Wiki143:Articles for deletion/Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was keep.

Having noted that the concensus is "keep", I note that there is far less concensus in what form to keep. Several voters recommended keeping this only as a redirect. Others as a merge and redirect. Several argued to keep it as an idependent article but did not address the original objections raised in the nomination - is this or is this not prohibited original research?

The copyright issues do seem to be adequately addressed. The source, however, is neither peer-reviewed nor independent. The assertions in the article are not easily verifiable and, based on the evidence presented below, may be fundamentally unanswerable. Similar analysis in, for example, Star Wars, would generally be categorized as non-canon or fan fiction. Because of those concerns, I am going to have to add my voice to those calling the content unsuitable for Wikipedia. Acting as an ordinary editor, I am going to be bold and turn this into a redirect. (I note that the source website for this content is already included as a link and can't think of anything more to merge.) Rossami (talk) 22:44, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow

Original research, reproduced from another source (although the page author claims to have permission from the original creator). Seems pretty pointless to me. ESkog 23:43, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

• Note: now someone else has put the Copyvio tag on the article as well. ESkog 23:45, 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep unless it really is a copyright violation. This article is a set of technical annotations of an extremely well-known comedy skit. You can argue that the author needs to get a life, but not the material isn't of wide interest! I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK!
• Note: I was the original author although at the time I didn't have an account. I did contact the author of the website that the information was found on and I received a fairly quick response. If you don't believe me, simply ask him yourself. The email address is listed at the page (info@13pt.com). The actual text of his response was:
  • >airspeed velocity of swallows onto Wikapedia.
  • Hi, yes, you're welcome to use some of my article for that. I think there may already be a link to the article under the Monty Python entry ... haven't checked in a while.
  • best,
  • j.
  • Aznph8playa 28 May 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a journal. Even if this weren't silly beyond words, it has no more place here than a technical paper on 'the breeding bahviour of Cave Swifts in secondary rainforest in 1985-1997' or sucjhlike. A single line, or even just the link to the page this came from, on the Hirundinidae article will suffice. Sabine's Sunbird 02:32, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Your cave swifts example isn't relevent. This isn't a random wildlife reference -- it's about a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A technical discussion of that scene might seem pointless to you, but not to any Monty Python fan. ----Isaac R 02:39, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Okay then, a study on 'agressive behaviour towards humans by Western Gulls', which would tie into Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (they were one of the species in the film.). At the end of the day to make the old airspeed velocity etc etc article wikiworthy it could be pared down to maybe three lines, all of which would be better merged on the swallow page than needlessly split out into it's own page. Are we also going to have a page for the weight of a Mallard.(laden or unladen?)? Sabine's Sunbird 02:56, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Except that people don't stand around at parties quoting Alfred Hitchcock movies.----Isaac R 03:08, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
    • A couple of Comments:
      1. A scientific breakdown of a humorous sketch is simply not encyclopedic. This would be like taking the lines from the Philosophers' Soccer/Football Game, another Python sketch, and comparing them to the philosophers' own writings. Fun to put together? Sure. But it doesn't belong here, IMHO.
      2. It may be a humorous anecdote that someone has actually done this work to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow (African or European), and this may warrant mention on the movie's main page as others have suggested. Stating the conclusion of this primary source may be worthwhile somewhere herein, but don't just text-dump someone's paper onto WP, with or without permission. ESkog 05:53, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Well the skit itself is already covered by the Monty Python and the Holy Grail page. I can't imagine this being a very weighty article, so I guess a footnote could be added to the MPatHG page. So merge non-copyright material, unless substantial content. — RJH 05:29, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Merge into hirundinidae. Information on the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow belongs somewhere on Wikipedia... Almafeta 07:00, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Merging would probably be the best idea I suppose. And I can understand why one would say all of the technical information being redumped onto Wikipedia isn't a great idea but it should be somewhere. Regardless of the apparent ridiculousness of this information, a simple google check for the information would show the enormous amount of intrigued people. This being so, I believe it would be useful somewhere in Wikipedia... Aznph8playa 10:07, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Semi-notable meme, so redirect to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Radiant_* 10:53, May 29, 2005 (UTC)
  • Article is useful for its technical content, not it's meminess. Coconut transport issues are big enough to rate their own article. ----Isaac R 16:08, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, yes, but for its technical content I'd like to see some verifiability first. A bird beating its wings twenty times per SECOND sounds rather unlikely unless it's a hummingbird. Radiant_* 11:37, May 30, 2005 (UTC)
      • If you're questioning the credibility of the information, take a look at the site's references http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/#1 Also you seem to think it unusual for a bird to beat its wings more than 20 beats per second and you mentioned the hummingbird but let me remind you that the smallest hummingbird beats its wings 80 times per second. Aznph8playa 19:12, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
        • Yeah, but a swallow ain't a hummingbird. Still, it doesn't matter. That just means the guys in the castle are right and King Arthur is wrong -- which is valuable information to any serious Pythonophile. ----Isaac R 15:34, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, important comedy skit that is referenced in popular culture, I can certainly imagine someone entering this query into wikipedia. -- taviso 13:11, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep -- strong concur with Taviso. --Simon Cursitor 07:20, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Analysis of a fairly famous aspect of a notable comedy movie. Sonic Mew 07:26, May 31, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep with a rewrite re: copyvio. Agree with Taviso. JamesBurns 06:38, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. James F. (talk) 09:10, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. As well as there being no such thing as an African Swallow (a problem dealt with in the article by assuming it's a South African Swallow) there is also no such thing as a European Swallow. None of the five species found in Europe are called that, none of them are endemic to Europe, and the one that is probably refered to is the Barn Swallow, which lives across Asia, North America and Europe and migrates to every other continent on earth (including as a vagrant to Antarctica). Incidentally, here is the Birds of America's (put out by Cornell University) statements on swallow wingspeed Flight speed is not much greater than that of other swallows, but with straighter flight this species covers ground more rapidly (see Blake 1948). Speed estimated at 8.0 m/s ± 2.0 SD (range 5–17), which matches the speed predicted if birds were flying to maximize rate of food delivery to nestlings - quite frankly a more reliable sourse. Why have a page devoted to someone's back of the envelope calculations when science already knows these speeds? (PS sorry if I'm being all bird geeky but I'm drowning in python geekyness at the moment.) Sabine's Sunbird 11:39, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Why are you apologizing? If we weren't all geeks, we wouldn't even be having this discussion!----Isaac R 20:59, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• merge into Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but make a link from Hirundinidae. - UtherSRG 03:01, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.