Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of telecommunications encryption terms

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. It seems we cannot come to a consensus here. Until the relist and improvements, the consesnus was clearly in favour of deletion, but the debate has becoe much less clear-cut since then. Suggest leaving it for a few weeks and then renominating if concerns remain so that they can be discussed. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of telecommunications encryption terms

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

Wholly unsourced; text suggests copyright issues; essentially no content has been changed in the last 9 years; little explanation as to purpose of article; little usefulness —danhash (talk) 23:22, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 00:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. —Tom Morris (talk) 00:22, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I've added some references to the article. Northamerica1000^(talk) 10:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Completely indiscriminate and arbitrary list of cryptographic terms that could be endlessly expanded. Nageh (talk) 17:47, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per nom and Nageh. Stuartyeates (talk) 07:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - it's woefully incomplete and lacking citations, but other than those issues, I don't see a problem with having such a list at least in theory. Bearian (talk) 20:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- You are kiddin, right? WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Many of these terms are completely arbitrary, some with no specific defined meaning. Compromise of a security system – where is the technical definition here? Why is there encrypt and encryption, but not decrypt and decryption or even decipher and decipherment, etc. Why is DES listed, but not all the other hundreds (thousands?) standardized cryptographic primitives? COMSEC equipment? What does this make special compared to just COMSEC? Oh, and telecommunication encryption is a misnomer, this is clearly not just about encryption or telecommunications. Nageh (talk) 22:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, v/r - T P 16:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment (Regarding above from User:Nageh): Feel free to prune any entries that aren't correspondent to telecommunications encryption terms. Also, while the list could be expanded, it is just a list article, and the list would have an end to it eventually.Northamerica1000^(talk) 03:02, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment I relisted per improvements by Northamerica1000.--v/r - T P 16:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete – Minor improvements; every delete argument still applies —danhash (talk) 16:18, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Actually, at the time of the above post from User:Danhash, there were two references in the article. Part of the statement in the nomination for deletion is "Wholly unsourced". Technically, this part of the nomination was nullified. Also in the nomination, "essentially no content has been changed in the last 9 years", was nullified per article improvements that occurred. Northamerica1000^(talk) 03:16, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, you are correct. I should have stated that the other delete arguments besides my own still applied. I still think it should be deleted, see my comment below. —danhash (talk) 15:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - if I want to know what Wikipedia has on "telecommunications encryption terms", this could potentially be a good place to start. Currently several entries point to completely the wrong page or a dab page, and that needs sorting out. It's incomplete. The entries need annotating and probably classifying. A few redlinks are OK as this would be a good place to flag up what further articles are needed in this subject area. It needs some TLC but not deletion. If all else fails, I'd be happy to adopt it for a while. --Northernhenge (talk) 20:01, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've commented out some obvious errors. --Northernhenge (talk) 20:22, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ILIKEIT. By which policy or guideline do you want this article to be kept? Also, I have pointed out obvious principal problems with this article above. "If I want to know that Wikipedia has on X"... use the search function, or browse through any of the cryptography categories. Nageh (talk) 20:32, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:USEFUL is probably a bigger problem than WP:ILIKEIT. --Northernhenge (talk) 18:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak~~ Keep – I'm uncertain about the part of the article where it's stated, "Please see the Federal Standard article for copyright-related issues..." et al., but this list appears to have encyclopedic functionality. It provides a list to navigate terms related to and about telecommunications encryption terms. It's unlikely that many reliable, in-depth sources and articles will exist in news sources for this topic, but I think this article has merit and would benefit from further improvements, rather than being deleted. Northamerica1000^(talk) 02:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – I've added more internal links to the article and:

— Rutenbeck, Jeff (2006). Tech terms: what every telecommunications and digital media person should know. Elsevier, Inc. ISBN 0-240-80757-X

—Northamerica1000^(talk) 03:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is an encyclopedia with text for each entry, and not just a senseless and indiscriminate list of plain technology terms!!! Nageh (talk) 13:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Regarding the statement in the article's lede about not all parts of a source being in the public domain, this part may be able to be removed from the article, because a great deal of information in sources is not in the public domain. This list article in it's early form just had listings of terms, which aren't really copyrightable. If they were, then Wikipedia couldn't have any articles with any content that quotes or uses copyrighted sources as references for terminology, or other things. Therefore, I'm removing this portion of the article. If anyone disagrees with this reassessment, simply re-add the information, preferably without reverting back to the version that has it, as this type of reversion tends to remove constructive edits. Northamerica1000^(talk) 13:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Still delete – Listcruft: it has little content besides links to other articles, so should be a category. Compare to other less-crufty lists: List of DOS operating systems (more of a glossary), List of human–computer interaction topics (sorted by topic, indentation, no extra pictures), List of life forms (sorted by topic). —danhash (talk) 15:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Listcruft is an essay, and not policy whatsoever. It's subjective opinion. See also WP:NOTDUP. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:28, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Still keep per WP:HEY - I think it has potential, which has been shown. And no, I'm not kidding. Bearian (talk) 20:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is an essay and not a policy or guideline. Btw, this is Wikipedia, not Wiktionary. Nageh (talk) 21:12, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The rules state you shouldn't destroy a list because you like categories better, there no reason the two both can't exist. Dream Focus 06:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, per WP:NOTDUP. Northamerica1000^(talk) 08:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Bad nomination rational. The fact that the content hasn't changed much since it was created nine years ago isn't a valid reason to delete. They still use these same terms. Whether you consider something useful or not, is no reason to delete something either. This is a perfect valid list article, it listing related things with links to those other Wikipedia articles. Dream Focus 06:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. People accept lengthy lists, so I will accept that, too. However, in that case this article should be redirected to Index of cryptography articles. As I have said before, the current title is a misnomer because the entries listed are neither restricted to areas of telecommunications or encryption. Nageh (talk) 09:42, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the list contains errors (incorrect links, omissions, questionable inclusions) but that's a reason to improve it, not delete it. --Northernhenge (talk) 13:57, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, accepting that WP:INDISCRIMINATE does not apply, it is, however, a duplication of existing (and vastly more complete) content: Index of cryptography articles. No reason to keep this list. Nageh (talk) 15:49, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Index of cryptography articles contains mostly information about general cryptography, and is not specific to telecommunications encryption terms. Northamerica1000^(talk) 23:19, 20 November 2011 (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.