Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Weld monitoring, testing and analysis

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. (non-admin closure) Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 18:04, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Weld monitoring, testing and analysis

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This topic does not seem to meet WP:N separate from welding. Zero RSs show this as a unique, defined (other than here) subject of coverage as defined here. It seems inevitably a WP:SYNTH/WP:OR problem. The current article is the result of a move from Signature image processing which at the time was seemingly being used to highlight the work of one associate professor (whose photo remains in the article). As a result of this discussion and this one, the article was moved. I think the second discussion indicates how this new article title and focus is the result of OR. Novaseminary (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep (changed 12/9/11 from "Keep") The nominator exhibits obsessive battling behavior against me (much via mis-using policies) and follows me around, ramping it up whenever there is a dispute at a different article. IMO their participation at this article (where I have been doing rescue type work) is a result of that. Please see talk page history of the article for the history at this one. Briefly summarizing, it began when I brought up the idea of deleting the predecessor article. My concern was that that it was overly narrow and focused on one company's particular method of doing weld monitoring and testing, and that the generic-technical-sounding title was not such. Other editors disagreed, saying that it was a heavily sourced article on a legit topic. During ensuing conversations, it became clear that none of the editors had a coi. Over the months it was decided to redirect/expand this article into a broader, uncovered topic which is Weld monitoring, testing and analysis where the the subject of the previous article became merely a section in the new article. I sort of "warned" ahead of time that the other sections would temporarily be stubs, hopefully temporarily as other editors built it over time. I researched other articles, especially the Welding article to make sure that this topic was uncovered. Also it was clear that real coverage of Signature image processing at Welding which is a top level article on a even much broader topic would be ungainly/undue. Recently I rechecked with the 3 other editors (also see their talk pages on this)....100% agreed and I made the move. As anticipated the new sections were stubs. I posted a note at the talk page of the Welding (which, structurally, this is basically a sub-article of) article about this article and solicited editors. It has EXTENSIVE coverage in sources; a very huge technical area that is not covered in Wikipedia. I did some work on intro sentences on the other technologies and somewhat pared back the Signature image processing section. The nature of the material in there (description of awards won, listing of who uses it etc.) makes it still appear promotional at first glance, but I am unable to find anything to cut out that is not useful information. I was focused on text and I hadn't thought about the photo of the inventor until now; IMO it's a good idea to take it out and I just did so. I was planning to / offered to write a better technical explanation of the technology if a previous editor (tony1) would provide with some technical papers he has on this, but (see recent talk at their page) they no longer have those papers. I was planning to leave this article, the first phase of the rescue completed, as the topic is not of particular interest to me when Novasemianry assaulted it IMO as a result of disputes that I'm having with them elsewhere. First they PROD'ed it; when I removed the PROD they tag-bombed it, including an overall notability tag. I decided to stay a bit longer at the article to bolster it against Novaseminary's assault by adding some sourced material and sources to a few of the stub sections. It was immensely easy to find sources because there are an immense amount of sources on this. I just removed the notability tag; and (IMO, from hundreds of observations of their behavior over approx 2 years) as a result Novasemianry nominated it for deletion in retaliation/reaction. North8000 (talk) 12:42, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Personal attacks aside, what RSs establish that this formulation of the article subject is notable? I don't doubt that some of this could go in other articles, by why is the subject as you formulated it notable rather than WP:SYNTH? why not request it be userfied so you can have a chance to add sources that show this is a discrete subject that meets N? Novaseminary (talk) 14:41, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those aren't personal attacks, they are comments on your behavior based on extensive knowledge. And you are again mis-quoting rules to do further battling behavior. (Weld) wonitoring, testing and analysis are very closely related and substantially overlapping topics. Trying to imply that putting those words into the title is a synthesis violation, or saying that wp:notability sourcing has to be for that particular word combination of the title are both ridiculous; such rules do not exist. And no, I do not want to userfy it; per the above I have no particular interest in this topic, I was just helping with an article rescue and I would have left the article already had you not assaulted it. North8000 (talk) 15:12, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. There is a whole army of professionals who do nothing but inspecting welds; while the sourcing may be improved, there can be no doubt that the topic is notable. --Lambiam 16:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But is that what this article is? If so, so it be redirected to Weld inspection? Novaseminary (talk) 17:10, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is a subset of the scope of this article.North8000 (talk) 18:12, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. It is the scope of the article that concerns me. How did you settle on these three particular aspects (monitoring, testing, and analysis)? Do the reliable sources treat these together as a distinct subject? As two or three distict subjects? Maybe it needs to be multiple articles. There just doesn't seem to be anything there to support this breakdown. I could write a well-sourced article about three singers, and title the article ”Singers A, B, C”. Assuming they each already have (or could have) their own articles, the subject of my combination would fail N and be SYNTH. Unless, of course, the RSs treat the particular subject as a topic itself (a la Delta blues, for example). We don't decide what particular combinations of subjects should be notable. We report on those that the RSs already cover as such. Novaseminary (talk) 20:25, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Based on my hundreds of interactions with you over ~2 years, I consider this to be just more obsessive battling tactics, but I will answer it as if it were sincere. The logic of the choice is again that they are three closely related and often-overlapping topics, with just the right scope combined for an article, and which included the absorbed article which is clearly monitoring. The process was that I floated the idea for three months at the talk page (August 26th through November 22nd) with no objections or alternate suggestions. And before doing it, besides putting the "ready to roll" question on the talk page, I also wrote the three other editors at their talk pages and got their explicit agreement before proceeding. North8000 (talk) 21:29, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The process you went through is not terribly relevant for the discussion here. Do you have any RSs that treat these three together, perhaps noting they are closely-related and often-overlapping? Or is that statement SYNTH based on your expertise in the field? Even better would be a couple of RSs explicitly indicating why these three are considered together. That sort of material would make an article at this level of generality really useful, and lead me to withdraw the nomination (or at least change my !vote if other have already !voted delete). As it is now, there are only several examples of what you consider to fit within the scope of the article, and one really long, seemingly promotional example. But there are no sources suggesting this scope means anything. Novaseminary (talk) 21:52, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You are ignoring my previous answers and posing manipulative questions that imply policies that do not exist; I am not answering again/further. North8000 (talk) 22:21, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
@Novaseminary: The article is primarily concerned with methods for testing welds so as to assure their quality. If you feel so strongly that the title of the article is not quite appropriate for that topic, feel free to suggest a better title. That would be a far better course of action than to keep striving for its deletion. --Lambiam 22:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would very much like to settle on an alternative to deletion or be convinced that what seems to me to be OR is not. To the alternative to deletion end, I already suggested redirecting (now move over redirecting) to Weld inspection; removing the unsourced or SYNTH material that is not about Weld inspecting (or pasting any sourced, non-related material into another appropriate article). But North8000 seemed to object and hold on to the position that North's formulation of the lead and title is not SYNTH. That seems wrong to me. Another option might be for a move to Weld monitoring, if that is the predominant phrasing (perhaps with Weld inspecting redirecting there, too). The trio doesn't make sense, though. If there are synonyms, we should pick the most used and redirect the others. If they are different variants, we need some RS to establish the three have been treated together as a group and are thus not OR here. If the title and lead are not themselves OR (either by fixing them as a result of this AfD or finding RSs establishing as much), we can deal with the article's unsourced OR text in the editing process. But we can't make a non-notable SYNTH topic notable, even if every sentence but the SYNTH is well-sourced. Novaseminary (talk) 01:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Novaseminary does not "feel" anything on this, this is their clever way of battling. Again, this knowledge is based on hundreds and hundreds of interactions of 2 years. When I have an editing dispute with them they follow me somewhere else and do something like and then pretend to sound wikipedian. The most recent disputes that caused this are when I told them off at Machine vision and Feast of the Hunters Moon; they followed me to those two in retribution for not giving in to their bullying at other articles etc. All starting from an initial clash about 2 years ago at the Carrie Newcomer article. They do this to other editors too, mostly newbies as I was then, I'm just one of the few that didn't succumb to it and leave Wikipedia.North8000 (talk) 02:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So are you conceding the point that the article should be moved or deleted? Novaseminary (talk) 02:50, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is baseless and ridiculous. North8000 (talk) 03:42, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep The topic is clearly notable - one about which entire books may be written - see Quality assurance of welded construction, for example. The nomination does indeed seem to be disruptive per the reasons given in WP:SK#2. Warden (talk) 09:49, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete A trainwreck of an article. Notability of an external topic is no excuse for filling an encyclopedia with random strings of unrelated words.

This began some time ago as an article on one specific technique for assessing welds, by measurement of arc welding parameters during welding. It has since morphed into a title that seems far broader, NDT vs. sectioning, nick-break tests, etc. but has lost what little structure it did have. This topic is not merely notable, it should probably be on the WP:VA vital articles list for engineering. However the lesson of the WP:IEP Pune project has been that you can't write articles by googling for a text string and pasting the results into a page. Writing an article on a large topic needs some prior understanding of a topic, in order to first structure its editorial plan (a naive editor can learn this much during research, but they still need to do so before publishing the article).

Good articles come from good article plans, that are then fleshed out with detail and research. I know of no way, and know of no examples, to take articles in this state and repair them piecemeal, to an adequate standard. The more usual result of that is something like boiler design or aircraft design process, where an article becomes bigger, but no better. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:16, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So what would be a good article plan in this case? Please outline a suitable structure for the topic(s). Warden (talk) 11:05, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not even playing your game, Colonel. This is a planning meeting, where we !vote on directions for future work. It's a big mistake to involve work (which takes time and effort) into such a meeting, because it delays and disrupts one's ability to plan.

I do not have such an article plan to hand. I certainly don't intend to write one before I consider I'm entitled to comment here. If I wished to write one, I'd start by pulling a couple of decent refs off the bookshelf (probably Gibson's Practical Welding and Houldcroft's Welding Processes) and quickly read their sections on weld testing. There's a clear three-way split between in-process monitoring, destructive and non-destructive testing. As the two listed are older books, they mostly focus on destructive testing as a means of training welders, the old approach being that a well-enough-trained welder didn't make mistakes. More modern approaches were to start using NDT, especially for post-war pressure systems. With the increase in automated welding in the decades of cheap, smart electronics, in-process monitoring becomes more important. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:32, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A perfectionist approach was tried in Wikipedia's predecessor — Nupedia. In more than three years, it only produced 24 articles and so it failed. Wikipedia has a quite different model in which imperfection is explicitly tolerated. This evolutionary model works. For example, see the current featured article and its progression over time:

You yourself edited this article too. All you did was refine a category but every little helps. Our incremental method worked in that case; what is the difference in this case? Warden (talk) 12:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Andy, isn't an article (even if a stub) the place where such planning and work usually occurs? North8000 (talk) 12:45, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Andy, many good points there, and things that I have said myself. This really needs involvement by one or more persons who are an overall expert on this and I am not one. (please read my first comment for important background, including content on the non-SIP areas which I never intended or wanted to put in and only did so when the article got assaulted. But, in Wikipedian AFD terms, the question here is not it's quality level but only whether or not that title/subject should exist (= is wp:notable) as an article, and there you said yes, that "This topic is not merely notable, it should probably be on the WP:VA vital articles list for engineering." Could you clarify? North8000 (talk) 11:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article should be upgraded to being a WP:REDLINK. What we don't want is a toad of an article like boiler design, something that squats on the namespace and drives other editors away from writing the real article. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This has (until now) been a non-article since the dawn of wiki-time and nothing happened until this was created. So a non-article does not sound like a plan for creating the article. North8000 (talk) 12:10, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I had planned to leave it as just stub sections (outside of the SIP section) until it got assaulted. North8000 (talk) 12:10, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep—I was part of a related discussion about how to reframe/merge the article on signature image processing. Weld monitoring, testing and analysis is a large area that deserves a separate article—and is likely to be expanded in content over the next six months by North8000 and others. $Tony (talk)$ 11:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but redirect. Titles with "and" in them usually show a lack of focus. "Weld inspection" (as proposed above) would seem to be a better title. The activity is notable and important - recall the failure of welded Liberty ships during WWII due to new welding techniques and inadequate inspection. The phrase "Weld inspection" gives 58000 hits in Google Books, so there should be no shortage of sources; "welding quality assurance" gives 10,000 books hits (but I expect substantial overlap). --Wtshymanski (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This seems reasonable enough to me. Andy also raises great points. With a good redirect and clear lead, we can rework the article to meet policy. But without repurposing the article, or at least retitling it, that seems unlikly. Why are the couple of ”keepers” opposed to this? Novaseminary (talk) 16:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The point at issue here is whether an admin should use the delete function or not. General issues of article development are not what AFD is for. For one thing, 7 days may not be enough time to agree on the right title. Others have been arguing about the title of yoghourt for more than seven years now! Warden (talk) 17:34, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And we might be moving toward a consensus that would allow an alternative to deletion, which is of course appropriate to discuss here. You think the article purpose and title satisfies N. I do not. Bit if we can agree on some tweaking that satisfies us both, that is good, not bad. Despite your less than constructive personal attack in your ”speedy keep” above, I think there is room for consensus, maybe unanimity even. I hope you zeal for keeping articles won't you from entertaining any alternatives to deletion. Novaseminary (talk) 18:04, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment If there were a better title I'd be all for it. I waited 3 months for other ideas. But so far I haven't seen one. Much here is monitoring which is not inspection. I suppose two articles (inspection and monitoring) is a possibility, though there would be overlap / "which article" type dilemmas. But I think that the scope covered by the current title is ideal at this point. North8000 (talk) 18:39, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Notable topic and not covered in Welding. --Kvng (talk) 21:55, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The subject is notable and covered in books. Too much valid content to shove anywhere else. Monitoring, testing, and analysis all go together, so its fine. Dream Focus 19:51, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Update Last night Novasemianry gutted the article by in essence reversing the original consensused move/expansion. Took the SIP material out and put that back into a separate article. I reverted. North8000 (talk) 11:06, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that SIP meets N on it own. I spun it of and left a summary with a main link on this article (WP:SUMMARY). If North thinks SIP fails N, he knows how to send it to AfD. If he disagrees with how I used summary style, he or anybody else can edit it. Novaseminary (talk) 15:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This disruptive editing is contrary to the consensused plan, further reinforced recently on the talk page. Stop and take it to talk to get a consensus.North8000 (talk) 21:32, 10 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is no consensus to delete Signature image processing. Redirecting a notable topic to another article that may or may not be an umbrella to the notable topic is the same as deleting the article. That needs to happen at AfD, and not this AfD. Novaseminary (talk) 03:41, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice try. We are talking about you doing disruptive editing, undoing the redirect at the article that was was a part of the consensused process to roll the article into a broader article. North8000 (talk) 08:54, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep The topic is clearly notable. The article is well done, but could be improved. I have added See also links in Welding and in Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as relevant articles. Issues with proper welding and inspection are very much in the public arena, especially where new pipelines are being built to transport natural gas in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:28, 13 December 2011 (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.