we're caught in a twisty little maze of procedural violations, all different. Nandesuka 15:59, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
      • Yes it was, everyone was pointed to the category in the 3rd of the 3 opening paragraphs, the issue of whether all the items in the category counted as well as those in listed in the list that was "includes but isnt limited to" was discussed at length in the VFD itself, and the result was delete ALL. And it didn't go through WP:VFU so re-creating it is an abuse of process, and it should be speedy re-deleted. ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 15:48, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
        • Nandesuka, appearing "on the list attached to the VfD" (actually, an entirely separate page) is not the same as actually appearing at the top of the VfD page itself. Many voters undoubtedly never even looked at that page, and took their cue from the writeup at the top of the VfD page itself, which, intentionally or not, only listed egregious spam pages and failed to explicitly mention pages like neat tiling or lock puzzle, etc. This was procedurally flawed: the process was biased in a way to delete pages that in many cases would have survived their own individual VfD (as Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Burr puzzle and the ongoing Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Interlocking puzzle show). So as I've said I don't believe the original VfD validly applied to this page. But fair enough, to avoid procedural snafus I'll use VfU for such cases in the future. -- Curps 16:49, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment If the nominator believes that The correct mathematical term is "continuous tesselation" then why the VfD - just move the page and change the nomenclature in the article. --zippedmartin 22:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Because the article contains totally original research - it is called "continuous tesselation" because it is "continuous" and a "tesselation", in the same way that a "red cow" is called that because it is "red" and a "cow", but that doesn't warrent the article [[red cow]] existing. ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 23:16, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
You can't assert something has been made up on the spot, and has a 'correct mathematical term', that's patent nonsense. To continue your daft analogy, if you were to see one of these and go round telling people the 'correct biological term' is red cow, they'd all think you'd been having too much 'energy' drink. There might be correct names for things that don't exist, but there certainly aren't correct names for things that haven't been thought of. But seeing as people have been tessellating for thousands of years, I doubt very much whether this definition was first used by a C20 puzzler. Ask for deletion on grounds of notability by all means, but strike 'original research' and your speculation over the naming because you're misrepresenting the case. --zippedmartin 01:26, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
It's the artificial classification that is made up. In the same way that classifying cows by colour was made up on the spot. Ununhexium is just latin for 116, it's not a name, its a placeholding definition, and the correct biological term for this is more likely to be bos rufus [although it isn't that either]. ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 09:37, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Then you agree that the sentence you meant to write at the top of the article was "Term is a neologism, the concept might be considered a form of continuous tesselation"? --zippedmartin 14:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment I am disappointed that this article was restored without going through VfU. I would like to offer that it is essential at this juncture to seperate how one feels about the breaches in procedure from the merits of the article in question. I need to do some research before voting so for now I abstain. Tobycat (talk) 00:06, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-08-15 02:40
Would you supply your reasoning please. ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 09:25, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. I've gone through most of the non-WP Google links in a bit of detail, and found no evidence that neat and nowhere-neat have been used in this sense by anyone but Mr Scherer. Hv 09:55, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
But is it an invented term for an existing concept, is the question... --zippedmartin 14:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
The answer is "Yes". ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 20:57, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
So you admit that this isn't original research, and want to change your delete vote to merge-with-tessilation or similar? --zippedmartin 16:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Speedy Delete, and imediately list on VfU, if needed to take care of whether or not it should have been deleted, at which point it could be brought here instantly as well. Failing that, Delete as a non-notable term for a phenomena. --Icelight 00:57, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. I am disturbed that non-mathematicians are styling themselves as capable judges of mathematical articles. I'd much prefer to see "the usual crowd" debating the article; I don't recognize any of the people above as having ever contributed to a math or physics article; as far as I know, none have any "bona fides". Please, if you are unfamiliar with the subject matter, don't vote. And, by the way, using google for math research is a really really bad idea, since 99.999% of all math is not indexed in google. linas 23:08, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. I am sufficiently familiar with mathematics to make a knowledgable judgement. I choose not to contribute to mathematics articles because I have no interest, not because I have no competance. I could, for example, demonstrate proficiency in Conformal mappings, holomorphisms, klien bottles, christoffel tensors, laplace transformations, bernoulli numbers, contour integration, riemann surface, etc. but I don't find it interesting, so I don't bother. ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 09:59, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and move to edge-to-edge tiling or merge into tessellation. Grünbaum and Shephard, Tilings and Patterns, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1987, which I consider the most authorative references on the mathematical theory of tilings, defines edge-to-edge tilings on page 18. This addresses Ril's concern that neat tiling is a neologism. I don't care that much about the other concern, that it was undeleted improperly: our goal is to write an encyclopeadia. I could not find neat tiling nor continuous tessellation in either MathSciNet or the book, so I'm curious where Ril got this term from. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 13:35, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment Sometimes different groups use different jargon for the same thing. What most of the world calls GMT or UTC, the US military calls "Zulu time". It's possible that puzzle hobbyists use a different term than mathematicians, which could be solved by using redirects. "Edge-to-edge tiling" gets about 60 Google hits (none with "Scherer" or "Wikipedia" in them. -- Curps 15:23, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • delete -- The concept may deserve insertion into tessellation, but I doubt very much that the name is used by anyone other than the original poster. (And I am a mathematician.) -- Arthur Rubin 22:38, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete for two reasons. Firstly, it was deleted in accordance with a vote on VfD. I'm as unhappy about the mass listing on VfD as other people are, but since it's clear that there's no clear consensus, we should follow policy and take it to VfU first. (In fact, it would be nice if some admin (Curps?) could go through Ril's list from the mass deletion—I'd like to acknowledge -Ril- for making the list available, since it's been helpful in the ensuing discussion—and look for other articles which aren't the Zillions spam they were accused of being, to list on VfU.)
Secondly, the article is no more than a definition and consensus seems to be that the most standard terminology is not neat tilings but edge-to-edge tilings for which we have a standard reference (Grünbaum and Shephard). (By consensus I mean both Jitse Niesen, above, and Joseph Myers in Talk:Tiling#Terminology.) It doesn't seem that we'd lose a great deal by deleting the article. When we have an article on edge-to-edge tilings, then we can put in a redirect—because I'm sure I have seen the term neat tilings in a recreational mathematics book, and besides, redirects are cheap. —Blotwell 11:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep with rename/merge option, as per Jitse Niesen, and request that he includes his citation (with cleanup ideally! :) in the article in preparation for the event. --zippedmartin 16:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge per Radiant, and discuss on Talk:Tesselation. This is a waste of VfD's time. Septentrionalis 20:43, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep per Jitse. And while it doesn't have anything to do with my vote, the original "VfD" was clearly flawed. Paul August ☎ 02:13, August 19, 2005 (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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.