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 delete. Clear consensus that this should not be a separate article. Not so clear consensus about whether a redirect to "yard" would be appropriate. The creation of a redirect is therefore left as a possible editorial action by anyone interested.  Sandstein  10:18, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Quarter yard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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

This "unit" consists of two words used in their natural sense: "Quarter yard" is no more and no less than one quarter of one yard. Yes, it has been used as a measure for purchasing cloth (not clothes), indeed I have probably bought "a quarter of a yard" of fabric or haberdashery myself, but that does not make it a unit worthy of a Wikipedia article. DePRODded without comment by original author. Sourced to one book which has sourced several articles of concern to other editors. PamD 07:35, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Yes, this is not a meaningful subject. The fascinating factoid that (when I was a kid, even) cloth was sold in units of quarter yards is already mentioned on the yard page. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:03, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fashion-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:19, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:19, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 11:20, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Yard, which, as Imaginatorium pointed out, mentions the "quarter" unit. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:55, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep The quarter yard still seems to be a significant unit for fabrics as it appears in lots of books about quilting and the like. See The Quarter Yard Principle for example. Andrew D. (talk) 18:36, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, well in America perhaps, at least. But this is mentioned on the page on the unit, the yard. Do you think that if paint is sold in 3 litre tins there should be a page "3 litres (unit)"? Imaginatorium (talk) 18:50, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Your paint example seems quite fictitious and so makes a poor straw man. For some daft weights and measures pages which I tried to delete myself, see WP:Articles for deletion/1 metre. The quarter yard seems better than that and it would be sensible to merge the content into yard as suggested by Mr. Granger. That name in this context reminds me of Are You Being Served?. It's a shame that Jeremy Lloyd has passed on... Andrew D. (talk) 19:37, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• No, the three litre analogy makes sense. I can probably still buy a quarter yard of fabric, or "One and five eighths yards" or whatever, from an old-fashioned shop in the UK although most now deal in metres; although I might buy a half pint of beer, or use a quarter of a pint of milk in a recipe, I don't expect to see Wikipedia articles about those measures any more than I'd expect to see "Three litres" or "Quarter yard". PamD 20:00, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The quarter-yard is not an arbitrary fraction. It was used as a unit in cloth measure as shown in this source, The Ship-Master's Assistant. This tells us that four nails make a quarter yard when measuring cloth and we have a good article about that smaller measure - see nail (unit). The topics should might be taken together or assembled into some larger piece about cloth measure but, per our editing policy, that's not done by deletion. And notice that we also have a blue link for the common variant - the fat quarter. My !vote stands. Andrew D. (talk) 20:40, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Yard per User:Mr. Granger - why is quarter yard different from yard? — kikichugirl ^speak up! 03:55, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete What about half yard and three-quarters yard and quarter foot or the enduring quarter inch? These are not encyclopedic topics, and creating redirects for every conceivable measurement (one and five-eights yards not to mention six feet) should not be encouraged. Johnuniq (talk) 00:13, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Fractions of a unit of measurement, no matter how notable that unit may be, are not worthy of mention in separate articles. — Jkudlick ^tc_s 12:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• We have numerous articles and bluelinks for fractions and multiples of some basic unit. Examples include:

1. decade
2. halfpenny
3. hundredweight
4. kilogram
5. kilometre
6. kilowatt hour
7. millimetre
8. millisecond
9. quarter-hour
10. quarter mile
11. quarter section
12. quarter (time)
13. quarter (United States coin)

The issue is obviously whether the usage is common enough to be a reasonable search term or title. In the case in question, it is too. Andrew D. (talk) 13:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No problem! Don't permit me to annotate this list, but here's a copy (thank you for making it) with some annotations. I thought, incidentally, that the purpose here was cooperation, not squabbling.

SI prefixes are somewhat different, and 'decade' is about the only one which is genuinely a multiple. You forgot century.

1. decade
2. halfpenny A coin, not a unit
3. hundredweight Not a multiple
4. kilogram SI prefix, but the base unit in SI
5. kilometre SI prefix
6. kilowatt hour SI prefix, but standard unit (watt hour redirects to kWh
7. millimetre SI prefix
8. millisecond SI prefix
9. quarter-hour Redirect to hour
10. quarter mile Redirect to dragstrip, slang expression
11. quarter section DAB, but it's true, almost an article about 1/4 of something.
12. quarter (time) Redirect to Calendar year including mention of quarters
13. quarter (United States coin) A coin, not a unit

Imaginatorium (talk) 14:49, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, for goodness sake! The argument is not whether there might one day be a fascinating article about the "quarter yard", with pictures of Victorian (?Elizabethan? my history not strong) ladies, quotes from Marlowe and whatnot, the discussion is an Afd for the current article which says (I reproduce the actual information content in its entirety) "A quarter-yard is 1/4 of a yard". An encyclopaedia strives to have coherent articles, which show not merely the referents of individual words, but the relations holding them together. Not one iota of the information content of this current article should or could be deleted, because it is already in yard. You mentioned the nice little article on nail (unit); I think this would be better incorporated into an article on measurement for dressmaking, because then the reader would naturally get the whole picture, instead of having to hop from bit to bit. ("bit" a unit used in on-line encyclopaediae to refer to page units; off you go). Of course it is often hard to decide exactly how to partition knowledge, but in the case of units the relation between the units in any scale is very important, so as far as possible it is desirable to keep them together. I'm not sure quite how we're supposed to vote on this, but if it keeps the world spinning, and would save vast amounts of time, let's just redirect to yard. (OT: but it would be nice to have an article on non-normalized units, like 1/4 yd in place of 3/4 ft or 9 in, and the Americans using megafeet or something equally fatuous to crash on Mars with. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Um, is the kilogram(me) no longer the basic unit? (It was back when I was a schoolboy; or is my memory going?) -- Hoary (talk) 13:58, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The system has evolved in stages from the original definition of the gram as the weight of a cc of water. My basic physics education was in CGS units and so I still think of the gram as the more basic unit. The process of evolution still hasn't finished as the metrologists aren't happy that the standard kilogram is evaporating. See the proposed redefinition of SI base units. Andrew D. (talk) 14:25, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• It's in one (sometimes rather shaky) reference book about units. However, it's not in Kesakatsu Koizumi, Tan'i no jiten (i.e. "A dictionary of units"), 4th ed, Tokyo: Rateisu, 1981 = 小泉袈裟勝、『単位の辞典』 第4版、東京：ラテイス、1981年 (no ISBN), even though this does find space for quartaut, quarte, quarter, quartera, quartern, etc. So it doesn't seem to be a priority in metrological lexicography. As for its other significance, the article doesn't hint at this, and none of the attempts above is convincing. Therefore delete. -- Hoary (talk) 14:06, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as a fractional unit that isn't even much used. Redirects are cheap, yes, but where does this particular sequence end, how long is a piece of string? Please note that there has been some not particularly subtle canvassing at WT:GGTF about this and some related articles today. - Sitush (talk) 16:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Too subtle for me to make sense of Sitush's complaint. I mentioned three AFDs over there. In the first case, I !voted to delete. In the second case, I have no definite opinion and so haven't !voted. In the third case (this one), I've !voted to keep. The only result so far seems to be that Sitush has rushed over here to jump to conclusions, right? Andrew D. (talk) 17:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Wrong. - Sitush (talk) 13:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Redirect to Yard Andrew D., I didn't try them all, but clicking on some of your listed examples above re-directed me to articles on larger units (e.g. quarter-hour redirects to hour, and isn't even mentioned in that article, which looks to me like a punt). The problem with quarter yard is that there is nothing to say about it, other than the measure. And if there is nothing to say, then it isn't encyclopedic. A number of individual articles have been created, all with the same reference to Cardarelli, and I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't a way to create a link mass to that book. In any case, unless some individual weight or measure has a fascinating history or significant content, I don't think that the individual units of measure themselves are encyclopedic. LaMona (talk) 04:03, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I clicked on the examples too, and tried to annotate the list, being as careful as I could to use a distinctive colour (green) to add comments, but Andrew D, champion of cooperation, being gentle to other editors, and our editing policy didn't want "carping" on his list, so I made the copy below in purple. Incidentally, it is not true that there is nothing to be said other than 1/4=1/4, but it is already mentioned on the yard page that cloth was sold in yards, down to quarters, rather than feet or inches. And I am working on a critique of Cardarelli, contributions welcomed. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:13, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Andrew D. says: "The issue is obviously whether the usage is common enough to be a reasonable search term or title." That sounds to me more like a dictionary function than an encyclopedia. We look up "terms" in a dictionary to get a definition, and perhaps a short example of usage. An encyclopedia is about topics, generally broader than a term, and with more to say than a definition of what it means. What I see in these (many) recently added terms for measures looks better suited to Wiktionary, since they consist only of the name and a definition. This one is definitely a case of that. Even if we add in the use of quarter yard for fabric, it still is no more than a definition. LaMona (talk) 15:52, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• WP:DICDEF. - Sitush (talk) 17:31, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to yard. Lightbreather (talk) 03:47, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I understand why a redirect would be appropriate; no article links to Quarter yard. — Jkudlick ^tc_s 04:12, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's a unit of measure one encounters in works about sewing, and for someone who hasn't been instructed in sewing, but wants to know if it has any special meaning when it comes to sewing (and it has, which the "yard" article touches upon), a redirect is appropriate. Lightbreather (talk) 15:21, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As someone who sews (in the US), I can say that quarter yard is not a "thing" any more than half a yard or yard. It's simply the amount that you wish to purchase. In quilting circles in the US there is a measure called a "fat quarter" - which is a quarter yard square piece of fabric, pre-cut, used for quilts that will use only small amounts of each fabric. They are sold at speciality stores and quilting fairs. (Yes, just a bit of trivia, but thought someone might like to know.) LaMona (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, about the "fat quarter." I added it to the "yard" article yesterday.[1] I disagree about a quarter yard having no special meaning related to sewing, but I won't argue about it. Nor will I change my vote. I think a redirect is completely appropriate in this case. Lightbreather (talk) 17:11, 31 December 2014 (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.