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.
Delete Besides being an incredibly unlikely search term, it's an article that doesn't enlighten anybody about either concept. Apparently, there's a German article that uses these two together, but let's just say that something got "lost in the translation". Mandsford (talk) 02:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as unlikely-search-term without any content of its own. It's a new DAB/summary-style page that doesn't seem to serve any purpose. DMacks (talk) 19:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I've started to split the DE-article; you're probably right: There should not be an article just because of another interwiki. -- Emdee (talk) 20:11, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - unneeded dab page. Bearian (talk) 21:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So what page on English Wikipedia should we link the German article to? Michael Hardy (talk) 02:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Those are the new pages (after this here was marked for deletion) with the correct interwikis. Since there has not been any contradiction you can speeddelete that one here now. -- Emdee (talk) 16:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Given Emdee's comment, it's a moot point. However, "because some other language links to it" doesn't (IMO) make a page viable. Conversely, "page X:foo is covered in Y:foo1 and Y:foo2, which interwiki link should X:foo give?" is a good question, which is up to editors of X:foo to decide. Perhaps there's a more general page on the topic (i.e., not a simple translation or direct "other language equivalent"). DMacks (talk) 03:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Related terms that are not ambiguous. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:17, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This should be kept as the correct target for the German interwiki. The other two articles are not the correct targets, as neither of them covers the same topic as the German article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:08, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
the charge that the article is irrelivant to the search(by DMacks) does not hold, and they were not just links- they containg correct info., sure they could be developed further, both are closely related in mathermatics.....Jomoal99 (talk) 14:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong and immediate delete. The irresponsible argument that we should keep articles because it's in the German wikipedia's structure is harmful to us; there is no reason (until all possible material in the world is translated) that the interests should be the same. (If I were a German editor faced with this silly problem, I'd consider using two interwiki tags - had you thought of this? ). SeptentrionalisPMAnderson 21:55, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We're not talking about an article, but a glorified disambiguation page. Otherwise there is no accurate interwiki for the German article, in the sense that neither of our articles can point back to it. This issue of interwiki creep, where meanings change as one follows links from one language to another, can only be avoided with pages such as this one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:42, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Schade</irony> Interwiki creep can't be avoided at all. Languages do differ; not least in the ways they divide up the world. Learn to live with it; I have made the obvious suggestion on how to do so. SeptentrionalisPMAnderson 02:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The transitive closure of interwiki links should give the equivalence relation "covers the same topic". In cases like this, where the German project has one article and we have two, no interwiki links are appropriate without a disambig page. Your suggestion would lead to the result that our article on greatest common divisor is classified as covering the same topic as our article on least common multiple, after the transitive closure of the interwiki links is taken. That would be very unfortunate. The same problem would occur with interwiki links from our article Eigenvalue, eigenvector, and eigenspace to a project that has 3 separate articles. That other project needs to make a disambig page to be the target of our interwiki link. Given the near-zero cost of maintaining a disambig article, this is a small price to pay for collegiality between projects and usability of the interwiki links system. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:57, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So what? We are not a translation of the German Wikipedia, nor they of us; and if they were, you'd get the same answer. Translation isn't transitive; it isn't even transitive if one translates from language L to M and back again; see invisible idiot. This is a pipedream, and harmful to Wikipedia. This vermiform appendix of an article is a small but real part of the problem. Delete now, unconditionally.
There's no need to yell. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Any project which has a blank article to provide interwiki links for Eigenvalue, eigenvector, and eigenspace is run by imbeciles; the proper solution in such a case is to have three interwiki links in our article (if necessary, in a text paragraph explaining the situation). SeptentrionalisPMAnderson 20:36, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Having two interwiki links to the same language is technically possible, but both are labeled with the name of the language – not particularly usable. The fundamental assumption underlying interwiki links is that it is possible to determine when two articles in different languages cover the same topic, so complaining about difficulties with translation misses the point completely. Which is: if two articles cover the same topic, they should be linked to each other, otherwise they shouldn't. — Carl (CBM · talk) 23:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Any project that does not like my little suggestion on how to handle the problem need not follow it. If the reverse situation came up, I should prefer to have multiple wikilinks.
If that assumption is meant to sweep away the difficulties of translation, then it is ungrounded. If it is meant to impose the same list of topics on all wikipedias, as appears to be argued here, then it implies another set of would-be Masters of Wikipedia. In either case, weg damit. SeptentrionalisPMAnderson 12:39, 25 July 2009 (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.