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. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 09:11, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

UKline[edit]

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

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The line has been used as a unit of length. WP has a seemingly decent little article about it: "Line (unit)". (I'm not entirely sure that it's good, as it depends partially on François Cardarelli's under-proofread book Scientific Unit Conversion, on which more below.)

I am surprised to hear of an old unit of measure with the name "UKline". Simply, "youkay this" or "youkay that" sounds to me very late C20, although I can't immediately produce evidence for this. The (mis)information about it is attributed to "Cardarelli, François Cradarelli [sic] (2003). Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures".

I don't have this book but I do have François Cardarelli, Scientific Unit Conversion -- an ambitious book, sadly ridden with errors, on which I imagine the later Encyclopaedia was based. Table 3-4 on p. 22 is about "UK linear measures". This says that the "UK line (line)" is one twelfth of an inch. Table 3-16 on p. 32 is about "US linear measures". This says that "line (US line)" is one fortieth of an inch.

I suggest that these are unfortunate ways to write, respectively, "line (UK)" and "line (US)". Anyway, the assertion that these are respectively one twelfth and one fortieth of an inch is backed up on p. 315 a book I do trust: 小泉袈裟勝 (Koizumi Kesakatsu), 『単位の辞典』 (Tan'i no jiten) 4th ed, Tokyo: Rateisu, 1981 (no ISBN).

The book has an alphabetically ordered list of units. This has no entry for "UKline" or "UK line". Instead, it has two entries for "line": one for the British version and the other for the US version. (According to Cardarelli, the US version was used in botany.)

Three possibilities come to mind:

1. There really was a term "UKline".
2. Cardarelli's later book adds new errors.
3. The author of this article misread/misunderstood.

I suggest that these are in increasing order of plausibility.

The sole author of this non-article is User:Shevonsilva, who I understand from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Salt spoon (unit) has created a lot of stubs in the hope that somebody more knowledgable/energetic will later convert them into worthwhile articles. This example suggests to me that they're likely to be misbegotten and that all of them should be summarily deleted. -- Hoary (talk) 12:50, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete We already have this content well-covered at line (unit) and this version of the title does not seem useful as a redirect because of the missing space. Andrew D. (talk) 12:59, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Not well enough covered to explain the claim that US=1/40, unless the Americans are all in the button trade. Surely, updating the line (unit) article would be more productive than these frenetic attempts to keep (almost) all of the stublets from this dreadful error-filled book? And as Hoary suggests, of course it is not the "UK line", it's the English one, with a very good chance there's a different factor for the Scottish one. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:20, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • It occurs to me that, phonetically, "button" and "botany" have a remarkable resemblance. I wonder if Cardarelli or his translator (M J Shields) or Springer made some sort of goof here too. ¶ I had a quick look for mention of forty lines equalling one inch, and the most interesting thing I found was this, in which pre-decimal French pouces and lignes are englished as "inches" and "Paris lines". Reliably or otherwise, Cardarelli does also talk about French, Prussian and other "lines". -- Hoary (talk) 14:21, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Please see obsolete Scottish units of measurement which explains the history of the replacement of local Scottish measures by the English standards which was completed in 1824. So far as I can tell, the Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures is entirely accurate and respectable and your condemnation of it seems quite improper. In this case, it shows the unit as line (UK). The compression to UKline seems to be the doing of Shevonsilva who was perhaps too careless but should be forgiven such a typing error per WP:AGF and WP:BITE. Andrew D. (talk) 13:42, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• An owner of the book (Hoary, above) says it is "riddled with errors". That's not enough for me to criticise it? You saw the table of Chinese units? You seriously think we should update the natural numbers so 13 = 12 * 13 / 23? I agree that I may (just) have attributed to Cardarelli errors that were Shevonsilva's. But plainly there are unreliable claims in the book, and if there is simply no trace of the putative terms (see PamD's comments on 'flock' etc), we should not leave them here, because one of the problems WP is actually causing is that bits of junk in it (yes, this is inevitable sometimes) get recycled into massive webidence for the false claim. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Hoary actually says that he doesn't. own the book. Your comments seem improper because they are hasty and over-broad condemnations of a serious work from a reputable publisher, based upon intemperate comments by a random assortment of Wikipedia editors. Andrew D. (talk) 15:00, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• No, you are right, Hoary only owns the previous version of the book. Hmm. The fact that it is published by Springer, a company with a glorious past, means nothing (now, anyway) in terms of the content. Try a google search for "springer publishes rubbish"; read about computer generated junk being published. Try "Advanced in Computer Science and its Applications"[1]. Imaginatorium (talk) 16:02, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• True: not only do I not own the book, I have no access to a copy. I do have a copy of the first edition. My comments on it so far have been undiplomatic but, I think, temperate. A huge amount of work went into this very ambitious book. I am sure that the great majority of the book is sound. But soon after buying my copy (back when it had just been published), I noticed a lot of oddities. I then bought a copy of a book of a comparable size and scope, Koizumi's Tan'i no jiten, which impressed me a lot more. (I don't want to rush to censure Cardarelli here. Koizumi's book surely benefitted from revisions made over two decades since first publication.) Thereafter I pretty much forgot about Cardarelli's book, until reminded by these AfDs. ¶ I am not a mathematician, but I was long under the impression that Springer was a preeminent publisher in this and related fields; the book therefore surprised as well as disappointed me. I've recently learned that -- in common with a number of other prestigious publishers, I suspect -- Springer publishes junk. (I suppose and greatly hope that junk only constitutes a minority, but junk some of it is.) Yes, do take a long look at "Department of redundant solecisms department", a page in "Language Log" about the Springer publication Advanced in Computer Science and its Applications. The author of this piece is Mark Liberman. This is not a hatchet job: you'll notice that, as "myl", Liberman goes out of his way to praise other, recent and superficially similar publications from Springer. -- Hoary (talk) 08:54, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• If Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures is entirely accurate, that makes it very different from the same author's earlier Scientific Unit Conversion, which errs toward bogus precision and includes very odd material. Table 3-104, "Old Japanese units of weight" (p.87) includes such units as the "karus hiri-ichi-da" which isn't even phonologically possible in Japanese. (There's a bibliography for sources, but this includes no title purporting to give information about Japanese, Chinese, Persian etc units. There's no indication of where this stuff comes from.) Throughout the book, obsolete units of measurement are given very precise equivalents. These they may indeed have acquired toward the end of their lives, but the book doesn't mention varying understandings of the same term. ¶ I suppose that one could say that the book (the earlier one, at least) is charmingly potty. Although its conversion tables for units of length sadly omit an old favourite of a friend of mine, the attoparsec, it does provide conversions from parsecs into chains (engineers'), chains (surveyors'), etc, and vice versa. ¶ I'm most willing to forgive typos in text (I make them myself), a lot less so of typos in titles, etc. People who can't create articles that aren't at least slightly worthwhile (in their undeveloped way) or aren't pretty much free of factual mistakes shouldn't be creating articles: the problems in their articles/stubs use up others' time that could more productively be spent elsewhere. And yes, I try to "assume good faith", but see (i) User talk:Shevonsilva passim and (ii) WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. (More alphabet soup: WP:CIR.) -- Hoary (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The fact remains that, in this case of the line (unit), the work in question is accurate. Your comments about the attoparsec and another work seem too tangential. Andrew D. (talk) 15:00, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment- I have a copy of this book, Encyclopaedia of Scientific Units, Weights and Measures (2003), and while I am certainly not an expert in this field, my view on the book is that it gives more of a historical timeline in explaining the various measurements used throughout history and in different cultures and/or countries. And the text is accompanied by a huge amount of conversion tables that are purported to be accurate by the author Cardarelli. However, it looks like to me from the massive amount of articles being created from this book, that Shevonsilva merely cherry-picked these terms and/or definitions for inclusion - in this case from chapter 3 in the book. My personal opinion is rather than creating a massive amount of stubs, it would make more sense if an article was created that encompassed all of the information from chapter 3, rather than cherry-picking, then there would be a better chance of finding secondary sources to support an article of this nature. Anyway, here's a rendition of the table (from the book) that is being used as a reference for the article nominated for deletion:

If you have any questions pertaining to the book, please feel free to ask. Isaidnoway (talk) 14:55, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the offer, User:Isaidnoway. (And for the table. I hope that you somehow automated the creation of what would have taken me a long time to produce.) For now at least, let's stick to lines. The older book says that the line, whether British or American, is obsolete; and it says that the American one "was used in botany for plant measurements". And that's all that it says. Does the newer book say any more? And I'm no metrologist, but I sense that Cardarelli gives an impression of systems where no systems existed. (I mean, were "line" and "cubit", for example, ever used in contexts even tenuously related to each other?) -- Hoary (talk) 15:16, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The newer book does not say anything at all about the American one being used for botany or plant measurements, nor does it say that the UK or US "line" is obsolete, but it does imply that. He does make a distinction though between UK linear measurements (based on the UK system of imperial units) and US linear measurements (based on the US system of customary units), which he says "where there are differences between them and imperial units, the designation (US) is normally applied. Isaidnoway (talk) 17:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks User:Isaidnoway. First a niggle: "that are purported to be accurate by the author" is simply meaningless: of course any author or publisher purports that what they have said is true. But it would be interesting to see the table of Japanese units -- just length, say, since those are fairly familiar, and all you need to show is the list of names, because if we can't immediately match them to the facts we know where we are. You say that the book provides info about "different cultures and/or countries", but does this include at least one case where you know independently that the book is accurate? Imaginatorium (talk) 15:45, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with your niggle. I believe this (from the book) to be accurate: The British system of units, known as imperial units, was established by the Weights and Measures Act (WMA, 1824) of June 17th, 1824. - Secondary source: Imperial units or the imperial system is a system of units, first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824. He goes on to discuss the various Weights and Measures acts through the years in the UK, and they are all accurate as well. Here is a rendition of the "Old Japanese units of length", which is the only Japanese one I see. Isaidnoway (talk) 17:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. ありがとうございます！　I do hope that as Hoary said you have some automated way of creating these. Anyway, compare with Japanese_units_of_measurement#Length which thinks hiro and ken are both 6 shaku -- actually a big old reliable dictionary (Kōjien) says hiro can be either 5 or 6. So, ok so far. But what is 'yabiki'? I don't know, and it seems curious that this unit has not found its way into Kōjien (the OED of Japanese) nor Daijirin, a more up to date successor. It sounds like "Arrow-draw", and I found myself on an archery site, where they discussed the term 引き尺 (hikishaku) which sounds like it might mean the same thing. But really, what are the chances that this Cardarelli character is doing other than assemble scraps of half-baked semi-info and lumping them together. Not impressive. Imaginatorium (talk) 18:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Koizumi's dictionary of units (mentioned above) says (pp.248-249) that a hiro (尋) could be either five or six shaku (尺) (though it implies that it was more commonly six). It says (p.106) that a ken (間) was six shaku. (Although it adds that there was a fiction that it was three or five sun [寸] longer than this.) By jô, Cardanelli means 丈, which we in en:WP romanize as jō; yes this was ten shaku. Koizumi doesn't mention yabiki. Going in the other direction, by mô, Cardanelli means 毛, which we in en:WP romanize as mō; yes this was one thousandth of a sun (p.306). Now, the mō is pretty damn short: with a standard shaku, it's 1/33 of one millimetre. I'd be astounded to learn that pre-decimal Japan had any need for a unit one tenth this size. The shi of Cardanelli's would have been about three micrometres. Amazingly, Koizumi does list a shi (絲) corresponding to this; but he describes it (p.136) as Chinese and one tenth of a rin (厘) rather than a mō. (Shi and rin will be Sino-Japanese: Japanese pronunciations of Chinese words.) It's sunny outside, so I don't propose to go through all the other items in this table (which is, after all, only tangential to the "UKline"); however, I think I may call it a promising first draft for a table of Japanese units but not something that should be taken seriously. -- Hoary (talk) 00:53, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Digression: strictly speaking this digression about Cardarelli is not germane to this page, because as Andrew D pointed out, in this particular case ('line') he actually got it right. I would like to collect together comments on the Cardarelli book, so would everyone be happy if I copy this to a page in my user space? There might even be cause for a WP article on the series of books, but for now I would like to have something to refer to in making other edits. For example, it looks to me as though Obsolete Russian units of measurement might have imported some Cardarelli "bogus precision". (How can I find changes within the page history? Have never worked that out...) Imaginatorium (talk) 05:40, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Imaginatorium, you look in the history (hint: it's linked as "history"), and wildly guess when the change was made. Once you've found a pre-change version, you click on a version that's more or less halfway between it and a known post-change version. You then click halfway again, etc etc. (It's here.) With most articles, eg Obsolete Russian units of measurement, this is pretty easy; with something like Barack Obama, it's very tedious. Everybody here published their comment under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL; so unless you remove attribution from a comment or falsify it (or possibly ridicule it) there should be no problem in recycling these comments elsewhere in WP. I'd have thought that an investigation, for WP-editing purposes, of something already used here as a reference work would be a good use of "userspace", but perhaps there are recommended and disfavored ways of doing this; you might ask here in "WP:RSN". -- Hoary (talk) 08:20, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (prattle) @ 20:49, 26 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:14, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete At best per WP:TNT even if notable, but not notable and the Cardarelli book is pretty unreliable and has a reputation for listing non-notable units of measure. Would also be open to creating a redirect per consensus. — kikichugirl ^speak up! 00:19, 27 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete No evidence such a unit has ever been used. Do not redirect to Line (unit) because the chances that someone would look for UKline (and not ukline or uk line) is minuscule. Wikipedia already as Line which gives the reader perfect information, including a link to the unit. Johnuniq (talk) 00:25, 27 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.