Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Writing of Principia Mathematica

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 redirect‎ to Principia Mathematica. Decisions about merging or not merging can be made afterwards, as the original page history is retained. Sounds like not much merging to be done though.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:51, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Writing of Principia Mathematica

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Writing of Principia Mathematica (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Though the author and the book are of course notable, the _writing_ of the book doesn't have enough coverage for a separate article. Currently the article is just several lengthy quotes from Newton's and Halley's letters, with minimal text on "writing" of the book. The publication history is better covered in the main article, Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica#Publishing_the_book. The title is also ambiguous, because Principia Mathematica is a title of completely different book. Artem.G (talk) 13:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science, Astronomy, and Mathematics. Artem.G (talk) 13:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
• Delete. I thought it would take more time to sort through this one, but given the existence of the main article Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica#Publishing_the_book, this article's title/existence is redundant, and I agree it can be too ambiguous as a redirect term. It doesn't look like the writing process really had standalone notability from the book itself, and is better dealt with in the larger narrative at the main article. KoA (talk) 14:10, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
• Merge into the main article (content is already merged, but no need to delete the history). I broke out this sub-article in 2004 during a debate on-wiki about what to do with articles longer than 32k; even a few weeks later we were already discussing remerging into a single long article. That merge has already happened and the sidenav breaking Newton's life into subarticles is largely outdated. Isaac Newton's occult studies should likewise be deleted/merged into Religious views of Isaac Newton (which in contrast seems to have developed into a full-fledged article of its own). – SJ + 14:39, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

  Occult studies have a lot of problems, I started to copyedit and trim dubious and problematic claims, and I agree that it should be merged, though what part of it should be preserved is not clear. Artem.G (talk) 19:25, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

• Merge anything from the history that is worthwhile and might have been overlooked into Philosophiæ_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica. We don't need this page, but we also don't need to delete its history. XOR'easter (talk) 15:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

What would be merged exactly? There's nothing sourced that doesn't already exist at the parent article really, especially since this was split out and in the parent's history already. That's especially considering there are only about three lines in this article. It seems more of a case for redirect at best outside of delete, though I still agree with the nom on the redirect not being that suitable either. KoA (talk) 18:07, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

There was more in the page at the time of the AfD nomination, and some of that might be worth bringing over in condensed form. XOR'easter (talk) 18:18, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that was all removed as unsourced and unusable because of that. I'm honestly surprised that huge chunk survived as long as it did. It wouldn't have any place in a merge though. If there is sourced discussion to be had of the correspondence, then sources would be used at the target rather than Wikipedia's quoting of it the primary material. KoA (talk) 19:22, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Those quotations were all from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry and wouldn't be hard to source [1], if one wanted to use some small parts of them. XOR'easter (talk) 20:10, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I was getting at honestly. There's nothing in the article itself that really needs to be merged, especially if it's just one lone source that was excessively quoting the primary material. If something is going to be sourced at the parent article, that can be done independently. That's why any merge is functionally just going to be a redirect at this point. KoA (talk) 14:41, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

• Delete per nom - there is nothing worth merging and the title is ambiguous. Walt Yoder (talk) 22:50, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

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.