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 Stubbify and start over. I'm open to arguments that the subject is noteworthy, but the existing content is plainly unsatisfactory and spammy. I've stubbified it; I suggest that the editors start over per johndburger's comments. If that doesn't work out, bring it back here to AfD. ChrisO 21:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Language technology (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Highly unencyclopedic essay focused on arguing the historical importance of the topic, with a strong conflict of interest (see comment below). Much of the material is duplicated, with the same slant, at Human language technology and Weidner Communications Inc.. A deal of it is taken near-verbatim from the user agreement at www.fastfluency.org.

New info: see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bruce Wydner Gordonofcartoon 18:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: see also WP:COI/N#Bruce Wydner. This appears to be one of a number of articles and edits by Dbp653 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) focused on writing Bruce Wydner into a pivotal role in machine translation history, with sourcing coming largely from Wydner himself. See comment here. Gordonofcartoon 15:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Unable to find any significant information about this subject other than wikipedia mirrors. Wydner published an article in a journal in 95, and his software is listed for sale in a directory produced by the British Computer Society, but other than that I can find no references that determine his work is in the slightest notable. He appears to be better known for a method of teaching people to speak Spanish than for his machine translation work. JulesH 15:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is very good spam, but it remains spam; its ultimate goal is to coöpt Wikipedia to improve the visibility of a commercial product. As such, it is vague and buzzwordy (Language technology is often called Human Language Technology (HLT) or Natural Language Processing (NLP) and consists of computational linguistics (or CL) and speech technology as its core but includes also many application oriented aspects of them) and ultimately unconvincing. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:17, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: Under a good-faith reading of both the article content and the rationale for its inclusion (provided on the talk page) it is reasonable to conclude that the content violates all three of the general proscriptions enumerated under WP:SOAP. This is clearly a promotional piece for the primary benefit of Bruce Wydner.

The supporting rationale states in relevant part:

   "As with many amazing events and discoveries it is often with hindsight 
    and after a period of disbelief and rejection, that acceptance is finally 
    achieved"

It is fundamentally a misuse of WP to attempt to "shorten" or counteract the "period of disbelief and rejection" faced by an individual inventor, regardless of the intrinsic merit or novelty of his or her ideas. That is the very definition of advocacy. There are numerous other problems with the content as well, some already discussed above, but on this basis alone, the content seems entirely inappropriate. dr.ef.tymac 18:23, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Restore to last balanced NPOV version of 21:59, October 30, 2006 by Academic Challenger before the bout of blatant spamming started.  --Lambiam^Talk 21:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep (and Restore) as per Lambiam. Mandsford 23:05, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep and Restore. We shouldn't throw the baby away with the bathwater. --Silvonen 05:13, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I see no value in keeping the version of the article Lambiam suggests. It is a short stub that does not explain how its topic is distinct from those of natural language processing, computational linguistics or machine translation. JulesH 07:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Concurring with JulesH, it seems like a detriment to keep and restore, because there is evidence to suggest this "distinction without a difference" is a root of potential confusion for some contributors. Disambiguation? Remote chance. Redirect? Possibly. Restore? The bathwater is filthy and it seems there was no baby to start with. dr.ef.tymac 16:51, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Language technology (also called Natural Language Technology or Human Language Technology) is a term that has considerable coinage and that is used as a collective and generic name for an area comprising several more specialized language technologies, both for spoken and for written language, such as speech production, speech recognition, natural language parsing and understanding, natural-language query-and-answer systems, and machine translation. In this sense it is similar to designations like robotics or information and communication technology, which are also broad collective names for varied collections of technologies. The term is used, for example, by the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, the Edinburgh Language Technology Group at the University of Edinburgh, the Natural Language Technology Group at the University of Brighton, the Centre for Language Technology at Macquarie University, the Graduate School of Language Technology in Sweden, the Human Language Technology Center at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and so on and so on.  --Lambiam^Talk 20:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

    Recommendation: if the restore option is deemed appropriate, I'd like to strongly recommend that this article be strictly designated as either: a disambiguation page (liberal option); or alternatively designated as a redirect (conservative option). Rationale: Lambiam has fairly demonstrated usage, however there is still ambiguity in the matter of distinction. Consider for example the following "rough taxonomy":

    • speech production -> subset of computational linguistics [tech], linguistics, physiology so forth ... [non-tech]
    • speech recognition -> subset of computational linguistics [tech], linguistics, physiology so forth ... [non-tech]
    • "Natural language" query systems -> similar to above
    • NLP -> similar to above
    • MT -> similar to above
    • parsing -> subset of computational linguistics, formal language theory, linguistics ... so forth

Disambiguation would be useful here, because of the apparent subtle differences in overlapping terminology. An independent article, in contrast, seems duplicative -- and likely to perpetuate confusion among General Audience readers and contributors. dr.ef.tymac 15:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - Any thoughts on whether Weidner Communications Inc. should be AFD'd too. Same problems apply, but with the proviso that there's a grain of truth: Weidner was/is a player in the MT market. However, I don't have much faith in the neutrality of the selection of sources. I've become even more suspicious of a promotional angle on seeing that a Darren Perkins also gave the single (positive) review to Wynder's book on Amazon [1], and that the [[:Image:Bruce Wydner.jpg|Bruce Wydner image] here is the same as that on the fastfluency.org website. Gordonofcartoon 13:43, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  That article is extremely unencyclopedic. It is blatant advertising too. Whether anything can be salvaged there depends on what reliable sources can be found, but I'd say in the best case it should be pared down to a few factual paragraphs. But who is going to do that? The easiest is to delete it and start over. If the company is notable (something I don't know), sooner or later someone may create a neutral, encyclopedic article on it. However, here is not the spot to have that discussion. You can prod the article for non-notability, use the article's talk page to challenge notability and demand evidence of coverage by independent sources, and if that does not produce satisfactory results, take it to AfD.  --Lambiam^Talk 20:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment—The phrase (Human) Language Technology is usually taken in the field to include speech processing, and possibly Information Retrieval, while the phrase Natural Language Processing does not typically include these. There is a great deal of overlap, and I agree that there is some potential confusion, but (H)LT is not exactly synonymous with NLP. (And Machine Translation is definitely a sub-field within NLP.) If we revert to the stub, I will flesh it out a bit, and add some historical perspective as to when DARPA (I believe) began using the term HLT in the 1980s. If it gets deleted, I will probably re-introduce it anyway (unless of course that is blocked for some reason), with such content. —johndburger 13:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • This sounds like the best proposal so far, provided the stub is clarified as indicated. dr.ef.tymac 13:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed. Looks good. Gordonofcartoon 14:57, 30 June 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.