Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/General Mathematics

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 Moving to General Mathematics (education) and then merge.. v/r - TP 15:32, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

General Mathematics

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

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The title of this page is wildly inappropriate. It should at least be """ and even that is probably too general, so something like "Mathematics education in the USA" would be best (although an australian source has been added, so that part should be called with "Mathematics education in Australia". These articlea already exist. The reason I am suggesting deletion instead of a merge is 1. This page needs to be merged to 2 different places, and 2. Merging always leaves a redirect. The term General Mathematics should not, in my opinion, redirect to a page about mathematics education, in either the USA or Australia. Benboy00 (talk) 12:21, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment Also, the content of the article is very limited, and even if there weren't the problem of US and Australian maths education jammed together here, and if the title was more specific, this alone does not seem nearly notable enough to warrant its own article. TLDR: This page should be deleted, and bits of it copied to here and here. Benboy00 (talk) 12:26, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Delete I agree, we would not allow a topic entitled History, Geography or English language to be occupied by an article on the school curriculum with that title in some schools, and adding the word general to the front does not help. If it is thought appropriate, it would either form a section of the main topic article, or one of its own as with Mathematics education. In this case, this is a clear case for deletion as a fork of Mathematics education. I agree that 'General education' should not redirect to an education article as there is no way of knowing that is what users might be looking for - most likely it would be the Mathematics article. --AJHingston (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Merge I started the article because I could not find anything on the topic on Wikipedia. I first came across the term about a week or two ago and could not find its exact definition. I will be happy enough if the topic can be merged into another article, either general (he-he) math article or U.S. school math article in such a way that it were easily searchable. This means that at least it needs a separate subsection (I hope Wikipedia indexes section names, and I hope Google crawls section names too). The book that I linked to that uses the term was printed in 1941, so it is hardly news. As someone who obtained secondary and higher education outside the U.S. I did not know the term, but recently it became more relevant as I started to get interested in American education system. U.S. education is very fragmented and navigating one's way around it is quite complicated, so anything to help myself and other folks like me would be helpful. Mikus (talk) 16:59, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment As noted above, a merge would NOT be appropriate, mainly because it would leave an inappropriate redirect. As for putting the information into other articles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_education_in_Australia#Higher_School_Certificate already has a (very short) section on it, and I think some of this article could easily be added to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_education_in_the_United_States . Benboy00 (talk) 17:43, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Keep and expand Clearly, the title of this article is problematic. It might better be relocated to General mathematics in primary education or some such, but the topic is clearly notable. Poor title choice is not a reason for deletion. Fix it, don't delete it. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 18:09, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• The term is used in college education as well, so renaming to "General mathematics in primary education" would not cover all the bases. Mikus (talk) 17:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

• Merge and Redirect to Integrated mathematics. The type of math education program discussed in the article, that of mixing multiple math subjects in one class rather than having separate classes in algebra, geometry, etc. was called General Mathematics by Kenneth Brown in 1946, but today is more commonly called Integrated mathematics. I see no problem with a redirect, as it is a reasonable search term. If there are other common uses of the term General Mathematics, hatnotes or a disambiguation page could be created instead. As I understand it, integrated mathematics programs are the norm in most of the world and countries like the USA and Australia are just now catching up. This is very likely a notable topic. Update A move to a less ambiguous title before the merge and redirect would be a fine option. Perhaps a move to "General Mathematics (education)" as suggested by the nom, would be a good compromise. --Mark viking (talk) 18:18, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment I personally think that it would be good to have the content here added to Integrated mathematics, but I think a redirect would be very problematic. A title of "General Mathematics" is very grand, and one would expect it to be an article on mathematics itself, or maybe a redirect to such an article, rather than a redirect to a page about a type of mathematics education. The reason I nominate to delete is that any other action, be it move (Wikidan61) or merge, will leave an inappropriate redirect. What would ideally happen is that this content is copied to Integrated mathematics, and then this page deleted. Benboy00 (talk) 18:36, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment How do you propose to search for "General Mathematics" meaning a type of education program? At the very least there must be a subsection titled as such so Google and Wiki could pinpoint to it. Will it work without a separate page with such a title, and without a redirect? If yes, we might try doing that. Mikus (talk) 16:15, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• Comment Well, at the moment (when the article exists), searching on google for the phrase general mathematics does not show this page in the first five pages of results (for me). What does come up is the article on australian maths education mentioned earlier (and the article on general relativity). If there is a section in american maths education with the name general mathematics, that will probably come up too. Google is very good at what it does, and does not need a redirect to find sections of wikipedia articles. Actually, it wouldnt even need a section titled that, as in the australian article, it has no section with that title, just a bullet point, and yet it still comes up. I am not sure whether I think it should be an entire section in american maths education, but that is a discussion for a later date. Benboy00 (talk) 09:56, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

• Delete. Poorly sourced, and combines together very different educational systems from different countries. Mathematics Education is better handled elsewhere. -- 101.119.29.15 (talk) 01:41, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

• Delete There is a basic problem: 'General Mathematics' means different things to different people. There are dribs and drabs of references but not enough of anything to make an article on a single topic and throwing everything together in a single article would be just an indiscriminate mess. Dingo1729 (talk) 02:04, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

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• Keep The topic seems significant in the history of Mathematics education. The rest is then a matter of ordinary editing. As and when the content has been restructured to the point that the title is just a redirect then the fate of the redirect might be considered at WP:RFD. Myself, I'd still want to keep it as a blue link. Warden (talk) 09:01, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
• There is no requirement that a merger has to leave a redirect from the original title, so the nominator's concern about merging is invalid. We have to maintain attribution to the authors of any merged content to comply with our copyright licence, and the easiest and usual way to do this is to keep the editing history behind a redirect, but if there is good reason not to have a redirect (about which I have no opinion yet) there are other ways to maintain attribution. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:24, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Merging#Reasons_for_merger "Merging—regardless of the amount of information kept—should always leave a redirect" (bolding in source, not added). I took this to mean that there is a requirement that merging leave a redirect. From what I've read, If it does not leave a redirect, then it is not a merge (which is why I think that some (very little) of the stuff should be kept, but not merged). Benboy00 (talk) 17:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• I would dispute the "always", but, even if we treat it as gospel, the redirect does not have to be from the current title of the article from which content is merged if a redirect from that title would be confusing or otherwise undesirable, as seems to be your objection. We can simply rename ("move" in the strange terminology used on Wikipedia) the article to a better redirect title before merging. And if we keep any of the content of this article in another article then that is, by definition, a merger. The issues with merging to two different places and with leaving a redirect are technical issues that can be overcome if the consensus of the discussion is to merge. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:59, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• I think that moving and then merging would be a perfectly fine idea, but I thought it would be improper to suggest it at the start of an AfD. I'm not too clear on the range of allowed votes for AfD's, or even if there is such a thing, but if "Move and Merge" is possible, then that would be the desired outcome (for me). The problem with that, of course, is that we need to choose an appropriate title, and since this is clearly a contentious issue, there would need to be some vote of what that name should be, and of course we would need an admin to supress the move redirect. It seems a bit complicated, but I'm sure it can be done. Hopefully people will read this before they vote and if they agree, vote "Move and Merge". Thanks, Benboy00 (talk) 18:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
• That is a good idea. I've amended my recommendation. --Mark viking (talk) 18:03, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

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.