Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Physics major

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 Restored to redirect without prejudice to ongoing RfD at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 May 7#Physics major. Thryduulf (talk) 12:41, 14 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Physics major (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)

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Bit of a weird situation here, so bear with me. Several days ago, there was an xkcd comic which contained a joke that on Wikipedia "physics major" was just a redirect to engineer (see here). It wasn't actually a redirect, however, but merely a redlink — with the result that after a quick attempt by a diligent Wikipedian to forestall the inevitable by creating a new redirect to physics education, a bunch of xkcd fans started trying to change the redirect target to engineer. The real Wikipedians in turn redirected it back to physics education, the xkcders redirected it to engineer instead, and on and so forth, and eventually our side wisely pageprotected it — but another user then objected to the physics education redirect on the grounds that the target was mostly about physics education in general and only contained limited content about the university/college-level aspect itself, thus resulting in the title's current form.
I'm not aware of any other instance on Wikipedia where we have an article about "subject education" and then a separate article about "subject major" which just gives a one-line definition of the term and then links to the broader article on subject education; in every single case I've investigated so far, "subject major" either doesn't exist at all, or exists only as a redirect to a broader article on subject education. Accordingly, this isn't useful in its current form, but since I don't know what the right answer is I thought I should bring it here for a broader discussion about how to handle it.
So my question is:

1. Should we just delete this and salt it?
2. Should we keep this as a protected redirect to physics education?
3. Or does this title have the potential to be salvaged as a real, substantive and properly referenced article about postsecondary physics education, which should consequently stand on its own separately from the main one?

No !vote; I'm too confused to have an opinion yet. The only thing I'm entirely sure of is that we don't need it in this form. Bearcat (talk) 17:54, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep as protected redirect (perhaps to Physics education#Physics_education_in_American_universities rather than to the top of the page). Plausible search term, the fact that other content exists in the target article is irrelevant. JulesH (talk) 20:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: It's since come to my attention that there was already a discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2012_May_7#Physics_major about the title's original form as a redirect to physics education, which was initiated before the title was converted to its current form. There's no point in having two simultaneous discussions operating at cross purposes to each other, so I'd suggest consolidating them into one — but would it be preferable to close this discussion and continue that one, or to close that one and continue here? (Given the title's current form as a standalone article, I think it makes more sense to keep the AFD going forward instead of the RFD, but I don't want to impose that without bringing it up for discussion first.) Bearcat (talk) 21:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:18, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:19, 12 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Physics education and protect redirect. The physics education article could stand some improvement, but that's a reason to improve it rather than to split the topic of physics major into a separate article, or to allow xkcd fans to make it an inappropriate redirect. (I'm a fan of xkcd myself, but apparently some of the strip's fans take it a bit too literally.) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:08, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Physics education. The article currently has no content (it's comprised of a short one-line sentence), and the topic can easily be covered in the Physics education article. Northamerica1000^(talk) 09:05, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Physics education, and save this AfD discussion for the benefit of some future researcher studying the impact of comics. -- 202.124.74.2 (talk) 11:16, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Physics education and protect, as per the multiple suggestions above. -- Chronulator (talk) 13:19, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep article or salt. I'm the one who converted it from a redirect to a stub article. I should note that I discussed that change on the talk page and got one comment for and one non-constructive comment, which I interpreted as close enough to a consensus, before I proceeded. But I'm glad to see a more vigorous discussion here. My reasoning:
  • Firstly, I mostly thought of it this way: if we need to have something there, in order to apply protection, we might as well make it useful, even if only in a small way. I wasn't aware of the salting option at the time. I think that's a good idea as well. I have trouble thinking up a scenario in which someone searching for physics major would be looking for the material in that article.
  • If we are going to have something and want to to be useful, how to do that? I'm not sure why someone would enter through Physics major, so I wanted to make it work for various possible reasons. I think of it almost like a disambiguation page, except it's not really that, it just a "which aspect to do you want to know more about" page. Maybe that's going off being creative beyond WP guidelines, but the situation is unusual, as explained in the introduction to this section. I'm interested if anyone can point me to a policy page that specifically addresses this type of, what should I call it, forked redirect? I've looked some at the pages WP:disambiguation, WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and WP:stub, but haven't really found something that seems to hit the nail on the head.
    Example of how it might be useful: Someone outside the US reads a cultural reference to physics majors behaving a certain way. Being unsure of what a physics major is (a leading physicist?) that person types that into google or the wikipedia search box. What that reader really needs to find is the Academic major article. They get the stub which directs them to the right place for that. You might argue that all the needed was a dictionary entry and that doesn't belong here, but they might have wanted more, which is why they might look in WP, such as an explanation of how majors work in the US. Others who might find the Physics education or Physics articles useful find pointers to those. I'm not sure what the scenario is for those--maybe someone considering a physics major who doesn't find what they really want but does find the Physics article a useful starting point.
  • I do not see this purpose on the list of purposes for a redirect at WP:redirect.

There seems to be an emerging consensus for the redirect, but I'm having trouble understanding the rationale for that. Is that really the content someone typing "physics major" would be looking for? It seems almost like we are doing that just to have something other than Engineer to redirect to. Ccrrccrr (talk) 18:46, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Merging with the Physics education article is my suggestion, since the content in this article does not exist elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please note that the Physics education article does not actually tell the reader what a physics major is. Neither does the Academic major article, unless you know the topic of physics. The Engineer article is however even less useful to someone looking up "physics major". O8h7w (talk) 21:17, 13 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
• Close this discussion. The page was changed from a redirect to a rather pointless permastub dictionary definition in an attempt to sidestep the pre-existing RfD debate. It has been returned to redirect status (where it parallels redirects such as English major) and the RfD is still running its course. Rossami (talk) 04:19, 14 May 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.