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. Withdrawn by nominator, appears the issues with the article have been fixed by various participants, so while it is not the same article we started out with, it is now a more accurate one. How about that! 78.26(spin me / revolutions)17:46, 28 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Another almost certainly bogus entry from the ever-unreliable Cardarelli book. No supporting evidence has been produced since the (orphan) page was created, but there is a clue to the actual origin here: User:Imaginatorium/Cardarelli#Stuck_(unit). This is not an English word for a unit, but a German word (Stück) meaning "item", and used for counting commodities rather as "piece" is in trading English. The German Wiktionary entry, likely to be more comprehensive than the English one has no mention of Stück having a special meaning for wine. The quote from the British parliamentary proceedings of 1875 [1] suggests that the writer was not necessarily clear on what Stück means, and that was only the beginning of the confusion. @Reyk: Thanks for pointing this out. Imaginatorium (talk) 04:15, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete- per the well researched and argued nomination. Another howler from the discredited Cardarelli book. It's very clear what's happened here: back in the 1870s a German winery sold hock wine at such-and-such a price per piece (per Stück) and those containers happened to be around 260 gallons. That doesn't make Stück a unit of volume, any more than selling fun size candy bars makes "fun (unit)" a unit of weight totalling 21g. ReykYO!07:07, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Reyk suggested the nomination here and in other conversations with the nominator and so their fulsome praise for the nomination without declaring their own part in the matter is improper canvassing/collusion. Andrew D. (talk) 07:37, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I never asked or suggested that Imaginatorium take this to AfD. That is a lie. If you think I've done anything improper you know the way to ANI. Otherwise, quit trying to poison the well. ReykYO!07:50, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Cardarelli is a respectable and reliable source, as recommended by NIST. The unit in this case is confirmed by other compendia of weights and measures such as Jerrard and The Economist's World Measurement Guide. The unit is a customary size of barrel and its specialist use in the production and trade of hock is confirmed by numerous sources including:
Hyatt's Handbook of Grape Culture
The Horticulturist
How We Weigh and Measure
The Economist desk companion
Ridley's Monthly Wine and Spirit Trade Circular
Encyclopedia of Wines & Spirits
Hotel Monthly
Wine, the Vine, and the Cellar
The latter explains that the word does originate from the German stück (piece) but that's not a reason to delete because the names of many customary units have a prosaic origin, e.g. foot (unit) and stone (unit). It says that the unit is "everywhere the same gauge" whereas the aum (a smaller barrel) varied in different regions of Germany. Such details can be used to expand and improve the topic per our editing policy. See also WP:ATD; WP:BEFORE; WP:NOTPAPER; WP:PRESERVE, &c. Andrew D. (talk) 07:27, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder what the bar is for "reliable". The investigation that Imaginatorium did into the book's "Old Japanese units of weight" shows Imaginatorium and me that this is not at all a reliable source. Are his and my standards for reliability skewed somehow, or are they unrealistically high? Is this book perhaps taken seriously merely because at the time of its publication (and for all I know even now) no other book in English had a similar ambition? There is at least one other book that does have a similar ambition; unfortunately for most people here it's in Japanese, but anyway it's 『単位の辞典』, by an actual metrologist. (A glance at the Japanese website of a multinational retail monopolist also shows interesting-looking Japanese-language alternatives, but I'm unfamiliar with any of them.) The Roman-letter index to the 4th edition of this book shows no "stuck", "stück" or "stueck". Its absence of course doesn't condemn it, but it does hint. ¶ That's an impressively long list of sources for the term's "specialist use in the production and trade of hock"; could you please quote an impressive example among them? I'd like to see signs of care, rather than unthinking recycling of factoids read elsewhere. -- Hoary (talk) 08:23, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also like to point out that Jerrard repeats the Salmarazd blunder from the Cardarelli book. This proves that Jerrard has merely cribbed lots of sketchy content from Cardarelli. ReykYO!08:51, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. I have the 2nd edition of Jerrard and McNeill, pub. 1964 by Chapman and Hall, copyright the authors. But the latest edition is produced by the unreliable Springer. So be careful using the authors' names, since this is not theirs. ¶ I also would really like a quote from each of the sources listed above; if there really is a standard wine barrel size referred to in English as a "stuck", it should be added to the article on wine barrels. Imaginatorium (talk) 09:18, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Articles must satisfy WP:N and WP:NOTDICT. The obscure sources above are copies of each other with the same fundamental flaw as Cardarelli, namely a desire to have a bigger list than anyone else, so anything resembling a unit ends up being included. Johnuniq (talk) 07:57, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep So all these major publishers made a mistake, but some random person on the internet figured it all out? Wouldn't they update their books with corrected information if that were true? I found a book published in 1877 about wine uses this measurement on page 27 "He had become possessed of half a stuck (about 750 bottles) of really fine Steinberg Cabinet" and on the book's page 377 "about 40 tuns(stuck) of wine, each of 240 gallons." http://public-library.uk/dailyebook/Wine%20and%20wine%20countries%20-%20a%20record%20and%20manual%20for%20wine%20merchants%20and%20wine%20consumers.pdf Also in the chapter titled WINES OF GERMANY on page 91 "The use of these large casks has been discarded for many years, as it was found that the wines did not mature in them so well as in smaller ones. Those now in use are called "stuck," and contain about seven ohms, of thirty gallons each." Each time the word is used stuck has the double dot over the letter u, but copying and pasting that in Firefox turns it into a regular letter u. DreamFocus11:33, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: The purported English word "stuck" is not the same as an intended German word "Stück"; so far I have only seen evidence of use of the apparent German, typically written properly (italicised). Perhaps this is indeed a German usage... I don't know, but I do not think we can use Cardarelli (the book, not the man) to answer such questions. Imaginatorium (talk) 18:14, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: There's original research going on behind the nomination here, which is fine, but I'm not aware of any secondary source that has concluded this unit is invented or does not exist, despite being referenced in multiple books. So, our sourcing suggests the unit does exist, but may be obscure. Many words are coined out of misinterpretations of other languages. But as to this AFD, is there really enough to have a separate article on this unit? Our goal as an encyclopedia is to serve our readers, and a one-sentence stub on this obscure unit does not strike me as useful to readers. It provides no context in this format. As I commented in the 2015 bundled AFD, shouldn't this be redirected to some list of related sizes (just as our sources do it)? An analogy might be List of English terms of venery, by animal; most of these terms are not actually used [2], but they do exist.--Milowent • hasspoken12:17, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Yes, "Stueck" means "piece" in German, but this does not make it not a unit if the references say it is one. It is quite possible that this began as a misunderstanding (if that's what it was) but became a customary unit later. For example you can see it being used as a unit here in 1972 and here in 1864. In fact, since it appears to have been used as a unit in the 1860's it's origin cannot have been in the 1870's. At the very least references show it being used as a unit more than a hundred years before Cardarelli, so it cannot be any mistake on their part. PS - as for the matter of whether this and many other articles about customary units should be moved to Wiktionary, I think that's a matter for another discussion. FOARP (talk) 13:42, 14 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Weak TNT delete Both Imaginatorium and FOARP are right on the substance; the problem is that even if what FOARP says is correct, we can't use it to fix the article and expand it beyond a useless, and misleading, substub without more reliable secondary sources. Imaginatorium's analysis of the bogus Cardarelli book's coverage of Japanese units is, AFAICT, accurate, which makes me extremely loath to trust it on stuff that isn't Japanese. We have the same problem with "Harvard University Press"'s Japan Encyclopedia, a completely ridiculous work that very few legit scholars actually looked at closely enough to see the problems, and the NIST source and others seem to have fallen into the same trap as most of the "reliable secondary sources" cited in our Japan Encyclopedia article (which was created in response to me bringing the book to RSN because I noticed the problems with it -- fortunately in that case at least one legit scholar in the real world had also noticed the problems). I am not opposed to the recreation of an article on this subject if reliable secondary sources actually discussing the problem can be located. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:18, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your response. I really suspect the claim of Weak TNT delete as apparently this is not a copyright violation or extensive cases of advocacy or undisclosed paid sock farms. I really suspect non-scientific methodology here based on personnel assumptions on units. Some authors of the resources mentioned in the article are scientists and refuting their claims needs a more scientific approach. Approving NIST is unreliable also needs more scientific approach. I appreciate Imaginatorium's work as he/she placed a lot of effort as a Wikipedia contributor, but, his work is much more un-reliable as there is a lot of personnel opinions are still there in his work. Somehow his/her work is leading to improving the articles. Japanese units are separate issue which is not relevant to this unit. Shevonsilva (talk) 17:16, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Shevonsilva: I think you should refrain from engaging in discussions like this until your English ability improves. I can pretty much figure out what you are trying to say, but almost none of it has any connection to my comment to which you are responding, which implies you didn't actually understand what I was saying. There was nothing in my comment about copyright violation or sock farms, and in cases like the above NIST remark I never talk about sources being "unreliable in general" but merely "wrong on this or that fact". there is a lot of personal opinions has nothing to do with what I wrote -- I said that he appears to be right (no opinions here; it's a question of factual accuracy) on at least some, and probably most, of the Cardarelli criticism. Japanese units are separate issue which is not relevant to this unit also makes no sense in this context; if a source is too old and makes too many errors, we can't hang an article on it, even if many of the errors are concentrated on a separate but closely related topic. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:12, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Shevonsilva: I can't really understand what you are trying to say either, but you appear to accuse me of "unreliable work". Perhaps you could explain what this means (keep it to two sentences max.) and either justify it, or withdraw the remark and apologise. Imaginatorium (talk) 06:45, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just fancy that, no. 37 Well, User:Shevonsilva added a couple of references to the article. One is "Jerrard", which is meaningless, since it is just Springer copy-pasting. The other is a new(!) superbig(!) "Dictionary of units", this time in three volumes, a total of around 2600 pages, and roughly $US400. The author is Jan Gyllenbok, a stub created by a SPA in 2018, the year of publication of this book, but who was previously mentioned in Historical metrology, itself a page with a curious history. Anyway, I can't help looking for his version of Japanese units, and wow is it wonky?! A series of purported weights based on the Imperial system, and based on a source called "CARD" has the following sequence (in bold; items separated by slashes; the apostrophe is clearly a left-quote): its ‘ko-koo / itho / ischo / its-go / pun / rin... apart from 'rin' this is more, new, garbage. ¶ But back to "Stuck": Cardarelli writes "stuck (hock)"... Gyllenbok reads this as "stuck or hock", and adds "for spirits". Hmm. More updates to follow... Imaginatorium (talk) 16:53, 18 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your concerns. Reverted the unreliable change made and added more references to remove the doubts. We can further expand the article now too. Shevonsilva (talk) 12:45, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the other Springer references because they are not even independent, and they show nothing, other than that the latest author Gyllenbok cannot even understand what "Stuck (hock)" means. I explained this, so you do not get to claim "no evidence". I will remove these again. Do not put them back unless you can respond to what I wrote. (You claimed along the way that you thought you are "more qualified" in English than I am; perhaps you could find another similarly "qualified" person who could explain to me what you are trying to say.) Imaginatorium (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Update from nominator. I would like to withdraw the nomination; many thanks for those of the responses that are constructive. It is clear that this term exists, or rather that really the German term exists (so it isn't a "UK unit"), in various degrees of anglicisation. I have replaced the text with a stub, including a picture of a Stückfass; I'm not sure how to include some examples of use in (mostly) old books. But I think this should redirect to an article on the various German cask sizes. I very much support User:FOARP's point that WP is supposed to be an encyclopedia on topics, not a dictionary of obscure headwords. ¶ I can't immediately see how to go about "withdraw", but I hope someone else can help. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:20, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As the creator of the article, I also consider it will be better to close the discussion. I have added citation needed template and you or someone else can add some references later as a constructive process. Shevonsilva (talk) 18:39, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Lots of sources. No compliance with WP:Before. Article and sources is improved from what it was when nominated for AFD. The niff nawing about the reliability of the sources ignores the many books, publishers, and assorted sources that exist, including those mentioned above. the sources mentioned by Andrew D. should be added to the article. In any event, that is a topic for discussion at the article's talk page, not a reason to delete. Meets WP:GNG
The removal of sources in the middle of this AFD discussion is simply an attempt to arrive at a result by indirection that which you cannot achieve by direction. It is a Self fulfilling prophecy regarding notability and lack of sources."There are no sources, so it must be deleted." Ipse dixit doesn't cu8t it here.
Keep. I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of all these AfD nominations based on the premise that Cardarelli is an unreliable source. Finding a mistake in Cardarelli does not mean that suddenly the entire work has to be thrown out. No scholarly source has been put forward that criticises Cardarelli in any way, or even pointing out any of the claimed mistakes. I am especially concerned that it is now being argued that the highly regarded academic publisher Springer is also unreliable due them once being fooled into publishing hoax articles. The IEEE, also highly regarded, was also taken in by the same hoax. I note that the evidence offered above for this is an article in Nature, which merely reports that the offending articles had been withdrawn, not that the publishers were now considered intrinsically unreliable. Ironically, it was Nature, the premier science journal in the world, that published one of the most famous hoaxes of all time – Piltdown Man. Frankly, if we are to reject every book or article that comes from a publisher that has ever been taken in by a hoax, or has published an article with an error, we won't be left with much in the way of sources at all.
The idea that sources that put the unit in italics are to be rejected is just out-and-out nonsense. Sure, that might show that the source considers it to be a foreign word, but so what? It still is a unit and being a foreign unit does not detract from its notability on English Wikipedia. Finally, the Journal of the Society of Arts uses takes the German "stück" to be 1200 litres. This article is from 1873, so clearly is not copied from Cardarelli, it clearly uses the word to mean a unit of volume, not piece, and is clearly a reliable source, although doubtless they have been taken in by a hoax sometime in their history. SpinningSpark23:14, 22 May 2019 (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.