Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ableism (2nd nomination)

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. Most of the rest of the comments, despite what would seem to be overwhelming consensus, are worthless. AfD is not a vote, it is a place to bring coherent, logical, policy-based arguments, or, in those rare situations where policy should not apply, simply cogent rhetoric. "Did you try Google Books? No, you obviously didn't" is sarcasm, not an argument. Threatening to leave unless it's kept is blackmail, not an argument. Going "As a handicapped person myself, I have used this term" is WP:ILIKEIT, not an argument. "This term is used by those in the disabled communitys" is certainly not an argument, although it does succeed in being grammatically incorrect. The only things saving this article are the similarly low quality of the delete comments and the work of User:Gimme danger, whose attempt to provide sources is commendable (and certainly more than most of you did). The weight given to users' comments at AfD and in other areas is based on the strength of their argument, not the strength of the emotion behind it. If people could please remember this in future, I would be most grateful. Ironholds (talk) 18:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ableism[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

This article was proposed for deletion back in March 2007 and kept at that time. However, since then, it continues to appear to be a neologism with no general adoption — indeed, no adoption at all — from the legal community, of which the article claims to be the key area in which this concept is involved. (What I mean is this: I've just re-run Lexis searches for databases available to me: 0 California cases use it (even though California is a leading jurisdiction in the disability rights movement); 0 United States federal cases use it; and 0 non-California American state court cases within the last 10 years (that is the extent that the databases are available to me as far as non-California and non-federal cases are concerned) use it. Among legal journal articles available to me on Lexis (which is limited due to the package I get, but it's not a particularly small package), it's been used once in the last 10 years (Carrie Griffin Basas, "Back Rooms, Board Rooms - Reasonable Accommodation and Resistance Under the ADA, 29 Berkeley J. Emp. & Lab. L. 59 (2008)). Without adoption by the community, I think it is simply unsupported and is essentially original research. Delete (not merge) and then redirect to Disability rights movement. --Nlu (talk) 02:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disability discrimination is a real part of society, whether anyone recognizes it or not, despite any legal reference here. NorthernThunder (talk) 02:38, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- And you think that disability discrimination isn't dealt with in the law? Of course it is, everyday -- but the courts and the legal community call it disability discrimination, not the made-up term of "abelism." --Nlu (talk) 03:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't see any justification within the article for restricting the search for reliable references to legal sources (although of course they are relevant too). The article does not mention "law" or "legal" in the lead (although perhaps it should) but does mention social sciences, and there are sections on architecture and ideology before the section on the law. --Mirokado (talk) 08:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - I do not mean to suggest that the term is only justified if commonly used in law. However, the utter lack of any reference to it in the legal arena is strong evidence is that the term is not an accepted term of common usage. --Nlu (talk) 11:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Did you try Google Books? No, you obviously didn't. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:52, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- In this case, I think the fact that books mention it is irrelevant. It's not used in the arena that the article claims that it is used and therefore is a neologism that has failed to receive common acceptance. --Nlu (talk) 03:41, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Nonetheless, Roscelese is quite right. You obviously didn't even try to see what was written in books about this subject. That you are dismissing books as "irrelevant" is worse still. As an encyclopaedist, you are supposed to be reading what books say about the subject, not outright dismissing books as irrelevant. Your approach to encyclopaedia writing is completely wrongheaded. Uncle G (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Specifically, in contrast, even just using the phrase "disability discrimination" (without searching also for inflected forms or split forms (like "discrimination against the disabled")), there are 136 California cases and more than 3000 federal cases (so much so that Lexis refused to give me a complete number due to the sheer numbers). You mean to tell me that in contrast "ableism" isn't just a made-up neologism? --Nlu (talk) 03:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- (As an example, you are going to find references to "iCrime" in Google Scholars as well.[1] But Wikipedia does not and should not have an article for "iCrime" it's a failed neologism as well.) --Nlu (talk) 03:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - there are quite a few hits in Google books and Google Scholar, enough to satisfy me that it's a relatively widely used term. The article is in a poor state, but that doesn't mean that an article shouldn't exist. Adpete (talk) 02:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. The only reference in this article after five years or so is a link to a google search result of a book review the text of which does not directly support the content it purports to reference (perhaps the book does but there is no page number given and no ISBN so quite possibly the original author never actually read it.) The article content is mostly unsupported rhetoric. It is also riddled with weasel words which give it a false appearance of authority. The article title is a ridiculous made-up word which I have never once heard used in real life (usage by pressure groups pushing their agenda does not count in my view towards establishing the notability of a term, it must be in widespread general use or the subject of reliable third-party historical reports to be an article title: it obviously is not or it would have been referenced already). In case this seems a bit negative, I would like to point out that I think there may be a place for an article with a sensible title covering Discrimination against the disabled (the actions of those doing the discriminating and their effects) as distinct from that covering the Disability rights movement, parallel with other articles on discrimination. Those who wish to keep the article should start adding references. To help you, I have tagged the locations which most immmediately need a reference or rewriting and may have another look after completing this post. It is the responsibility of the originating author (or anyone who wishes to retain unsourced challenged content) to provide references, not a subsequent reader, and, if the article is retained, I will delete tagged content, particularly with the who and whom tags, for which no references are provided (although I may also look for references myself as well). --Mirokado (talk) 04:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- You should not only look for sources yourself, you should treat your remit as an encyclopaedia writer (which is what you're here for, remember) as involving the writing of an encyclopaedia, not just the tagging and removal of other people's work. Do some writing yourself. Research the subject. Don't go down Nlu's highly erroneous path of not looking in books. Build the encyclopaedia yourself. It's not as if there are no academic sources discussing this subject. Roscelese found some with ease. I found some with ease. You should have found some with ease, too. Nlu's wrongheadedness here is indeed an example of how not to be an encyclopaedist, and how not to do the proper research.
  Yes, people wrote a whole load of drivel without citing sources. (I was highly tempted to use "Drivel" as a section title to separate it off, but I resisted and chose something else.) That's your cue, as an encyclopaedia writer to fix the problem that you see by picking up the literature on the subject, reading it, digesting it, and writing an enyclopaedia article based upon it. Writing the encyclopaedia is not Somebody Else's Problem. And AFD is not Cleanup. Uncle G (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - And Wikipedia is not supposed to be a depository of every term there that has failed to gain common acceptance, either. I don't think "proper research" requires me to (given the results that pop up when "ableism" is searched for — which, as noted, in Google searches yields non-neutral sources that are completely outnumbered by, for example, the number of sources you would find by searching "disability discrimination" and, in legal sources, yields virtually no source at all — in order to see that "ableism" is a made-up word that has no common acceptance. I don't think I am required to throw common sense out the window and conduct a fruitless and counterproductive fishing expedition on the encyclopedic value of this term just because there are some sources somewhere using the term. When a major field that the article claims uses the term actually doesn't use it at all, the term doesn't deserve an article.
  - And while deletion is not a substitute to cleanup, right now, the content has no redeeming value and is close to complete garbage. Throwing the garbage out facilitates a proper encyclopedic treatment of the subject rather than hinders it. You state above that "[w]riting the encyclop[e]dia is not [s]omeone [e]lse's [p]roblem." Terrific idea. But neither is it our problem somehow transform garbage into gold. If the subject is to be treated properly in an article, its editors should not be laden with the burden of trying to transform a rubbish pit into Taj Mahal. Writing an encyclopedia does not require that you try to catch every paper airplane and try to incorporate it into the encyclopedia. --Nlu (talk) 13:39, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - "You should ... look for sources yourself". I most certainly should not if other editors have been adding unreferenced content wholesale, presumably on the assumption, if they care at all, that somebody else will waste his time tidying up after them. They must learn to do things properly and if they do not the unsourced material must be removed to avoid misinformation being mirrored all over the world. Having said that I do in fact sometimes add references myself (recently The Horse Whisperer for example) but not at the expense of any new (referenced) content. --Mirokado (talk) 20:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This article is in more of a mess than I had at first realised. Following a bungled attempted move which seems to have been made without discussion or consensus (nothing on the talk page) the talk page has the original title Talk:Discrimination against the disabled whereas the article has the title Ableism as above. The main related actions were cut-and-paste "move" of article only and history merge. If this article is to be kept I expect the original title (which I mentioned independently above) to be restored. Anyone who wishes to do so can then initiate a properly managed contested move request if they see fit. I would correct this myself in any case, but it may be better to leave things as they are while this deletion request is active. Any comment from Nlu? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mirokado (talk • contribs)
- It looks to me that the copy-and-paste issue was solved back in November and really isn't an issue (as much as I hate to admit it). It is still my opinion that the article should be deleted and rewritten on a clean slate (under something like "disability discrimination," which, as I noted above, is what the courts and the legal community uses) if at all (I am still not convinced that this is not something that is adequately covered and coverable under the disability rights movement article). --Nlu (talk) 06:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - That is because, as noted, not only have you not bothered to look in books, you have actively resisted looking in books. It is questionable whether other people should work to convince someone who is making a basic error in how to write an encyclopaedia of the encyclopaedicity of a subject, rather than to convince them to stop making that basic error and start being a proper encyclopaedist first. Go and read books. Do your research properly. And when you want something rewritten, pull out your own editing tool and do what an encyclopaedia writer is supposed to do: write. Nominating things for deletion as a substitute for cleanup is completely wrongheaded. Uncle G (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose deletion request. By the nature of my work on it, on WikiProject Disability generally, and by my comments here, my reasons for keeping this article should be obvious. I won't restate them or I'll be going on forever. Good luck all. Kikodawgzzz (talk) 06:44, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Threats are not good arguments. If your commitment is that tenuous, you shouldn't be going around threatening people. It just makes you look like a bully rather than a contributor. --Nlu (talk) 06:46, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Just to be clear, I saw no threat to me in the doubts expressed in the linked response and would ask you to drop that concern. Mr K and I have known each other on-wiki for some time (it's clear we have different opinions about nearly everything except breathing regularly but that just makes our conversations interesting). --Mirokado (talk) 07:15, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - In light of Mirokado's clarification, my initial interpretation of this as a threat is withdrawn. --Nlu (talk) 07:22, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rename or Merge to some article about discrimination against disabled people. My Google searches of books and scholar show the word "albeism" is used, but never in a neutral way. That would make it unsuitable for an article title. Jaque Hammer (talk) 13:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Your Google searches have been inadequate. Not that you needed them so much at this point. You could have just read some of the sources cited in the article, which discuss the subject perfectly happily and "neutrally", whatever you thought that might have meant, and which are written by people with credentials in the field. Uncle G (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:13, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:13, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: As a handicapped person myself, I have used this term. - Gilgamesh (talk) 13:04, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: This term is used by those in the disabled communitys. -Rainbowofpeace (talk) 09:28, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rename/redirect This article should not be deleted. However, it seems clear that the primary term used to describe acts of discrimination against the disabled is disability discrimination rather than abelism (though is does seem that this term is more infrequently used). The article should be moved to Disability discrimination and abelism turned into a redirect with alternate title. Ajbpearce (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: The primary term in academic and education contexts for describing the attitudes and institutions of society that disadvantage disabled people. The term has a wider scope and different focus than "discrimination against the disabled", much like sexism has a wider scope and different focus than "discrimination against women". Sources abound. --Danger (talk) 02:47, 13 January 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.