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 Addiction. Consensus seems clear that this doesn't merit a stand-alone article in its current state. I'll leave the history there for the curious. Flowerparty^☀ 00:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

-holism[edit]

Pure dictionary definition with no hope of making encyclopedia article

The article name is invalid; article names in encyclopedias are supposed to be nouns or verbs (and not even adjectives), so it violates WP:MOS, whereas affixes are valid articles in wiktionary.[1]

The topic is invalid as well, the topic is supposed to be an underlying concept and not purely a word or purely lexical- that's what dictionaries do, and do it far better than we can here.

The article contains a short list of words that happen to match a particular lexical pattern- again, dictionaries do it much better, and are usually more complete as well.

This is a textbook case of Wikipedia is not a dictionary, this is a dictionary entry with no realistic chance of recovery. - (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 13:42, 12 July 2009 (UTC) - (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 11:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Per nom. CarbonX (talk) 11:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. -- the wub "?!" 12:50, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Addiction as a hopeless dicdef. youngamerican (wtf?) 13:01, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect, unlikely but plausible search term. Powers ^T 13:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Just delete and skip the re-direct. WP:NOTADICT. Niteshift36 (talk) 13:46, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. "-holism" is not in Wiktionary, and the article is more substantial (including listing the origin of the term) than some other suffix articles. And frankly, I don't see anything wrong with these articles.SPNic (talk) 13:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- So Transwiki it......still doesn't merit a stand alone article. Niteshift36 (talk) 14:16, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- The article is completely about the usage of a suffix, encyclopedia articles are about an abstract concept, not simply usages of words or terms or affixes. You can meaningfully translate encyclopedia articles directly into any different language, this wouldn't translate because it's purely about the English language, rather than factual knowledge. This is what English dictionaries are for.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:12, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - So we should delete it because it's "purely about the English language"? I guess we should delete English language on those grounds too.SPNic (talk) 15:34, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - We must be reading different articles. English language would translate fine and remain encyclopedic. -holism would end up as an English-French (or whatever) dictionary entry; it's a purely lexical article, with no possibility of being anything more.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 15:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Weak keep as a legitimate topic related to the English language. There have been many words that have been coined as a variation of alcoholism, some of which have caught on, others that have not. I remember the first time that I heard the word "workaholic", I thought it was silly because there is no such thing as "workahol", but the term has become standard. Essentially, this is a suffix that was invented in the 20th century. It's not much different than coining "telethon" from "marathon", or "motorcade" from "cavalcade". Mandsford (talk) 16:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly where is it defined as 'legitimate' in the wikipedia? I can only find WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary and WP:MOS which (essentially) both forbid articles like this which are about non noun/verb words. The wikipedia is not about words/terms, that's what wiktionary is for, and it's definitely not about individual suffixes which are only subparts of words. You could merge it with other articles like Suffix if you want.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:56, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it's not much different than -thon or -cade, neither of which have articles. Powers ^T 17:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But we do have several articles in Category:Suffixes. the wub "?!" 17:48, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but wiktionary has more than a couple of hundred. This just isn't something that the wikipedia or any encyclopedia shines at.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:05, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've now created the wiktionary article at: wiktionary:-holism.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 18:08, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as a neologism. The topic is treated at wiktionary:-holic, and Wolfkeeper seems to have created a article at wiktionary:-holism as well. Cnilep (talk) 22:34, 16 July 2009 (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.