Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hořava–Witten string theory

Hořava–Witten string theory

Hořava–Witten string theory (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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No evidence of existence of such theory. The term does not show in google searches, nor in the references given. The article is heavily based on a single self-published source, but how it follows from it is unclear. Other references are in support of well-known things about string theory. So I'd say it is a dubious original research. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:10, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• BTW The article is a slightly reshuffled version of a recently deleted one: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Townsend string theory. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. Urs Schreiber has an article about this at nCat lab, strongly suggesting the notability of the article. See [1] and the references therein. The original articles by Hořava and Witten together have over 4000 citations (see [2]), again pointing to the notability of the theory. Sławomir Biały (talk) 07:10, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

There's also this article published in Phys Rev D about the theory (and itself gets over 250 gs cites). Sławomir Biały (talk) 11:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• Weak delete. The String theory work of Edward Witten and Petr Hořava (theorist) is certainly extremely notable, and we already have articles about it. However, this article is not about that work (it doesn't cite them at all), but seems to be a WP:COATRACK for unpublished WP:OR by Lubos Motl. However, we really need the physicists to judge (I'm not one), and I've notified the Physics Wikiproject. -- 203.171.197.4 (talk) 07:34, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
• Delete. No adequate sources. ArXiv is not a RS on its own. Xxanthippe (talk) 08:03, 20 July 2013 (UTC).
  • Comment. Unlike most peer-reviewed journals, putting something on arXiv does not make it into a reliable source. But the paper in question, "Proposals on nonperturbative superstring interactions", has nearly 300 citations on Google scholar, despite its lack of journal publication. To me that indicates that it may be considered reliable. However, the title of the Wikipedia article does not appear in that paper. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:17, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment. I see no indication that anyone has done due diligence regarding the topic of the article. There are many more reliable sources on Hořava–Witten theory that can be found in principle (see my posts above). The fact that the present article does not cite those is something that can be fixed by normal editing, not deletion. I don't know enough string theory to be able to comment much on the present state of the article, but the sources I have seen discuss Hořava–Witten theory as the strongly coupled limit of an $E_{8}\times E_{8}$ heterotic string theory and the low energy limit of M-theory in $R^{10}\times S^{1}/\mathbb {Z} _{2}$, and this does not seem to be mentioned in the current article. So there might be WP:NPOV/WP:WEIGHT issues that need addressing, but again those need to be dealt with by normal editing rather than deletion. Sławomir Biały (talk) 09:21, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

You're convincing me that this is a case for WP:Blow it up and start over. What I'm hearing is that this article isn't about string theory as Hořava and Witten defined it, but about something quite different. -- 203.171.197.23 (talk) 12:16, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Without anyone commenting in detail on the substance of the article or the sources, you are very easily convinced. No one here has committed even the most superficial assessment of either the article or available sources. What you should be convinced of is that the subject of this article is indeed notable and therefore the article should be kept. Blow it up and start over would require someone to assess the article a propos of sources in detail. Naturally, since this is AfD, that won't happen. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:49, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean, "No one here has committed even the most superficial assessment of either the article or available sources"? I've looked at the article, and to my (non-physicist) eyes it seems to me to be poorly-sourced WP:OR unrelated to what Hořava and Witten actually wrote. Unless we get support for the article from the Physics Wikiproject, which seems unlikely (given the way all the sister articles are being deleted), I'm still calling it a case for WP:TNT. -- 202.124.72.1 (talk) 06:54, 22 July 2013 (UTC)