Wikiquote:Votes for deletion/Mnemonic pages


 * 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: No consensus.  Cbrown1023  talk  23:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Mnemonic pages
Pages nominated:
 * Category:Mnemonics
 * Biology mnemonics
 * English mnemonics
 * English astronomy mnemonics
 * English biology mnemonics
 * English chemistry mnemonics
 * English computing mnemonics
 * English date and time mnemonics
 * English electrical and electronic mnemonics
 * English geography mnemonics
 * English geology mnemonics
 * English mathematics mnemonics
 * English medicine mnemonics
 * English music mnemonics
 * English navigation mnemonics
 * English spelling mnemonics
 * English weather mnemonics
 * French mnemonics
 * German mnemonics
 * Russian mnemonics
 * Swedish mnemonics
 * Transwiki:List of first-letter mnemonics
 * Transwiki:List of mnemonic verses
 * Transwiki:List of mnemonics
 * Weights and measures mnemonics
 * Zodiac mnemonics

Rather than wait out the nomination of Japanese mnemonics for no good reason, I'm going to be bold and nominate every mnemonic page I could find, English or otherwise. I hope that this will address any concerns that my motivation was language-based.

Here are my explanations why these pages should be deleted: —LrdChaos (talk) 16:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) There is no real way to source this. While sometimes textbooks will list mnemonics, the ones that we have lack sources.
 * 2) This somewhat follows from the above. More often than not, mnemonics are the creation of a student or a teacher as an aid to learning. Sometimes their usage can be widespread (SOH CAH TOA for sin, cosine, and tangent, as an example) but there often a number of variations that are, in effect, vanity quotes.
 * 3) The subject matter isn't really appropriate for Wikiquote. In my mind, mnemonics are quite a different animal from the other sorts of quotes we have here; these basically boil down a series of learning aids, and while they can easily meet a simplistic definition for what constitutes a "quote" (i.e., something said or written) their nature is different from other "quotes". (Perhaps mnemonics might make a good subject for a Wikibooks page.)
 * 4) In the case of foreign-language pages, the material isn't English. While there are often English descriptions accompanying the mnemonics, the primary content is not English and cannot be translated in such a way as to preserve the point.
 * ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Vote closes: 22 February 2007, 17:00 (UTC)
 * Vote extended to 20:00, 26 February 2007 (UTC), to give a full week's consideration after explicitly adding Japanese mnemonics to this discussion. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

KEEP. or figure out a place to put it. Usefull 24.222.119.85 04:36, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, per nom. ~ UDScott 16:26, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete I totally agree with LrdChaos here, per nom.  Cbrown1023  talk  16:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Retain, these pages cover a useful topic mhardee 9:05, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * NOTE: The actual signature/timestamp of the above vote is 16:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC). We currently have no User:mhardee. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Three things:
 * Delete all mnemonics aren't really quotes, and so few of them are notable, or verifiable since there are no "official" mnemonics.
 * or Delete non-English mnemonics if we decide that mnemonics are acceptable. Mnemonics don't translate very well so the meaning is lost. Besides, we have foreign language Wikiquotes, where they would be more appropriate.
 * Should we close the Japanese mnemonics debate early since the page would be included with this discussion?
 * Koweja 18:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * As I write this, I see 2 explicit "transfer nominations" from Aphaia and myself, 1 implicit one from InvisibleSun, and 3 implications (from LrdChaos, UDScott, and less clearly, Cbrown1023) that doing the transfer would be in line with their expressed interest in both discussions to delete all mnemonics articles, with no unaccounted-for votes. I conclude there is a fairly clear move in this direction from the existing Japanese mnemonics ("Jm") participants. I'd rather see more explicit agreement in "Jm" to transfer, but if that hasn't happened by the closure date, I feel I can add "Jm" to this discussion as part of its closure, based on this evaluation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 00:05, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep the English language ones; they are a bit marginal, but arguably are within our scope. Some are so well-known that they can be called "familiar quotaions".  Delete the foreign language ones as being outside the scope of English Wikiquote.--Poetlister 22:39, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep or move; this is useful content and having it somewhere on Wikimedia makes coping with additions and links easier. –EdC 01:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Please note that EdC probably means "Transwiki" with move.  Cbrown1023  talk  01:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Um, yeah, sorry. TBH if there isn't an appropriate home for them I'm beginning to swing towards killing them off; I'd prefer that not to happen, though. EdC 18:09, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all, including Japanese mnemonics, for the reasons I've already described in the "Jm" discussion. In addition to the questionable value as pithy quotes and my opinion that these are better moved to Wiktionary or even Wikipedia, the one likely insurmountable problem these articles all face is that nobody wants to reliably source any of them, despite the readily available references for such material. People can (and do) add whatever mnemonic they wish to make up, and we have no reasonable means to identify them as "vanity" or unnotable quotes. This is a blight on Wikiquote, and should be terminated with extreme prejudice. If I thought we had any hope of sourcing, I'd consider changing my vote to "transwiki", but it just ain't gonna happen. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 10:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Agree that mnemonics aren't exactly quotations; they're more like formulae. - InvisibleSun 22:00, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * * Transwiki or Keep → The mnemonics are very useful, although it's true that they aren't quotes. Like what the others said, having a collection of mnemonic somewhere in wiki quite a good idea, since it's wasteful to delete all of them just like that. — Yurei-eggtart 17:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Transwiki or Keep -- I think it's a matter of opinion as to whether these are quotes or not, but I can't countenance the wholesale deletion of useful knowledge. --The Cunctator 18:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment. To those suggesting these be transwiki'd, where should they go? I suspect Wikipedia would just try to kick them back here, and the only other place they might fit is at Wikibooks, but no one has really addressed the where question yet. —LrdChaos (talk) 19:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. However I think Wikipedia is the best position; Wikibooks would be scared with materials not in compiled in their scheme. Personally I think those are within our scope, but apparently I belong to the minority. It depends on each POV if they are quotes or not, as the Cunctator said. We need to have many opinions to go through the middle way between those "no, no" and "yes, yes". To sum up opinions as many as possible, their ADF will a better place than ours. --Aphaia 03:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Aphaia, I didn't understand that last statement. Are you saying that there should be an AFD (articles for deletion) discussion about this on Wikipedia? Would this be to reconsider EdC's transwiki of three articles? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep If ever I would want to read mnemonics, I want to read them here, not some other website. Possibly some articles need merging, but not full deletion. Dev920 00:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment: So far, I've found only 6 articles in this list that even make an attempt to source some mnemonics:
 * English mnemonics — 2 external sites, neither wiki-reliable (I removed the unused medical one now in "medicine" and a commerical link)
 * English astronomy mnemonics — 2 of the 63 have unspecific book references (no chapter or page/edition)
 * English mathematics mnemonics — a personal poem, an MP3 file, and other unreliable sources
 * English medicine mnemonics — 1 of 44 (a complete, specific source!), 1 possibly reliable general source (MedicalMnemonics.com)
 * Transwiki:List of mnemonics — the medical link again
 * Transwiki:List of first-letter mnemonics — 16 well-cited references which apparently were not transferred to their resulting Wikiquote articles (except for the Swansburg medical quote)
 * After more than a week, I've seen no community interest in trying to obtain sources (or even transfer existing sources from the transwiki page) for any of these quotes. (All the existing sources were in the articles before this nomination.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 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.