Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Large sack

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 redirect to Sack (unit)#Coal. Consensus to not keep, but a split between delete and merge. Redirect is a compromise that allows editors to decide whether to merge any content from the history. If that does not occur, the redirect may be RfDed. Sandstein 08:32, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Large sack

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Article is based on a fragment of a table in a book known for unreliable claims; it is misleading, in that a "large sack" is actually a container, a sack of a larger size than normal. More rationale at my user page. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:43, 6 July 2018 (UTC) @AndyTheGrump, Anna Frodesiak, Archon 2488, Johnuniq, Kikichugirl, NebY, PamD, and War wizard90:: pinging other editors involved in previous AfD discussion. To clarify, I think this article should be deleted because it is not an appropriate topic: I think there could be an article on coal measure (beginings of a draft), which would put the various bits of information in context. "Merge" is not really an option, because there is no information here which is both nontrivial and accurate. And there is no evidence of the expression large sack as the name of a unit, even though clearly big sacks were used, along with middling-large, quite big, and other sacks. Imaginatorium (talk) 19:37, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Hhkohh (talk) 09:52, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

comment I can find several earlier references to 1 large sack equalling 2 cwt (one from 1986, one from 1919); I didn't check further. I didn't find any measurements in this unit, but numerous cases of someone carrying coal in a "large sack", so maybe it was a standard delivery. I have to say I'm having notability issues with this. Mangoe (talk) 14:21, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Sack (unit)#Coal per below. Mangoe (talk) 01:43, 8 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - not notable --Danski454 (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Sack (unit)#Coal. OR comment: when I was young (1950s in Britain) a large sack of coal was indeed two hundredweights. I'd hardly call it a unit but it was a standard measure of coal. It was certainly carried by one man and these sacks were the normal size for emptying into our coal shed. Thincat (talk) 20:43, 6 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There's nothing misleading or unreliable about this as it was well-established and documented as a standard measure of coal. There may be scope to merge with other similar units, as Thincat suggests, but this is not done by deletion. Andrew D. (talk) 22:06, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment and question - this article reads more like a dictionary definition than an encyclopedia entry, so could it be transwikied to Wiktionary?Vorbee (talk) 09:51, 8 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and merge as per thincat (talk · contribs) --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk to me • ✍️ Contributions) 12:22, 9 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment this and other articles only sourced to Cardarelli 2003 (such as Stack (unit) or Aum (unit)) should be merged somewhere if no other references exist; as noted that discussion can happen at some other forum. Several regular participants feel it's likely such references exist for this specific unit, and I'm not interested in conducting a detailed search. If they could provide such a reference this will be an easy Keep closure, otherwise I see no reason not to merge with Sack (unit) (purely an editorial opinion). power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:01, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: exactly. This decontextualising of fragmentary information seems to be a common problem, perhaps caused in part by editors who think that if only they can create 500 articles this is somehow significant. (See Cyrillization of German‎ for a completely unrelated example.) Imaginatorium (talk) 19:40, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I find a table in an arithmetic book from 1885, and a 18XX "cyclopedia". I'm still leaning towards a merge; the notable topic is "archaic English units of weight for measuring specific goods". power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:09, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with a larger article putting the unit in the wider context of other relevant/contemporaneous units. There's no benefit in having thousands of stub articles on every obscure unit of measurement in history. This information would be more accessible and meaningful to users as an entry in a table of other similar units, rather than as an article in its own right, especially since this article provides no useful historical context – where and when was it used, and by whom? Archon 2488 (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless a non-Cardarelli source can be found which supports the idea that this was ever a defined unit. OED does not define "large sack". It may be that coal-merchants or other dealers used the term "large sack", but we have no evidence that it was a standardised unit. PamD 22:07, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This and the following delete !vote was selectively canvassed by the nominator. The previous AfD for this topic had a much larger list of participants. Andrew D. (talk) 00:04, 14 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as non-notable and highly misguided. There is no standard decreeing that 1 large sack is 224 pounds, and showing "1 large sack ≡ 101.60469088 kg" makes Wikipedia look breathtakingly dumb. The unreliable reference is a printed version of the unhelpful website aggregators that suck up factoids. If someone wants to write an article about this topic, it would have to be more than a dictionary definition. Johnuniq (talk) 02:39, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If a reliable source can be found for it, it makes sense to keep the information, but to present it in a more meaningful and accessible context. I have no doubt that the appropriate action is to delete this page, but if the information is accurate (even if it was not standardised, as most archaic/obscure units were never rigorously defined as standards in the modern sense) then it makes sense to retain it and present it elsewhere and turn this page into a redirect to that. The decimal dust issue is trivially resolved by rounding, as I have done. Archon 2488 (talk) 19:07, 12 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk to me • ✍️ Contributions) 00:41, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Economics-related deletion discussions. Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk to me • ✍️ Contributions) 00:41, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Update The claims that there is no evidence for this are false. The measure was established by an act of parliament so I have added some details and a citation to the article. Andrew D. (talk) 07:17, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Can you please quote the Act? Do the words "large sack", in that order, appear in the Act? Would you also do me the honour of answering a question: (1) Do you really think that this kind of microstub is the way to make a better encyclopedia? (You could comment on my suggested draft for an improvement: coal measure.) Imaginatorium (talk) 08:09, 13 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The encyclopedia is built by developing such topics rather than deleting them. The act specified sacks of one or two hundredweights. The former seems to have been more common for domestic deliveries, when they would typically be carried on the back. The larger sacks would be too heavy for that but I have found some details of how the larger size was used in the navy -- with hoists and sack trucks. Andrew D. (talk) 00:04, 14 July 2018 (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.