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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Joe Decker (talk | contribs) at 00:23, 29 March 2012 (Closing debate, result was keep). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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 keep. joe deckertalk to me 00:23, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Restricted randomization

Restricted randomization (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This is a mirror of a handbook on a government website. It's not subject to speedy deletion because it technically is not a copyright infringement. But see WP:NOTMIRROR. Bbb23 (talk) 18:40, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:54, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy keep. No reason given for deletion. None of the four points under WP:NOTMIRROR applies to this article. It certainly needs some work, including a proper lead section, but I see no reason at all to delete it. Qwfp (talk) 20:48, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. An admin (I forget who) once said that editors should eliminate "speedy keep" and "speedy delete" in AfD discussions. Couldn't agree more. "Mere collections of public domain or other source material such as entire books or source code, original historical documents, letters, laws, proclamations, and other source material that are only useful when presented with their original, unmodified wording. Complete copies of primary sources may go into Wikisource, but not on Wikipedia." (WP:NOTMIRROR).--Bbb23 (talk) 21:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
collections of public domain or other source material... that are only useful when presented with their original, unmodified wording clearly does not apply to this article. (By the way, "fails to advance an argument for deletion" is a valid reason for WP:Speedy keep). Qwfp (talk) 21:05, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So, you're saying the language used (not counting the intro that no one seems to like) is useless? Perhaps we should mirror information on all sorts of websites as long we can get the proper license. What a world. Failing to advance an argument is different from you - or anyone else - saying the argument I advanced is wrong.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm saying it will still be useful after its wording has been modified, hence is not 'source material' in the meaning of WP:NOTMIRROR#3. See also WP:Plagiarism#Public-domain sources para 2. Qwfp (talk) 21:34, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The plagiarism cite is not particularly helpful in this context. As for your first point, it would be great if you would modify the wording and make the article useful. It's been in its present, not useful, mirrored state for years now.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:49, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Please read the section addressing impatience with improvement. Btyner (talk) 02:47, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - The current article, and all of its historical versions are just a pure text dump without context. The entire article would need rewriting from scratch. The presence of the current article is not helpful to the reader looking up "restricted randomization", and furthermore, the existence of this mess is likely to inhibit any casual editors coming by from trying to fix this due to the huge mess it is in. We are better served by blowing it up and starting from scratch. -- Whpq (talk) 16:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Addendum' - I forgot to note that in poking around Google Books, it does seem that the topic would likely meet notability and we should have an article, but based on my reasoning above, I'm expressing an opinion of delete as I am ignoring all rules in that deleting this instance of the article would acutally help the development of the article. -- Whpq (talk) 18:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:39, 19 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"TNT" clearly does not apply here. That's only when current content is hopeless. In this case, the current content is good, but needs context and further work. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:28, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Excuse me, but this is absurd. Split-plot designs are a standard topic in statistics that originated in agricultural field trials. The fact that they are also applicable to quality control means we should delete the article about them because there are other articles on quality control? Why don't we delete the article about Barack Obama because we already have a plethora of articles about people born in Hawaii? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:38, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. The article plainly needs work to adapt it to Wikipedia conventions and to provide context. (The comment by 202.124.74.38 is the silliest thing I've seen in a while---as if this article were only about quality control, and as if the existence of other articles were a reason to delete this one.) Michael Hardy (talk) 04:20, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Has everyone already forgotten what was going on on Wikipedia in 2002, where maybe 10% of all articles were merely copied from either the US. Geographic Names Data Base or a federal government site on telecommunications? An article titled "Atlantic Ocean" would begin by saying "In telecommunications, the Atlantic Ocean is an ocean bounded by Europe and Africa on the east and by the Americas on the west..." etc. We were all told that of course that's crazy, but the idea is to work on the article so that it wouldn't be crazy. Brion Vibber, who has been Wikipedia's main software guy forever and ever (in 2002 and still today....) seemed to be responsible for this. Michael Hardy (talk) 04:26, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stubify delete the entire content, replace with a stub article which defines the term and build the article from there. While the content might have been OK in 2002 it does not meet todays standards especially WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. Rather than start with the current article it seems easiest to work from a stub article.--Salix (talk): 18:14, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have flagged this article for rescue; see this page. To repeat what I wrote there:

    This is a clearly written article about an obligatory topic in statistics. It is "obligatory" in the sense that split-plot designs are a compulsory part of the standard curriculum that everybody gets exposed to. The only reason offered for deletion is that the initial version of the article was copied from a (non-copyrighted) government web site. The WP:NOTMIRROR policy has been cited. But it's a "mirror" only if edits to the site that it "mirrors" are automatically put into it. Many thousands of Wikipedia articles, by explicit policy, began as copies of pages on telecommunications maintained by the Federal Communications Commision, and similarly the U.S. Geographic Names Database. We read things like "In telecommunications, the Atlantic Ocean is an ocean across which the transatlantic cable was laid between Europe and North America[...]" etc. (I think "In telecommuncations..." was prepended on Wikipedia and not found in the software. In 2003, lots of these had not yet been further edited. This article clearly needs work. Simply deleting it is absurd.

Michael Hardy (talk) 18:11, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The "Atlantic Ocean" example is hypothetical, used because I didn't immediately recall any examples from the time when such things were numerous. But now I remember that the article titled transliteration initially began that way. "In telecommunications, transliteration is..." etc. Obviously, transliteration is much older than telecommunications and anything reasonable that you could say about transliteration in general would be quite independent of telecommunications. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Its naive to think that by destroying an article entirely, it'll somehow encourage others to come along and make a new one from scratch that will be infinitely better. This subject is notable, as the Google news and book search seems to indicate. This is a word for word copy of a government website though. http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/pri/section5/pri55.htm So perhaps eliminating any sections that don't belong, and just reducing it to a brief explanation of what this is. Dream Focus 23:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, someone should create a bio on William J. Youden ([9][10][11][12]) one of the key statisticians regarding the development of restricted randomization techniques (his 1972 paper called it "constrained randomization)[13].--Milowent • hasspoken 12:10, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Important topic of practical statistics, which is why it is featured in a somewhat how-to manual for engineers. The article should focus on concepts, specifically the randomization distribution (the distribution of statistics induced by randomizing a finite population of experimental units, under an assumption of treatment-unit additivity). The restriction on randomization occurs when randomization occurs in blocks, and this is often treated as though randomization was done for all the units (with no blocking) for example. Rosemary A. Bailey's article contains more references.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 18:05, 27 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Michael Hardy. Sasha (talk) 22:18, 27 March 2012 (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.
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