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.
Needless introduction to M-theory, was a copyvio for four years, could become a fork.
Nomination withdrawn This AfD has more or less become a discussion about introduction articles generally, about which there may be no clear consensus. I think introduction articles are unhelpful forks but there is clearly a wide swath of editors who think otherwise so I suggest another means of dealing with this for now (likely RfC). At least this AfD may have shown it bears talking about more. Thanks everyone for your input! Gwen Gale (talk) 03:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete We already have the main article M-theory. I think this one is needless and could become unhelpful. It could fork off accidently into a misleading summary (the solar system analogy is in itself not at all the way to put a rundown of bound particles in quantum states and there are already other creeping worries of missed simplification): A reader could be more lost than ever after reading this. Moreover, why maintain two articles? Conflicts are likely to slip through one day, even shreds of PoV which could turn this one into a fork, maybe. Gwen Gale (talk) 10:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete wierd and more of a tutorial than an article and yet not very helpful. It is more of a superquick, not-entirely correct guide to very-small things in physics. Yes M-theory is hard to understand, but that's because string theory is hard to understand (apparently even by string theorists). If someone needs to be reminded what an atom is then, lets face it, they probably need to start at a less abstract level than m-theory.Nick Connolly (talk) 09:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. An article on this topic would be quite worth-while. The current pseudo-stub not really useful, though. If possible, improve, don't delete, but not much would be lost if it went away completely. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. We have others of these in Category:Introductions -- I'm all but certain there were once several more than there are now. Is someone running a merge campaign? I see value in these, and M-theory is certainly a topic that could warrant one. --Dhartung | Talk19:03, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, including two featured articles: introduction to evolution and introduction to special relativity. It is not impossible for an "introduction to..." article to be a content fork, but that needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis, rather than as a general swipe. When "introduction to..." articles fail or there is no consensus that it has suceeded (an example of a failed introduction article is Introduction to particles), the general approach is to merge/redirect back to the main article, not delete. Carcharoth (talk) 06:02, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Previous related debate concerning Introduction to evolution was here. What I said when closing that debate was "It is clear that WP:AFD is the wrong venue for discussing "introduction to" articles in general. Suggest opening a request for comments on the issue, or continuing at one of the discussion threads pointed out towards the end of this AfD. The issues specific to this article (such as proposals to merge with evolution should be addressed on the talk page for the article". Raising this here in case this applies here as well, with any merge obviously being to M-theory. Carcharoth (talk) 22:43, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete article is a content fork, great for other projects forking the project, bad for forking pages within the project -Mask?05:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. We do still have Introduction to entropy. The problem there referred to above is related to arguments about the disambiguation page. Delete is not the answer. If there are problems with it, then it should be discussed at Talk:Entropy whether it should be merged back there. The same should holds for this article. Personally I would keep that one and this one. Making the various articles on entropy understandable is not proving easy, and I suspect the same with this one. --Bduke (talk) 07:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
comment it seems to me that aside from the rights-and-wrongs of introduction-to... articles in general, they provide a bit of a puzzle for the AfD process. The central issue in most AfD's is usually notability but this articles actual subject (M-theory) is manifestly notable. However at the same time that doesn't mean a seperate introduction article is neccesarily called for. In this case we have a bad introduction to artcile, but AfD isn't clean up. Perhaps we need a deeper theory of deletion, an M-theory of deletion....Nick Connolly (talk) 09:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I don't see why one cannot write a short introduction to M theory accessible to 14 year olds and older lay people. This article may have issues that one needs to work on, but the main M-theory article is not really accessible to lay people who go to wikipedia without much knowldege of physics to find out what this "M-theory" they hear about from time to time is all about. Count Iblis (talk) 13:28, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This sort of thing is much better discussed on talk and project pages. AfD isn't the place for discussing exactly how related articles on specialised topics should be structured. Phil Bridger (talk) 21:36, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with Phil. I really think WP needs to develop a hands-off policy, and let the subject matter experts deal with this. There are plenty of capable editors at WP:Math and WP:Physics who know what the WP article standards are and how to write good articles, and all the rest. PLEASE let these subject matter experts decide how to handle this ... they are quite capable and frequently happy to delete crappy articles, and don't need help. Opening this debate to the general public just clouds the issue, and we may as well be arguing for the deletion of Pokemon articles. linas (talk) 03:05, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to M-theory main article. If the intro at that article doesn't explain things well enough, then it should be improved-- we don't need a separate article for this. And no, AfD probably isn't the best place for this discussion. --Areldyb (talk - sign)00:58, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Strongly disagree with the merge suggestion, as that seems to miss the whole point of "Intro to..." articles. The problem here is that WP has readers of many different levels: laypeople, high-school and college students, and grad students, post-docs and professors. From experience, it is essentially impossible to serve the needs of all in one article (gravitation and quantum mechanics fly to mind). What may be clear-as-a-bell to an advanced student is almost always (based on my WP experience) taken to be gibberish by the lay reader. Since M-theory is one of those hot, fashionable, trendy theories, that get written up in pop-sci rags, it has a layperson/pop-sci audience who will want to know more. Yet it is stunningly complex, and needs an article written at the grad-student level (or higher!). Merging these two into one would only result in bitter edit wars ... as if there weren't enough of these, with someone alternately trying to delete either the low-brow, or the high-brow content. linas (talk) 02:58, 16 April 2008 (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.