Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Relations on a set of four elements

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 delete. I'm sorry, but all these well-intentioned keep / merge arguments just don't address the issue of whether this is encyclopedic work. If someone wants it in their userspace to work on merging or something else, ask me and I'll userfy for you. Mangojuice^talk 16:18, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that in spite of the obviously big amount of work which has gone into created these pages, they are not encyclopedic. Some of it (not a lot!) may be merged into relevant pages, and the rest should be moved to wikisource or something, I'd think. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree This is effectively original research, although certainly verifiable in the mathematical sense, and large parts of it may, at least in principle, be sourceable. If not transwiki'd it should be userfied, no reason to lose all that work. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:20, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Userfy - seems worthy of keeping but is not really for Wikipedia (would be nice to see it on a university wiki or something though, I've discovered this amazing small uni-based wiki on another field of knowledge that has really helped for tracking down sources for assignments) Orderinchaos 05:24, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree with previous commenters that this material is worth saving someplace, but that Wikipedia is not that place. —David Eppstein 05:32, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Soft delete.  --Lambiam^Talk 07:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge articles together into Binary relations on a finite set, as a main article for the section Binary relation#The number of binary relations. A lot of this material can be sourced using OEIS, which not only lists integer sequences, but gives interpretations like this (and provides some original sources); some of the material is so elementary that that a reference to a textbook on discrete mathematics or combinatorics should suffice; delete the remainder. Geometry guy 12:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge or keep per Geometry guy. If this material can be proven mathematically, and in some sense is mathematically trivial, it isn't original research within our meaning of the phrase; it has nothing to do with introducing new theories or advancing a position. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep. It looks like a standard piece of set theory /combinatorics. If Wikipedia contains lists of dog or cat breeds, why it could not contain list of properties of small sets?--Ioannes Pragensis 20:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Useful overviews. Demonstrate which combinations of properties of relations, such as being a partial order, total preorder, reflexive, irreflexive, etc., are possible, and provides examples for each combination of properties.--Patrick 20:56, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment If nothing that is provable in principle can be OR, then we have no OR in mathematics (we still have factual error). This, however, has the disadvantages of OR: Wikipedia is not a scratchpad. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment ok but these small sets properties really belong to the "basic knowledge" of finite mathematics, just as the Multiplication table of small numbers, but on a higher level of abstraction.--Ioannes Pragensis 10:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge or keep this useful info. JJL 23:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The information is useful, but as it is, it is just pagefuls of factoids with a poor name. Wikipedia is not a repository for such information I believe. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:49, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge into relevant articles...though I do not believe there is any case for leaving these as articles per WP:NOT a source of indiscriminate information section 6 "Textbooks and annotated texts".--Jersey Devil 03:56, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, not really encyclopedic, more the kind of homework one would give too-bright pupils early in a course on this area of discrete mathematics. Charles Matthews 15:15, 20 May 2007 (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.