Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Less

Less
User:JackPotte seems to propose either deletion or moving to Guide to Unix. I oppose both and therefore vote keep. The page is admittedly a stub, but that's fine: Wikibooks has loads of utterly useless stubs, and this stub is not utterly useless.

A further claim is that this cannot be expanded to be long enough and therefore is encyclopedic. I submit that whether something is encyclopedic as opposed to instructional is not a matter of length; Encyclopedia Britannica has some very long articles, longer than most Wikibooks "books". The page is to instruct how to use "less" and is therefore instructional in character and within remit of Wikibooks. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:49, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

If the outcome is that this should be deleted, please move the page to User:Dan Polansky/Less. I wish Wikibooks good luck in attracting contributors of useful content that does not fit Wikipedia and adds value for Wikibooks readers. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:53, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

On a slightly different subject, I propose that the use of closed template in closure of deletion discussion is abandoned. It is useful to be able to skim through closed discussions, which the template prevents by hiding the actual content of the discussions on a per-discussion basis. I propose that discussions are closed by (i) striking out the discussion header, and (ii) stating the outcome of the discussion in boldface. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:05, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Tbh, I don't see the difficulty with expanding material one wants to read. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:29, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * per Talk:Less. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 11:18, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Talk:Less does not contain any policy-based or consensus-based argument. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:22, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't agree with you on this point too. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 11:42, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I know. When I asked you to quote the relevant policy, you quoted parts of it and then added your wording since the parts were not enough. Either there is a policy that requires a minimum length of the material to be eventually developed as a single page or there is not. You have failed to quote such a policy. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:15, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Two meta-level remarks about this section.
 * This section was not created by a proponent of deleting the book, so it's not clear to me that any deletion nomination has actually been made. I don't mean this as a bureaucratic technicality, but as a practical problem with what is being presented here: the only explanation given here as to why the book should be deleted is written by someone who evidently does not believe the book should be deleted, and in my experience it is at best extremely difficult for someone who does not hold a position to give a properly effective presentation of that position.  So I don't see much point in the community trying to weigh in on the issue when the issue has not been reliably set before us.  In effect, what we have been offered here is not a proposal that something be done, but rather a proposal that something not be done.  For an effective community discussion, we need to start with a clear definition of what action is proposed.
 * Reminder: positions expressed here are not "votes"; it's not a question of simply counting up how many contributors take which position.
 * --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:28, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you. As a way of explanation, JackPotte was threatening to delete the stub (which I admit it is but will be expanded later) by placing query to it, which I removed as inappropriate. Let JackPotte present policy-based deletion rationale here. I did my best to represent his arguments here, but I admit I could have goofed; let JackPotte present his deletion rationale as best as he can.
 * As for whether this is about "votes", I think the vote count outcome should still be clear to anyone reading this later, and the vote count still matters as long as the voters try to engage in argument seeking exercise rather than placing bare votes. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:37, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * We did discuss, once upon a time, whether there would be a better word to use instead of "vote". The word "stance" was discussed &mdash; I think I might even have suggested it &mdash; but never really took off because, although it's short (one syllable), it's not as core-vocabulary as "vote".  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:58, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally, I don't want to copy-paste Talk:Less here, but to sum up: these 612 characters are not a book. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 13:13, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, these 612 characters are a stub. What can be admitted is that, after the page gets expanded, it still will not be of the length typical of a book, but one should not really be confused by the word "book" in "Wikibooks"; the keyword is instructional, not book. Novels are books and yet are excluded. Therefore, I ask now as before that the nominator for deletion provide a policy-based rationale. Stubs that are not deleted are in Category:Stubs, including Communism and American Studies. I submit that Less is already more useful than those stubs. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 13:30, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * or rather, move to be one chapter of a larger book. I think I have to agree with Jack Potte here: I don't think the topic is large enough to require a book on its own. Length is immaterial, though: my thought is that less is but one of a suite of *ix utilities, and would be of much more use if it was grouped with those utilities under a *ix header of some sort. In particular, then there could be a header page that grouped by functionality, giving an overview of what could be done and which tools were available to do it. I have to admit that, having never before seen books for single utilities broken out as separate, if I was looking for a CLI utility like less I would start by searching for a CLI reference. Chazz (talk) 18:43, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * why the hell are people alienating an editor that started a project/page in the last 30 days is beyond me. There is plenty of other work to do, pending merges etc... and people decide to disrupt an active contributor ?!?
 * Let him provide the free content then we can have a better view of what it is and what to do with it, even if it takes a few years to get there, there is no mischief being done and we certainly do not delete stubs...
 * A request was made to an active contributor and he did not agree (no consensus), that should be the end a the discussion, even spending more energy in a debate is harmful to the project as the contributions will certainly decrease and add frustration to all involved. A more protracted discussion would be right if the standing of the editors was similar or the alterations were significant (like if the page was moved out of an already existing aggregation). Just live User:Dan Polansky alone, or join in on his contributions... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 20:21, 25 September 2016 (UTC)


 * for now. For whatever reason, these two users have gotten irritated at each other, and that would make it hard to engage in a constructive conversation with the author atm.  I suspect that in the long run this content will be most appropriately handled as part of something else, but we can afford to wait a while first, so we know better better what we're dealing with, and when-and-if we do want to start such a discussion I'd really like to see if we can do so without antagonizing each other.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:19, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * There isn't any hard feeling on my side, I think that the shortest our policy about our inclusion criteria is, the longest these debates will be, by virtue of what is subjectively a book and what's not. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think you have overstated your position in this mater and by reading Talk:Less I can only infer that you had a more complex rational behind it (I clearly read a strong distaste for stubs), but at the same time forgot (or decided to ignore) the potential harm you could cause, harm that depended only on User:Dan Polansky reactions. Your position in regards to policy was ultimately not positivity stated there, and would not benefit Wikibooks at that time and place.
 * For instance Naming policy only bit that can be enforced is that "Each chapter or page in a book must start with the name of the book followed by a slash" and the rest plus the linked material is only guidelines. I agree with you that the title should be later changed, and kept as a redire4ct if nothing else covers the same topic. But at the same time realize that there is not enough content in it yet, depending on how the project evolves it could be merged into an aggregate of similar but related content.
 * The proper place to debate issues with our policy is in its talk page (even indicating works that go against it as examples). There are more complex project that fall outside of our policy but still reside in Wikibooks without anyone taking drastic actions. Enabling useful free content should have primacy over all other considerations, we can always decide later what to do with it even without any protracted discussion, all content will ultimately become orphan over time.
 * The case in point is that a positive active stub with 30 days or even more (depending on the level of activity) shouldn't be a target for long debates or arguments, beyond simple nudges to the editors. It is not only premature but clearly harmful and disruptive. (The same is valid for interactions with new contributors) --Panic (discuss • contribs) 23:16, 25 September 2016 (UTC)
 * 30 days seem reasonable (from the creation or the last edition), above which we could add the 7 days of the query process. I would be ready to launch a vote like Policies and guidelines/Vote to officialize it, once and for all. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 08:46, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * PS: that should also mention that the minimum time before adding BookCat is good-sense to avoid any edition conflict. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 09:08, 26 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit lost in what you are proposing, BookCat and query in my view do not need a timeout protection. The first should be deferred to the page creator/project contributors (or left out until they decide what to do or someone helps them selecting the proper place for the work). The query on the other hand should be open to anyone that disagrees with the merit of the created page, as to streamline the speedy deletion of unwanted/abusive creations and permit a response from those involved in it without an necessary RfD (I would agree that at least a 24h grace period could be used but that should be common sense resulting from what content is on the created page, some would even merit a query tag just after the first edit).
 * In any case I don't see anyone supporting here or on the tagged work talk page supporting your view point so attempting to aff them to the policies (it covers several as I understand it) would be futile at present. Feel free to elaborate more on the proper forums maybe you can gather consensus, you can also use the proposals page on the Reading room. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 26 September 2016 (UTC)


 * A question to supporters of deletion: if there is to be minimum eventual length, what would it approximately be? Like, what number of words? Since my point above again is that the instructional character matches Wikibooks well, and that the dispute seems to be not about character but rather about eventual length as opposed to current length. Word counting of the less man page at developer.apple.com gives me over 10 000 words, so that would be a floor on the eventual length of the page. If, on the other hand, current length is the concern, then the question is to what extent does Wikibooks want to delete stubs or substubs. I do believe that something like substubs should be deleted; these are for example pages that contain table of contents and nothing else. If editors consider the current page to be too much of a substub, I can expand it to make it longer. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:29, 1 October 2016 (UTC)