Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amendment to allege use

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 keep‎. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 11:23, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment to allege use

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Fails GNG and NOTDICT. The article subject is a legal term of art describing a procedure in trademark practice in the United States. The sources added by James500 are either how-to guides or forms for lawyers, continuing legal education materials (which are generally just collections of primary sources [e.g., statutory materials or regulations] or outlines), or trivial mentions. I conducted a BEFORE search via Google scholar and Google books found no SIGCOV of this concept in a way that would allow this article to be other than a definition or how-to page. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Satisfies GNG easily and by an exceptionally wide margin. There is a very large number of independent reliable sources, that run to at least several hundred pages of significant coverage (WP:SIGCOV). As far as I can see, the nominator's description of the sources in the article, and the many other sources in Google Books, is not accurate and/or not relevant to GNG. For example the nominator has claimed that some of the sources are just "forms for lawyers". That is not true. They are actually collections annotated forms. While the forms themselves were drafted by the government, the "annotations" in the books are an independent commentary, written by independent authors working for independent commercial or academic/university publishers who are independent of the government. For another example, GNG says nothing about "how-to guides", even if that description was accurate. On the face of it, "how-to guides" count towards GNG. The information in such guides can be rewritten in an encyclopedic form, like any other information. I have not seen any evidence that all of the sources consist entirely of copies of government publications. There is a lot of coverage that professes to be original. I did put text from the some of the sources, such as the IPL Newsletter and some of the Practising Law Institute books, into Google's search engine, and some of the material did appear to be demonstrably original, inasmuch as the search engine did not return any government publications for the text in question. Further, I do not understand how the nominator could have read the entirety of at least several hundreds of pages of books most of which are in "snippet view". Snippet view doesn't let you see the whole of the book, and while large portions of a book can be read, it is a slow and difficult process to read them. The article is capable of being expanded beyond a definition, therefore it does not violate NOTDICT. The article subject is a legal document and the legal procedure for using that document. A document is not a "term of art". It is a physical object. It is a piece of paper with writing on it. It is not "just a term". Similarly the procedure is physical act done by human beings, which is not a "term" either. James500 (talk) 04:28, 11 July 2023 (UTC) The policy WP:NOTDICTIONARY says "articles that contain nothing more than a definition should be expanded with additional encyclopedic content. If they cannot be expanded beyond a definition, Wikipedia is not the place for them." That means that we expand definition articles, instead of deleting them. James500 (talk) 20:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per WP:NOTDICT. Perhaps it could be rewritten to be more encyclopedic and more than just a definition, but until that happens, I don't think there's anything here worth keeping. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 15:11, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Done. The article is no longer a definition (and can be expanded further). James500 (talk) 20:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I still think what you've added is insufficient to establish notability:
The first paragraph is a definition and explanation of the procedure.
Amendments to allege use were first created by the Trademark Law Revision Act of 1988, which amended the Lanham Act. The fact that something was brought into existence does not make it notable.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office originally assumed there would be an amendement to allege use in 50% of cases. In the financial year of 1991, there was an amendement to allege use in 2.9% of cases. In 1992 and 1993, it was reported that there was an amendement to allege use in 5% of cases. The fact that a thing that exists has been used and that the federal government tracked statistics in the early 1990s does not make that thing notable.
The IPL Newsletter of the American Bar Association expressed approval for the low number of amendments to allege use. The fact that a thing exists and that some people in a specialist part of the bar knew that it existed in 1993 and approve of it not being used too often in the 1990s does not establish notability.
As of 2018, most amendments to allege use are sent to the United States Patent and Trademark Office by the Trademark Electronic Application System. A non-notable thing that is now an electronic non-notable thing does not make the non-notable thing notable. Cf. WP:NOTHOWTO.
Amendement to allege use were criticised by the IPL Newsletter. This is exceedingly vague and, in any event, criticism of a thing in a newsletter does not establish notability.
As to your points above, I looked through the snippets for each of the sources you cited to (or the full sources when I had access to them via legal databases), at the page numbers that you cited in the reference section you created (see, e.g., this search of this source:Trademarks, Copyrights, and Unfair Competition. ALI-ABA Course of Study. 1989. Pages 9, 19 and 41.). Those mentions appeared to me to be trivial, definitional, or part of a how-to guide, none of which establish notability here. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The text quoted above that I added to body of the article was intended to deal with the claim that the article failed NOTDICT, not claims about notability. WP:ARTN says that the content of the article is irrelevant to notability. Notability is determined by the amount of coverage that can be found on the internet etc with Google etc, which in this case is hundreds of pages of significant coverage in dozens of law books and other books, that you have not addressed, and can not address, simply by criticising the present text of the Wikipedia article.
I hardly think that two statistics explained by reference to the praise of those statistics in the IPL Newsletter constitutes "excessive listings of unexplained statistics", since the listing is neither excessive nor unexplained. The prediction is not a statistic at all (because it failed to come true). And a statistic about the number of amendments sent by TEAS is not "how to" content.
WP:NOTHOWTO does not say anything about what sources do or do not contribute to GNG. WP:NOTHOWTO does not say, either in express words or by implication, "How-to books are not significant coverage for GNG". If, for the sake of argument, a book is a "how to" book, that book contributes to GNG like any other. You just don't copy the "how to" content without rewriting it so that it is no longer "how to" content. The actual principle of the policy, and what it actually says, is that Wikipedia does not give "instructions in the imperative mood". So, if the book contains instructions in the imperative mood, you just rewrite the information so that it is no longer an instruction, and no longer in the imperative mood. That is easily done. In any event, where a book simply states or explains what the law is (as opposed to giving instructions to readers), that is not a "how-to" book. As far as I can see, the books don't consist entirely, or even mostly, of instructions to readers; and their content is therefore mostly not "how to" content.
A search like this is no good, because it does not read the whole content of the three pages in question. You have to read on like this and this until you have read the whole of each page. (Admittedly, this is perhaps not one of the more important sources compared to, for example, 70+ pages, 70+ pages, 30+ pages, 30+ pages and 20+ pages)).
It would be helpful if would you would stop repeating what you have already said, stop putting words into my mouth, stop misrepresenting policies, guidelines and sources, and delete from your comment the irrelevant direct quotes from the article you have added above, as no one claimed they were proof of "inherent" notability. James500 (talk) 00:50, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For the avoidance of doubt, as far as I can see, most of the relevant content of the relevant books [1] [2] is not trivial, definitional, or "how-to" content. James500 (talk) 01:57, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what about an analysis of the article as written is "repeating what [I] have already said", I'm not sure how I "put[] words into [your] mouth", and I think you're misunderstanding my point, which is that if all of the RSes are definitional or how to guides, the only thing this article can ever be is a regurgitation of definitions or how to guides. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:04, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Current version of the article seems much improved and well-referenced. Marokwitz (talk) 11:52, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:33, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment what concerns me with legal pages in particular is the high risk of the contents being digested by a LLM AI to give offwiki users incorrect information. I don't know how to parse this topic; it seems on the one hand that there is a lot of verbage and opinion written about it, but we are not a legal journal and it is outwith of our purpose to write a page as if we are. On the other, cutting right down to the absolute basics without any opinion appears to then be a legal dictionary definition and WP:NOTDICTIONARY. Even leaving the page as it is appears problematic if there are similar legal terms in other juristidictions which mean slightly different things. Could the page contents be merged to wiktionary and this title redirected? JMWt (talk) 07:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The presence of potential errors in any Wikipedia article, including medical articles where the potential consequences are worse, does not justify their deletion as Wikipedia is an ongoing project. The article cites reliable sources and is not written as a dictionary entry. Marokwitz (talk) 09:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
if there was no opinion or comment, the remaining content would literally be the dictionary definition. JMWt (talk) 09:59, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is not accurate and has no basis in policy or guideline. There is no policy or guideline that says Wikipedia does not neutrally report the opinions or comments of reliable sources. The statistics and history in the article are not opinions or comments or definitions. There are only two sentences in the article that actually consist of opinion or comment. There is no policy or guideline that says that Wikipedia does not state or explain what the law is. A statement or explanation of what the law is not an opinion or comment. If I write something that means "Statute X [or judicial precedent X, as the case may be] imposes on person A a statutory [or common law] duty to do Y; and if he does not perform that statutory duty, then the statute [or judicial precedent] imposes legal sanction Z as a punishment", that proposition of law is not opinion or comment or definition. It merely is a statement of what the law is, and it ought to be included in any encyclopedia. WP:5P1 says that Wikipedia combines features of general and specialized encyclopedias (my emphasis). Therefore Wikipedia absolutely is a legal encyclopedia, and should include everything that you would expect to find in a legal encyclopedia, and in every other form of specialized encyclopedia. Most of the coverage of this topic in law books consists of exactly the kind of material that you would find in a legal encyclopedia, and therefore ought to be included. Indeed, you would find a very large amount of exactly that kind of material in Britannica. The bottom line is that if we excluded this article on the basis of that kind of reasoning, it would be completely impossible to have any articles about laws. That would completely disrupt this area of the project, for no benefit to our readers. James500 (talk) 17:47, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - while very dry, I think the guides cited by James500 do provide significant coverage of the subject. _signed,Rosguill ^talk 03:43, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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.