Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Subjects in Foucault's Pendulum

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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was delete. This article is a duplicate of the concordance at wikt:Appendix:Words From Foucault's Pendulum. It appears to have been created in order to circumvent the deletion decision of the article "List of Words from Foucault's Pendulum". The only difference is the addtion of this sentence in the header of the list. "These are either topics that don't belong in a dictionary or protologisms." I do not find that sentence to be true. All of these are, in fact, topics which do belong in a dictionary. In addition, the concordance is already linked in the main article on Foucault's Pendulum. Rossami (talk) 02:55, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

List of Subjects in Foucault's Pendulum[edit]

I don't know how to otherwise put it, but I feel that this article is not appropriate for Wikipedia. Not meaning to bad-mouth Foucault's Pendulum, but I fail to understand why we need to compile a list of subjects covered in this one book, as opposed to compiling a list of subject found in, say The Bible? The Elder Pliny's Natural History? The Boy Scout Manual? (I am trying very hard to put these points in neutral language, but the fact someone would consider this list appropriate for Wikipedia leaves me speechless.)

  • Foucault's Pendulum is a work that's intended to be decoded. There are subjects here that the average reader would be frustrated by, and want to immediately look up in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia makes it much easier to read this book, and if you've paged through it, you know what I'm talking about. How else are you gonna know who Adolphe Menjou is or what Joss sticks are. The boy scout manual reader doesn't need an encyclopedia. I got the idea to make this page when I saw the index for Hitchhikers Guide and thought this worked along the same lines. Maybe not. Whatever. I vote Delete Someone should turn this into a website before all the work is lost because I know readers need this.

Let's move this effort to its own webiste, & encourage the author to create an external link to it. -- llywrch 22:30, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete - this is the sort of thing the elastic deletion clause ("No potential to become encyclopedic") is for. "Wikipedia articles are not lists or repositories of loosely associated topics" would seem to apply as well. -- Cyrius|✎ 22:47, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, Foucault's pendulum is an important novel, so the esoteric topics covered within it are going be very interesting to many readers. I'm depressed that you don't want wikipedia to adequately cover topics like this book, or the Bible, or Pliny's natural history. Kappa 23:13, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I don't see how you read that into what xe said. The book is covered in Foucault's Pendulum (book), not in this article, and the (encyclopaedia-worthy) subjects from the book are covered in individual encyclopaedia articles. How, therefore, does suggesting the deletion of the list somehow translate into non-coverage of either the book or the subjects? Uncle G 00:59, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
      • Because it means not covering the "non-encyclopedia-worthy" subjects which may neverless be important in the book, as well as not gathering these related subjects together in an accessible form. Kappa 07:51, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • No it doesn't mean that at all. Coverage of subjects "important to the book" but not outside of it can quite naturally go in the article on the book. Uncle G 01:36, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)
  • Delete. Maybe I just don't understand the idea here. If you're reading along and find something you want to look up, why would you look at this list instead of just looking the term up directly in Wikipedia? (By the way, if it survives vfd, don't forget to move it to List of subjects in Foucault's Pendulum.) FreplySpang (talk) 23:17, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • This is better because those kinds of words are in every other paragraph, I suggest you try to read the book
    • P.S. Note that The Ultra-Complete Index to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy refers to a document on WikiSource, not Wikipedia. FreplySpang (talk) 23:21, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • That's an index, it says "word x is on page N, it's not an annotated list of links. Annotated lists of links are possibly the best form of navigation tool ever. Kappa 00:52, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • How was this supposed to be different from List of Words from Foucault's Pendulum (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of Words from Foucault's Pendulum) ? At the moment, as far as I can tell, it's a a copy of it. Uncle G 00:59, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
    • "These are either topics that don't belong in a dictionary or protologisms. For a list of obscure but defineable words, see the concordance" Kappa 01:18, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC) {BWT "protologism" is a newly created word that hasn't gained wide acceptance, so you shouldn't use it in encyclopedia articles.) There really aren't any protologisms in this list. Its either archaic words that people havent thought to define in wiktionary, or obscure places and things that only a semiologist would know about.
      • That's pretty much the only textual difference between this article and List of Words from Foucault's Pendulum, and it is not borne out by the rest of the article at all. Hence my question, which is still unanswered, as to how the original author intended to edit the article to make it distinct from List of Words from Foucault's Pendulum. Was this intended to be simply a "main article" broken out of the "See also" section of Foucault's Pendulum (book) (which has just been turned into rather a mess, by the way)? Uncle G 01:36, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)
        • Any defineable words should have been removed. What's left are encyclopedia subjects. If there are still words, clean it up.
  • Delete. Not an encyclopedia article. RickK 01:11, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
    • WP has a great deal of lists which aren't articles. Kappa 01:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. This should be a category, not an article. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:26, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Items in this list are important to Foucault's Pendulum, but not vice-versa. People would rightly object if someone started trying add that category to things like Jesuits. Kappa 07:51, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I think that the main reason this article is being rejected is the lingering defined words that aren't "Subjects." If people saw only a list of wikipedia articles they would be much more inclined to recognize the significance.
    • I think they recognize the significant, but Foucault just doesn't get the same number of votes that Pokemon or Star Trek does. (please sign your comments) Kappa 09:46, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • The only way I can explain this is that all of the votes for deletion come from Rosicrucians that don't want to be found out. I don't sign theses things because I think it goes against the whole commie-ideal of wikipedia.
        • Well things are certainly more anarchic if you don't know who is saying what, LOL. Kappa 22:34, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge per WP:FICT. Radiant_* 10:51, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
  • Userfy so author can preserve it elsewhere, then Merge to the parent book's article or delete. I guess WP:FICT is the closest policy. This is an interesting idea but it's not WP's purpose. Barno 16:26, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Its just plain useful. D&D characters get less. Further, most of these are red-links. Umberto Eco was so esoteric that wikipedia still hasent covered the stuff he mentioned in 1988. If it serves no other purpose, it is a place for people to find these links and fill them. Someone jusr started a page on Agartha and I'm looking forward to finding out WTF the Anslem of Cantebury isShadowyCaballero
    • Note: User's seventh edit, all to this article or to this VfD (and one to stub his userpage).
  • Comment: Spelling correctly helps find information quicker. Anselm was a person, Canterbury was the place he was from. Eco wasn't esoteric, just the opposite; however this book covered many esoteric chunks of information. The fact that he mentioned old movements, old secret societies, old conspiracy theories, etc. doesn't mean that they're intrinsically verifiable or meet WP's standards of significance. However, I remember wishing for a really big encyclopedia with details of these people and books and organizations. Just not sure WP is the right place to build that. Barno 19:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • You don't think wikipedia is the right place to build a really big encyclopedia? What could be a better place? Kappa 21:29, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • A big encyclopaedia full of unverifiable secret societies? Please don't distort what Barno said in order to argue against it. Uncle G 01:36, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)
        • If the secret society is in this book, that's a verifiable fact about it and makes it significant to large numbers of people. Pokemons get articles. Kappa 09:23, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Barno's point would be better made if written: "Anselm was a person, Canterbury was the place he was from." Uncle G 01:36, 2005 Apr 1 (UTC)
  • Delete. A sort of glossary, sort of mishmash of words/objects that happen to be mentioned in a sentence of an overrated book. The important ones can be mentioned in the Foucault's Pendulum article, things like Clavichords (a redlink which should probably be listed as clavichord) have little to do with the book, and are mentioned so many other places that one might as well have paper on the list as that. Shouldn't be a category either, as it opens up articles to have 1000 categories attached to them: "Subject in insert book here". -R. fiend 03:30, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong delete. Reading through the entries, this is obviously a "list of words from FP that the writer of the article didn't understand". There's all sorts of random things here, including avalon, centenary, couscous and naiad. WP is not a dictionary. Radiant_* 09:42, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete I have a sick devotion to wikipedia. Nothing gets me going like a list full of red-links. All the crankery going around, this site is the only trustworthy source. Foucault's Pendulum, a book about crack-pot theories, is the perfect book to filter through WP because it will seperate the cookery from the verifiable facts. All of these subjects should be spell checked and blue-linked, but the list itself is highly inappropriate and should be deleted immediately.

  • Strong delete, as Wikipedia should remain an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. I note that a concordance to this effect already exists in Wikidictionary([1] ), that, incidentally, looks suspiciously like the same list. Perhaps there should simply be a link to that 'Concordance' in the Foucault's Pendulum article. Duncan France April 2 2005 [Please note: I can't find the tilde key on the computer I am at at the moment...!]
  • Delete unencyclopedic. —Seselwa 10:07, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. --Carnildo 23:09, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. A datadump of terms, a glorified glossary for a single work of fiction? Uh uh. --Calton | Talk 00:17, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.
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