- Toki Pona (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (restore|AfD)
This article got deleted for non-notability. However, the following independent reliable sources establish its notability:
- Article about Toki Pona in The Globe and Mail
- Russian TV-show about conlangs (Toki Pona is presented from 9:22 to 13:41).
- Toki Pona article in the popular Serbian magazine Politikin Zabavnik
- Article about fast thinking in the popular Russian magazine Computerra, with six paragraphs about Toki Pona
- Esperanto - The New Latin for the Church and for Ecumenism - this book by Ulrich Matthias (translated into many language) mentions Toki Pona
Number 3 and 4 were considered in the deletion discussion, but apperently weren't enough to convince people of Toki Pona's reliability (maybe because they're not in English). Number 2 already existed at the time of the deletion discussion, but apperently wasn't known to anyone involved in the discussion, and hence wasn't considered. Number 1 only got published today.
The fact that Toki Pona has been mentioned in at least five independent reliable sources, of which two (number 1 and 2) cover it in much detail, should suffice for establishing its notability. Marcoscramer 16:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- Comment This seems like a classic case of more sources coming to light and clarifying the notability of a topic. However, I'd still be wary of simply undeleting the article, tacking on the source, and calling it a day, because most of the information in the article is unlikely to be supported by the sources. The article wasn't written using these sources, so it's a bit rough to cite it post hoc. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:37, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate/rewrite - Agree with what Night Gyr says above. If undeleted, I wouldn't be surprised if the links just ended up in a "References" section at the bottom and no real work was done to cite any information in the article. Rewriting the article using the sources seems like the best idea. I only know English, so I can't really say anything about the sources themselves.... Wickethewok 18:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate from scratch. I nominated it for deletion the first time due to non-notability and lack of verifiability; I'd say notability is comfortably satisfied now, and these sources look adequate to write a verifiable article, but the article should be rewritten to take advantage of these sources, rather than just having the sources tacked on, like Night Gyr mentioned. The now-deleted version is more-or-less completely OR. Ƙɽɨɱρᶓȶ 22:15, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- Comment I don't agree with a whole rewrite of the article - we should just restore it as it should never have been deleted in the first place, and those who have recently been on a deletion binge on subjects they know little about should be a bit more careful in the future. For us involved in IALs Toki Pona is an obviously notable language, but those who insisted on referring only to WP:NOTE due to a lack of knowledge of the IAL community should take note. The fact that an article on a language some deemed delete-worthy has appeared in Canada's largest newspaper is egg on their face, and really should serve to show that WP:NOTE is not sacred scripture. For those wishing to delete articles on IALs/conlangs in the future it would be best to join the group called Auxlang on Yahoo! Groups and ask there first. I'm writing this somewhat in irritation and I apologize for that, but I'm tired of people with no interest in IALs coming in and removing content / trying to delete pages on content that they know nothing about that people like myself have been so careful to write up in spite of the fact that content on IALs is very hard to come across in traditional sources. When content on IALs does not appear in these sources it is for two reasons: 1) the language is non-notable and an article on it can be deleted, or 2) the language is notable, but has been ignored by traditional media due to the subject of IALs as a whole not being newsworthy. I don't mind non-notable pages being deleted, but only if it's done by someone who understands the difference between 1) and 2), and there has been precious little of that of late. At the very least ask over at Portal:Constructed languages first. Mithridates 22:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- One more comment For those that understand German, there was an AFD for Toki Pona today and it looks like it's going to be kept. Interesting to see how they treat AFDs for these subjects compared to here and other languages. Mithridates 22:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- Not necessarily. It could just mean that the German article has better references to prove notability. And to think that anyone should join some Yahoogroup before they're allowed to touch conlang articles is just a slight smacking of WP:OWN.Corvus cornix 23:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- It doesn't smack of WP:OWN at all - I would suspect anyone who wanted to rewrite and delete articles they know nothing about without first consulting with people who know about the subject matter. That 'some Yahoogroup' is the main place to go for discussion on IALs, with people such as Don Harlow, the author of the Esperanto Book and the former president of the ELNA, someone whose opinion is definitely noteworthy on whether an IAL is notable or not. I'm saying this in order to help out for future reference - it's been obvious to people in the IAL community from the start that Toki Pona is notable, not so obvious to people that know nothing about IALs. I'm not a rabid inclusionist BTW and would support deletion/merging of all the Ido and Interlingua compared and other silly pages that were created last year. Mithridates 23:10, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- It's interesting how things can change though. I just had an image of Roman Wikipedians in the 1st century deleting the article on Ebionites (today's FA) as a non-notable subgroup of a non-notable religion. That tells me I need to get some more sleep. Okay, I'll try to stop commenting on this subject now. :) Mithridates 23:31, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
- Even a cursory check of http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona will reveal no references, just links, so I doubt "the German article has better references to prove notability." It is odd, in any case, that the notability of any topic should be decided by those unfamiliar with the subject. There are a lot of things I would consider "not notable" that an expert in the field might consider vital to a proper understanding of the field. Ansric 00:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- The fact that the article was previously deleted as unverifiable, and has now recieved sufficient coverage in reliable sources, is not "egg on our face." We (at en.wiki, at least) require already-extant reliable sources to work from, and if those sources don't exist, we can't write an article. Now that a reliable article verifying much of the details of Toki Pona has been published by a reputable newspaper (the two sources mentioned at the AfD were only quick passing mentions with little detail), along with the additional sources found by the DRV nominator above, now we can get started on a quality article. Ƙɽɨɱρᶓȶ 17:35, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- I beg to differ. The nomination for deletion has the following: "An apparently non-notable, web-based constructed language." The word 'apparently' there shows that the nominee knows very little about constructed languages. The 'egg on the face' comes precisely from the nominee not bothering to ask a single person involved in the field about whether a language is notable or not before nominating it for deletion. There was also no attempt to look any further into the Russian references or spend any more than a few hours ascertaining whether the language is notable or not. This lack of curiosity was the problem. The nominee also made the laughable assertion that "Additionally, the lack of reliable third-party sources makes it impossible to confirm crucial details such as the assertion that the language's creator Sonja Elen Kisa is actually a linguist, for instance, or to verify that the number of language speakers and "enthusiasts" is accurate", as if this alone were grounds for deletion. These are reasons for deleting _sections_ of a page, not the whole thing. Like I said, for anyone who knows anything about constructed languages it's been obvious from the start that Toki Pona is notable, and the failure of _anybody_ to ask _a single person_ actually involved in the field is, and remains, egg on their face. You don't see me going around trying to delete articles on 'apparently non-notable harpsichord models' or anything else I know nothing about. As I said before, I support the deletion of articles on non-notable languages. Next time it would be a good idea to do a bit of research beforehand on which is which, and we wouldn't have to go through all this. Mithridates 03:02, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate. I voted delete in the 2nd AfD. I agree there is now enough non-trivial coverage in reliable sources on which to base an article. There is deletion review if Mithridates feels any of the other articles in the "deletion binge" were improperly deleted. I suspect we agree that this was the most notable of the ones that were deleted (though we might disagree on which others cross the notability threshold). Most of the articles were tagged for notability for quite some time and a good-faith effort was made to find non-trivial coverage in reliable sources in all the AfDs I witnessed. As far as the German wikipedia, for better or for worse, different WPs have different standards. For example, as noted a year ago on Portal_talk:Constructed_languages by a user that's been in the inclusionist camp, the German WP "traditionally has been pretty biased towards auxlangs". Possibly, many of the articles that were recently deleted for lack of notability still exist on German WP. - Aagtbdfoua 02:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- Comment. Forgot to add, I think the previous revisions should be restored. In general, I think such revisions should be left deleted only if there's something horribly wrong with them (such as excessively spammy, promotional, BLP/COI problems, etc...). I don't think that's the case here. However, in my opinion, the self-published sources (such as the official site), should be used sparingly, perhaps to outline the syntax/grammar of the language, which is salient enough to the article, non-controversial, and hasn't been covered in the reliable sources. But these are just suggestions - I have little interest in a content dispute, and in any case, this isn't the venue to discuss article content. - Aagtbdfoua 02:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate. Notability satisfied. Susan Davis 03:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate. After seeing the links posted above, I believe we can write an article on the conlang with the sources provided there and see if anything from the deleted article could be useful. User:Zscout370 (Return Fire) 09:12, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate. I argued for deletion in the most recent AfD, but now believe notability has been established with the recent article in The Globe and Mail. -- Schaefer (talk) 20:20, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
- Restore. I did not know about the previous AfD in time to vote there, or I would have voted against it. Much work was put into Toki Pona, and the demand that it be recreated from scratch by those who know nothing about the language or indeed about constructed languages in general, and are not going to be involved in writing the article, is absurd, when all that is being requested is that it be edited somewhat to cite references. Additionally, the idea that 'notability' is established by journalists in the popular press, who are simply getting their information entirely from those of us in the online conlanging community in the first place - note the sneering tone in the AfD calling Toki Pona a "web-based" conlang - is even more absurd. Their editors are not the ones who are checking whether the content is accurate; we (the conlangers who discuss and maintain such "merely web-based" sources) are. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 06:23, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Additionally as a "notable source", a talk about Toki Pona was given by John Clifford at the recent 2nd Language Creation Conference, and will be available online soon. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 06:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
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- Concur entirely with Sai Emrys' two comments. Additionally on the credibility issue, one should note that in a well-designed conlang, an incredible amount of linguistic research and knowledge goes into it. It would have to, to keep you going for decades as some conlangers have done. Finally, what makes you think that if Tolkien were alive today, he wouldn't be using the web to maintain it? (Try accusing Quenya of not being "notable"....) Given the amount of paper notebooks he was forced to use for his conlangs and his concern about the destruction of nature, it would be the perfect choice. Twenex 08:32, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Comment: we should probably add a cite of the talk John Clifford gave last year, too, about "Semantic Primes", covering Toki Pona along with other noted lexically minimalist conlangs. --Jim Henry 17:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
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- Good point; I almost forgot! Here's the link to the video of it: [1]. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 17:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Restore. Notable, but I agree with comments on the AfD that the scholarliness of the article could probably stand to be improved. Then again, there are natural languages on WP that are significantly non-scholarly in presentation, but that's a fistfight for another day. Paul.w.bennett 13:06, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Undelete and edit to incorporate new information from and cites of new sources, and remove unverifiable statements if necessary (I didn't see the article's last version before its deletion so I don't know if there are any such). --Jim Henry 17:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- I was surprised when this was originally deleted, but looking at the Internet Archiver archive of it, it is true that the page has the appearance of relating to a non-notable constructed language. It is now apparent, however, that the language is in fact notable. I originally thought that it should just be recreated; upon examining the archive, however, I think that it should be undeleted and improved upon. There is plenty of good-quality linguistic information in the article; now just undelete it and add sources that verify its notability. --Iamunknown 17:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Request for extension - Admins, please extend this DR and temporarily restore the article in question, since we are now talking about whether it can be edited to cite sources or must be started over from scratch, and most of us don't have access to it currently to be able to make good comments about whether that can be done or not. Sai Emrys ¿? ✍ 17:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
- Comment - I have concerns about using conference talks as reliable sources. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting WP:RS, but the purpose is that a reliable source has an independent entity checking the facts of the author. For an academic article, this would be the peer review process. For a book, newspaper, or magazine, this is the editor. It's not clear to me who the independent entity would be for this conference (or for any conference). The point is moot for Toki Pona, but I would hesitate to create an article for Kelen, Glossotechnia, or Tenata based on the Google video. Sai or Jim, you were there - out of curiosity, how many attendees did you get, and who selected the speakers? - Aagtbdfoua 00:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- Disregard my question, I found the handout here. [[2]] Unless I'm miscounting, looks like 36 registered attendees, 12 of whom were speakers at the conference - and some of the others might have been on the panel. I also now see that Kēlen does have a WP article, based solely on the conference talk. I guess we'll continue the discussion there. (Please don't be offended, as I assure you, if I were in the Bay Area, there would have been 37 attendees. But this really doesn't look like an appropriate source for an encyclopedia article.) - Aagtbdfoua 01:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- More people showed up than were pre-registered, and some who pre-registered didn't come; Sai can give you a more nearly exact count, I reckon -- but it was a small conference. Do you mean that a talk at a conference like this is not reliable enough to base an entire article on (not necessary since we have several other sources) or so unreliable it shouldn't be cited at all? --Jim Henry 14:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
- Certainly Glossotechnia is too new and obscure to merit a WP article, and the same may be true of Tenata as far as I know; but Kēlen has had an article for a couple of years based on its fame within the conlang community. In any case the talks about Toki Pona and those about K%C4%93len or Tenata are different in kind -- the latter were given by the language's creators, explaining the unusual structure of those languages, and the former was given by someone other than the creator, describing the social history of the Toki Pona speaker community. --Jim Henry 15:08, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
- Restore original article, including history, to a visible location in order to allow us to use some of the original article's better points; and then recreate. Queerwiki 16:40, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- Recreate with history restored. From reports here the last good version of the article was more like a guide to the language, but some of it may be salvageable (I hate guessing like this, why can't the history be restored for the DRV if there are no pressing issues such as BLP?). Also, a small point, I'm assuming the most recent version deleted was better than the one deleted in 2005. --Dhartung | Talk 17:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- Comment. Hey, it'd be really nice if someone informed the closing admin when a DRV is started! Especially if commenters in the DRV are going to imply that the closing admin (that would be me) didn't do any research when closing the AfD, or imply that I don't know anything about the subject. Ooh, and I see the article was also restored on June 20 without contacted me, and the summary stated "deletion was admin's abuse of power"; nice communication there. Anyway, we have two English language sources here--the Globe and Mail article gives the language non-trivial coverage, but Ulrich Matthias only gives trivial coverage to Toki Pona. I can't evaluate the Russian or Serbian sources, and I don't see that anyone else in this discussion has demonstrated that they give non-trivial coverage. Still, with the Globe and Mail article I'll agree that we have enough to establish notability. There's not really a problem with restoring the history, in my opinion. And if someone had contacted me to inform me about the Globe and Mail article and asked for the history to be restored, I probably would have done it. --Akhilleus (talk) 23:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- Response to Comment My apologies - I did not understand how to interpret the deletion log to come to the conclusion you were the closing admin. I merely posted the info on the talk page and another admin started the DRV. Queerwiki 00:39, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
- Restore the article. It will quickly be edited to include these sources and to make it more encyclopedic. There's no benefit starting over from scratch unless the article was irremediably bad. Foobaz·o< 01:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
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