Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Demiard

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 speedy keep. per SK1 & all that. (non-admin closure) –Davey2010^Talk 00:30, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Demiard

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No evidence for existence of this unit beyond the dubious Cardarelli. The word is not in the Oxford English Dictionary. PamD 23:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Withdraw now that an entirely different article has been written on the French liquid measure. And I'll add to my "to do list" a plan to create redirects or dab page entries for those Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution. PamD 07:28, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Googling suggests that "Demiard" is an ancient French liquid measure - and French Wikipedia agrees - but this article and Cardarelli declare it to be a UK dry measure. PamD 00:00, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It's more French than English but I suppose there was some crossover due to trade and other connections. Anyway, there are obviously reasonable alternatives to deletion such as merger with Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution#Volume - Liquid_measures. Please see WP:BEFORE. Andrew D. (talk) 00:10, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution. There is nothing to "merge" as the treatment in the February 2011 revision was already better than the text in Demiard. Johnuniq (talk) 06:03, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:24, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Food and drink-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:25, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect as per Johnuniq. This really is very silly: the article as AfD'd should be deleted. Davidson tries to convert it into a different article, but it still belongs in some sensible topic, f'goodness sake. I removed the Cardarelli ref anyway, since it does not support the current version at all, unless in Cardarelli-speak "UK" means "French/English-speaking" and "dry" means "liquid"; it seems to be a mangled version of the situation in Canada. AAMOF, words like this, which mean "half-of-something", deserve rich dictionary treatment. Imaginatorium (talk) 07:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cardarelli gives it as equivalent to half a pint, which is where it seems to have ended up. That source is therefore reasonably accurate and so should not be discarded to satisfy this bizarre vendetta. Per our editing policy, this is a work-in-progress and there may be more to find. I've only spent a few minutes on it this morning but already my work is disrupted. Tsk. Andrew D. (talk) 08:10, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So in your view, "UK unit of dry volume equal to half a pint" is an "reasonably"(??) accurate way of saying Canadian unit of liquid volume equal to half a pint". To me it looks like 1 out of 3, but you think that's good enough for WP? There is no "vendetta"; Cardarelli is full of minor errors, and more importantly half-truths. That makes it inappropriate as a reference. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:27, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The main point of Cardarelli's encyclopedia is that it "converts the huge variety of units from all over the world in every period of recorded history into units of the SI." It would be nice if it provided a detailed history of each unit too but, as it's already 848 pages, one can see why it limited its scope to that particular project. So, it's a valid source for providing the SI equivalence of the units in question and more generally gives some clue as to the nature of the unit. Now, it is our policy that Wikipedia is not paper and so we can be more ambitious, aiming to document each unit in all respects. This work is happening on a broad front and we have thousands of articles about obscure units such as the statcoulomb. That one doesn't have any sources at all and there's predictably someone complaining about that too so we shouldn't rush to throw away sources once we have found them. It is our general editing policy to develop such work in mainspace in the fabulous manner of the stone soup — everyone chipping in with morsels until we have a complete meal. Carping because it doesn't taste good yet doesn't seem productive because that's the case with much/most Wikipedia content - only 1% of our articles are of good quality and even that figure is debatable. Andrew D. (talk) 13:39, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Un demi, s'il vous plaît I've found the French equivalent now which tells us, "en France jusqu'à nos jours, de commander un « demi » de bière dans les bistrots." In other words, the unit still lives on, after a fashion, when ordering beer and so they link the article to the portail de la bière. As this seems similar to the situation in Australia, where a complex variety of units are used when ordering beer, I'm starting to see a theme here. There was an interesting question in the Guardian recently: Why is the standard UK beer can size 440ml?. I'm still working on that one ... cheers! Andrew D. (talk) 13:54, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As Cardarelli is happy to promulgate junk like the stupping ton, I'm reluctant to trust any of his 800 pages. And how do we know that today's "demi" of beer has any connection to "demiard" or "ard"? PamD 15:04, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:44, 24 February 2015 (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.