Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/Pre-History

Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/Pre-History
The definition of 'civilisation' from my history book is (the way I remember it): citizens living in a city from the latin word (yeah, I forgot the latin word because the exams are over) with a government to protect the citizens, a systematic form of writing and communication, and a developed economy, religion and education system. Since the prehistoric times cannot have a 'systematic form of writing of communication', it does not fall into the category of 'ancient civilisations'. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 13:44, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It seems like potentially relevant background for the subject of the book. The page probably wants improving to fit into the organization of the book (it's classified as a stub, though, so that's no surprise).


 * The organization of the book might be improved, too, in that the trichotomy of publishable/developing/stub articles only works, if at all, for the largely interchangeable "articles", not for infrastructural pages like "Introduction" and so on. This seems to be an infrastructural page.  However, all of that belongs on the main talk page of the book.  Including the deletion proposal itself, I think (with a pointer to it from the page's talk page, probably).  If there was no response at the book for a week or so (similar time frame to adopting a seemingly abandoned book), then it would make sense to bring the proposal here; but coming here first seems to be bypassing the possible community of the book.  That's probably true of most individual-page deletion proposals (though not all, depending on the scope of the reason for deletion):  it's an organizational matter for the book, and people with an interest in the book &mdash;who might not be conspicuous by recent edits&mdash; should usually be the ones the proposal is addressed to, until and unless it becomes clear that there simply is no such "local" community, or at least none sufficiently active to respond in a reasonable time frame.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:30, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It seems to be an organizational weakness of the way we have things set up that the template provided for proposing discussion of a page deletion has built into it the assumption that the discussion will be here. The process of discussing a page deletion within the book community is implied by the fact that consensus at the book is speedy-deletion criterion 4, but the template structurally discourages it.  We ought to have things set up to encourage trying local discussion first before coming here.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:43, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

comment I've been considering whether this should be vfd-ed almost since I went here. I thought and thought, and decided to nominate it. I believe that the book does not really have a 'community given the lack of 'regulars: related changes. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 14:54, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, but that's the point of using the talk pages: you can't judge from recent changes.  You would probably conclude, for example, that Conlang has no regulars on the basis of its [ recent changes].  In fact, there's at least one reasonably active Wikibookian who is really just here to work on the Conlang book, and happens to be drawn into other things around the project along the way (in a way vaguely reminiscent (if one completely cuts out the heroic element) of the way James Garner's character in Support Your Local Sheriff! was just passing through town on his way to Australia).  Which is, at least in part, why I think we should find a way of structurally encouraging people to try local inquiry first.  Of course, it might only produce a subset of the same people who would respond here, but so what?  The problem can still be talked through first by people especially interested in the book, and perhaps resolved &mdash; and if a consensus isn't reached, the matter can still be brought here later, with additional background information to the nomination here.  --Pi zero (talk) 17:15, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm in full agreement with the point being made above. I would even say that, unless it is a true orphan, a RfD will always decreases the chance of improving or defending a work. --Panic (talk) 20:23, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Relevant background to the work on civilisations. Titling it "introduction" would make this obvious, or perhaps "Before Civilisation". QU TalkQu 20:43, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * We already have an introduction as well as a 'what is a civilisation'. Please consider reading them first. Thanks Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 00:27, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I did, and they aren't the same. There is relatively speaking little content here and I see zero justification for deleting useful content just because it might not quite fit in the scope of the book by a narrow, indeed somewhat pedantic view. QU TalkQu 20:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * There are, in fact, three front-matter pages in the publishable column:
 * Introduction
 * What is a Civilization?
 * Archeology
 * --Pi zero (talk) 02:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * In fact, I don't really consider the archaeology part part of the introduction. But you could, of course. I think all that's introductory is covered by these three and there is no need for a chapter about prehistory, which itself is off-topic anyways. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:28, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Keep. At least to me it seems obvious that a book on the history civilizations should discuss how they came into being. The Prehistoric Levant section alone could be enough to justify the existence of this page. I don't see the need for a name change, either. --Duplode (talk) 17:31, 1 July 2010 (UTC)