Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Welsh Wikipedia

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 no consensus to delete, default to keep. The "keep" arguments are, frankly, poor; therefore no clear "keep" consensus. Sandstein 19:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Welsh Wikipedia

~~Also nominating the following page for the same reasons:~~

The pages show no evidence that the topics have been the subject of significant coverage by independent, reliable sources as required by the primary notability criteria. There is also no evidence that the topics meet the specific criteria for web pages unless simply being distributed by Wikimedia makes something notable. Guest9999 (talk) 17:09, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete both, notability is not inherited. Stifle (talk) 22:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom, or as a second choice delete and redirect to List of Wikipedias. Being a Wikimedia project is not an inherent claim to notability, and no independent sources have been provided, nor could I find any. There are multiple precedents to not keep articles like this, such as the Scots, Kashubian, Inuktitut, and Tibetan Wikipedias. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:22, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, I think... I don't understand Welsh, but googling for "Cymraeg wikipedia" gives more hits than "Welsh wikipedia", so I suspect that there may be Welsh-language references to be found. It would be helpful if we could get a Welsh speaker to look at this and either add some references (if they exist) or tell ust that there aren't any good references to be found. Looking at Meta:List of Wikipedias, it appears that the Welsh wikipedia is five times as big as the largest wikipedia listed by Metropolitan90 as a precedent (Scots) and ten times as large as the largest one listed that uses what's generally accepted as being a distinct language language (Kashubian -- Scots is generally considered to be a dialect of English rather than a distinct language, and even Kashubian is considered by some to be a dialect of Polish), so I'm not sure that it's entirely fair to compare to those. Still, in the end it comes down to reliable sources, but I think we should let someone who can evaluate Welsh sources weigh in on that before we delete. Klausness (talk) 13:49, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I've posted a question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wales to see if someone there can help out with references. Klausness (talk) 19:36, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- I've also posted a question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tajikistan (though it doesn't look all that active), since Tajik Wikipedia is also part of this AfD (though it should really have its own AfD). Klausness (talk) 19:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. My sort-of-"Keep" above is for the Welsh wikipedia. Since the Tajik wikipedia is smaller and significantly less active, I suspect that it doesn't meet the notability requirement. Klausness (talk) 19:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. There are 100 articles in the Wikipedias by language category, including several dozen much smaller than the cy. (currently on 15,000+ articles and growing daily). My question is, why are they "notable" but cy. apparently is not? With comparatively few websites entirely in Welsh, the Welsh wikipedia is important to Welsh culture on-line and, like the rest of the wikipedias, has great potential as an educational resource. Why this hurry to delete this when articles on much smaller language wikipedias seem perfectly acceptable? As for notability, try googling Welsh topics (avoiding English) and you'll see how often cy. comes up. I would go so far as to say that the coverage of Wales is more extensive than on en. Online references will be found, but mostly in blogs and discussion sites, mainly because Welsh-language websites are relatively few in number. Wikipedia is far bigger than just en., even if it's the largest single language wiki. Time to be less parochial? Enaidmawr (talk) 22:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Additional comment: I notice that articles on three other Celtic language wikis, viz the [Irish (5,424 articles), Scottish Gaelic (4,333) and Cornish (1,333), all seem to be perfectly acceptable, although they are just stubs. So I ask again, why delete Welsh wikipedia? Enaidmawr (talk) 22:53, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Addendum: It also has interwiki links to seven other language wikipedias, including Spanish and Japanese. They seem to find it perfectly acceptable and I see no sign of it being proposed for deletion on those sites. But apparently it's not good enough for inclusion here, even though we have stub articles aplenty on minor anime characters from forgotten TV series, third division Norwegian soccer referees, etc. Enaidmawr (talk) 23:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't know whether those other Wikipedias have equivalents to WP:WEB (other than the Czech Wikipedia, which does have an equivalent, but I can't read it). But looking at the Czech, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Turkish articles about the Welsh Wikipedia, it's obvious that they don't have any independent sources either. (That's understandable given that such sources, if they exist, are probably in either English or Welsh.) The fact that an article exists in another Wikipedia does not mean that their editors have specifically taken an interest in whether that article is acceptable to them; maybe they just haven't gotten around to deleting it yet. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:27, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - I've expanded the article and added references. It's not perfect, perhaps, but it's a start. Please take a look at it and kindly reconsider. Enaidmawr (talk) 23:04, 20 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 22:51, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I do not think we should delete articles on wikipedias in languages other than English unless we have a clear assurance from fluent speakers of the language that they have searched hard and found no sources in the language. I am inclined to keep them with a rather lower notability criteria than normal as wikipedia is an obvious place for someone to search to see if there is a wikipedia in a given language (OK a more knowledgeable person might search meta, but many people do not even know meta exists). So, I say keep. --Bduke (talk) 00:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I think that the absence of sources comes from the fact that only Welsh media and publications have talked about it. Eklipse (talk) 08:07, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I've read about the Wicipedia in Golwg and in Y Fanner Newydd, but as both these publications are in Welsh and have limited on-line presence, it's very difficult to provide refrences. As Eklipse mentions, it's unlilkely to be mentioned in English language press. While refrences are iimportant, this highlihgt how the Wikipedia (the English version) could become an encyclopedia of only things that are in''''Bold text'Bold text' Enlgish. --Rhyswynne (talk) 10:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- While English-language references are preferred in the English Wikipedia, foreign-language references are fine if no comparable English-language references are available. And they don't need to be accessible on line in either case. So if you have Welsh-language references from reliable sources (even if they aren't on line), please add them to the article. Klausness (talk) 12:17, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - if the National Library of Wales considers the site of enough importance to appear on their site as an e-resource at [1] then there must be something to it. Thaf (talk) 13:19, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - not because it's a wikipedia project, or because "stuff exists", but because it's important in the context of the Welsh language and having an article about it ensures that non-Welsh speakers can be kept informed. I think its value as an article will gradually become apparent. Deb (talk) 20:40, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - in case it's relevant, it may be worth pointing out that several of the above users (Enaidmawr, Rhyswynne, Thaf, Deb) are major contributors to the Welsh wikipedia. Hope this doesn't constitute a conflict of interest; better to point it out gently now before somebody screams about it. My own feeling about the article is a bit mixed, even though I too have an interest in the project. I reckon that probably there is not enough to establish sufficient notability in its current form, although there may well be if the external references alluded to above (Golwg, y Faner Newydd) were tracked down and added to the article. But then neither would I favour keeping stub articles on minor anime characters (per Enaidmawr's comment). — Alan^✉ 12:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further comment: Just been thinking about user Bduke's comment that "I am inclined to keep them with a rather lower notability criteria than normal as wikipedia is an obvious place for someone to search to see if there is a wikipedia in a given language". The main page already has a section devoted to Wikipedia editions in other languages, with direct links to the more major ones, and a link to a complete list. If there is more that we can do to increase visibility from within project namespace, then yes, great, I'm all for it. But I still think it's important to apply notability criteria consistently as regards article namespace, and frankly I think that Wikipedia is already generally too lenient as regards mention of Wikimedia projects in article space, notwithstanding user Enaidmawr's comment that it is also too lenient as regards a lot of other trivia. — Alan^✉ 18:33, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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.