Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Steamroller (pipe)

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 transwiki to Wiktionary, then DELETE. --VS ^talk 10:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Steamroller (pipe)

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

Another pipe for smoking which is not all that notable and lacks anything other than original research. Suggest removal on grounds of both (lack of) notability and verifiability. Delete. Coccyx Bloccyx (talk) 23:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

• Keep as it is not original research and looks notable to me, though nowhere near as chillum23:14, 10 January 2008 (UTC). Thanks, SqueakBox
  • At your own leisure, please identify the reliable publications about this subject and explain how the article is not original research. Thank you, Coccyx Bloccyx (talk) 23:18, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - Yes the article is unsourced, but a search for "Steamroller Pipe" brings up 78k Ghits, and the entire first page is about the pipe. There's no question this is a legitimate article. Torc2 (talk) 00:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
  • The entire first page is a mirror of this version of the Wikipedia article, as it says outright. Counting Google hits is not research. Research involves actually reading what the search engine turns up. There is very much a question of the legitimacy of this article. It has been asserted that this subject is undocumented and thus the article is original research and unverifiable. You haven't cited a single source that documents this subject, yet. Search results are not sources. Uncle G (talk) 00:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
    • I don't get that result. I see the Wiki article as the second entry, but the rest are all different sites - usually stores (no surprise) - that at least demonstrate that the term is in common use. At the very least, I don't see 78,000 copies of this same article. "Counting Google hits is not research" - I don't know what essay that's from, but it's a faulty argument. The search wasn't intended to verify the content of the article, just verify the object exists and the term is in wide usage, which is all that's required to stop the AfD. Torc2 (talk) 00:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
      • It's a quite correct argument. You are not doing research, in any way, shape or form. You are merely counting Google hits. That is not research. It is the flawed and long-since discredited Google test, that doesn't prove a thing.

        Moreover: That you saw this article as the second result does not change what comes up as the first result. Despite my saying that research involves actually reading what the search engine turns up, you apparently have still not actually read the first page that your search turns up, to see that it is indeed an out-of-date Wikipedia mirror, as it openly states.

        Verification that something exists that is not what is required at AFD. What are required to make a valid keep argument at AFD, rebutting arguments that an article is unverifiable and original research, are sources, per deletion policy. That the object exists is irrelevant, and is not a valid argument. The plot of grassland to the west of my house exists. Despite the fact that I mentioned our Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research policies, the only counter to which is to show that sources exist, you have still to make a valid argument that holds water, have still to cite even a single source, and have still to make any case at all for keeping the article. You are propounding several of the classic fallacies, instead. Please learn to not repeat these long-since-debunked and fallacious arguments at AFD. Once again: Counting Google hits is not research, and search results are not sources. Please familiarize yourself with our deletion and content policies.

        Sources! Sources! Sources! Uncle G (talk) 02:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

        • From the essay you linked: "Search engines can: Confirm roughly how popularly referenced an expression is". Sounds like it's doing all I said it was doing. For that matter, nothing on the page you linked said the results were totally useless, just that they can't be relied on alone to prove anything. Incidentally, a google search for "The plot of grassland to the west of Uncle G's house" only returns one hit, and that's back to here, so that's really not an accurate comparison. Do you have any external sources to prove it exists? Torc2 (talk) 02:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

comment - Sourced. Torc2 (talk) 06:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

• Merge // Liftarn (talk)
• Keep. It's got sources, enough at least to prove existence and notability.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. The sources cited in the article fall into one of two categories: (1) they do not meet our standards for reliable sources and/or (2) they are not sources at all, just mere dictionary definitions. For example, one of the Google book searches links to "The Complete Drug Slang Dictionary" by Emmanuel Frost, and all it says about the subject is "pipe used to smoke marijuana". The marijuana.com citation should be removed post haste as well, it is just a Google scraper. The erowid page is a user-submitted essay about their own personal drug experience and happens to mention the pipe in passing. How exactly is this useful information? RFerreira (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

• The sources are reliable, they're just not scholarly. Who would you trust on an article describing a cannabis pipe, a Harvard sociology profession, or somebody who was probably baked as they wrote it? The sources, including the one deleted (which I disagree with), show beyond the threshold of verifiability that the pipe exists and is in common usage. Torc2 (talk) 23:05, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

• Interesting discussion. Transwiki to wikionary. The sources seem reliable, but essentially provide a dict-def, which is all this article is (plus a one-sentence "how-to"). That the thing is defined does not make it (a) notable, (b) encyclopedic. Kudos on the sourcing however - they are good sources for the definition, on a topic that I would imagine is hard to find reliable sources. Pastordavid (talk) 02:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
• Merge to Smoking pipe (non-tobacco) and Transwiki to Wiktionary. Let's look at the references provided in the article now (version). The first reference (to marijuana.com) is a web site search; the results of this search seem to be hits against forum entries, which are not (in this case) reliable sources. The second and third references are another matter; these are to published books (not self-published, I believe) and they are sufficient to satisfy verifiability of the meaning of the term, but not sufficient to support the full content of the article or the notability of the topic. The last reference (erowid) is really interesting, is likely factual and accurate, but does not meet the standard of Wikipedia reliable sources, I'm sorry to say. Thus, we have a term that we know is used in the subculture, which we know the rough meaning of, and which use is supported by reliable sources. This spells two fates - a wiktionary entry and a list entry. My recommendation regarding process: I would tag the article with {{Copy to Wiktionary}}, merge the verifiable content to the target noted at the beginning of this comment, and once the copy-to-Wikt is done, convert the article to a redirect tagged with {{R from merge}}. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:00, 18 January 2008 (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.