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. A rewrite would definitely be a good idea, but clearly no consensus for deletion. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 05:39, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Historical inheritance systems (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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WP:BLOWITUP comes to mind. Look at the state of this article, and then at what Wikipedia is not. Wikipedia is not a scientific journal; this certainly reads like a humongous paper written for an anthropology journal. Wikipedia is also not a indiscriminate collection of information; I can't find a better way to describe this article. The immense amount of intricate work that has gone into this article, which is, frankly, a work of art, is its downfall. It's entirely impossible to work with. I think this is a perfectly good subject to write an article on, but it needs to be done in an encyclopaedic manner, and I believe that it has to be done from scratch. So, as I say, WP:BLOWITUP seems relevant. Microphonics^talk 23:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2013 September 5. —cyberbot I ^Notify_Online 23:46, 5 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. I wrote this entire article and, frankly, I can't believe that someone proposes its deletion because it is "too well written". You say it should be erased because It contains too much information and seems like an article written for an scientific (anthropological) journal... Well, you are saying that Wikipedia is less reliable and of less value than an scientific journal, and it should remain that way. I think we can make Wikipedia a source as valid as an scientific journal. You say that this article should be written "in an encyclopedic manner", perhaps implying that encyclopedical articles are much shorter, but you forget that encyclopedical articles tend to be much shorter because of lack of space (they are written on paper). Wikipedia is a digital source and, as such, doesn't have these limitations. We should take advantage of this and write articles as "long and detailed" as we could. I considered my article finished and wasn't thinking about writing more on it, but when I visited it today, wanting to get a view of my finished work, alas, here I find someone trying to blow it up because it is "too long". Do you think this is fair and ethical? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ansegam (talk • contribs) 5 September 2013

Do you think it is fair and ethical to completely ignore every call to fix the links to disambiguation pages and to ignore the requests to split up the article in more manageable pieces? This article is completely unreadable. It give me the idea that you are writing your thesis here and don't care about readability, download times or even download caps. I have spend a lot of times repairing your links, but I have enough. DELETE The Banner talk 21:31, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Let me be more friendly: blow up this article in such a way that it shatters in more convenient pieces. Split up the article The Banner talk 19:57, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:46, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak delete - although it could be more convenient to use WP:BLOWITUP, it has admittedly become big beyond repair. Infinitely too many references and is unencyclopedic. The one that forgot (talk) 10:29, 8 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as original research and synthesis. This monster has over 500 references but the overarching topic itself is not discussed in the references, which instead discuss narrower matters.The article topic is therefore the creation of the author of this non-encyclopedic article. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:36, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• The article reminds me of a recent featured article: Social history of viruses which likewise covered a broad topic and had hundreds of references. What's the fundamental difference? Warden (talk) 12:05, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep WP:BLOWITUP is not policy; the actual policy is WP:PRESERVE. The topic is quite notable as there are numerous works describing inheritance law in various societies. Works which try to provide historical perspective exist such as Dead Hands: A Social History of Wills, Trusts, and Inheritance Law. Digesting and summarising these is a matter of ordinary editing in which explosives play no part. Warden (talk) 11:51, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note that this article was split off from the History section of Inheritance in July - presumably because it was becoming quite large. If this page were deleted then the content would just be reverted back in that article which obviously ought to have some coverage of the history and methods of inheritance used throughout human history. This split further demonstrates the notability of the topic. The problem just seems to be scale of the topic. Further splits might help but deletion just seems to be disruption of the natural process of development and expansion. Warden (talk)

• Keep with a recommendation of a rewrite. I see a few obvious problems that could probably be fixed with a bit of determined editing (or, possibly, a well-written script). The alleged [[WP:OR}] and WP:SYN will be significantly more difficult to detect and replace, but one could always solicit an expert from the most relevant WikiProject. The violations of WP:NOT are more significant, and will require extensive editing; though it is not well-suited to Wikipedia, nominating it for cleanup would probably be a better solution than deletion. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 17:39, 6 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Because I did my best to write a good article and don't want it to be blown up... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.137.209.91 (talk) 06:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is this you, Ansegam? The Banner talk 13:30, 12 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 01:48, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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• Keep with a recommendation of a rewrite. I agree with NinjaRobotPirate there are altrnatives to deletion. I have removed the copyediting tag. GOCE will await a decision on deletion. --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep There is no doubt about the notability of the topic. Historical development is a discrete aspect of inheritance and there is value in separating it out from a description of what we have today. The problem is in the form of the article. Ansegam says that he did his best, and it clearly needs a fresh eye and an understanding of how to structure Wikipedia articles, but a lot of the information could be preserved in some form. There are ways of summarising without losing the sense and value of the academic research cited, and in other cases facts can be tabulated. --AJHingston (talk) 10:47, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, not a junkyard. GregJackP Boomer! 23:33, 13 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. For what it's worth. "The Flesch reading ease score is 17, this means that 6% of the articles on Wikipedia are harder to read than this one." Readability of Wikipedia for this article Retrieved September 20, 2013. Donner60 (talk) 03:15, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. There is certainly a problem about deletion purely on stylistic grounds; some articles on technical and scientific subjects will be largely impenetrable to those without some grounding in the field. That is not to say that is something to which anyone should aspire and there are most certainly ways in which this article could be made much easier to use without any loss of value. But Wikipedia is not the Discovery Channel, which was alleged to have required that programmes should be comprehensible to a 12 year old child. --AJHingston (talk) 07:48, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I am Ansegam. I split up the article into several parts as some of you told me. I hope it is more readable now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ansegam (talk • contribs) 19:44, 20 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, encyclopedic, educational, and great deal of secondary source coverage. — Cirt (talk) 01:36, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - I've fixed much worse than this one. Bearian (talk) 14:04, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep , as easily rewritable. "Blowitup" applies when something is too confused to have anything worth saving in a rewrite, or, more often, when something is so contaminated by promotionalism or the like that a rewrite would only serve to perpetuate the improper material in the article history. Neither reason applies here. There will be some stylistic problems here, such as handling the list of ethnic groups (I suggest a table).(And the refs need reformatting) But it's not inaccurate, it's a major ethnological topic, and it serves as a good introduction. The individual inheritance systems should of course be individually covered, and the articles on the individual groups should discuss the topic, but this is a suitable brief survey. This is basically written in an encyclopedic manner, and I share the amazement of the original author at the nomination. If we were to all go around deleting articles we each individually found hard to understand, there are major topic areas that would be completely uncovered.

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.