Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/BSTJ papers

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. -Doc^g 01:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BSTJ papers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

An unencyclopedic list of information available elsewhere, per WP:NOT#DIR Alison Chaiken 06:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:NOT#DIR.Anjouli 08:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• This information could be useful to people wanting info about electronics. I have put it in Category:Electronics. Move it to a more informative title, e.g. Bell System Technical Journal papers. Anthony Appleyard 09:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - A complete list of every paper published in a technical journal is not encyclopedic, nor is it feasable to maintain such a list (which contains thousands of papers). Dr. Submillimeter 10:24, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete I hope they cut and pasted most of this because that's a lot of work to waste on an obviously non-notable matter that's bound to get deleted.Quadzilla99 10:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per WP:NOT. This sort of list is not useful and is in all probability available elsewhere. --Philosophus ^T 10:45, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Transwiki if possible. Iiiiiiindiscriminate. ~ trialsanderrors 11:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per above. May even be a copyvio. MER-C 11:57, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy delete per WP:NOT. --ScienceApologist 14:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:NOT is not a speedy criterion. (And per below, WP:USEFUL is clearly not a speedy keep criterion, or a keep criterion at all.) ~ trialsanderrors 21:49, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Wikipedia is not a directory. These are not even the 'greatest hits'; they seem to be ALL the papers. EdJohnston 14:55, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per EdJohnston's comment, I could see the utility of a short list of the most notable papers from the journal as a section in the Bell System Technical Journal article. What specifically violates the Wikipedia is not a directory injunction is having a long, unorganized list as a separate article. Alison Chaiken 18:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - I began this article and would like to chime in as to why it was begun and why it is so important. A year ago I was performing research into some history of telephone systems. Once I discovered the Bell System Technical Journals' existence, I scoured both the internet and libraries searching for a listing of articles and papers included in the Journal over the years. None was to be found without seeking out a major technical library, and not even usually then. I contacted the San Francisco Public Library and the had the collection, but could not produce an index of the articles or subjects contained within. I could request papers, but could not discover which papers to request! I contacted several other major libraries and discovered that the University of California at Berkeley had the collection in the stacks of their engineering library. However, they also did not have an index available without being physically on-site. I journeyed to the Cal engineering library and an idea came that perhaps an index of the papers would be useful to those performing research. I realize that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but as such it is also a reference system and a listing of other reference materials can be extraordinarily useful. Additionally, there is no other method, short of physical presence, of obtaining something as simple as a list of journal paper titles from any location on the internet. Google Scholar, contrary to others assertions, does NOT have this information available in any manner. Additionally, listing the titles of journal papers from a publication would not constitute a copyright violation, or all library systems would be inherently in violation of the law. Jory 20:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Wikipedia has no obligation to record something just because it is not available elsewhere. WP:NOT is still applicable. If Jory feels that disseminating this list to the world is important, perhaps he should create his own website and place the list there. (I also reformatted Jory's comments into one paragraph; the paragraphs were not all indented properly. Please forgive the reformatting.) Dr. Submillimeter 21:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I wonder if we can transwiki this to Wikisource. It's certainly not -pedia material, but I agree with the assessment re copyright. ~ trialsanderrors 21:48, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Check out this Google Scholar listing of BSTJ papers: 16,300 hits. The argument that the table of contents information is not available elsewhere probably used to be true but is no longer. Alison Chaiken 23:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • "Info is available elsewhere" is really neither an inclusion nor exclusion criterion, unless it's copyvio. If the folks at Wikisource think it's something to keep that's ok with me. Clearly it fails policy here. ~ trialsanderrors 23:49, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Response to Alison Chaiken - Thank you for providing that link. However, you will notice that a vast majority of Google Scholar hits in regards to BSTJ papers are citations, rather than the papers themselves. As an example, I can tell you there are a total of 386 journal papers in the BSTJ from years 1955 through 1960. If you perform an advanced search on Google Scholar, you will see that only 47 entries are found and they are all citations. However, I can understand the concerns of those discussion the deletion proposal. I am happy to provide a website where the journal papers are indexed if no other public location is available. I had just felt that this information was of vital importance to the research community and was unsuitably unavailable. It should also be noted that since beginning this article on WP, 68 additional journal paper titles were added by WP users other than myself. I provided the initial 386 paper titles. So it is clear that there is some desire from users for this information to be available, whether it be here or someplace else.. ~ Jory 04:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Response to Jory But aren't the citations at Google Scholar listing the exact equivalent of what BSTJ papers provides? I don't understand the additional utility of the BSTJ papers table over the Google Scholar listing. On the other hand, a short list in the regular Bell System Technical Journal article of the most cited papers would add value to that article. Alison Chaiken 05:15, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • Response to Alison Chaiken - It's not the same thing. Citations may help you discover previously-referenced papers, but will not help in identifying a paper that has not been previously cited, but is still useful to new research. My idea was to provide the titles of these papers so researchers could locate papers they were seeking and then be able to request the appropriate volumes from libraries that store the collection in off-site storage. I agree that citing some oft-used articles in the main BSTJ article would enhance that article, but it wouldn't provide additional reference for those seeking more information. I am guessing you have never perused the BSTJ itself, as I hadn't prior to December 2005. It is an amazing wealth of discovery and knowledge that is still very pertinent to current research, but is nearly forgotten, except where already cited. This tome of information contains not only the history of technology used for telephone systems, but also the initial understanding of sound perception (Fletcher & Munson's research into hearing), the initial discussion of how to refer to amplitude (a 1931 paper essentially creating the decibel), the development history behind the UNIX operating system, the creation of the transistor, and much much more. Just the number of actual papers available in the 5-year period I previously mentioned should illustrate how inadequate Google Scholar's contents are. 47 citations out of a possible 386 papers. Jory 05:32, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
            • Comment - I have decided to put up a database-driven directory of the BSTJ papers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jory (talk • contribs) 22:20, 31 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]
• Delete per nom. --EMS | Talk 04:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep Many of these were before 2000, and GS coverage is very weak before that. And it is unsystematic in any case--just look at the reviews cited of the GS page in WP. The question is how to deal with this material, because WP is not really a scientific indexing service--and if we included them all the page would be somewhat large and unwieldy. But we do in practice justify many of our articles on the grounds that there is no systematic coverage elsewhere--and this has been the case since the start.

However, I think it highly likely that they are all indexed in the standard engineering indexes, which are available in major libraries. I think Jory's index is a much better way of handling this, and the list should be whittled down a good deal and kept. I think that including highlights from a journal is a good use of WP, but I am not sure whether they should simply go at the bottom of the article on the journal. DGG 09:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

• Reply to DGG - Yes, the papers are all available via an engineering index, but that index itself must be physically accessed in order to discover any information. I have only found that index available at the UC Berkeley Engineering Library, but again, one must actually visit the library and locate the printed index for it to be of any use. No online index of any form exists, other than that which I have begun. Anyway, I have decided to go ahead and create my own website for the directory, as mentioned previously.—Jory (talk • contribs) 19:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

• Engineering Index is available online as Compendex. They are also probably in Inspec, also available on line. Of course it takes being a member of a university which has paid the five-digit amount for access. And thus good free lists like this are indeed very useful.DGG 07:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete There's definitely a point to keeping track of this kind of information, but Wikipedia is not the place to do so. Build your own website or complain to the folks at Google Scholar. Anville 16:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Just you try complaining to the folks at GS. (ironic smile). DGG 07:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or transwiki. This is not the sort of information that belongs in WP. —David Eppstein 22:28, 3 January 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.