Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Language

This is a collection of discussions on the deletion and merging of articles related to Language. It is one of many deletion lists coordinated by WikiProject Deletion sorting. Anyone can help maintain the list on this page.

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Further information

For further information see Wikipedia's deletion policy and WP:AfD for general information about Articles for Deletion, including a list of article deletions sorted by day of nomination.

Archived discussions (starting from September 2007) may be found at:

• WikiProject Deletion sorting/Language/archive

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Language

East Asian languages

East Asian languages (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)

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All recent citations relating to an East Asian language family, and not Austric or Austro-Tai, come from 3 people: Stanley Starosta, George van Driem, and Michael Larish. The page is poorly written, involving an entirely irrelevant Distributions section. Van Driem also admits that this proposal does not adhere to the comparative method, according to the abstract in . I see no evidence or any reason to assume linguists take this proposal seriously, and the page would therefore fall under WP:FRINGE. Vampyricon (talk) 21:54, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion has been included in the list of Language-related AfD discussions. Vampyricon (talk) 21:54, 1 October 2026 (UTC)
• Note: this discussion has been included in the list of Asia-related AfD discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 22:26, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Keep - per WP:NFRINGE, a lack of consideration doesn’t necessarily make a topic rejected. Reliable sources are included, but the article could use cleanup (including removal of undue weight); I however do not see deletion as a solution for issues in notable articles, at worst, Stubify. - RealGatba (talk) (contribs) 01:34, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

References

Wasta

Wasta (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)

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Should be deleted, per WP:DICTIONARY. Ighs (talk) 16:02, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion has been included in the AfD sorting lists for the following topics: Language and Middle East. Shellwood (talk) 22:09, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

• Delete. I was going to suggest a redirect as ATD, but there are too many near-synonyms mentioned in the lede for that to be practical. As it stands, this is WP:DICT (including etymology and usage, which are also dictionary-style content). Cnilep (talk) 01:08, 1 October 2026 (UTC)
• Delete Per nom; A thin article. Sakiv (talk) 13:45, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Ad hoc

Ad hoc (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)

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This is a glorified WP:DICDEF...mostly. What's not is just scattershot examples of ad hoc things. This isn't a valid encyclopedic topic. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:48, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion has been included in the list of Language-related AfD discussions. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:48, 29 September 2026 (UTC)
• Redirect to Ad hoc (disambiguation), which I just beefed up. It links to the Wiktionary page. I agree this is a clear WP:DICDEF. Readers won't be better served with a standalone definition article. If there are any missing notable examples of Ad hoc in society, then new articles can be added to the DAB page. TheDeafWikipedian (talk) 19:17, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

  I somehow totally missed the dab page when I was looking at this. A dab page is fine in this case...there are at least 2 reasonable entries on it, but I do think there are quite a few that are mere WP:PTMs and should probably go. Either way though, the dab page should be sitting at the base title per WP:MALPLACED, so a delete here would enable that more easily. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 19:27, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

• Keep, important and historical. Hyperbolick (talk) 21:36, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

  WP:ITSIMPORTANT (it's not even that...it's a dictionary def). And what does "it's historical" even mean? –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 21:41, 29 September 2026 (UTC)

• Move the DAB to this title, per the discussion of TheDeafWikipedian and Deacon Vorbis above. The current content is essentially DAB-like. It describes various ad hoc groupings or ideas, and is not abstract or amorphous to require a WP:BCA. Cnilep (talk) 01:21, 30 September 2026 (UTC)
• Move Ad hoc (disambiguation) to Ad hoc: Agree with Cnilep. Current article is mostly WP:DICDEF and disamb page covers various uses of the term. Asteramellus (talk) 23:12, 30 September 2026 (UTC)

• Redirect to the corresponding disambiguation page, which is Ad hoc (disambiguation). The article's sections itself seem to use "ad hoc" in a different sense than its typical Latin-derived definition, and thus fails to stay on topic (i.e. topics are only vaguely related to "ad hoc"). PicoMath (talk) 01:07, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

Kurukh phonology

Kurukh phonology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)

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page created using AI from the start, violation of WP:NEWLLM scope_creep^Talk 05:01, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion has been included in the AfD sorting lists for the following topics: Language, Ethnic groups, India, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Tripura, West Bengal, and Suspected AI-generated articles. BhikhariInformer‬ 📮 ^{(Ping me or else I won't see it)} 05:54, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Does not qualify for soft deletion due to previous PROD.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:16, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

• Comment I'm quite familiar with phonology, so I'll go see now if I can rewrite the article from the sources given. Wreaderick (talk) 10:56, 1 October 2026 (UTC)

IBM Pollyanna Principle

AfDs for this article:

• Articles for deletion/IBM Pollyanna Principle
• Articles for deletion/IBM Pollyanna Principle (2nd nomination)

IBM Pollyanna Principle (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)

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Nothing more than a dictionary definition at best. Fails WP:GNG. Lacks reliable sources - failing WP:SIGCOV. Geoff | ^{Who, me?} 17:13, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

• Delete per nom. Darrion N. Brown 🙂 (my talk page / my sandbox) 17:58, 20 September 2026 (UTC)
• Note: this discussion has been included in the AfD sorting lists for the following topics: Language and Technology. Zeibgeist (talk) 18:18, 20 September 2026 (UTC)
• Comment: this survived the first nomination from 2005 (just old enough to be a VfD), but that was under the lower standards of the era–a year later, it was boldly merged to Pollyanna principle (a newer article that hadn't even been created yet at the time of the VfD), and the resulting BLAR held up for 20 years before finally being contested just today, seemingly just to add the YouTube sourcing. As there did appear to be a merger (even if any evidence of that was removed from the other article's text, it's still there in the page history), I'd advise against full deletion, but no opinion (even on a restoration of the long-stable redirect) beyond that. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 21:22, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

  Wonderful day!

  I absolutely vote Against the Deletion of the dear page of a miracle!

  More to that, sorry, but I just cannot even imagine how anyone in their dear mind may delete that page from Wikipedia at these times when LLM/"AL" is being used frequently absolutely inhumanly... in development or even in art...

  If you want to contribute to Wikipedia so much, **create** a page for the clockmaker William Clement recently added as a reference only at!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clement

  ...but leave this page alone in safe!

  No, we must absolutely NOT delete this page and the miraculous and so important quote from it. Too many human history and work is being inhumanly altered, deleted nowadays...

  Executives working on AI at Microsoft and OpenAI admitted what its critics have been saying all along: Large language models are predatory pieces of technology that have been built on what a Microsoft executive called "an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions," and the "largest theft of labor in human history." An internal Microsoft document said generative AI products have created a "doom loop" that is killing "the entire web." ~ Source

  In 2024, a group of authors, led by novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson, hit Anthropic with a class action lawsuit, alleging the company violated copyright laws by using pirated books to train its AI model... "It is the largest known copyright recovery in history," said Justin Nelson, the authors' lead attorney. - How Anthropic secretly destroyed millions of books to train its AI ~ Source

  This quote on the page? This is us... those who remember, appreciate, and love the human history... this is a quote of an important human history moment... which highlights the crucial difference between a Human and not... respecting, supporting, attributing to those alive... who feel, who think, who work, who cherish, who love...

  The YouTube video? Well, it's published by the video's dear author! The Jim Henson Company! People at YouTube comments even find it a marvel, too!

  > I come back to this every once in a while when I start feeling particularly apocalyptic about AI. Machines should work, people should think. ~ @RossCourtright

  Absolutely not. We must not delete such a miracle from our, the infinite history... and we must respect these words with its own whole page.

  We should rather make it more transparent, explicit, better formatted, and more comprehensible.

  And I myself being almost 40 years old recall a class at school with this dear quote hanging on the wall near teacher's table!

  > Machines should work. People should think. ~ IBM

  ...cogito, ergo sum... (talk) 08:59, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been mentioned on social media. Preimage (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2026 (UTC)
• Soft redirect to wikt:IBM Pollyanna Principle. The current page is a WP:DICDEF. And I don't think there's scope to write an encyclopedic article here ... in terms of non-dictionary-like coverage, there's https://quoteinvestigator.com/2025/09/01/people-think (WP:EXPERTSPS) ... and that seems to be about it AFAICT. This is the page's second deletion discussion. Moreover, the redirect has had roughly 1000 pageviews over the last decade. So the preconditions required for soft redirection hold (WP:POINTWIKT). Deletion is contraindicated per WCQuidditch, and none of the other alternatives for deletion make much sense: redirecting back to Pollyanna principle will just confuse readers given the term isn't mentioned there, and given the lack of WP:SIGCOV, merging would raise concerns about undue weight of coverage in the merge target (WP:UNDUE). Preimage (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: What is the best target for a redirect? For technical reasons, the article should not be deleted outright and consensus is against keeping a standalone article.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 17:31, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

• Comment I truly don't understand all the comments saying the page is a "dictionary definition"? It tells what the principle is, then gives a narrative of how it got created, who created it, why they created it, and whom they recruited artistic assistance from. That kind of information is more typically found in encyclopedias than dictionaries. The article is rather short, though, so neutral on whether it's kept as a standalone or merged & redirected and oppose full deletion. HierophantOfOmens (talk) 19:26, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Support soft merge to wikit unless a better option is found.

In its current state, this is not a viable article. The page explains the axiom, but makes no mention of how it came to be known as the IBM Pollyanna Principle. The term "IBM Pollyanna Principle" does not appear in Paperwork Explosion. The wikit article cites Arthur Bloch's Murphy's Law book. I'll have to track it down. The Quote Investigator page posted above also has a few leads.

Hydraulics and Pneumatics (Parr, 1999) uses the term in its introduction, but makes no mention of its origin.

Programmer Productivity (Arthur, 1984) quotes it by that name and might have a longer discussion about the concept behind it. The Google Books preview is one line.

I encourage my fellow editors to not let sentimentality impair their judgement. Paperwork Explosion is an incredible piece of filmmaking featuring an innovative program. It's an advertisement for office equipment. SenshiSun (talk) 04:40, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

• I'm not quite sure how to deal with this one. I can easily find books and articles that quote it but none that give enough information for an encyclopedia article. Most call it an "axiom" (which I take to be a short statement of intended truth) and it features in some books of quotes. It is in Wiktionary but not in Wikiquote. (It would fit best into the latter, IMO.) The best I can come up with is a redirect to Pollyanna principle adding at least a mention in that article, with hope that enough information might surface some day for a stand-alone article. Lamona (talk) 21:12, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

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 merge to Az people. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:59, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

As (tribe)

As (tribe) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View AfD | edits since nomination)

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I propose merging because this appears to be the same ethnic group and "Az people" is more in line with other similar articles. Arctic Circle System (talk) 00:33, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion has been included in the AfD sorting lists for the following topics: Language, Ethnic groups, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Russia. BhikhariInformer‬ 📮 ^{(Ping me or else I won't see it)} 02:02, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Merge per WP:DUP FaviFake (talk) 10:53, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

To clarify: the proposed merge target is Az people? M kuhner (talk) 19:40, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

• Merge HOWEVER it should be merged the other way around, As (tribe) is more substantial then the suggested article, and should remain the main article with all the rellevent info inside: have Az people merged to it. Happypenguins82 (talk) 21:42, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Merge to Az people, or reverse merge, from Az people?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Vanamonde93 (talk) 23:02, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Merge, not reverse merge. Az people is ten years older with a more substantial edit history and is better titled than As (tribe). Content also looks slightly better to me, but neither is great and it's somewhat closer. 1brianm7 (talk) 23:41, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

• Merge: supporting merge in either direction Ar1201u1 (talk) 08:04, 28 September 2026 (UTC)
• Merge to Az people since they are the same group and "Az people" is the more established title. Tioaeu8943 (talk) 19:28, 2 October 2026 (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.

Redirects for Discussion

Relisted, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 July 7#redirects from ISO 639 codes 'os' and 'oss'