Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Concision

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 in one form or another. It's clear that there is no consensus to delete the nominated pages but also none what to merge where exactly. Fortunately, this is not a question that has to be answered at AFD. So Why 12:29, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Concision

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This is basically a matter of WP:NOT#DICT, with a little bit of WP:NOTHOWTO as well. There really isn't anything more that the page can say, beyond the definition and advice about writing style (although essays in Wikipedia space about concise writing are certainly policy-compliant). Pages about more specific concepts involving this word already exist. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am also nominating/bundling the following related page because because the subject is very similar, as are the reasons for deletion:

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Logic-related deletion discussions. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:29, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Wiktionary This seems like a pretty clear cut case of "Wikipedia is not a dictionary". CJK09 (talk) 21:43, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Merge Concision and Succinctness as these cover the same topic. There is some overlap with Plain language, so it's also conceivable to treat these two topics in one place. – Uanfala 21:57, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- I think that merging both pages into Plain language could be a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - Another possible merge target is Verbosity. It might be the opposite concept, but it's on the same dimension. – Uanfala 22:06, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - If we go that way, I think that Plain language would be the better target. Actually, though, I could imagine merging all four pages. In so doing, there could be a genuinely encyclopedic page covering the history of some ideas, instead of a few dictionary entries. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      - Merging with Verbosity will be straightforward, but I would caution against rushing to merge into Plain language unless a decent amount of literature has been consulted and a text can be written that integrates the two topics. – Uanfala 22:52, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
        Do you mean that it would be tricky to merge Verbosity into Plain language, or that it would be tricky to merge any of these pages into it? If the former, it would be simple to leave Verbosity out of it. But if it's the latter, I'm concerned about what the merged page would be called, without creating an Easter egg situation. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:58, 14 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep; I like the idea of merging in Succinctness. I would move this to Conciseness, which happens to be (internally) one of the criteria for article titles at Wikipedia:Article titles. The fact that a concept is abstract and difficult to write does not lift it from the category of things that can and should be included in an encyclopedia. The concept of conciseness, beyond the mere dictionary definition, is important in philosophy, law, and literature. It is one reason things like word limits for academic essays and court filings exist at all. bd2412 T 02:23, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- Note: I have added some materials about teaching students conciseness at various levels of education, and that fact that it is claimed that conciseness is not as highly regarded in certain cultures. bd2412 T 03:12, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - You named Conciseness as the merge target. Currently, that is a redirect to Concision. If we go with a simple merge of Succinctness into it, would the Concision pagename be more appropriate? --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - "Conciseness" appears slightly more common, at least per Google hits. I am, of course, biased due to my work on the conciseness portion of title policy. bd2412 T 17:41, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I've been thinking about the ideas about merging. I'm not entirely convinced that doing so would be preferable to deletion, because, for example, when referring to physical size, we treat such words as huge, big, little, and tiny as DAB pages rather than regular pages, and there does not seem to me to be that much that can be said about concision and succinctness as standalone ideas within society, as opposed to as words. (One can address the application to law, for example, in Legal writing, and the application to pagenames in Wikipedia space.) But I'm open to persuasion, and I'm open to merging if that ends up being the consensus. So if there seems to be strong support for merging, I'm quite willing to withdraw this AfD early. However, there is not yet anything remotely like consensus about what would get merged into what, and I would prefer to see an emerging consensus about that before considering whether to end the AfD. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 15 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- My gut feeling is with bd2412's suggestion for using Conciseness as the article title for the merged Concision and Succinctness. I don't think the AfD should be closed early as it's a tricky topic and it could do with more input. – Uanfala 21:09, 16 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Tryptofish:: big, huge, little, and tiny are adjectives, while concision (or conciseness, or succinctness) is a noun, a thing. A comparable concept, I think, is Size - which was a disambiguation page for a very long time, until I turned it into an article on the concept of size. That, of course, was after my proposal to do this was met with skepticism that an article could be written on a concept as abstract as size. bd2412 T 01:18, 22 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    - That's a good point. It looks to me like my own skepticism here is a minority view. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:54, 22 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Merge and keep by moving succinctness into concision. The reason for keeping? Well, all the idioms, metaphors, word-blends, abbreviations and similes in the English language encouraging conciseness as well as its widespread discussion on various lexicological forums, as well as its opposite (verbiosity) suggests the topic is notable. 92.6.189.188 (talk) 15:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, J 947^{^{^{(c) (m)}}} 03:31, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Succinctness at Conciseness per Uanfala and BD2412. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 21:34, 21 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The Succinctness page is grossly incomplete and incorporates database and programming language. Concision is strictly grammatical writing for documents. Verbose writing (documents) is not poor programming (cryptic). Merging these two is illogical; writing and programming are different animals. Keep concision (which it can be greatly improved to incorporate the KISS method, reference business/administrative writing compared to descriptive writing), and make a separate page for proper programming or database design. Thanks. --DigitalIQ (talk) 06:58, 26 August 2017 (UTC)— DigitalIQ (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]
- These issues go beyond my knowledge areas. My impression is that there are separate pages for the programming aspects, and that the proposed merge page should only be about the more general concept, but maybe I'm wrong. Do other editors believe that these are good reasons to change to a different course of action? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:48, 26 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - I think the merge page should eliminate programming/database; i.e. not include it with document writing. Cryptic programming gets the job done, but it is highly inefficient. It can make the code run slow with extraneous commands. Cryptic programming is the closest equivalent of verbose document writing, so verbose should not be used to describe cryptic/overbloated code. The two are unique, and should not be merged. This is just my opinion. KISS (Keep it simple, stupid or silly) is more a saying than method. It is taught in business writing classes to eliminate verbose writing (i.e. waste). Descriptive (novel writing to describe characters, and so forth) vs. business/proposal (concise) writing. Cheers. --DigitalIQ (talk) 06:48, 27 August 2017 (UTC) Edit (8/28/17): Maybe Concision can be merged with the page on Academic Writing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_writing --DigitalIQ (talk) 14:07, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jdcomix (talk) 15:20, 28 August 2017 (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.