Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force forks

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: delete all. ‑Scottywong| [speak] || 06:21, 27 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(Time stamp for bot to properly relist.) ‑Scottywong| [confer] || 05:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am proposing a that all forms associated with the translation task force are deleted; this involves around a thousand articles in this category ([1]). I will need some help tagging these articles. These articles:

• are not maintained, meaning content can be inaccurate and out of date
• appear to be part of our encyclopedia, when in fact they are unmaintained content forks
• are indexed by search engines
• are needless and redundant content forks (WP:REDUNDANTFORK) that are not temporary
• are all titled "Simple", which is also a fork of the simple English Wikipedia
• do not reflect our current consensus. For example Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Desmopressin and the recent drug pricing discussions.
• have content that is copied and pasted without attribution to original authors
• waste a lot of the valuable time of Wikignmoes relating to maintenance (particularly the gnoming editors updating templates, citation styles etc).
• are out of date, often by some years, which poses a risk to the communities and readers of the non English wikipedias where they are translated into.
• are also not in use - I have also gained email confirmation from User:Doc James that these articles are no longer in use and can be deleted from the perspective of the task force.

This follows a trial nomination of five articles. Ping to participants there: Doc James, SmokeyJoe, WhatamIdoing, SandyGeorgia, Colin, Robert McClenon.

All pages have been tagged. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:34, 19 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Background

These articles are associated with the translation task force (link here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_task_force). These articles seem to be copied lead statements and most haven't been edited since creation eg here. This has come to my attention whilst doing a survey of medical templates, as many templates that had come to my attention are used on those articles.

With regard to Medical translation task force

It's clearly a very worthy goal and a great effort has gone in. However, the translation task force really seems to relate to WP MED foundation which is a meta organisation and should more appropriately be based there, in my opinion. I think that the articles that have been copied should be deleted. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:21, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• No objection to what seems like agreed WikiProject maintenance.

  As an MfD procedural thought, I would have liked to see in the nomination:

  1. Who is User:Tom (LT) to be asking to delete these pages? A. He is an active and engaged WikiProject member doing agreed clean up.

  2. Where is a starting point thread link in the WikiProject to confirm WikiProject notification and possible discussion? A. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#Translation task force forks

  2a. At that WT:WikiProject link, there should be a link to this MfD nomination.

  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:33, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• User:Tom (LT), is this the actual nomination, or just a draft? If it's a draft, then I'd like to suggest that you need to pick either "waste a lot of the valuable time of Wikignmoes relating to maintenance" or "most haven't been edited since creation", because otherwise it's self-contradictory. I'm not convinced that anything in the Wikipedia: namespace has the appearance of being part of the encyclopedia. Also, content that never appeared at simplewiki can't be a fork of simplewiki. (Maybe this should be a transwiki proposal instead of a deletion request.)
  • Hello unsigned commenter. To be clear, this is not a draft, but unfortunately I don't have appropriate technical skills to mark a thousand pages for deletion in an automated way. With regard to the encyclopedia, unless a person is aware of the Wikipedia namespace (which I do not believe readers will be), if you access any of the articles they appear to be from us. I do see what you're saying regarding those two statements but my meaning is that they haven't been materially edited since created. Cheers --Tom (LT) (talk) 11:09, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's not an unsigned comment. It's one in which I had two separate points to make. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:45, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • On the merits, the main question is whether the history of the project is worth retaining, in case anyone wants to know what happened. Imagine explaining some of the disputes to editors a few years from now: "See, he re-wrote the leads, so he could use them for this translation project, but you wouldn't be able to find out about that unless you were around and paying attention at the time, because we deleted everything, so just Trust Me that there was this translation thing going on as a primary motivation, okay?" Some of the stated goals (e.g., search engine indexing) can be solved with a response other than deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:04, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    • On that basis, there is merit in keeping (and tagging Archived/Historical) Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT(Simplified)L which records exactly what you said and has a history as pages were added to it. The simplified page == the wikipedia lead at the timestamp on the page, so it is merely duplicate info. I don't think there is any merit in keeping the each individual page, which have no history other than to document the wasted efforts of wiki gnomes and bots in fixing up citations and em dashes and other such on these unused pages: no actual editor made actual content edits that anyone might ever want to discuss. I don't think these individual pages add up to any help in finding out about why the leads were rewritten or motivations of editors, nor do I think keeping material in case some future arbcom. We have wikiproject discussion history and an existing arbcom with plenty commentary already. -- Colin°^Talk 10:52, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
      • If there actually wikignomes were frequently editing these pages, then I'd have more sympathy for that argument, but I have found zero such instances myself. It sounds like {{Historical|brief=yes|last=2016|comment=This page was part of a now-completed translation project. Please [[Special:Search|search for current articles]].}} would address most of the concerns. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 21 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
        • Really? I find examples on the first links I click from Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT(Simplified)L.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Cellulitis has one wiki gnome edit.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Abscess has three wiki gnome edits.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple HF has three wiki gnome edits and one bot edit.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Bronchiectasis has one wiki gnome edit and one bot edit.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Diabetes has three wiki gnome edits.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Crohn's has two wiki gnome edits.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Diarrhea has two wiki gnome edits.
          • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Anemia has has four wiki gnome edits.

          Multiply by 1200 pages and that's a lot of wiki gnome effort wasted. I'm not really seeing any "purpose of Wikipedia" reasons for keeping 1200 pages that were never maintained (many are six years old) and are no longer going to be used (James has moved the translation project off of en-wp). Even James has no sentimental attachment to them, so I'm not sure why this is worth the effort being expended here in order to keep old cruft. -- Colin°^Talk 07:51, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Btw, I can't see a link to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/SimpleAmoxicillin/clavulanic acid which was closed Delete and was the "test the waters" MfD. -- Colin°^Talk 12:28, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: per nom and 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 09:17, 22 September 2020 (UTC) XfD Voting Tool again[reply]
  • Delete: per nom and trial discussion. No need to retain a thousand (unused) possible copyright violations, and the author does not oppose deletion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 09:22, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete them all, per nom, trial, and other concerns. I am sympathetic to WAID’s argument to mark them historical, but I think we should err on the side of integrity of information rather than preserving a record of what happened. We have no way of knowing if someone somewhere may still use or translate one of these pages, or preventing them from doing so, and the case that I know best is wrong. Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force/RTT/Simple Dementia with Lewy bodies was created on October 3, 2016, the diagnostic criteria changed in July 2017, this was known to DJ in March 2018 when I began to rewrite the entire article, and yet the dated content remains. Experience and history lead me to believe that the situation at DLB is not unique. I should also mention that the 2016 version did not distinguish between dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Lewy body dementia (LBD)—not the same thing—which led to other errors. Most of the simple version is cited to LBD, not DLB, sources. Nome of this was corrected even though it was pointed out over two years ago. The safest thing to do here, to assure these pages are never read or used, is to remove them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tom (LT), I do not see this page listed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:28, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no! You're right. Fixed. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Full mea culpa for MfD contributors: I created this page, linked to relevant subpages via an AWB request, and then posted at the relevant venue (WikiProject Medicine). However, embarrassingly, due to a fault that is solely my own, I forgot to check that I had listed it at MfD, something I've now rectified. I consider myself trout'd. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tom (LT) a bot just deleted it. [2] I do not speak this language but I still do not see it on the page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:05, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, not sure what to do about that now. I have posted for help on the MfD talk page: Wikipedia_talk:Miscellany_for_deletion#Help_with_a_listing. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:11, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is there now, per UnitedStatesian fix. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:16, 14 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all, consistent with the consensus established at the previous MfD. I agree that in this case integrity of information is a more significant concern than in-WP historical preservation. Note: I adjusted the timestamp of the original nom. to avoid the bot problems. UnitedStatesian (talk) 22:07, 14 October 2020 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.