Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Year 32,768 problem

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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, as merge seems to be the consensus. Anyone want to volunteer to merge these pages together? Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 19:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Year 32,768 problem

Year 32,768 problem (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Also:

Year 65,536 problem (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Year 292,277,026,596 problem (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)
Year 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 problem (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

I remember many years ago solving the problem of why $42,949,672.96 had gone missing from a bank account. The Year 32,768 problem article is the same - a totally non-notable, joke example of arithmetic overflow. And it does not even explain it very well. -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 19:59, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment. Y 10K is also at AfD at the moment. -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 20:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom, especially considering that the universe itself won't be around for last two. Possibly worth a mention in Year 2038 problem, but I don't think it's worth a redirect. Tevildo (talk) 20:25, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete as non-notable joke, with no prejudice for recreation once the year 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 gets closer. (Can we call this WP:CRYSTAL in the extreme?) Redfarmer (talk) 20:34, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete On Wikipedia, jokes in article are generally considered VANDALISM. Wikipedia does not tolerate vandalism. If the whole article is vandalism, it must be deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radman622 (talk • contribs) 20:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep 292,... as redirect to year 2038 problem (where it's been for over a year until vandalised edited, delete all the rest. Speedy delete 170,... as nominated elsewhere by Voortle, its creator. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 20:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete and add as a minor section in actual problems.--Him and a dog 20:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge to an omnibus year rollover problem page, per User:EncMstr's suggestion on the Y10K AfD--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge per NapoliRoma. I had the same thought but you beat me to the save page button. hateless 21:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: It wasn't at all clear to me that the link from Year 65,536 problem to here was not an error. Is it standard procedure to link the text "this article" to an AfD page of another name?--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:34, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Often, a group AfD is linked to a description of articles proposed for deletion, but sometimes it's linked to a typical article in the group. See Template:AfD footer (multiple). — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
      • Just a thought, then: I think it would be clearer if, when an article's AfD header links to a different article's AfD discussion, that the linked text reflect that, so the reader knows something out of the ordinary is going on -- so in this case, something like "the entry for Year 32,768 problem" instead of "this article's entry". (PS: "footer"??)--NapoliRoma (talk) 21:53, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Redirect all and merge to year 2038 problem, per Arthur Rubin and Tevildo. Granted, 170... and 292... are of dubious value, but a redirect would elliminate future problems. At least redirect 10k - 65k which are pretty valid redirects, just not articles. Pharmboy (talk) 22:20, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge all to computer year storage rollover problem... perhaps also Y2K. 132.205.44.5 (talk) 22:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong delete. Not notable as its own article, but should be mentioned somewhere else nonetheless. Malinaccier (talk) 00:42, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    ...which is to say, "merge"?--NapoliRoma (talk) 00:55, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    Actually, it could be merge, but I think not. "Not notable as its own article, but should be mentioned somewhere else nonetheless." does not necessarily mean any of the (less than one sentence) of content should be merged. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 01:05, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    I was thinking of it being something like homeopathic dilution -- the article would be merged into the new article, but its content then removed, so only the essence of the original article would remain... .
    More seriously, the significant difference to me between "delete" and "merge" would be that the redirect from the old article would be retained.--NapoliRoma (talk) 01:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
    There are multiple options. Delete and redirect, redirect, or merge (include information and then replace with a redirect) are all possible. Include information and then delete or merge and delete redirect appear to violate GFDL. (merge, replace with redirect, and move the redirect to Wikiepdia-space for reference, then delete that redirect is an allowable outcome.) — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Ok, I will bite. How does merge and delete redirect violate the GFDL? Inquiring minds want to know. Pharmboy (talk) 02:20, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • GFDL requires that the "authors" (handles, at least) of the information be accessable. If, say RightGot said:

The year 32,768 problem is a software bug that may occur in 32,768.

and that appeared in the new article. See, for example, Wikipedia:Merge#Full-content paste merger. One acceptable alternative is for the edit history of this article be copied to the talk page of the merged article. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 02:30, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • comment Or change to redirects and leave histories intact on the redirect pages, which is the easiest. As long as the information is accessible via knowing what is redirected to the page, then it passes. That is a rather odd effect of the GFDL, I must admit. And what about pages that are deleted? They were distributed and now the authors information is removed with the content? More technical but once you have distributed the info, you are bound by the license, even if you delete it later, correct? Pharmboy (talk) 15:52, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment This is pretty much where I was going, without knowing about the GFDL wrinkle: the most appropriate handling of a "delete...but should be mentioned somewhere else" outcome is to retain the old article's name as a redirect to "somewhere else", thus preserving its history and original content. Which is to say, "merge", at least according to what I thought the common definition of merge is.--NapoliRoma (talk) 18:12, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge per NapoliRoma digital_me 00:07, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge per NapoliRoma. They are, at least, notable memes. expensivehat (talk) 19:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Question: if the consensus on this were to be "merge", what's the followup process? Seems like the "delete" and "keep" process would be pretty straightforward and instantaneous, but someone would have to do some real work for the merge, and a name for the merged document would need to be chosen. I'd be glad to volunteer to take a hack at creating such a page, but would also welcome insights into what its name should be.--NapoliRoma (talk) 20:15, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge. Although probably not notable enough for an article, it looks to me to be something which is not just a joke, but real -- at least to those of us who tend to think like mathematicians. Here, for example, is a source about it. Probably not a sufficiently reliable source etc. but this is just to show that it's not just something somebody made up for Wikipedia. Donald Knuth talked about similar things in at least one of his books on computing: possibly not this problem, but similar ones, including some far in the future. In reply to Pharmboy: when it was distributed, the author information should have been distributed with it, shouldn't it? So then it could be deleted from this site and that would be OK. Just my opinion on GFDL. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge per NapoliRoma's suggestion. I can see the point of an article on rollover years generally, but giving these "problems" their own articles is just silly. Hut 8.5 21:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Speedy delete - look at the other contributions by this editor. It's a Troll. andy (talk) 23:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Because I moved an article an spacecraft from "manned" to "human" saying that "manned" was sexist, andyjsmith is refering to me as a troll. RightGot (talk) 23:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
  • No, it's because almost every edit you've made so far is trivial at best and disruptive at worst. You've created a massive number of edits for responsible editors to check through. This article is an example. andy (talk) 00:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
  • nth merge to an omnibus year rollover problem page since as time passes, there will always be other problem years/dates identified, which are not notable enough to warrant their own articles. Travellingcari (talk) 03:39, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge ... I would suggest that there should be some cross-linkage between software bug or unusual software bug and these articles, because the Y2K problem is not mentioned or cross-referenced from either of these. The common types of software bugs section in the former article deals with technical and logic causes, but my feeling is that there should be an orthogonal set of 'functional types', one of which would be the 'calendrical problems' that are the subject of these articles. There are lots of other related types which aren't specifically related to software, such as temperature problems (a thermometer designed for a temperate environment will be challenged by use in an arctic or desert environment) and speed problems (most older cars could go faster than their speedometers could display). This doesn't help much in reaching a specific merger solution, but I thought I would articulate a few things that were on my mind about this issue. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:27, 20 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.