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 no consensus. The article as nominated, and the article as it stands are so different it is difficult to read this discussion as an integral whole. All things considered, no consensus, but feel free to re-nominate if you really want to. Courcelles (talk) 03:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moving parts (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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One part OR, one part dictdef, one part stub which hasn't gone anywhere in five years. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:21, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• I suppose it's a bit out of process to comment like this on my own proposal, but I'll do so anyway. First, Uncle G deserves thanks for putting in a lot of work improving (essentially re-writing from scratch) the article. There's no doubt it's better than it was. It has references. It has nice diagrams. It's no longer a stub. The problem is, it still doesn't tell a coherent story. It's a bit of a jumble of various ideas which aren't closely related to each other. Maybe it's several articles. Maybe it's stuff that needs to be merged into other articles. I'm not sure. Maybe it's just that the name of the article is poor? In any case, I think at this point, the best advice I can give to people who have already expressed an opinion is to go back and read the current version and see if you still feel the way you did originally. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:22, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not out of process at all. This is a discussion, not a vote, after all. If it helps in thinking about this, go to Special:Search and look at how many articles on mechanisms, engines, and machines state that something has the advantage of "no moving parts" or "fewer moving parts", often considering this point so important that it's in the first paragraph or even sentence of the article, without explaining in any way why or how this is an advantage, or even why or how the number of moving parts is an important design factor at all. This article, of course, does explain the whys and hows of that, along the way leading the reader who then wants to find out more, to (one hopes) in depth discussions of more specific subjects from lubrication through computer aided design and kinematic design to tribology. (No, you aren't going colour blind. There's a whole engineering subject of kinematic design that we haven't addressed in all these years.) Uncle G (talk) 17:23, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Delete I think one of the main reasons this article hasn't progressed very far is the poor choice of title. All it says basically is that "moving parts are parts that move". DubZog (talk) 20:33, 17 July 2010 (UTC) * Now that the article has been expanded a lot, I kind of wish I were an engineer to be able to say whether it's any good. Is there a wikiproject engineering that can be consulted? DubZog (talk) 01:41, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Already done. See WT:WikiProject Engineering. Wizard191 (talk) 12:13, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep Article has a lot of potential for significant expansion with plenty of reliable sources from books, magazines and newspapers. Also, last I checked, Wikipedia does not have deadlines for stubs. The article needs cleanup. AFD is not cleanup. Vodello (talk) 20:41, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Improve or Merge until standalone article per vodello. With proper linking the article can be improved by many users. Deletions generally wastes time/effort which can be spent on improving articles. Kasaalan (talk) 20:44, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Negative comments about what deletion does or doesn't do generally serve only to piss off the people who participate in AFD in good faith. Are You The Cow Of Pain? (talk) 20:46, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Delete I can see the editor's sincere desire to contribute. However, moving parts have nothing to do with each other besides being parts that move. And that would just be a dictionary definition, contrary to WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. It would be better to write an article on one kind of machine, its history and present uses, rather than on a topic that spans half the universe. Wolfview (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:47, 17 July 2010 (UTC).[reply]

Undecided Article has been improved so that it qualifies as a second-rate WP article. You know, the kind that puts together two or three sections about some related topics and gets some good info to readers, but without really having one topic that meets strict policies. Another example is Peckerwood. (No other relationship between the two however.)Wolfview (talk) 06:35, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Non-encyclopedic, not sure there's anything to add to this article that wouldn't be better suited to wiktionary. Good faith article, but doesn't work in the context of the project. We already have this information, and much more, in mechanics, amongst others. Merge any unique information, delete the rest. Throwaway85 (talk) 21:48, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. My76Strat 01:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why? (As for myself, I say delete because it's an essay that doesn't go anywhere; not exactly sure where it could be merged to.)Erpert (let's talk about it) 06:42, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The core of the article is a dictionary definition. The rest belongs in other articles that discuss each aspect in depth (i.e. the kinetics info should be in kinetics, etc.). Wizard191 (talk) 18:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per improvements by Uncle G. Bearian (talk) 19:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• redacted - this article will just degenerate into a random uncontrollable list of moving parts, Dr Who tells me. Throwaway85 says it well. Greglocock (talk) 04:15, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, post recent improvements. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:53, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, there is some content that can certainly be expanded, but the current article (with significant improvements by Uncle G.) has been nicely moved into at least a Class=C status in my opinion. For editors coming to this page after July 23, 2010, consider looking at a comparison of the article history prior to Uncle G's update. The comments before his update do not reflect his latest work. Another great example of the Heyman Standard. § Music Sorter § (talk) 15:49, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Change- weak keep i'm not convinced it is necessary, but it has improved Greglocock (talk) 16:11, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Dictionary entries are concerned with etymology, parts of speech, spelling and other lexical matters. This article is nothing of the sort. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:39, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep I was skeptical at first: it does need a lot of work, but I see value in the definition of what a moving part is, and discussion as to why they are an important consideration in engineering (wear, heat, lubrication, complexity, etc.). Needs better "flow," however. -- GreyTrafalgar (talk) 18:18, 23 July 2010 (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.