Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Public weal

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 Cheers, I'^mperator 21:29, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Public weal (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

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Contested prod. Disambiguation page that doesn't disambiguate anything but instead defines a term and lists the articles that have similar meanings; should be in the Wiktionary, not an encyclopedia. Public weal has two meanings, one listed by Merriam-Webster as obsolete, the other as archaic. No one looking for information on republicanism or commonwealths might happen upon "public weal" as their search term (that definition is obsolete). A simple redirect to "common good" would suffice for anyone who typed in the archaic meaning. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 14:10, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. -- RJC ^Talk_Contribs 19:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Disambiguations-related deletion discussions. -- RJC ^Talk_Contribs 19:33, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as a DAB, possibly removing the Commonwealth/Republic language. Add Mad War, a.k.a. War of the Public Weal. (In fact, I'll add that now.) Cnilep (talk) 19:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cnilep, the Mad War was a part of the page. For whatever reason, someone recently removed it before you added it back. — The Man in Question (gesprec) · (forðung) 20:44, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep; the notion that public weal (as "common good") is archaic is false, the phrase is used in many official legal documents (see the links to the disambiguation page). Certainly Mad War should be kept. Those unfamiliar with the term "weal" (I'm guessing most Wikipedians) might easily misunderstand the meaning of "League of the Public Weal" and "War of the Public Weal". This page is not a Wiktionary entry, as suggested; many disambiguation pages give a brief explanation or definition before disambiguating. Should not be redirected to common good because it does mean republic/commonwealth (as in A Fruitful and Pleasant Work of the Best State of a Public Weal, and of the New Isle Called Utopia). I would call up WP:Redirects for discussion#Reasons for not deleting. Although of course this refers to redirects, no disambiguations, it still illustrates my point: "If someone says they find a redirect useful, they probably do. You might not find it useful — this is not because the other person is a liar, but because you browse Wikipedia in different ways." — The Man in Question (gesprec) · (forðung) 20:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • References to "public weal" in the news from this month: [1] (August 2009 MSNBC article), [2] (August 2009 TIME article), [3] (August 2009 article), [4] (August 2009 article), [5] (August 2009 article), [6] (August 2009 article). (Incomplete) official legal references: [7] (1987 court decision), [8] (Virginia Bill of Rights) — The Man in Question (gesprec) · (forðung) 21:08, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment. The fact that "public weal" is still used in some contexts does not mean that it is not archaic; a complete lack of usage would make it obsolete. But "public weal" is not colloquial and has an antique air about it, hence archaic. As to Mad War and League of the Public Weal, neither of these seem appropriate. From WP:DAB, under "What not to include," partial title matches are not included. War of the Public Weal redirects to League of the Public Weal, while the article on the Mad War does not call it the "War of the Public Weal." Those unfamiliar with the term "weal" may well misunderstand the meaning of the league's and war's name, but this is solved by linking to the wiktionary, not by disambiguation. Rather, a disambiguation page would be necessary if the Mad War were sometimes called "The Public Weal," which it is not, even if sometimes called the War of the Public Weal. The same goes for the League. "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving conflicts in Wikipedia article titles that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic, making that term likely to be the natural title for more than one article. In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to different articles which could, in principle, have the same title." The other two links seem covered by the section of WP:DAB that says "A disambiguation page is not a list of dictionary definitions." RJC ^Talk_Contribs 21:13, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wikipedia itself defines an archaism as "the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current". An obsolete word, on the other hand, is "no longer useful"[9] — i.e., to call Middle English "Old English" (as was current in the 19th century). The news of MSNBC and TIME doesn't seem like specialized use. — The Man in Question (gesprec) · (forðung) 23:16, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ah, you're correct. My mistake. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 04:46, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This DAB seems perfectly reasonable; disams get to skirt DICDEF a bit and this doesn't seem like a particularly bad or unreasonable case. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:04, 24 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The articles for the first two entries do not mention "public weal" and might therefore be removed from the dab. The second two entries (or synonyms for them) are partial-title matches, not themselves ambiguous. It would seem to be deleteable then. (Or the information on "public weal" could be added to the first two articles.) -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:06, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  There. I added references to "public weal" to both articles in places where they seemed appropriate. — The Man in Question (gesprec) · (forðung) 12:30, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  Keep now. -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:06, 31 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Ambiguous term which this article successfully disambiguates. The references to the League and the War will help the confused. Xanthoxyl (talk) 13:44, 27 August 2009 (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.