Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Non-medical use of dextromethorphan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 Merge to Dextromethorphan. —Quarl (talk) 2007-02-10 23:47Z

[edit] Non-medical use of dextromethorphan

Non-medical use of dextromethorphan (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article is a mess, reads like a drug-abusers' manual, and in my opinion has no place in Wikipedia. The entire article is basically a reworded copy of the DXM Faq available at the "Vaults of Erowid" website, http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/faq/dxm_faq.shtml. Sufficient information on recreational DXM use is already available in the main dextromethorphan Wikipedia article. Equazcion 06:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to remind everyone to please post your comments at the bottom of the page, below all other comments. For all intents and purposes this is a talk page and should follow similar rules. It changes often, so finding new comments is much easier if people need only look at the bottom of the page, after the last comment they read. Also, if your opinion changes, please strike-through your original comment using the <s> </s> tags and add your new opinion afterwards.
Thank you. Equazcion 06:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Delldot and I have gotten to work on this, so I urge anyone who's already voted "delete" to go back and look over the article. It's substantially better now, with far more citations and less OR. Jolb 22:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. Article is two years old with a long history. In 2004, the article apparently had an alarmist tone, which appears to have been corrected. The pendulum apparently has now swung the other way. However, I don't see inherent problems with the topic itself at all, balance in the article can be brought with some cleanup effort. There seems to be plenty of valuable information on this page still, and since Wikipedia is not censored, anti-social topics should not be banned as long as the big three content policies (WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:OR) are followed. Finally, the merge process does not involve AfD. hateless 07:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. It's a very real topic that deserves its own page. There's plenty of media coverage of DXM abuse, and I'm sure that some people might find this a useful source of information. It does require a rewrite, however, and I'd be happy to work on it. Jolb 12:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
In addition, I think it would be good to compare this article with the LSD article. That's a FEATURED article, and most of the sections and information in this article correspond with sections and information in the LSD article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jolb (talk • contribs) 02:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC).
  • Qualified-keep The article should stay, but should be stripped down to the key information, with some of the less scientific (talk of "plateaus", etc.) removed and remove advocacy-style text.Ryandaum 13:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)) Delete I'm changing my vote to Delete after reading Equazcion's comments below. I'd be content with the removal of this article and with the editing of the 'recreational use' portion of the main DXM page.Ryandaum 19:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • From the article's own talk page:
Though some parts are well written, this article reads much more like a "how to" guide for abuse than an encyclopedia article on the history of a specific substance non-medical usage. The message seems to be focused on detailing safe recreational usage protocol, riddled with weasel words and what appears to be original research. A complete rewrite may be in order. --NEMT 06:19, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:No original research and other content policies, all additions to Wikipedia must have sources - that is, they must be previously published by a reputable source. This article is subject to many edits that add nothing more than personal slang, personal opinions, and other original research. So if you're wondering why I'm reverting bogus edits, there's your answer. Peoplesyak 14:21, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Now from me: Almost the entire article is originally sourced or sourced from the DXM Faq at Erowid, which although it is widely used due to the lack of reputable information elsewhere on the topic, is still arguably not a reputable source in itself. Should the article be kept I would continue to help clean it up as I've already started doing, however I still question its merit as a standalone article. The actual reputable information that doesn't consist of original slang can be sufficiently represented in the "Recreational use" subsection of the Dextromethorphan main article. Since the Non-medical use of dextromethorphan article is basically just a rehash of the DXM Faq at Erowid, an external link to that site would be a better conformance to Wikipedia's "no original research" policy and quality standards, while still providing that external information to those who would like to judge its reputability for themselves. The content's merit as "encyclopedic content" is very questionable. Equazcion 16:45, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep. If the article has problems, this is not a reason for deletion, we can just fix them. Remove OR, unsourced statements, and text that is too similar to copyrighted text, stub down if necessary. From WP:DP#Problem articles where deletion may not be needed: "Article needs improvement | List on Wikipedia:Cleanup". "Article is biased | List on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention". If all OR and other unsuitable info is removed and there's not even enough left for a stub, it can be redirected to dextromethorphan. But I find that highly unlikely. It's an encyclopedic topic; deletion is not required just because the article has problems. delldot | talk 20:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Rewrite and Merge with Dextromethorphan. Wikipedia is not censored but a how-to on OTC drug abuse is carrying things a bit far. Finding reliable, verifiable sources that don't read like OR or copyvio for the subject matter as it stands now would be a good trick. Flakeloaf 23:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Addendum But then again the sources can be OR, and if they're reliable (Erowid is arguably reliable) then a rewrite for tone should solve our problems nicely by creating a solid section to merge with DXM. Flakeloaf 23:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • No opinion as I'm now involved in editing this article. There's a lot of good information there; merging it with Dextromethorphan would make that article too long and draw undue attention to the drug's recreational usage. Flakeloaf
  • The reasons for deleting the article exceed the simple low quality of its content, although I haven't properly stated that. Cleaning up the article will only produce a copy of the Dextromethorphan recreational use section. It simply isn't warranted to have two articles that describe a single drug. Although the LSD article may contain similar information on abuse (a point stated above), there is still only one article, rather than one describing the medical use and one describing the recreational use. If the non-medical article were stripped down to only valid, verifiable data, and rewritten so as not to be a "how-to" on abuse, what's left would be information that is already contained in the existing "Recreational use" section of the main Dextromethorphan article. Even the recreational information in the Dextromethorphan article is largely unsourced, although I feel much of it is worthy of being left in since it is largely common knowledge, and its lack of reliable sources is only due to its lack of proper public studies. In other words, clean up the non-medical use article, and you'll be left with the dextromethorphan article's "recreational use" section. A separate article for that purpose is simply redundant, and does nothing more than create a dumping ground for tips on abuse and more unverified information. Equazcion 03:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - If cleaning up in this manner does produce a duplicate, I'd suggest a merge and redirect. That way it wouldn't have to be deleted, and the potentially valuable history 2 year old would be left intact. Also, folks that come back looking for the old article will still be directed to a useful article. Redirects are cheap, there's no reason to delete outright here. (For the record, though, I still think there's enough here to merit a separate article). delldot | talk 03:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge delete or rewriteMerge-- better suited for Dextromethorphan delete--Copyright violation and OR Rewrite-- need i say more? Maverick423 18:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Does anyone have any specific complaints? Maverick said that there's copyright violations, original research, and bad writing. Would someone point these out specifically so that I can fix them? Jolb 22:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • My earlier OR claim was unfounded; the article carries numerous links to apparently-reliable sources. Erowid, though far from ideal, could be thought of as a reliable source for reasons that are out of scope for this discussion. "Bad writing" ranges from inappropriate use of SI abbreviations ("mgs") to comparisons with other illegal drugs that are probably outside of the average reader's sphere of knowledge. I have some free time tomorrow to change this article's tone a bit, assuming someone else doesn't beat me to it. Flakeloaf 23:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I've added a few 'Citation Needed' tags and will continue to do so. Take a look through the article to find them as those are examples of specific complaints. In response to Erowid being a reliable source, Erowid itself is a collection of articles written by the community and sometimes cited with reliable sources. However the specific article we're talking about is not Erowid but the DXM Faq written by William White, which originally had nothing to do with Erowid; it is just featured there now, among other places on the web. Much of White's research, while it may make sense, is based largely on original experiences reported in by people who emailed him their stories or posted on forum message boards. No one even knows who William White is, what his credentials are (if any), or even if that is his real name. I admit the lack of genuine legitimate studies in this field makes the task of separating reliable from unreliable information very ambiguous. However without reliable sources, the encyclopedic content drawn from the DXM Faq should be very limited, and again, I think what's in the main dextromethorphan article does that job already. I've been reading through the non-medical use article, and fixing it would mean rewriting it to basically look like the dextromethorphan article. The history section is perhaps the only significant thing this article adds, so maybe if everything else were eliminated we could re-title the article "History of recreational DXM use" and save it for that sole purpose. Any thoughts? Equazcion 00:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Or as a slightly different alternative, merge only the history section with the main dextromethorphan article, eliminating the remainder of the non-medical use article. Equazcion 00:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I think renaming it to a more specific topic might make it harder for others to add more info later on; I'd opt for leaving it at the more general title. delldot | talk 01:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • That's the point. Additional recreational use info would go to the main DXM article rather than a separate article, and the separate article would just be for history. Equazcion 01:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Re-post (delldot deleted it): I noticed that the dextromethorphan article is very poorly referenced. Now that delldot and I added a bunch of citations to this article, I think it would be better if the recreational section of dextromethorphan was cut down, and any useful there was incorporated here. There is a total of ONE citation in the entire Recreational use section of the Dextromethorphan article, so it seems to qualify as OR, whereas this cite is very well referenced. Jolb 01:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • If you check various other comments above you'll see that lack of references is just one of many reasons for possibly deleting the article.
  • Again, while the addition of references is a good step forward, references weren't the only problem with the non-medical use article. Equazcion 02:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Identify other problems and we'll fixed them as we go! Flakeloaf 21:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I did. Read everything I've already said above. Equazcion 02:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I've removed the cleanup tag as the article's quality has seen a vast improvement in the past couple of days. If the prospect of having the article deleted served as motivation for its improvement then it has served its purpose. I admit I'm not sure where that leaves us. I still feel merging is an option, as is making the article purely for the purpose of the history of recreational use, since the non-medical use's history section is still the main significant contribution that article serves. However as I see it, leaving the main DXM article as is, while simultaneously keeping the non-medical use article as a source of expanded recreational information, would be fine at this point. Please take a look through the 'newly renovated' Non-medical use of dextromethorphan and post your opinions on what should be done. Equazcion 15:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I've also proposed the deletion of Triple C in favor of replacing with a redirect to Non-medical use of dextromethorphan (assuming this article ends up staying) since all of its content has effectively been merged here already. It is also properly referenced here whereas the Triple C page contains no references. Equazcion 15:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I concur, the triple c article is HORRIBLE! Jolb 23:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep Reignbow 00:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Triple C Article Deletion: The 'proposed deletion' tag was deleted by a user so I've created a separate AfD (a page like this one to discuss deletion of an article). Please take a look at the Triple C article and go to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Triple C to post your opinions on whether or not it should stay. Thanks. Equazcion 01:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge and Redirect It is well-referenced but the article, at it's essence, is about the drug (without the drug, there could be no non-medical use). The info regarding use of the drug, regardless of prescription, should properly be on the page of said drug.--William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 01:24, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The argument against merging is that it would make the main DXM article too long. As it stands now, if the non-medical article were merged into the medical article, it would make the medical article contain more recreational content than medical content. However, after the redundant information between the two articles is eliminated, there wouldn't be much left to merge aside from that History section; hence my suggestion to make the Non-medical article for historical info only, changing its name to "History of recreational DXM use," and leave the other scientific recreational info in the main DXM article. Equazcion 03:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • My argument is that because the Recreational Use section of Dextromethorphan is so poorly written and poorly referenced, that section should be cut down. People will then click the "main article" link in that section and be directed to Non-medical use of dextromethorphan, which is more thorough, referenced more thoroughly (and therefore less OR), and more NPOV. Jolb 03:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The question of which to keep shouldn't regard the content itself but instead the merit of having two separate articles in the first place. Recreational use of a drug traditionally falls under the main article for that drug and not to a separate article. The history here may merit a separate article, but otherwise, there is no reason to have a separate article just to describe recreational use. Furthermore I don't think the Recreational Use section of Dextromethorphan is poorly written or poorly referenced. Even if both were true, it would be in the same state as the Non-medical article was just a couple of days ago, and similar corrections could be made there as they were here (and as far as references I've already done much of that). If it still needs additional references then please add appropriate cn tags, as was done for the Non-medical article before. The argument for keeping the Non-medical article was that a lack of references and poor writing is no reason for deleting an article, and the same holds true with the recreational section of the DXM article. Given the choice between fixing the recreational portion of the DXM article or simply eliminating it in favor of an outside article in order to correct the problem of it being poorly written/referenced, it makes much more sense to simply correct the recreational use section of the DXM article. There just isn't a need for an entire separate article about something that would normally be a section of another article.Equazcion 03:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Although, again, no merge at all would also be fine. Both could be kept, with the Non-medical use article as a source of expanded information on recreational use, for those who are interested, as it basically is currently. Now that the article has been fixed up I think that would be a legitimate option. Equazcion 03:48, 9 February 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.