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.

List of common misconceptions[edit]

The result was speedy keep. Snowball chance in hell that this AfD will be sucessful, there is already sufficient consensus to keep article‎. (non-admin closure) 21 Andromedae (talk) 21:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AfDs for this article:

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List of common misconceptions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Biting the bullet here and nominating this page for deletion a sixth time. My reasoning here is quite simple: this is not an appropriate topic for a list in the mainspace. Wikipedia is not a collection of trivia which this page plainly is. Each one of the listings is, at most, appropriate for a single line on their respective pages. The sources cited on this page are often low-quality, including television (1) shows (2), recipe aggregators like Allrecipes and Cookthink, Dotdash Meredith subsidiaries like Thoughtco (deprecated), random blogs including at least one Wordpress-hosted site, and mainly, blatant plagiarism from Snopes (actually, this whole article is practically Snopes Wikipedia-style.) Therefore I think this page should be deleted from the mainspace, and if it must be kept, then moved to the meta namespace ala Wikipedia:Unusual articles since it does serve an educational purpose. wound theology◈ 19:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I favor cleaning up and removing misconceptions with weak references like the ones mentioned, but I strongly oppose deletion or moving it off the mainspace. The list is clearly valuable to users, doesn't seem to obviously contradict WP:SALAT, WP:ENCYCLOPEDIC or WP:NOTDIRECTORY and seems well within the scope of WP:NLIST. agucova (talk) 20:00, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I origianlly came to this article because I am a 40+ USAmerican and was linked from a tumblr post about incorrect "facts" about the world that we were taught as children. Most of these items on this list are indeed COMMON misconceptions in the US. Pre-internet (or even pre-google) it was NOT easy to find the truth about these misconceptions. they were considered common knowledge and encyclopedias did not have enough breadth of information to prove a negative.
I have read through all 6 nominations and arguments for/against deletion of this article and it appears that the delete voters by and large have the opinion that this information is not important enough to be collected while keep voters tend to agree that the article needs to be edited but is a valuable resource. I agree with the KEEPers. Many of the items in the article i did not even KNOW were misconceptions (oil is made from dinosaurs, carrots are good for vision, and diamonds not being coal are 3 quick examples). If you feel it is too US-centric, maybe add that to the title? If you feel it should not be on the main space, they could be a sub-article under urban legends? The suggested unusual articles category is inappropriate because specifically states that the "material is not to be taken seriously". that is precisely how many of these misconceptions were started (as jokes or tall tales) and what the article is trying to clear up.
NOTE: I have never commented on or edited a wiki article before so excuse me if my format of comment is incorrect. 71.182.139.42 (talk) 21:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
KEEP ^ vote obviously 71.182.139.42 (talk) 21:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I appreciate your enthusiasm for the wiki process, but these aren't arguments why we should keep the article. It's not that I don't think these are misconceptions -- although some are arguably pedantic -- but that the page itself (in my view) is not within the scope of Wikipedia. wound theology◈ 06:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do not know what you mean by the scope of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia that catalogues whatever reliable secondary sources say in their fields of expertise, and many entries on List of common misconceptions are attributed to such sources. I wonder if something can be done to control the quality of that article if it attracts a number of poor entries.
Since I am not here to vote, I will just say that my opinion is Keep because I do not think the article is that bad, and there are already many misconceptions that have been debunked by sources that Wikipedia accepts (as mentioned above). Do you want the misconceptions to be catalogued differently? As a prose? As a bunch of subpages? I would like to see the development of the big discussion on this page. CarlFilip19 (talk) 19:53, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has guidelines about what articles should cover. Many of the things here would fit perfectly fine on their respective articles, but just because a collection of ostensibly collected statements is well-sourced does not warrant inclusion on Wikipedia as an independent article. A page like List of reasons to visit Seattle, Washington might have many perfectly reliable secondary sources about popular attractions in the city, but Wikipedia isn't a travel guide. This list is functionally a collection of trivia which, put simply, is not encyclopedic. wound theology◈ 12:26, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Yes, this article has it's problems and could stand improvement. As one of the active editors for this page it is a constant task to keep it cruft free and make sure all the assertions are reliably sourced. I would welcome help with that. Despite the flaws, it's a useful compendium of things that are commonly believed that are false. As someone once said, "It's not what you don't know that's the problem, it's the things you think you know that aren't true." It's a valuable resource that should remain, and was once a featured article featured list candidate. Seeing how this article has been nominated for deletion five times in the past without success I find it odd that it has been nominated a sixth time. It's time to drop the stick. Seems like a WP:SNOW keep. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 00:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Contrary to a common misconception, the page was never a featured article, with one of the issues cited as preventing it from being promoted being: ""common" needs to be defined clearly - i.e. what makes the list not wp:OR." Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:12, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Earlier this year List of hobbies was deleted after a fourth nomination for many of the same reasons I nominated this page. wound theology◈ 06:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The page requires OR to determine what is common, and what is a misconception, violating WP:LSC. The idea that RS could be deferred to is a common misconception for a few reasons:
  • Misconceptions cannot be "common", they must be "common among X". X is undefined, and excluding an entry in a local newspaper for saying "it's a common misconception that "local landmark"" is defining common, and isn't deferring to RS. The edge cases are common among world, among America, among Jews, among historians of whipped cream etc. Line drawing is defining common.
  • RS are not deferred to. The talk page is huge because editors want to exclude RS when they say something is a common misconception because they don't personally believe it's common. See literally two days ago.
  • "Current" is said to be implied from the title (according to an apparent consensus of what "common" is defined as), but isn't defined how to establish this. Seen in a dispute a few days ago, where it was argued if it was common in 1967 it is common now because people are "still alive".
  • RS will not always say "it's a common misconception that", "words to that effect" are used, which includes "contrary to popular belief", but also includes "many people believe" and "etymological urban legend". Evaluating whether "words to that effect" are met requires comparing to definition of common and misconception, which is the problem that led to the idea of deferring to RS in the first place.
  • An entry cannot be included as a misconception if it's not false, as it is not then a misconception. The way this is enforced is usually not something being factually wrong, but quibbling with definitions: that's not a misconception, it's... a misnomer (misnomers are a type of misconception), technical language vs common language dispute, abstraction of complex ideas and many many more. i.e., entries to "list of common misconceptions" which have RS saying they're a misconception, are being excluded because it doesn't fit editor's personal definitions of "misconception."
Some of these problems are fixable, others are not. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:04, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As an addendum, to support the position that the page is a list of trivia, the phrase "contrary to popular belief" has been identified in The Washington Post as a "journalism cliche... that we should avoid". Contrary to popular belief is widely regarded in the talk page as the most acceptable "words to that effect" for "common misconception". Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None of this is a good reason to delete the article. It reads as a list of complaints about how other editors on that page have disagreed with you. While some of these issues may provide a reasonable argument to review the inclusion criteria, deletion is not the right remedy. For instance, generally we (the editors on that page) avoid arguments over semantics, (the Earth is not round, it is an oblate spheroid") although that's not in the inclusion criteria. Perhaps it should be, but this is not the venue for that discussion, the talk page is. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:07, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We avoid arguments about semantics because we are essentially saying "even though it's described in RS as a misconception, according to our own personal definition of misconception, that's not a misconception, it's a .... dispute about linguistics." Inserting it into the inclusion criteria would be saying "it has to be in multiple RS as a common misconception, and also must meet our own personal definition of misconception." If you think that's not OR I would be interested in hearing your justification. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 23:21, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We've tried explaining this to you before, but I'll simply reiterate the gist of it by paraphrasing another editor and then I'm not going to argue about it any further.
Wikipedia editors determine, through consensus, what reliably sourced material is WP:Notable and whether including it would be giving it undue weight. Also, sometimes the sources differ and we need to use our editorial judgment to decide which to "believe" or to document the dispute (which we don't do on the List of common misconceptions - disputed entries are simply not included). Ultimately, the consensus of the editors is the only method used to determine which material warrants inclusion for literally all material on Wikipedia. Taking issue with the fact that editors must determine the notability or weight of reliably sourced information through consensus is an objection to Wikipedia itself, not this page in particular.
Your accusations of WP:OR because editors are using their editorial judgment about what to include and what not to include is a misconception of what WP:OR is. There are no WP:OR assertions on the page. And even if there were, that's an argument to remove those assertions, not delete the article. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 01:20, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"That's more of a misnomer than a misconception." This isn't someone arguing the entry isn't notable, or that including it would be giving undue weight. They're arguing over the definition of misconception. "Editors are using their editorial judgment about what to include and what not to include". Material can be excluded because it's not relevant to the topic. But it's not a question of relevance when "list of animals" has editors trying to input their own personal vibey definition of animal to exclude elephant, when there is a consensus of RS describing elephants as animals.
"editors are using their editorial judgment about what to include and what not to include" Again, the first line of LSC: "Selection criteria should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources. Avoid original or arbitrary criteria that would synthesize a list that is not plainly verifiable in reliable sources." I know it's possible to read this as me arguing against all editorial judgement, but I am very narrowly discussing inclusion criteria and the role of editorial judgement in defining terms against a consensus of RS.
The simple fact is, if I'm an editor and I have an entry that meets the inclusion criteria, I don't know if it's going to be excluded because editors don't believe it's a "real" misconception. The current inclusion criteria is clearly insufficient, but trying to integrate editor's understanding of "real misconception" would clearly go into OR. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:24, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Common Misconceptions page does not require OR, indeed, no OR is allowed on the page. If reliable sources state that some notion is a common misconception (or some synonymous term), and that notion is included in the article as an entry, then the source for the entry is not derived from a Wikipedia editor's original research, and is, therefore, not OR. On occasions where editors have added entries without RS, all such entries have been swiftly removed. The act of editors interpreting and reiterating the content of reliable sources is not original research, and if it were, then everything on Wikipedia aside from items of WP:BLUE would need to be swiftly deleted. Joe (talk) 18:39, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question is less what is included, but what is excluded. If RS say something is a common misconception, but an editor says "but I don't personally believe it's common" and removes it from the page, then that's a violation of LSC. That obviously wouldn't exclude everything on Wikipedia apart from BLUE. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 06:40, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. It's interesting, educational, and while it will never be perfect, it can be constructed so as to be well supported by sources. A net added value to Wikipedia, much more so than millions of other articles (individually I mean). W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:49, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Two reasons: 1. There was a 1994 book The Encyclopedia of Popular Misconceptions, thus supporting it as an appropriate topic for an encyclopedia. 2. The list provides an additional research resource, for example, in the Scientific misconceptions article it is included in the See also links section. 5Q5|✉ 10:30, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neither of these are good reasons to Keep. The existence of an encyclopedia means very little to what we as an encyclopedia should cover -- there are many wikis and many published encyclopedias and their existence alone do not mean anything. Similarly, being linked on a "See also" section means nothing. If it did mean something, many pages that have been relegated to Wikipedia's dustbin could have been saved. wound theology◈ 12:19, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The entry for bonfires in the book: "Bonfires: To most people, especially youngsters, a bonfire is a calming, comforting experience, punctuated by fun and the crackle and smell of burning pine wood — a sort of wienie, marshmallowy fancy that warms the heart. But it wasn’t a pleasant experience for those in bygone days, because such fires were fueled by the burning bones of corpses — they were fires of immolation and funeral pyres. Christians and heretics especially hated “bone-fires”!" Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:23, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lamona It is undefined. People will claim that you defer to what RS say is common to avoid defining it. But they will believe you should exclude misconceptions believed by groups they think are too small to have it be common. And then call that "editorial judgement" instead of saying that they're defining common. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:56, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not a collection of trivia which this page plainly is.
Agree that Wikipedia is not a collection of trivia, whether this article is is a matter of opinion. I and many other do not think it is.
Each one of the listings is, at most, appropriate for a single line on their respective pages.
Clearly false. Many of the entries are elaborated at length in their topic article. To cite just two examples: equal transit time and Cass Elliot didn't die fro eating ham sandwich. And even if this assertion was correct, it's irrelevant to AfD.
The sources cited on this page are often low-quality...
True to some extent, but irrelevant. From WP:ITSUNREFERENCED
In the Wiki model, an article which may currently be poorly written, poorly formatted, lack sufficient sources, or not be a comprehensive overview of the subject, can be improved and rewritten to fix its current flaws. That such an article is lacking in certain areas is a relatively minor problem, and such articles can still be of benefit to Wikipedia. In other words, the remedy for such an article is cleanup, not deletion.
...blatant plagiarism from Snopes...
Citation needed.
Agree that the scope of this article is rather open-ended and could possibly lead to it attracting a large quantity of low quality entries. As someone put it in the 4th AfD, it's a "magnet for POV and OR edits". Which is true. But it's also not a valid reason for deletion, as per WP:LIKELYVIOLATION. In the approximately 5 years since AfD-4 it's grown by about 100 entries to about 430, so the fear that it was going to grow out of control would seem to be unfounded.
In sum, the arguments given in favor of deletion are either false, irrelevant, or just someone's opinion. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:00, 2 July 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.
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