Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rayleigh (unit)

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. Malinaccier (talk) 13:45, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rayleigh (unit) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Doing a Google search I cannot find more than a couple of papers where this unit is mentioned, and it is not part of any of the unit standards I can find. Rather than a PROD I am doing an AfD just in case it is used somewhere. If it is, then please add sources and description to that context to demonstrate why it should be retained. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science, Astronomy, and Engineering. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep One straightforward way to check for usage is to look at papers that cite a paper establishing a term, in this case "The rayleigh: interpretation of the unit in terms of column emission rate or apparent radiance expressed in SI units" [1]. Checking citing papers [2] gives a good long list, of which I checked the first 10. Of these, 8 make explicit use of the unit, and devote at least a short passage to defining it, so I think we are good. Of particular note is p. 22 of this thesis [3] which gives an in-depth definition that we should adapt for the article. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:45, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Clear evidence of significant coverage in sources linked above. In addition, editor discussions within the talk pages of the MOS lend validity to the notability of the subject, even if it is rather obscure and not an official SI unit. Jtwhetten (talk) 18:57, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I think we have to be very careful not to conflated how we consider SIGCOV for citations of academic articles compared to in news or similar. A good comparison should be how BLP are judged. The most definitive notability is when something becomes a generic, so is quoted without citation e.g. general relativity. Dropping down a level in physics (excluding HEP) I dont think anyone would question the notability of a paper with > 1000 citations, or > 100 in the first year or two.
  • A Google search would show if Rayleigh has become a generic -- it has not.
  • The original paper has 176 cites on Google Scholar since 1956. While relevant, that is not strong SIGCOV. It has 3 cites in 2023-2024. Note that not every paper that cites it will discuss the units.
  • The second has 44 cites since 1974, certainly not particularly significant.
  • The third has 58 since 1976, better but it also discusses an alternative definition so IMO is weaker.

My interpretation remains that this is not really a notable topic, and the wider community has not voted major support of the idea. If they had it would be a widely used generic unit. Just my opinion. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:31, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

N.B., I do not see the MOS discussion as supporting the notability, in fact the opposite. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:33, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

...what. It's a scientific unit that is used in at least 50 peer-reviewed studies. That makes it easily notable enough for an article. You are operating on some very strange metrics here. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:57, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am being a rigorous physicist. A paper cited in 50 peer reviewed studies is not particularly notable, for instance in physics it would be counted but far more would be needed for tenure. For a BLP in physics (not HEP) a rough estimate is that their should be 50 papers all cited more than 50 times, i.e. an h-factor of 50. Perhaps compare to unconditionally notable terms such as the 1968 Ernst equation which is cited 1159 times, 1968 Broyden's method cited 3816 etc; there are many, many more. Ldm1954 (talk) 15:17, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The argument as to whether the Rayleigh is generic is curious. A review of linked pages provides multiple references using the unit in the generic sense (i.e. without citation/explanation). Refer to [4], [5], and [6]. The pages using these sources do require editing to comply with MOS but that is another issue. Moreover, I think we would all agree this is a very niche topic, and so it is appropriate to expect a certain amount of difficulty in finding numerous RS to satisfy SIGCOV. Jtwhetten (talk) 15:12, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep This "notability" pruning is distressing. It'll force a lot of decent Wikipedia pages into the Wiktionary. Why should Wikipedia strive to have less to say about less things? Urhixidur (talk) 02:05, 23 September 2024 (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.