Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/IPA for X

IPA for X

This is a multiple-page nomination (sorry if the title is incorrect). The pages under scrutiny are:

Help: IPA for Berber

Help: IPA for Colognian

Help: IPA for Gujarati

Help: IPA for Judaeo-Spanish

Help: IPA for Klingon

Help: IPA for Laz

Help: IPA for Kashmiri

Help:IPA for Luxembourgish

Help: IPA for Marshallese

Help: IPA for Mingrelian

~~Help: IPA for Nguni~~ (nomination withdrawn)

~~Help: IPA for Punjabi~~ (nomination withdrawn)

~~Help: IPA for Quechua~~ (nomination withdrawn)

Help: IPA for Svan

Help: IPA for Walloon

The IPA for X pages are designed to provide utility to readers and editors in understanding and transcribing language-specific transcriptions at Wikipedia. They are not to be a resource for language learners or simplified coverage of a language’s phonology compared to the phonology section of a language's Wikipedia entry. When an IPA for X page is created, it should be there to cover an unmet need. I believe that the above pages do not qualify for this unmet need. Most of them are not linked to at all and the rest are only used a handful of times. In certain cases, the pages have only been recently created, but the need for the page should exist before it is created. Here is the breakdown for each:

Help: IPA for Berber – created July 2010. 7 articles link here, 4 of these are language-related articles that explain transcription within article space.

Help: IPA for Colognian – created November 2010. 3, articles link here, 2 of which are language-related.

Help: IPA for Gujarati – created November 2014. ~~No pages link here.~~ 5 pages link here.

Help: IPA for Judaeo-Spanish – created October 2014. No pages link here.

Help: IPA for Klingon –created December 2014. No pages link here.

Help: IPA for Laz – created October 2014. No pages link here.

Help: IPA for Kashmiri – created October 2014. No pages link here.

Help:IPA for Luxembourgish - created May 2014. 6 pages link here.

Help: IPA for Marshallese – created April 2011. No pages link here.

Help: IPA for Mingrelian – created April 2014. No pages link here.

Help: IPA for Nguni – created December 2012. No pages link here. But 13 use {{IPA-xh}} and 14 use {{IPA-zu}}

Help: IPA for Punjabi – created December 2012. ~~No pages link here.~~ 38 link here.

Help: IPA for Quechua – created December 2013. ~~No pages link here.~~ 9 pages link here.

Help: IPA for Svan – created October 2014. No pages link here.

Help: IPA for Walloon – created March 2014. 2 pages link here. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:21, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Help: IPA for Berber, Help: IPA for Svan and Help: IPA for Walloon are mentioned in one or both of the above lists but are not currently tagged for deletion; while Help:IPA for Luxembourgish has been tagged for deletion but is not mentioned in the above lists. -- John of Reading (talk) 03:02, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, thanks. I believe I've fixed it now. I wasn't as sure about Luxembourgish, but since I've tagged it we can discuss it. So it's in both lists now. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:18, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment It is absolute unintelligible for me what this request is all about. These pages do not hurt, and when they are correct, there is no evidence that they harm anyone while they might be useful in the future, if not already. So why take them away from potential users? -- Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 21:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Btw., going through Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Reasons for deletion thoroughly, I cannot identify a cause for deletion there. Do you? -- Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 21:22, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. The deletion policy does not explicitly reference a policy for pages in the help namespace, but we can infer from items 10, 12, and 13, that help pages that are redundant, useless, unused, obsolete, or in violation of the established policy for help namespace are candidates for deletion.

As Help:help and WP:Help namespace explain, help pages are designed to help editors and/or users use Wikipedia. Since these pages are unused for their stated purpose (helping understand language-specific transcriptions at Wikipedia), we can't keep them in help space.

But, you might say, these could someday be used. Someone may put a few Mingrelian or Kashmiri transcriptions, making their relevant help pages appropriate. But there are two important issues in regard to this question:

First, this puts the cart before the horse. The need for a specific language transcription help guide should be established before it is created. This is done by first creating a language-specific template that redirects to Help:IPA. When there are a sufficient number of pages that use this template, then the redirect can be modified to instead be used as a template that links to the page as, for example, {{IPA-es}} does for Spanish and {{IPA-ja}} does for Japanese. Many of these pages do not even have an associated language template (incidentally, when doing the research for this, I found that a few of these pages did start out this way but nobody bothered to alter the template from a redirect. As such, I have withdrawn my nomination for IPA for Nguni, IPA for Punjabi, and IPA for Quechua).

Second, there must be a point at which we decide, either beforehand or after a period of time, that a language transcription guide is not needed. For example, IPA for Judaeo-Spanish was just created in October. Perhaps users simply need more time to start using it. On the other hand, IPA for Marshallese has been around since 2011, which is a strong indicator that it is not actually useful. It would also be nice to have a good idea of how many links warrant one of these pages. I would think at least more than 5, but others might argue for just one. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:32, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On the other hand, IPA for Marshallese has been around since 2011, which is a strong indicator that it is not actually useful. It's not used. It's not used because there's no IPA template for Marshallese. It's an indication nobody can (be bothered to) transcribe Marshallese. 213.7.227.83 (talk) 01:28, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]