Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/26 over 44

26 over 44
26 Over 44 has extreme POV issues, seems to be original research, no real sources or citations, and a platform for the author, one Jerekson, to rant on American English instruction.

Zidel333 17:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment. I'v just finished reading the entire text of this book (not much, so far), and I have to say I am on the fence. I don't think that it is any particular secret that the english systems of writing and spelling are needlessly complicated. Also, I don't see much in here that is original research. The roots of the english language are reasonably well known in academia, and the history of the language certainly qualifies as a subject that can be represented here on wikibooks. However, I do agree with the assertion that the author has needlessly introduced a certain amount of NPOV. To that extent, I have marked the book with the npov template, to alert the author of the problem. Also, I will likely send the author a message letting him know about the problem before he does too much more work on the book (if he is even active, I haven't looked at the page histories). I don't think we need to delete this one, necessarily. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep. I've been talking to the author of this book, User:Jerekson. I told him about the problems, and he has assured me that his intentions are not to post original research (he claims to have a list of sources that he is going to reference), nor to violate NPOV. He has also mentioned that he is going to go back and attempt to fix some of the obvious problems in these areas. Also, I would hardly call this a rant: It is a well-known fact that in America the literacy rates have been in decline. Also, there is some argument to be made (with verifiable sources) to say that a proportion of the public school teachers in America are not completely qualified to be teaching (at least not the subjects that they currently teach). The intended goal of this book (according to the author) is to discuss the history of the english language, discuss the difficulties in learning the language as experianced by children, the difficulties in teaching the language, the efforts to reform the language (of which there are many), and to overview some of the suggested methods for teaching the language. All of these subjects fit into the category of things that belong on wikibooks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. Much of this is very American and only of interest for US readers but it's informative and a good read even if it's a bit biased and incomplete - if we want something to be unbaised then the easiest way to do this is by having more than one author and that's the great thing about Wikis.  Xania 20:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I really do hope that more than one author will get in and work on the text. The basic infrastructure should be enough to attract people. English learners from other countries are among those most frequently interested in English spelling reforms, so while it is focused on issues current in the US, I believe 26/44 quickly gets to issues of interest to the International English-Learner community. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jerekson (talk • contribs).


 * Keep -- the book was just started not to long ago, and certainly shows promise. -- SB_Johnny | talk 22:01, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete Book is an original source of strong POV advocacy. Completely qualifies as exemplary soapbox.
 * Book is not moving in the direction of a textbook treatment of existing advocacy issues for a certain subject.
 * Book is not moving in the direction of NPOV.
 * Book is not moving in the direction away from originality.
 * The assertions of the book themselves are debateable (actually seriously flawed), as opposed to being a scholarly treatment of some long-standing or widely-held assertions in society or science that were later found to be flawed. An acceptable example would be a historical exploration of flat earth theory.
 * Book title has zero hits on subject, suggestive of an attempt to coin a phrase. Readers should be able to google an existing subject and find a Wikibook title as part of the results.
 * The entirety of the opening module uses weasel language. To illustrate how the page condescends to the reader, the following quotes will be responded to in kind:
 * "You’ve been suspicious of big pharmaceutical companies for years" ...I have?
 * "Well, school is already probably the biggest bureaucracy in the country"  ...Really?  I heard it was insert_favorite_government_soapbox_here?    
 * "Oh, come on. They have our kids’ best interests at heart, don’t they?"  ...Did the reader really say that?  Oh come on?
 * "The medicine man that keeps the villagers sick and then shows up with the cure is nothing more than a witch doctor, a swindler, a cheat." ...Where does this fit in?
 * "I don’t know much about Linguistics....You know enough." ...Great, I can stop reading now.

An acceptable effort would be a textbook NPOV treatment of "Currently Debated Issues in No child Left Behind" vs. something called "32 of 50: States Left Behind". Another fitting effort would be non-original research on "Phonemic Orthogonality in the Development of English Language" vs. "Some Bastard Raped 41% of My Language". This book draws conclusions, instead of exploring existing conclusions drawn in an outside field. Poppafuze 12:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * First off, the title of the book is hardly grounds to have the book deleted. Here at wikibooks, the original author of a book is given unilateral control over naming and organizing their book, and the title of this book does fit in with the subject matter. I would admit that there are better titles out there, but that is not the issue at hand. Also, the 26/44 ratio is known in a linguistic study of the english language, and the term "26 over 44" is the result of a shortcoming in the mediawiki software, and not an attempt to define something new.
 * Second, I don't see much in here that qualifies as "Strong POV advocacy", although the author has admitted to introducing a few flaws and has promised to fix them. The "No Child Left Behind" act might be a strongly contested political tool, but it does play an important role in the literacy rate of America. As such, it is certainly worth mentioning that act, and that cannot be considered an NPOV violation.
 * The most important point that I am going to make right now is that this book is less then 1 week old (which, according to Deletion policy means this book wasn't even eligible to be listed here in the first place), that the book does have a strong potential to contain valuable information of a sort that is not currently on wikibooks, and that the author is new to our policies and has promised to clean up the book to meet our standards. Keep in mind that wikibooks authors are volunteers, and we should not be expecting them to "jump when I say jump", or to make gigantic changes to the tone, premise, or structure of the book within so short a timeframe. Good books take time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you point me to a policy or rule that states that "the original author of a book is given unilateral control over naming and organizing their book,...", that would be appreciated. --Panic 17:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no such point stated explicitly, but the person who creates a new book does get to pick the name of the book, and there is currently no policy that restricts the types of book titles that can or even should be used. It has been a de facto rule that the person who is creating a new book gets to decide how to create it. Now, this is not to say that a book could not be renamed once it is created, but it can still be created in any way that the original author sees fit. You may be personally familiar with the "C plus plus" and "C -/- -/-" books, where both titles were bad, but authors were allowed to create them anyway. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as 26/44 being known in linguistic study...
 * http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=26%2F44+english&btnG=Search .nothing
 * http://www.google.com/search?q=26/44+phonemes&hl=en&lr=&start=10&sa=N ...nothing
 * http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=26%2F44+spelling&btnG=Search ...1 hit
 * http://www.google.com/search?q=26/44+language&hl=en&lr=&start=90&sa=N ...nope
 * http://www.google.com/search?q=26/44+dyslexia&hl=en&lr=&start=90&sa=N ...nope
 * One source claims 40 sounds.


 * The outline of this work should have presented at least one of the actual major historical efforts to revise language by design (mandatory) and why (or not) these worked. It should have presented the views on the necessity of phoneme:grapheme correlation vs. the dynamically evolving nature of language (i.e. linguistic conservatism vs. dynamism) because each side of that argument can claim the other as the cause of any current or past mismatch between oral and written language traditions.  Other substantive causes of lingustic change are not observed in the work, either.  Why accentuation develops and how that drives change, phonemic temporal structure, etc.  These are all central to a balanced treatment of the subject, before going anywhere near an espousal of some solution.  A good book is not going to arise over time from a swiss cheese outline.


 * Dragging out on "No Child..." is missing my point entirely. I was saying that there exactly is a way to treat that subject in Wikimedia.  The simple fact that this is being debated this early is reflective of the subject matter presenting something that is primarily debateable, instead of a treatment about a debate without acting as a participant.  I purposefully used language similar to the first page to draw out a defensive response from somewhere, which succinctly illustrates the clear direction this book has already taken in its short life.    If the tone of the module was textbook, a lot of this NFD would not need to be here.  The early time is the best time to discuss the suitability of the work, rather than later after the author has expended a significant amount of time.  Especially when the premise of the work has been clearly established, as in this case.  Here at Wikibooks, IFF a consensus develops that the work is not suitable, the volunteerism of that contributing author is respected by telling them to not waste their contributory time.


 * It's a great subject, and deserves any fair treatment it can get, even if it's POV. Except the POV part precludes it from being here.  The Simplified Spelling Society deserves documentation in their own right, even if it hadn't been around 98 years, regardless of whether they support British English, or American.  It's not hard to become fascinated by the concept that language is not static, why that is, why some languages are more or less quirky, and whether something should be done about it.  The dyslexia example is a hypotesis that deserves work, ought to be documented here,and could have a wide-ranging impact on understanding of cognition and linguistics.  I hope the author can render a study of the subject without continuing down the POV path.
 * "There aren’t enough letters to cover all the sounds! How stupid is that?...Pretty stupid."
 * "there was another answer to why kids are failing. What is that reason?...The French."

...I hereby upgrade my assessment to "gaggingly POV" and stand down. Poppafuze 16:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure responding to such a lengthy essay on why someone elses contributions should be deleted will do any good, but keep in mind that (1) the book hasn't had time to move towards or away from NPOV or unoriginality (is unoriginality an asset?), (2) witty, conversational textbooks often teach at least as well (if not better) than dry, monotonic treatises, (3) a lot of the oddness of the English language has to do with it's multiple origins (including the odd phonetics, which the monks realised before codifying German with it's wonderful phoenetic spelling). The book certainly needs some work, but from what I've seen so far the primary author is clearly passionate about the subject, joyful about presenting it, and hopefully he'll stick around and make a good book out of it. -- SB_Johnny | talk 18:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * There are several points from this long essay that I would like to speak to directly. First off, the fact that this book has drawn so much debate so early is not indicitive of the inappropriateness of the book. I would say that the community is pretty overwhelmingly in favor of keeping this book without comment or argument, as demonstrated by the number of keep votes already listed here. Next, the fact that the title of this book doesnt appear on google is insubstantial. It may not have ever been written in such a format before, but that doesnt mean that the english language doesn't have 26 letters, and that those letters are not used to represent approximately 44 sounds. The fact that the author has put those numbers together in an original way does not violate NPOV, and i would also argue that it doesnt qualify as Original Research either. Finally, the question-and-answer format of the book may not be the norm among textbooks, but wikibooks doesnt specify that textbooks must follow a particular format. Authors who try to discuss a subject in a novel way are encouraged to do so: We are looking for contributors, not robots! This book is still young, the problems are known to the author, and they are being corrected as quickly as should be expected from a one-man volunteer workforce. Expecting more is awfully authoritarian on your part. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep -- --Panic 17:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep -- --Jerekson 04:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Give him more time.--Oualmakran Youssef 06:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep; if the guy gets over some serious POV issues --Member 05:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete sorry guys, but this is bunch of crap. POV, OR, crackpottery of the highest calibre. Grue 16:37, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Close -- result is keep by numbers and by argument. The delete votes have been from less experienced wikibookians, and this is turning into a WB:BITE problem. -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)