Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to viruses (2nd nomination)

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The result was keep, nom withdrawn. Xasodfuih (talk) 12:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction to viruses

Previous discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Introduction to viruses

This article is a dumbed down version of Virus, having virtually the same lede. It is a violation of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. We do not have Wikipedia articles called Introduction to Chemistry, Introduction to Calculus. I had placed a tag to transwiki this article to wikibooks, but I have been reverted. I think this article should be copied to wikibooks and its Wikipedia page should become a soft redirect to wikibooks. For instance, that site has books on wikibooks:Introduction to Philosophy and wikibooks:Introduction to Psychology. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:53, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Here's the text of WP:NOTTEXTBOOK:
"Textbooks and annotated texts. Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not a textbook. The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter. It is not appropriate to create or edit articles that read as textbooks, with leading questions and systematic problem solutions as examples. These belong on our sister projects Wikibooks and Wikisource. Other kinds of examples, specifically those intended to inform rather than to instruct, may be appropriate for inclusion in a Wikipedia article."
That article doesn't instruct or teach. It merely presents the concepts in a less technical manner, much like the other articles in Category:Introductions. So, if we delete this, we shouldn't do so per WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Thanks for pointing me to that category. As far as I can tell it's governed by Wikipedia:Make_technical_articles_accessible#.22Introduction_to....22_articles, which says at the end:

“

Following the advice given in the preceding sections, can the article be made sufficiently accessible as a whole, without the need for a separate introduction?
Given the degree of general interest in the topic at hand, might a well-written lead be sufficient?

You should start an "Introduction to..." article only if the answer to these questions is "no".

”

I had a look at M-theory and Introduction to M-theory for comparison— these articles have vastly different lede sections and also vastly different TOCs. This is not so much the case with Virus and Introduction to viruses, which have nearly identical lede sections so the Introduction to viruses appears to be more of a WP:CFORK than a true introduction. But a bad lede in an intro article is not a reason to delete, so I'm going to withdraw this nomination (once I figure out the procedure). Xasodfuih (talk) 12:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep We have a guideline for the creation of such articles: Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible#"Introduction to..." articles and three featured examples, of which this is one. Colin°^Talk 11:55, 11 March 2009 (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.