Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Conphilosophy

Conphilosophy
I propose to delete this page since it contains TOC and no nother content and has been so for more over a year, in fact since 2007; note that Conphilosophy/Branches is again just a list of redlinked subpages.

As for WB:Deletion, the relevant part is probably "delete pages with no meaningful content". What does not seem to apply is "In general, keep stubs that can be improved on, but delete stubs that are too narrowly defined or do not have a decent definition of what they are about". Also relevant could be the line "Abandoned pages displaying intent, but no actual content" which spells out what "Absence of meaningful content" covers.

Requests for deletion/Conphilosophy is a 2009 deletion nomination by me that resulted in keeping. However, I think the deletion discussion was at odds with WB:Deletion's "delete pages with no meaningful content", or it was made with a different interpretation of that statement in mind. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:48, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This empty content may penalize the other books in the Web indexing, but I'm searching for a strong proof before employing this argument in the policy. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 12:36, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * into the Conworld book. I don't think deletion is appropriate, as the content is not null; there appears to be some thought that went into the outline and might therefore be usefully preserved.  I floated the idea of such a merge at the previous nomination for this book, at which time I also explained my opposition to deletion.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:30, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * @Pi zero: Which sentences in there do you consider to be "not null" content? I don't find any such sentences. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 14:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, I do not see any "thought" that went into outline. The outline on the page is this, hidden underneath verbiage:
 * Conphilosophy/Definition
 * Conphilosophy/Branches
 * Conphilosophy/Branches/Metaphysics (added to this post later)
 * Conphilosophy/Branches/Epistemology (added to this post later)
 * Conphilosophy/Branches/Ethics (added to this post later)
 * Conphilosophy/Branches/Philosophical logic (added to this post later)
 * Conphilosophy/Branches/Mathematical logic (added to this post later)
 * Conphilosophy/Examples
 * Conphilosophy/History
 * Conphilosophy/Topics
 * Conphilosophy/Lists
 * Conphilosophy/References
 * --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 14:37, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Let's try a different angle: "Conphilosophy" is not anything at all, as a subject. Indeed, Google: "conphilosophy" finds only 388 pages on the whole of web. What is a constructed philosophy as opposed to philosophy without a modifier? As for conlang, I understand: that is a constructed language, one that is not naturally occurring. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 14:46, 7 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Seems clear enough to me: conphilosophy would be philosophy selected not for advocacy but for ascription to a conworld. Making the merge that much more natural.  On the question of content, there's not very much there (though more than you quote since there's an outline for one section) &mdash; which only makes it all the easier to simply merge into the other book.  I could likely do it in a few spare minutes except for the encumbrance of this extant RFD.  Tbh, proposing to merge would have been more constructive.  I don't understand a desire to delete content in preference to salvaging it.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:56, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * So which sentence is the content as opposed to meta-content or scoping information? Do you mean the trivial pseudo-outline that I have posted? Anyone with a shovel can create such a pseudo-outline for almost any subject. I have now added the philosophy branches, but they do not present any non-trivial substance.
 * What is an example of conphilosophy? Which books and resources could the reader check or which operational tests could the reader perform to verify the accuracy of the content? --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 15:09, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You seem to be excluding meta-information from "meaningful content". That doesn't work for books.  A major difficulty in writing a book is organizing it; note in the earlier RFD I phrased myself in terms of usefulness to later writers.  You also seem anxious to denigrate someone else's contributions, which surprises me given your reversed role in another current RFD.  Human thought is a precious resource; I hate to see any of it go to waste &mdash; and in this case the only obstacle to salvaging it is your position that it should be deleted instead, an attitude I find hard to fathom.  As for verification, Wikibooks is more relaxed about references than Wikipedia, and in any case you're on pretty thin ice simultaneously claiming there's nothing there and objecting to the quality of sourcing.  If there's nothing there, then it costs nothing to merge it into the other book, so again I see no merit (and some demerit) in demanding a deletion.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:53, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * For one thing, I indeed tend to exclude meta-information from "meaningful content". In particular, I do not consider the above quoted redlinked outline to be "meaningful content". It certainly is no more meaningful than the TOC at American Studies, which is currently in RFD with five people expressing views in favor of deletion. However, as for keeping meta-information-only stubs, there could be an outline that would make the page worth keeping, but such an outline would need to be something non-trivial. As for my Less page currently in RFD, the page is a stub but has what I consider to be "meaningful content"; the content is meaningful because it contains recipes, items of information that a user of the less program can use to do certain things with the program, to accomplish a task. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 17:31, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * As for WB:DP's "Abandoned pages displaying intent, but no actual content", I consider meta-information to be excluded from "actual content". --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I reject any artificial distinction between organization and "actual content". What matters is the test I defined before:  would someone coming along later have an easier task if the material were still available.  In some cases the answer is "no".  From my experience of the conlanging/conworlding material, I think in this case the answer is not quite "no".  As I've noted, it'd be trivially easy to absorb what's useful there into the other book, and I find a preference for destroying things instead repellant.  (In using the word "repellant", I'm actually censoring much stronger terms of opprobrium.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:56, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Btw, my test is directly supported by the policy page: "Content is not meaningful if it does not add value to readers or otherwise contribute to the project."  So if it contributes to the project, it doesn't matter whether it's meta-information.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:04, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The distinction between meta-information and actual content is meaningful and certainly not artificial. In a cookbook, even a single recipe is the actual content that helps the reader produce a certain outcome, whereas an outline that breaks down the cookbook into vegetable recipes and poultry recipes is not the actual content. The distinction is what the WB:DP seems to invoke when talking about "actual content" in contrast to "intent". My position is that TOC outlines without actual content - boxes without recipes to put in the boxes - should be deleted when abandoned for an extensive period of time, and this position seems to find some support in WB:DP.
 * The above quoted redlined outline is so trivial that it does not contribute to the Wikibooks project. It does not help anyone start writing a "conphilosophy" book or chapter. Anyone who had the first idea of how to write a "conphilosophy" book could easily start anew.
 * That said, I don't object to merging to Conworld. OTOH, I think Conworld should be deleted as well but that won't happen. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:43, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Well. So much for conphilosophy.  As for meta-information, it seems clear to me that the passage I've quoted specifically points out meaninglessness is not exclusively determined by usefulness to readers; usefulness to writers ("to the project") also matters.  What you call these things... well, no, it does matter, at least some; that's why I mislike the term "actual content" for non-organizational information, as that implies that infrastructure in some sense "doesn't count", which is over-general.  Certainly some meta-information is unhelpful (as is some non-meta information).  That's why I've !voted in favor of deleting some of these outline-only books, but not all.  What sorts of organizational information are helpful is very dependent on the nature of the book.  (Even more elaborately, I think meta-information could be more effectively useful if it came in the form of some sort of well-designed context-sensitive semi-automated assistance, rather than merely an outline or organizational discussion; which is why I'm working on making wiki markup capable of doing that despite the WMF's ill-advised choice of direction.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:06, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yet another angle: Interestingly enough, since I have quoted the redlinked outline in full in this discussion, and since this discussion is archived, prospective creators of a "conphilosophy" book can read this outline in the archived discussion. This would be even easier if RFD discussions were archived directly on the talk pages of deleted pages rather than in subpages in RFD; at least, the subpages of RFD are linked from talk pages. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:18, 8 October 2016 (UTC)


 * , or into Conworld. While I broadly agree with Dan Polansky on there being a difference between "actual" content and meta-content which is relevant for RfD cases (cf. the current American Studies and Australian Studies RfDs), I do not think it provides a sufficient reason for deletion. In this case, there are two attenuating factors:


 * Crucially, the Conworld book provides not only a reasonable merge target but also a overarching context for the Con- books in as they are currently laid out (cf. the "This book is part of the Conworld series of wikibooks" template).
 * An additional, and less clear-cut, factor is that (near-)empty books are arguably less harmful if they cover a minor (but in-scope) topic, as opposed to claiming a major and highly visible topic and/or title (such as American Studies).


 * That being so, I regard this Conphilosophy outline as part of a broader Conworld multi-book project, and the choice between keeping it as it is or merging it (as well as the other Con- books) into Conworld as an editorial decision to be taken by the involved editors. Therefore, the preferred outcome for me is "keep". If you find this to be too lenient a reading of deletion polices ("intent, but no actual content", etc.), a merge into Conworld would also be a reasonable outcome.


 * P.S.: As for the relevance of "conphilosophy" as a subject, it seems quite clear that "conphilosophy" is a neologism created following the pattern "conlang" (a much better known neologism). If the Conlang book is about creating plausible fictional languages, the Conphilosophy one is about creating plausible fictional philosophies. Putting it in another way, the issue of relevance probably would not have been raised if, rather than "Conworld" and "Conphilosophy", the books in question were called "Ficctional Worlds" and "Philosophy in Fictional Worlds". (Admittedly, though, the current introductory text in the Conphilosophy front page doesn't help much, as the fictional aspect is not obvious if you don't know what the "con-" prefix stands for -- for instance, a description such as "However, you are not interested in the philosophers of this world-- you want to create your own philosophy" applies just as well to real philosophic activity.)


 * Duplode (discuss • contribs) 05:31, 8 October 2016 (UTC)