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 the whole shebang. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Son[edit]

Son (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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I'm sending a bunch of family-related articles to AFD. As counterintuitive and ridiculous as this nomination may seem (April Fools was a couple of days ago...), on close analysis there seems to be little if any sources in any of these articles (many of them not have not been touched or significantly altered in years). There is a surprising amount of reliance on dic. defs and encyclopedia entries without much else. Also, I'm just not sure where one would go to find sources on these topics. I looked up "nephew" on google and got next to nothing. Perhaps for "son" and "daughter" we could find and add stuff that are probably in our more specific articles (like first-birth right) but ironically not here. For "cousin" we could grab some stuff about the legality and acceptance of cousin-relationships and put it in there. Disownment seems very notable but at the moment is has no sources at all. I'm afraid the others may be doomed to a life on Wiktionary. I suppose a mass-merge is possible. Coin945 (talk) 06:29, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This nomination will radically change Template:Family. It might be a good idea to bring this into the discussion as well.

Also nominating:

• Daughter
• Aunt
• Uncle
• Cousin
• Nephew and niece
• Parent-in-law
• Brother-in-law
• Sister-in-law
• Affinity (law) - may have to be deleted anyway because of Affinity (canon law)
• Disownment - I suspect this one is very notable but there state of the article at the moment is bad.

--Coin945 (talk) 06:44, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I think Affinity (law) and Disownment should be treated separately in the debate.

Disownment: possibly redirect to child abandonment: I think this is already covered by child abandonment which has an article and disinherit wich redirects to inheritance, unless someone has more references showing it's a distinct legal concept? Affinity (law) I have no opinion on, other than that it seems distinct from Affinity (canon law).

• Keep: family relations articles. Just because they're bad articles is no reason for deletion. There's room for more content: e.g. social roles of family members in different cultures. --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:26, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I totally agree with you in theory, but in reality there just seems to be little or no sources. Please, help me dig up some dirt that we can use. I want to be proven wrong on this one. I wish these articles could be kept......--Coin945 (talk) 12:54, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Can you imagine how absurd it would be for us to have 6,832,485 articles but make Cousin and Aunt redlinks? I strongly suspect that multiple reliable sources exist that cover the concepts of daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, etc. Nyttend (talk) 12:26, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, this is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary.
• Keep all; no particular opposition to merging all in-law concepts until enough material exists to support individual articles. bd2412 T 14:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to expand on my !vote a bit, and specifically propose that Son and Daughter should be kept as individual articles, that Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin should for the time being be merged into a single article on relationships by descent from common ancestors other than one's own parents (which covers all kinds of great aunts and seventh cousins and so forth), and that the in-laws articles should be merged into a single article on relationships by affinity. bd2412 T 16:29, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep the first 6 (son to nephew and niece) as vital articles. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:56, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Cousin. The Cousin article contains useful content (albeit not terribly well written). It is (well, ought to be) a useful resource for the "Xth cousin Y times removed" definitions, which I believe that many people don't understand well. Also, the concept of a "double" cousin is notable. Perhaps more use could be made of [1] Joelphillips (talk) 15:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Note to Keepers It's all very well and good to say that these articles should be kept (I agree with you in theory) but what we really need is evidence of notability. Look at the articles yourself. Type each and every one into Google, You'd be surprised at what little information is actually out there.--Coin945 (talk) 15:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Google (search for "cousin family") returns loads of pages that attempt to define cousin relationships. [2] [3] [4]. Joelphillips (talk) 20:34, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Besides Google, you need to consider the print sources. Such fundamental concepts of human existence can reasonably be assumed to have been studied in publications that have never made it to the Web. Nyttend (talk) 22:15, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep - The concept of a son is very easy to find sources which meed WP:GNG:

• Father and son:a study of two temperaments - Edmund Gosse, Peter Abbs
• The return of the prodigal son: a story of homecoming - Henri J. M. Nouwen
• Raising a Son: Parents and the Making of a Healthy Man - Don Elium, Jeanne Elium
• That's My Son: How Moms Can Influence Boys to Become Men of Character - Rick Johnson
• Son-rise: the miracle continues - Barry Neil Kaufman
• Counterfeit Son - Elaine Marie Alphin

... and on and on and on. The concept of family, raising a family, family values, societal expectations of various family roles, historical family roles, and the like have been the subject of thousands if not millions of publications. I see no reason why any of the articles AFD'd here can't be expanded upon with a modicum of research.--StvFetterly(Edits) 15:50, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep or merge. These articles are very useful, I see no reason to delete them. If they were deleted, Wikipedia would be less informative and less useful which is not what we are aiming for. No Raisin At All (talk) 17:53, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. All of these articles describe fundamental concepts critical to any attempt at a comprehensive encyclopedic work. There are clearly sources available, as noted by Stvfetterly above, so that's not a valid concern. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 19:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Article condition is not a deletion rationale, absent some narrow exceptions. It certainly isn't a deletion rationale here. These are, as noted above, vital articles and core concepts that any serious encyclopedia should address. Sources are not difficult to find. Even adding "family" as an additional search term is productive, in not only the web search, but Books and Scholar as well. I understand that common words make targeted searching difficult, but there are literally hundreds of years of writings on these topics. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:08, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comments I didn't look at most of the articles, but I note that the affinity article is sourced from Britannica. Are we willing to tell Britannica that they were wrong in having an article on the subject? Meanwhile, disownment and child abandonment are two very different things: abandonment is leaving behind an infant or toddler, while disownment is done to people of full or nearly-full maturity who generally are able to take care of themselves. Nyttend (talk) 22:13, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • With respect to the affinity article, I would add that the existing Affinity (canon law) article addresses the topic only from the point of view of one religious organization. To limit our discussion of the topic to that would make it seem that groups like Protestants, Jews, and Hindus have no concept of the legal status of in-laws, and that secular laws do not recognize such a thing. bd2412 T 23:23, 4 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep first 6 to nephew-and-niece; possibly merge Son and Daughter to form Child (relationship). Core relationships, and I'm sure there's plenty of sociology, psychology, cultural significance, etc to be added. (Needing a son to light funeral pyre. etc). Not so sure about in-laws, but certainly a lot of tidying/dabbing/redirection is needed: Brothers in Law doesn't link to Brother in law, the latter has some dab-type links as See alsos.... haven't looked at sister/father/mother-in-law. Won't spend time sorting out B-i-L for now, but when the dust settles one way or the other there's work there to be done. The template and other links need looking at too: child, linked on the template, is about the agegroup not the relationship and there was no obvious link from that article to Son or Daughter (have now linked from lead para and from Child (disambiguation). PamD 09:40, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:30, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• The Next Step So, what's the consensus here? Some say that "son" should be kept and don't comment on the others, some say that the first 6 (vital) articles should be kept, others discuss merges etc. The general vibe is that more sources can be found. I'm a bit dubious to that (e.g. looking at those 3 "cousin" sites didn't convince me that there was THAT much more info out there), but I concede that it is probably best to keep the articles where they are. I am an inclusionist myself, so this was a bit of a bizarre move to make but after stumbling on the articles a couple of days ago (for some reason or another) and being dumbfounded by how bad (for lack of a better word) they were I felt it was necessary to put them up for deletion based solely upon closely examining the evidence objectively. The same idea - of something being seemingly inherently notable but there just being no sources - very narrowly almost got signature song deleted, but others and I argued its case. You're probably right. The problem now is divided consensus. Where do we go from here?--Coin945 (talk) 19:15, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Eventually, this AFD will be closed. It's possible that a closer will read the current situation as qualifying for an early close, otherwise it will remain open for the full 7 day duration. Unless consensus changes before then, the articles will probably be retained. As with any articles which have substantial room for improvement, the "next step" is always to locate more and higher quality sources and improve the status of the articles. I've got a couple things on my plate and somewhat limited editing time right now (so I'm mostly hanging about AFDs), but I'll see what I can scare up in the next few days to lend a hand with one or more of these. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:59, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that a vote to "keep" one of the group is not a sub silentio vote to "delete" the rest; there are no actual "delete" votes here for any of the nominated articles. Possible merges can be discussed on the talk pages of the articles involved. I would support a merge of aunt, uncle, cousin, and niece/nephew into the article on Consanguinity, which addresses all of these relations. bd2412 T 21:09, 5 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Please keep these articles. I note you say there are few sources quoted. Please could you define what you think would be acceptable sources, besides definitions? It might give those of us who are genealogists somewhere to look to help to improve these articles. I'd only support a merger of any of these articles if the words were redirected into the merged article. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, extremely encyclopedic, significant coverage in secondary sources, numerous books devoted specifically to these very topics. — Cirt (talk) 05:36, 8 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge I am commenting because I just Googled the term half-nephew for research into my own familial relationships and the Wikipedia article ranked higher than the Wiktionary article and therefore I accessed it first. I use Wikipedia as a primary reference because I believe in user created entities such as Mozilla software and Wikipedia. I feel that merging these articles would make the resulting article encylopaedic regardless of it's definitional character. For example I entered the term half nephew into the dictionary on my Mac and got no results. I imagine that one referencing most modern online dictionaries would find a similar result. Regarding insufficient sourcing I find it fascinating that there are few classic academic sources available while there is a plethora of more casual sources for explanations of familial relationships. I believe that this is because simple words, like son, are commonly considered to be universally understood to the degree that it is assumed that it is unnecessary to examine them from an academic viewpoint. That said, perhaps I am mistaken on this point. All in all I believe the merged article would rightfully belong in Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary because dictionary definitions are normally concerned with one word only, leaving the examination of related words to thesauri. People searching for words of familial relationships are likely to be looking for more than the simple definition of the word and be more interested in the relationship of that word to other terms of familial relationship. Of course the individual words must needs be pointed to the merged article for this change to have any value.

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.