Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Re-Romanization of English

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 delete. Johnleemk | Talk 15:15, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-Romanization of English

This is one Bulgarian academic's suggestion for a simplified spelling of English. The article cites its source (singular), but I still don't consider the proposal notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. Delete. Angr/talk 12:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

This deletion proposal is unsubstantiated; the original allegation that the article was a "nonnotable spelling reform suggestion" is now reduced to "I don't consider the proposal notable". The latter apparently derives from Angr's assessment of the system itself which however should not be a consideration. Far from proposing reforms, the article presents in Wikipedia a comprehensive, self-contained system of Roman spelling of the English language, reviewed and published by a respectable scientific journal. This surely makes it notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia. Whether one likes the system or not is quite irrelevant -- as is the presumed Bulgarian nationality mentioned above, one hopes. Apcbg 13:36, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The fact that the person who proposed the system is Bulgarian is indeed irrelevant. This system would be equally nonnotable if it had been made by a person of any other nationality. Angr/talk 13:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

• Delete, one publication does not establish notability. I haf spelink reform idiaz tu, but nobdié lists tu zem. Sandstein 15:04, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as per Sandstein Bhoeble 15:37, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. We already have orthographic rules for English. We don't need an encyclopedia article on a system of spelling that isn't used by native speakers. Brian G. Crawford 15:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete There is no evidence that this is more than an illustrative example for a single linguistics article, whose lesson is completely lost for lack of context in this one-sentence article. —Michael Z. 2006-03-18 15:59 Z
• Diyliyt. unremarkable summary of non-notable proposal in obscure venue Bucketsofg 17:06, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Dilliyt bikooz nn. Pavel Vozenilek 18:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete While English is a mess this proposal isn't notable. Personally I'm rooting for spelling in IPA. kotepho 18:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Has improved a little and our coverage of this subject is sorely lacking. Deleting this article isn't going to help either. It is troubling that I cannot find many references to people actually citing or discussing this particular proposal though. —kotepho 2006-03-20 21:25Z
• Deeleet, not notibl. Ths lks lyk inr cty slng spk 2 me. GrandmasterkaImage:Blend Flag.jpg^{Impart wisdom} 19:00, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Deeleet per Grandmasterka --Khoikhoi 22:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Don't like English spelling? Then make up your own Lingua Franca. Just don't write articles about not notable suggestions. Bobby1011 00:43, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: Non-notable. Anyone can throw together a list of spelling rules. Now, someone who compiled an entire dictionary, spent money to publish it, and wrote 10 000 articles on a new Wikipedia, then I'd call it notable. Peter Grey 04:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, although I could see a brief mention of the proposal at the spelling reform page. Smerdis of Tlön 06:27, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• keep, although I could see why this may be considered NN, does that mean as per above, we'll be deleting all the articles in English spelling reform or Category:English_spelling_reform? Roodog2k 15:14, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

English spelling reform is a wider term, and far more widely publicized. This is someone's individual idea that may have appeared in one publication. Grandmasterka 16:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see what you're saying. Never mind. I still say delete. Grandmasterka 16:40, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Please look at this quote (from Wikipedia talk:Fame and importance#No):

Jimbo Wales - 'fame' and 'importance' are not the right words to use, they are merely rough approximations to what we're really interested in, which is verifiability and NPOV. [...] Consider an obscure scientific concept, 'Qubit Field Theory' -- 24 hits on google. I'd say that not more than a few thousand people in the world have heard of it, and not more than a few dozen understand it. (I certainly don't.) It is not famous and it is arguably not important, but I think that no one would serious question that it is valid material for an encyclopedia. What is it that makes this encyclopedic? It is that it is information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an NPOV fashion.

Although this was about the use of the criterion "fame and importance", I feel this equally applies to notability. This was not thought up by some student in two days, and it is not about your next-door neighbour's dog. The article is not original research, it is verifiable, it gives a reasonably neutral point of view, what else do we need? David Deutsch himself may be famous (at least I'd heard of him) and L.L. Ivanov is not (at least I'd never heard of him), but I don't see how that would be an argument one way or another. I must add that I question the rationales given for some votes, which sound to me like "I don't like this spelling (or, I like another one more), so let's not include this." Lambiam^Talk 17:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Comment: Notability in linguistics is based on use, not on sketchy proposals. No matter how much people discuss a particular scheme, it's not 'real' until it's featured in some body of sample text. Peter Grey 19:30, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

My problem is not the merit of the orthographic scheme, but the lack of context. (For starters, we don't actually know that Ivanov didn't write the paper as a student, or in a rush, but it was published, so we can assume it has some merit.)

However, what of the transliteration scheme: was it presented in the paper as a proposed reform? Was this scheme even the topic of an article entitled "On the Romanization of Bulgarian and English", or simply an example to illustrate some linguistics principle? This WP article fails to mention its importance and intent; without finding the paper in a library, or having someone even quote from it, we have no way to judge its purpose or notability. Since it does not seem to be cited or mentioned anywhere else, there seems no reason to judge it as notable. We can't write a WP article about every entity mentioned in in an academic paper. —Michael Z. 2006-03-20 19:57 Z

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.