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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. ( non-admin closure) – Davey2010(talk) 23:01, 12 September 2014 (UTC) reply

Note: Today I moved the title of the article to the singular form Diverticulum (mollusc). Invertzoo ( talk) 13:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC) And today I moved it to Diverticulum (gastropod) to be more precise in the titling. Invertzoo ( talk) 21:02, 12 September 2014 (UTC) reply


Diverticula (mollusc) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log · Stats)
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Term appears to be a plural form of the single "diverticulum" which already has an article. No evidence of this term being used as the singular in any nudibranch article-- all references to "diverticula" appear to be the plural form meaning "multiple side sacks". "Diverticula" would have the plural form "diverticulae", which is not a word. "Diverticula" also not in OED ("diverticulum", yes). For a reference using the correct form of "diverticula" see here. KDS4444 Talk 13:55, 4 September 2014 (UTC) reply

  • Keep A simple WP:BEFORE style search shows 4,300 GScholar hits for Diverticula mollusc and 4,240 GScholar hits for Diverticulum mollusc; it appears both forms of the word are common in mollusc study. GBooks shows 4,290 hits for Diverticula mollusc -wikipedia, including some textbooks on the first page of hits. This topic looks highly notable to me. The articles Diverticula (mollusc) and Diverticulum are about different subjects. Diverticulum is concerned with diverticula in the context of human medicine and embryology, whereas Diverticula (mollusc) is about the digestive system of molluscs. It is reasonable to keep these two articles separate. The article could definitely use some sources and further improvement, but these are surmountable problems, per WP:SURMOUNTABLE. A highly notable topic and surmountable article problems suggests keeping the article. Given that article titles should generally be in the singular, a move to [[ Diverticulum (mollusc)]] would be fine. -- Mark viking ( talk) 18:34, 4 September 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I agree with Mark viking on all of the points he made. Invertzoo ( talk) 19:30, 4 September 2014 (UTC) reply
    • An equally simple (okay, please, let's stay away from the condescending terminology like "simple", "basic", "easy"-- I don't even care for "facile")... An understanding of the formation of Latin plurals and singulars means that yes, this term occurs a lot (as a plural noun) in articles related to nudibranchs, but no, it is not the singular form of the word and so it should not be the title of an article. The diverticulum article is about the exact same thing as the article on diverticula (mollusc): in both cases, what is described is a short cul-de-sac off of a tube of some kind-- neither zoologist nor medical doctor is going to argue with that. It happens that in the sea slugs, the diverticula end up serving some interesting purposes-- great, that means the article on diverticulum should cover that, since they are, in fact, the same thing. My problem is that the title is technically incorrect (in that it is in the plural form), and in its correct form (the singular), an article already exists. We should not have multiple articles with slightly different titles on the same subject ("house" and "houses", "lamina" and "laminae", "umbo" and "umbones", etc.). This should be a housekeeping deletion, nothing more. That there are objections to this leaves me somewhat floored. I would support a merge of the contents into the article on diverticulum, and may go ahead and perform the information transfer on my own. But please don't call me or my acts "simple". As I have said, it is condescending and it's rude, and it is done all too often in deletion nominations. Lastly, if you would support a merge, it would be good if you could put "Merge"in bold text somewhere in your commentary, because other wise it looks like "keep" is your only vote. Thanks. KDS4444 Talk 11:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC) reply
      • It is not really appropriate to launch an AfD in a situation where a "move" or a "merge" would be a sufficient course of action. AfD is supposed to be for suggesting the deleting of articles which are on subjects that are not notable enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia; that does not apply here. And, since this is a gastropod-related article, asking for input on the Gastropod Project's talk page would probably have been a good idea. That was not done. I personally would say, do not merge the article without a consensus from the gastropod project. Wikipedia has numerous instances of articles with the same word as the title, and which are discriminated using a subsequent word in parentheses. It is not necessary to merge all articles that have titles based on the same Latin word. You can try to argue that Diverticulum has the same meaning in human anatomy as it does in sea slug anatomy, but that is not actually the case. The two terms being based on the same Latin word does not mean that the two very different sets of information should automatically be included in the same article. Disambiguation pages or hat notes can serve to differentiate article with similar titles. Invertzoo ( talk) 14:56, 5 September 2014 (UTC) reply
      • No insult intended; I was calling my search simple, not any of your prose or actions. I just used the Find sources template above and removed unneeded parentheses to investigate notability. Regarding the article, it often happens the same term is used in different ways in different fields. If there are no RS that discuss the term in depth, its different uses in different fields, history, etc., then it would be synthesis to merge disparate meanings into a single article. In this case, I haven't seen any mollusc articles that also discuss human diverticula, and I haven't seen any medical articles on human diverticulum/diverticulitis that also discuss molluscs. The two specialties have little in common, save for a fondness of using latinate terms to describe physiological features. We must follow the sources. Moving this article to Diverticulum (mollusc) will not collide with Diverticulum because of the disambigating (mollusc). I agree with Invertzoo that adding hatnotes to the two pages would further help with disambiguation and guiding the reader to the appropriate article. -- Mark viking ( talk) 17:54, 5 September 2014 (UTC) reply
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k ( talk) 16:26, 6 September 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per Mark Viking's discussion. Despite their similar name, the two features are totally different, and are in totally different phyla. I have no problem with an article on an obscure but notable topic. Bearian ( talk) 21:30, 10 September 2014 (UTC) reply

Note. The 7-day period is now up. A decision needs to be made and the AfD needs to be closed. Invertzoo ( talk) 21:01, 12 September 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.