Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Slovio (2nd nomination)

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 delete. There are strong arguments for deletion that don't seem to be addressed by those arguing to keep. No reliable sources have been presented to show verifiability. --Coredesat 07:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Slovio

Slovio (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This is a second nomination; the first nomination was closed as Keep, even though there were pretty strong arguments for deletion. The subject of the article is a constructed language, which fails notability guidelines (WP:N). I can understand that the subject may seem worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia to enthusiasts of conlangs, such as Esperanto or Novial. However, Esperanto has its own culture with many thousands of speakers and activists; it also has its own literature and music scene. Novial, while not as popular as Esperanto, is the creation of a notable linguist, Otto Jespersen. Slovio, on the other hand, seems to be a project which is developed and used only on http://www.slovio.com and the related family of websites - http://www.slavsk.com/ , http://www.panslavia.com/ , http://www.zvestia.com/ and a few others, which all look very similar, as if they were designed by the same person. I found it mentioned on a few blogs, but i couldn't find that it is used by anyone for actual communication. I couldn't find any other significant primary sources for it (see also Talk:Slovio#Usage and validity of external links). Amir E. Aharoni 12:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

• comment/context - The page on the language's creator, Mark Hucko, survived an AfD on 7 Mar 07. An article on another of his inventions, Multi-level Cosmology, was speedy-deleted by author request and community consensus in Feb 07. What I get from those two discussions is that there's something similar to a walled garden built around a "polymath" and his various inventions. So, while I'd be okay with a keep if someone can provide an assertion of notability from an external source that does not accept submissions from people promoting their own invented language, I'm not sure we can find it. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 16:59, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep – While I'm not a great fan of Slovio myself, I still don't think Slovio's notability as a constructed language can be denied. Granted, the primary websources for it are most clearly related and probably the worik of one and the same person. That, however, is not an argument for deletion; all it means is that the language is well-marketed. Googling for Slovio turns up 159,000 hits. Among these are not only the aforementioned websites and references to wikipedia articles, but also numerous mentionings on other places. I don't have the time to delve for press articles and the like, but I am aware of a few scientific references and press articles. Besides, let's face it, Slovio is very well-known. It does have a community of speakers and is probably the most successful international auxiliary language ever created during the last 30 years or so. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 09:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Oh, but you do have to "delve for press articles and the like", because without them the article is absolutely worthless. And the press articles that you find must not look like "press releases" saying that Slovio is a constructed language created by Mark Hucko and that anyone who knows any Slavic language can easily understand it.

159,000 Google hits by themselves prove nothing. I have yet to see any proof that anyone actually wrote anything in Slovio without simply copying examples from slovio.com . --Amir E. Aharoni 09:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

How 'bout this? http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/tilman.berger/Publikationen/BergerPlansprachen.pdf Published, scientific, and in German! —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 12:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't know German so well, but i understand that this is a summary of several projects whose aim is creating a constructed languages on a Slavic basis. From what i understood Slovio is regarded the most important of those projects because it has the biggest network of websites that support it and have their own domains (not free hosting like geocities.com). The problem is that those websites are all inter-related and look as they are just parts of one big website.

The part in this German paper with the details about Slovio (page 4 ff.) mostly quotes the slovio.com website and presents quotes in Latin and Cyrillic Slovio copied from it. The author of the paper is not even sure who Hucko is - he writes "scientist and linguist" in double quotes.

However, i may have missed something. Does it present anything else that proves that Slovio is actually used anywhere else except that family of websites? --Amir E. Aharoni 13:03, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Slovio is used, that much I know. I've no idea how many actual users there are, probably no more than 100 or so, but that is pretty impressive for an IAL anyway. Keep in mind that only Esperanto, Interlingua and Ido can boast a number of >1000 users. Even a language like Volapük has only 25 speakers or so.

BTW, a few other links: http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Slovio/ (I don't know if this is of any use here) and http://www.obywatel.org.pl/_old/index.php?menu=1&curnumer=21 . The latter appear to be a Polish magazine, feature an article under the title Gdy Slovio staje się ciałem by Bartosz Chrząszczak. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 13:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Mmm, Polish ... I learnt it very well when i visited Poland 17 years ago, but forgot it a bit. Here's what i can make of that article without a dictionary: "Może już za kilkanaście lat powstaną pierwsze telewizyjne kanały informacyjne, filmowe i muzyczne z programami w języku Slovio." = "Maybe in a few years there will be established informational, musical and movie TV channels with programs in Slovio language." Just like the article says: Maybe. When that happens, Slovio surely will deserve its place in Wikipedia. But today Wikipedia cannot be the only reference on this language except slovio.com. That's what Langmaker is for.

As for the websters-online-dictionary link - see my comment at Talk:Slovio#Usage and validity of external links.

Until there is any proof, i consider this language to be used by nobody except the guy who wrote the slovio.com family of websites.

Slovio is nowhere near Esperanto or even Ido in notability. 1000 is just the number of denaskuloj and many thousands of other people learned it as a second language. There are Esperanto groups in many countries and a significant body of literature in and about it. Esperanto has many flaws, but its notability is absolutely undeniable and absolutely incomparable to Slovio's. --Amir E. Aharoni 14:24, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Amir, I guess this means that one of the argumnts you're making for this article's deletion is "Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day"? I'm just trying to clarify your position. For me personally, if I knew more about that Polish article, and saw other articles like it, perhaps I'd be satisfied of Slovio's notability - though, then again, perhaps I'm wrong because a language can't be notable if nobody speaks it except the author. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 16:58, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes - WP:MADEUP is certainly one of my arguments.

That Polish article is very short (at least from what i can read online). It is not about Slovio - it is about multi-national television networks and their influence on culture. Al-Jazeera is one of the examples there, but i don't think that being mentioned in the same sentence with Al-Jazeera is by itself a proof of Slovio's notability. Much more articles like it could change my mind though.

The interesting question is where did the writer of the Polish article first found out Slovio. I suspect that he - like us - may be an Internet enthusiast and that he just found out about it on Wikipedia. This article has existed here since 2002 and that may have done the damage by making it more popular! And it also appears in {{Slavic languages}}, which may have made the damage even worse. This doesn't mean that the damage should go on being made. --19:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought about it a little, and decided that the work done on Slovio is probably too complicated and thorough to be simply categorized as WP:MADEUP. A dictionary of several thousands of words was certainly not made up in one day.

Nevertheless, it badly fails the tests for sourcing, verifiability and notability. --Amir E. Aharoni 20:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

• Delete. There are no real references that demonstrate its notability. fraggle 11:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment - Some thoughts: Slovio is probably the best-known Slavic constructed language but I haven't seen much activity from it lately and if you look at the main page for the language a lot of the links have now disappeared and lead to nowhere. If the author really is notable it might be best to delete the page and merge it into his. If not then his page should be nominated for deletion as well. There's also that tiny Slavopedia project page on Metawiki to think about, also written in Slovio. Last thought on the matter: I doubt any of the IAL Wikipedias (Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua) will ever delete a page on some of the IALs being deleted here, so if they all vanish on the English version (and other Wikipedias) it'll be an IAL itself that'll have to be read in order to get information about these languages. Mithridates 16:57, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Mithridates - thanks for your comment. I am aware of the Slavopedia on meta and also of the fact that this article here has many interwiki links. I'll deal with them in due time. This is not to say that i am waiting for this article to be deleted so i'd be able to tell all the other Wikipedias: "Hey, this was deleted from en-wiki, so you must delete it too." I actually wouldn't mind if this article will not be deleted - but someone would have to provide really good proof of notability.

I think that there were precedents of articles about conlangs that were deleted from conlang Wikipedias, but i can't recall an example. --Amir E. Aharoni 19:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep there is similarly a discussion for deletion of the article on the author, [1] and I see this unfortunately ending in a decision to delete both of them--there seems to be material to support one article, merging the one into the other. I hope th closing is coordinated. Of the two, I think there material is better here. DGG (talk) 18:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

comment - DGG, I always respect the opinions you provide at AfD. I still haven't made a vote yet. Though, if Mark Hucko's claim to fame is that he made some things up, and if Slovio is one of the things he made up and has no notability except for how much he promotes it, why not delete both? I beg those people who state that "Slovio is a well-known constructed language" to please take a minute to put some external independent third-party verifiable references in the article, so that we could see them and end this discussion - if that's what we should be doing. I wouldn't like to delete an article on a notable subject, especially when the subject's creator's article is also being deleted - but I also don't believe Wikipedia's about taking someone's word for it without verification. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 19:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• weak keep - I think the use of Slovio in Slavopedia might qualify this as "notable"; if any pidgin spoken by a few hundred islanders in the Pacific, with no established literature, is notable, then why not this too? I may still change my vote, though. Must check to make sure more than one person has contributed to Slavopedia. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 20:13, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Your arguments are fair and careful, but bear in mind that reference to a sister project is against WP:SELF. I have to agree that it does prove that a couple of people wrote a few lines of Slovio by themselves - User:Kpjas and ru:User:Ramir. I asked for their opinions.

Anyway, it's really hard to accept this as the only reference. --Amir E. Aharoni 22:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm okay with bending the rules for topic categories that have very little supporting them, in the interest of doing no harm. If it smells like something that could satisfy notability guidelines for something in that category, that is; this is starting to acquire a good smell. If only 3 people have learned it well enough to post messages in it, that's good for me. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 13:59, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

If you ask me, the inclusion of Slovio in Category:Slavic languages and a link to it from {{Slavic languages}} is harm. Wikipedia is the only important website where people interested in Slavic languages can find out about Slovio, so my guess - until someone proves the opposite - is that most of the (few) people who did discover Slovio, discovered it on Wikipedia. This would be OK, if the existence of Slovio would also be published beforehand in some obscure, but scientific magazine, but i am not sure that it ever happened.

IJzeren Jan posted a link to a paper in German, which looks like it was published in a scientific magazine. That paper is from 2004, according to the PDF properties. It cites slovio.com as the source (unless i missed something else - i don't know German well), but the guy who wrote could have discovered it through Wikipedia. If that indeed happened, it makes the whole thing even worse.

Wikipedia shouldn't be the first place where such ideas are published.

The fact that the article exists since 2002 doesn't make the article more legitimate, but it does make the harm in its existence worse and harder to reverse. --Amir E. Aharoni 14:25, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"Wikipedia shouldn't be the first place where such ideas are published." - too true, and you won't find anyone who hates the use of Wikipedia as a promo tool any more than me. But, it's happened. And also, true that someone should try to offer some independent sources here! I might still change my vote to delete if that doesn't happen. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 15:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep Not acquainted with a Slavic based international auxiliary languate (or "artificial language"). As with Esperanto, genuine linguist-created languages are notable, and an aid to other linguists. No reason to delete this. Mandsford 01:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment - There is no proof whatsoever that its creator actually is a certified linguist - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Hucko (2nd nomination).

Also see above for reasons that this language cannot be compared to Esperanto, even though Zamenhof was not a linguist.

There's a good place for non-notable artificial language - Langmaker. --Amir E. Aharoni 05:06, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

• Placeholder Neutral opinion. --Dweller 12:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment I have requested that the AfD on Hucko himself is closed as premature, pending the conclusion of this AfD. If this is closed as nn / delete, it would make keep comments at that AfD difficult to justify and I'd be happy if Hucko was prodded. If this AfD is closed as keep once more, I think it would significantly impact on editors' opinions regarding Hucko's notability. Having both processes parallel makes things murky. To keep matters centralised, please comment on this at the Hucko AfD, rather than here. --Dweller 12:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

It may be more fair for Amir to withdraw this AfD (under WP:SNOW or whatever). After all, by his own assertion, there is less proof of the existence of Hucko than there is proof of the existence of Slovio. Also, his argument that Wikipedia doesn't present any independent proof of Hucko's existence puts the Hucko article on very shaky ground, I think. AllGloryToTheHypnotoad 14:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

• delete - Google turns up only 13 results for "slavio constructed language"(with out inverted commas), to distinguish from "slavio" which yields 300,000+. Though, I do question what has changed since the lastm nomination, and the principle of "stare decisis" implies that a decision that has already been made should be let to stand.martianlostinspace 21:51, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Could this possibly be because you have misspelled "Slovio" as "Slavio"? Liam Proven 02:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice, idea, but no... [2] martianlostinspace ^{email me} 23:48, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

When correcting your "slavio" to "slovio", then Google turns up more than 3,100 results — that's about 6 times as much as the same search turns out for Novial, more than 3 times as much as for Ido, 5 times as much as for Volapük, etc. — so Slovio certainly is one of the more well-known constructed languages in the world. Please don't try to jinx your results. From my own experience I would not say that it's more popular than Ido or Volapük, but definitely more so than, say, Novial or Solresol. The mere fact that there are hardly and independent sources online or printed cannot be the sole reason for deleting this entry. Where does this anti-conlang hype come from, all of a sudden?! If you'd let some experts on constructed languages decide, no sane expert would exclude Slovio because it's "non-notable" (which it is not, by definition). Will write more tomorrow... — N-true 00:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep - it is notable, scholarly, detailed and refers to something generally known from other places and sources. Liam Proven 02:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment: What other places and sources? --Amir E. Aharoni 04:56, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

• Delete undistinguished personal project, no evidence of notability. Wile E. Heresiarch 17:32, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Let Hucko do his self-promotion on his own website. Friday (talk) 22:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Your judgement is on the base of your thinking that Mark Hucko has created and written the article on his own. This is, obviously, not the case. So your statement doesn't make much sense. It could, if at all, be related to the article Mark Hucko only. — N-true 00:19, 3 August 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.