Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grok

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. Sandstein 21:54, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Grok

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary.

While some articles about words are valid encyclopedic topics, this does not appear to be the case here. This article consists of nothing but dictionary content. It starts with a definition, moves on to etymology, and ends with a long list of usage examples. All of these are dictionary content; there is quite literally nothing encyclopedic here, which would justify an encyclopedia article.

Furthermore, it's abysmally sourced. The references are all for the usage examples; no references for the definition or etymology. And almost all of the external links are themselves dictionaries, which really should tell us something. Powers ^T 15:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:43, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science fiction-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:43, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:43, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'll wait to see how the discussion goes but I'm wondering if the concept (rather than the word) might merit an article (and there does appear to be such a programming concept). One random source that came up on google scholar dedicates a couple of pages to it [1]. If the concept is deemed notable, then I guess it's better to add a proper lead to the article and trim all the word usage info (possibly moving it to wiktionary). Uanfala (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if the concept is sufficiently different from Understanding to merit its own article, but at the very least, the name would have to be recast to be a noun. Powers ^T 00:33, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. Uanfala (talk) 22:50, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I admit I clicked this to laugh at how ridiculous the justification for deleting this article would be, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this is not at all the case. Nonetheless, I think perhaps you should consider that while Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a dictionary, it is also the first, trusted, source for a very large portion of the WORLD population to begin learning about something new, and the article in the current stage manages that quite well, even though it is deficient in many of the ways you have pointed out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.204.27.211 (talk) 00:39, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Soft redirect. Wiktionary already has an article on this, so this can be soft-redirected. Yes, it's used pretty often, but this is still just a glorified dictionary definition. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:29, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. Uanfala (talk) 00:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to wikt:grok and soft redirect - I'm not convinced this is anything more than a dictionary entry. ~Kvng (talk) 22:06, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect as mentioned because this seems best connected to this subject with no solid signs of a better independently notable article. SwisterTwister talk 08:09, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Soft redirect to wikt:grok per Kvng. I do think this as a concept could be worth an article, but I'm not really sure what that article would be called or look like. ansh 666 00:01, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep, I've been convinced by the comments below that this is more than just a long-winded dictionary entry. ansh 666 02:17, 28 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. The entire Article looks oddly more like a Wiktionary entry than a Wikipedia one. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 05:28, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This is more tha wprd, it is a concept of literary -- and perhaps even more general significance. DGG ( talk ) 07:28, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ymblanter (talk) 08:22, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The talk page states prominently that "This article was cited as a source in a ruling from the Land Use Board of Appeals of the State of Oregon, Friends of the Metolius and William Johnston, petitioners, and Tomas Finnegan Ryan, interventor-petitioner, v. Jefferson County. See Wikipedia as a court source." As the factual nature of the article is not disputed and it has already been written into legal records, it would be disruptive to delete this. There are also obvious alternative to deletion. Reading and adding sources would be a good start. For example, see Open to Grok. How do Hackers' Practices Produce Hackers? or Grokking User Needs. The WMF should read this stuff too... Andrew D. (talk) 12:00, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I was just telling my partner about this, as it's a useful concept. She looked through the article and was incredulous that anyone would want to delete it. Hearing her reaction, I checked its stats. It started as part of the Jargon File and was introduced to Wikipedia in 2001 where it has had 575 edits from 369 editors. There's a reasonable amount of discussion on the talk page, but I don't see anyone suggesting that it should be deleted. And it gets about 480 hits per day. In other words, someone reads the article every three minutes. After all this time, effort, readership and acceptance of the topic, it seems quite outrageous that a drive-by editor can so casually propose that it now be deleted. As Wikipedia matures but attendance at AFD withers, we should raise the bar for such nominations. Andrew D. (talk) 12:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment When I searched for Grok in an academic search engine, I were only able to find things coincidentally named Grok or just the acronym G.R.O.K. but not the term itself. --Mr. Magoo (talk) 13:59, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone can click the Google scholar search link provided above to see that it has 8,530 hits for this topic. Andrew D. (talk) 17:12, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's the point, they're Grok but not the Grok we know. --Mr. Magoo (talk) 12:38, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. As DGG says, this has been a notable concept, not merely a word, since the Sixties. WP:DICT should not be misused to remove valuable content on notable subjects like this.--Arxiloxos (talk) 16:52, 27 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Though the references in the article aren't great, better refs are easily found which support its notability, e.g.[2] The article just needs work. Manul ~ talk 04:45, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Your linked reference is a dictionary! How does having an entry in a dictionary support the encyclopedic notability of the topic? Powers ^T 19:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Commenters above cannot even agree if this is an article about a notable word or an article about the concept of grokking. I think that just serves to illustrate how poor this "article" is. Could it be improved? Perhaps, but first we'd have to agree on whether the word is notable on its own (and there's very little evidence of that), or if the concept is sufficiently different from understanding to be worthy of its own article (and there's not much evidence of that at the moment, either). Powers ^T 19:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per the reasons cited by Andrew Davidson. This seems to be a valid term with notable uses. Even if the article is in a poor state, notability is established. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dimadick (talk • contribs)
Established by what? The sources don't do it. No one's denying it's a valid term with notable uses, but that alone doesn't satisfy our inclusion criteria. Powers ^T 18:11, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep—WP:NOTADICTIONARY specifically calls out our article on thou as a case where a word, by dint of its demonstrated notability, is an encyclopedic topic. Here are ~~two papers~~ a few cites where the term is discussed at some length.

D'Andrea, Vincenzo; De Paoli, Stefano; Teli, Maurizio. "Open to Grok. How do Hackers' Practices Produce Hackers?". Open Source Development, Communities and Quality. IFIP International Federation for Information Processing. Vol. 275. Springer. pp. 121–129.

McGiveron, Rafeeq O. (2001). "From Free Love to the Free-Fire Zone: Heinlein's Mars, 1939–1987". Extrapolation. Vol. 42, no. 2. Kent States University Press.

Spruiell, William C. (1996). "A Lack of Alien Verbs: Coinage in Science Fiction" (PDF). The Twenty-Third LACUS Forum. The Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States.

McGregor, Gaile (1988). The Nobel Savage in the New World Garden: Notes Toward a Syntactics of Place. University of Toronto Press. p. 263. ISBN 0-87972-416-1.

Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Ishvan (2008). The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press. p. PT67. ISBN 978-0-8195-6889-2.

Chapman, Mim (2010). What Does Polyamory Look Like? Polydivrse Patterns of Loving and Living in Modern Polyamorous Relationships. iUniverse. pp. (several). ISBN 978-1-4502-2008-8.

Blackmore, Tim (1995). "Talking with Strangers: Interrogating the Many Texts That Became Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land". Extrapolation. Vol. 36, no. 2. Kent State UP. Several articles in this issue concern Stranger, one of which is listed above. I have access to the pdfs and will forward them along if anyone is interested. This one in particular cites several other analyses.

Lesser Cartographies (talk) 02:49, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, especially due to the information given by Lesser Cartographies immediately above. There's enough to show that the article is capable of discussing the word as a concept instead of a simple dictionary definition. clpo13_(talk) 00:47, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep enough meat to it that it;s not just a dicdef. Artw (talk) 20:38, 6 March 2016 (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.