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. WP:SNOW MBisanz ^talk 01:40, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

British Imperial Lifeline (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Unreferenced; not clear why it needs its own article. Slac speak up! 05:25, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. —Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This was an important concept which greatly influenced Britain's military and colonial policies from the 18th century until 1947. It should be possible to find lots of references on this topic, though I'm not sure that the article is correctly named. Nick-D (talk) 07:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I can see why this was nominated, can someone find some references for it please and maybe even expand it a little. Then I'll be more than happy to !vote "keep". Ryan4314 (talk) 12:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I have no desire to expand this article that was created with an "everybody knows that" attitude, but there are sources [1] that someone can use. Mandsford (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep As Mandsford's Google Books search indicates, there's clearly plenty of reliable sources. Just a poorly written article. Joshdboz (talk) 19:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. While the article doesn't cite any references at the moment, it appears that many potential references do exist.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Unscented (talk • contribs) 16:53, 24 March 2009
• Keep I agree there is little content in this article, however, as has been said above it is an important concept in British and colonial defence planning and policy. The article definately needs a lot of work, however. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I note there is a lot of agreement that it is an "important concept", but not very much on whether we should keep the article itself. As it stands, it is worse than useless; who is going to volunteer to fix it? Or doesn't all the relevant information belong at British Empire? Slac speak up! 04:56, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be consensus that it's notable and could have its own article. If an editor really wanted to merge it they could propose that on the relevant talk pages, but there's nothing that says we can't have stubs for a while. Joshdboz (talk) 05:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep Highly notable topic. Blatant case of failure to follow WP:BEFORE. Colonel Warden (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Keep, per the cite of WP:BEFORE by User:Colonel Warden, we don't delete topics (except in BLP cases) simply because the existing article is unreferenced or poorly referenced. The notion that an article stub "is worse than useless" is evidence of a dramatic miscomprehension of the purpose of deletion. As above it is for articles that can't be fixed with normal editing. This means the topic itself is non-encyclopedic or what is there can't be identified or cut back into a couple of sentence stub. This is not meant to be an attack, but please, give this some thought: does this contribution help to make this a better encyclopedia? I don't see how trying to delete clearly notable topics without even trying to improve them yourself achives anything but a waste of everyone's time. Time which could be spent actually writing, editing or researching articles. T L Miles (talk) 23:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment To the above two editors (and especially User:T L Miles), please comment on the nomination, not the nominator. Your comments appear to assume bad faith or laziness on the behalf of the nominator. It's perfectly reasonable to nominate an article for deletion when it's had a bad title, little content and no sources since it was created about two a a half years ago. I note that neither of you have made any attempt to improve the article. Nick-D (talk) 07:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: With respect, nobody has explained to me in this discussion (1) Why the minimal content in this article can't be relegated to British Empire and kept there, (2) How the topic, in its own right, is encyclopedic, ie. in need of its own article, and what this article will contain. My personal suspicion is that the title of the article is Original Research, given that a quick google turns up practically no results outside of Wikipedia. It's not my responsibility to turn this article into something useful, given that I don't see what it's doing outside of British Empire, or even why the article is titled the way it is. An article that is unreferenced and not demonstrably useful certainly makes Wikipedia worse; frankly, assuming that my nominating this article for deletion is a "waste of time" is itself a misunderstanding of the purpose of AfD. Slac speak up! 05:31, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment 1) I agree that a merge might be more appropriate, but they go through the process set out at WP:MERGE rather than AfD 2) The topic is notable, but its title is awful. Nick-D (talk) 07:47, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Here are several hundred books which use the phrase or something similar. The contention that this article and its title is OR is quite mistaken. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:18, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep per above. Where else but in WP can one quickly find an explanation for an obscure term. -MBHiii (talk) 14:58, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:HEY with rescue by Joshdboz. Bearian (talk) 15:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep. Obviously encyclopedic. Ottre 17:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
• Keep After reading some of the above, I'm convinced its a notable topic, and not just one guy passively referring to it as their lifeline on one occasion. It was called that quite often apparently. Dream Focus 18:51, 26 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Plenty notable and sources exist, the rest is regular editing. -- Banjeboi 14:06, 27 March 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.