Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of common misconceptions (6th nomination)

List of common misconceptions

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Biting the bullet here and nominating this page for deletion a sixth time. My reasoning here is quite simple: this is not an appropriate topic for a list in the mainspace. Wikipedia is not a collection of trivia which this page plainly is. Each one of the listings is, at most, appropriate for a single line on their respective pages. The sources cited on this page are often low-quality, including television (1) shows (2), recipe aggregators like Allrecipes and Cookthink, Dotdash Meredith subsidiaries like Thoughtco (deprecated), random blogs including at least one Wordpress-hosted site, and mainly, blatant plagiarism from Snopes (actually, this whole article is practically Snopes Wikipedia-style.) Therefore I think this page should be deleted from the mainspace, and if it must be kept, then moved to the meta namespace ala Wikipedia:Unusual articles since it does serve an educational purpose. wound theology ◈ 19:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2024 June 26. —^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 19:22, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I favor cleaning up and removing misconceptions with weak references like the ones mentioned, but I strongly oppose deletion or moving it off the mainspace. The list is clearly valuable to users, doesn't seem to obviously contradict WP:SALAT, WP:ENCYCLOPEDIC or WP:NOTDIRECTORY and seems well within the scope of WP:NLIST. agucova (talk) 20:00, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I origianlly came to this article because I am a 40+ USAmerican and was linked from a tumblr post about incorrect "facts" about the world that we were taught as children. Most of these items on this list are indeed COMMON misconceptions in the US. Pre-internet (or even pre-google) it was NOT easy to find the truth about these misconceptions. they were considered common knowledge and encyclopedias did not have enough breadth of information to prove a negative.

I have read through all 6 nominations and arguments for/against deletion of this article and it appears that the delete voters by and large have the opinion that this information is not important enough to be collected while keep voters tend to agree that the article needs to be edited but is a valuable resource. I agree with the KEEPers. Many of the items in the article i did not even KNOW were misconceptions (oil is made from dinosaurs, carrots are good for vision, and diamonds not being coal are 3 quick examples). If you feel it is too US-centric, maybe add that to the title? If you feel it should not be on the main space, they could be a sub-article under urban legends? The suggested unusual articles category is inappropriate because specifically states that the "material is not to be taken seriously". that is precisely how many of these misconceptions were started (as jokes or tall tales) and what the article is trying to clear up.

NOTE: I have never commented on or edited a wiki article before so excuse me if my format of comment is incorrect. 71.182.139.42 (talk) 21:10, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP ^ vote obviously 71.182.139.42 (talk) 21:11, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for the wiki process, but these aren't arguments why we should keep the article. It's not that I don't think these are misconceptions -- although some are arguably pedantic -- but that the page itself (in my view) is not within the scope of Wikipedia. wound theology ◈ 06:24, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:26, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and add an entry for "This article is a plausible deletion candidate". Seriously though, the problem with this article is keeping it free of cruft. Everything listed there needs to reliably referenced as both a misconception, as being common and also have a relevant article linked that has some non-trivial coverage of the the misconception. Anything that doesn't fit those criteria can be removed. There is no case to delete the whole article. Let's just clean out the crap and try to keep an eye on it for anybody adding any more crap. --DanielRigal (talk) 23:26, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At the risk of going off-topic here, agree that a big problem is preventing or eliminating cruft. Currently, the edit notice says "It is preferred to propose new items on the talk page first." but this is not a requirement. I have advocated making it a requirement, but did not achieve a consensus on the talk page for that. Interesting that an editor who has added dozens of entries over the past few weeks that are arguably "cruft" is here arguing for deletion. I would invite participants in this discussion to review the recent activity on the page and it's associated talk page. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 01:42, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep You remove things with bad references, you don't delete an entire article because of them. Dream Focus 23:31, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's a mischaracterization of my argument here. Bad references aren't the main problem; the page itself (in its current format) is not within the scope of Wikipedia. wound theology ◈ 06:27, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Yes, this article has it's problems and could stand improvement. As one of the active editors for this page it is a constant task to keep it cruft free and make sure all the assertions are reliably sourced. I would welcome help with that. Despite the flaws, it's a useful compendium of things that are commonly believed that are false. As someone once said, "It's not what you don't know that's the problem, it's the things you think you know that aren't true." It's a valuable resource that should remain, and was once a ~~featured article~~ Wikipedia:Featured_list_candidates featured list candidate. Seeing how this article has been nominated for deletion five times in the past without success I find it odd that it has been nominated a sixth time. It's time to drop the stick. Seems like a WP:SNOW keep. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 00:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary to a common misconception, the page was never a featured article, with one of the issues cited as preventing it from being promoted being: ""common" needs to be defined clearly - i.e. what makes the list not wp:OR." Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:12, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Earlier this year List of hobbies was deleted after a fourth nomination for many of the same reasons I nominated this page. wound theology ◈ 06:28, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The page requires OR to determine what is common, and what is a misconception, violating WP:LSC. The idea that RS could be deferred to is a common misconception for a few reasons:

Misconceptions cannot be "common", they must be "common among X". X is undefined, and excluding an entry in a local newspaper for saying "it's a common misconception that "local landmark"" is defining common, and isn't deferring to RS. The edge cases are common among world, among America, among Jews, among historians of whipped cream etc. Line drawing is defining common.
RS are not deferred to. The talk page is huge because editors want to exclude RS when they say something is a common misconception because they don't personally believe it's common. See literally two days ago.
"Current" is said to be implied from the title (according to an apparent consensus of what "common" is defined as), but isn't defined how to establish this. Seen in a dispute a few days ago, where it was argued if it was common in 1967 it is common now because people are "still alive".
RS will not always say "it's a common misconception that", "words to that effect" are used, which includes "contrary to popular belief", but also includes "many people believe" and "etymological urban legend". Evaluating whether "words to that effect" are met requires comparing to definition of common and misconception, which is the problem that led to the idea of deferring to RS in the first place.
An entry cannot be included as a misconception if it's not false, as it is not then a misconception. The way this is enforced is usually not something being factually wrong, but quibbling with definitions: that's not a misconception, it's... a misnomer (misnomers are a type of misconception), technical language vs common language dispute, abstraction of complex ideas and many many more. i.e., entries to "list of common misconceptions" which have RS saying they're a misconception, are being excluded because it doesn't fit editor's personal definitions of "misconception."

Some of these problems are fixable, others are not. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:04, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As an addendum, to support the position that the page is a list of trivia, the phrase "contrary to popular belief" has been identified in The Washington Post as a "journalism cliche... that we should avoid". Contrary to popular belief is widely regarded in the talk page as the most acceptable "words to that effect" for "common misconception". Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:09, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]