Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Toki Pona (3rd 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. As a rule of thumb, entries with circa 40 interwiki links are seldom non-notable. Sandstein 21:04, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Toki Pona

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

I'd understand the need for this article if there were a lot of people speaking this language, or it had some documented influence on a subculture, but there is no evidence of that. Instead, it's a long article on the structure of a constructed language written by one person, and it's mostly cited to that person's homepage.

Removing the self-citations, vanity press works and Freewebs.com citations, the article's sources are narrowed down to a single article in The Globe and Mail in 2007. If you check Google Books, no reliable sources cite it other than a programming guide that uses it as an example of how to program language recognition. I see that Wikipedia has no policy on constructed languages but I think that a single newspaper article is not enough to establish notability. Shii (tock) 14:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:43, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. If you look more carefully at the sources you'll find the Los Angeles Times too. But deletionism like this really baffles me - I can understand wanting to delete some vanity software or an individual, but a noteworthy constructed language with a devoted following? Why? Greenman (talk) 21:35, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are hundreds of constructed languages, and anyone can invent a new one at any time. I don't think this falls under Wikipedia's purvey. Shii (tock) 23:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant, as almost none of the hundreds get any mention in the Los Angeles Times etc. Greenman (talk) 00:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a New York Times article and academic newspaper that mention the Zhyler language. I don't think this language should get its own Wikipedia page just because of the mention; it's not documented as having a significant group of people or cultural impact. Toki Pona is the same. Shii (tock) 07:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep What's with this obsessive deleting? Toki Pona has been around for over 10 years, it has an active community [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], and has been cited many times in books [6] [7] [8] and newspapers [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] from around the world. Learn it. ~ Iketsi (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia scrapers are not book sources. Shii (tock) 07:18, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Granted, but that still leaves us with at least 3 legitimate book references. ~ Iketsi (talk) 13:51, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Question Although it's all very well that a nifty box in the upper right of this page automatically displays all previous AfDs for this article, they make for a grossly incomplete picture of the history because they're missing the DRV that overturned the decision of the second RfD. Is there a standard way to include that important additional perspective in the displayed information in the upper right of the page? --Pi zero (talk) 06:01, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, obviously. Toki Pona is in fact one of the very few languages constructed in the 21th century that actually managed to generate quite some media attention and even a group of followers and interested bystanders, which is especially remarkable if you consider that it is not even an auxiliary language like Esperanto. Let's face it, constructed languages are not the type of thing newspapers write about habitually; in general, one article in one major newspaper is already quite a success. I don't really know what precisely explains this success, but Toki Pona certainly belongs to the most remarkable projects of the last decade. A simple search on Google books turns up no less than 115 results – I have neither the time nor the will to check all of them, but it's clear at least some of them are valuable notability indicators and not just "Wikipedia scrapers". —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 20:10, 13 February 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.