Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Potatoe

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 or REDIRECT.

The decision of whether to keep it as a disambiguation page should be made elsewhere. dbenbenn | talk 08:21, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Potatoe

All of the relevant information is already included at Dan Quayle, and this article can't really be expanded. The only time it'll ever come up is in discussions of Quayle, and even then it doesn't deserve its own page. – Beginning 05:30, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

~~Might as well redirect to potato. It's a common enough misspelling, and literacy is in its death throes anyway. —Korath (Talk) 06:50, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)~~
- - Or would that be, in this context, "death throws"? Denni ☯
- I suppose, though it's rather embarassing to think we'd have to do that. I don't profess to be the best speller around, but that's pretty atrocious. – Beginning 07:16, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
  - The Dan Quayles of this world need encylopedias too. Kappa 08:26, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The Dan Quayles need encyclopaedias, and we do redirect some reasonable mis-spellings already, in deference to that. However, the rest of us need encyclopaedias that note that this term is more that just one mere mis-spelling amongst many. Redirect to Dan Quayle (and remove the resulting self-redirect from Dan Quayle). Uncle G 13:39, 2005 Feb 6 (UTC)
Delete this page. Can't we delete also the page on Dan Quayle on the grounds that he's non-notable? --Angr 14:39, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- If you seriously want that, nominate it. However, I predict that it will not be deleted. I'll vote to keep it, for starters. Uncle G 15:02, 2005 Feb 6 (UTC)
Redirect to potato as a misspelling. Redirect to Dan Quayle seems less useful, since the incident was many years ago and was not very significant, let alone for the non-Americans among us. Martg76 15:46, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Redirect to potato, not to Dan Quayle. People aren't going to type "potatoe" or make a link called "potatoe" and expect it to go to Dan Quayle. They know where to go for information about him. However, bad spellers may type this word expecting to learn about the plant Solanum tuberosum. — Ливай | ☺ 15:50, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Redirect. In fact, I've been bold and created the redirect to Potato. Joyous 16:33, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
Comment. Redirecting to Dan Quayle would have been a bit insulting to our former V.P., and therefore a bit POV, as deserved as it might be. I wonder if Misunderestimated goes where I think it might go? (Looks like it does.) --BM 18:19, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Comment. The reason that I recommended redirecting to Dan Quayle is that the spelling bee incident is usually what people are referring to when spelling it as potatoe, at least in my experience. It wasn't an example of a POV or insult. – Beginning 21:15, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)
- Redirecting potatoe to Dan Quayle is neither POV nor insulting. The particular association of this word with this person is a simple matter of fact, not a point of view. It is a fact that some people associate the word with the person significantly more so than mis-spellings are generally associated with particular people. (The author of the article and pretty much all of the participants here apparently do, for starters.) The insult would be to say that Dan Quayle is a potatoe (or even a potato). But a redirect does not necessarily imply identity, especially since redirects can result from mergers, and shouldn't be assumed to imply it. Uncle G 03:43, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
Comment Given the obvious disagreement of where it should redirect, I think I've done what's necessary and sufficient by rewriting the article to read as follows, to serve both those readers who have innocently made the same mistake as Dan Quayle, and those who are looking it up specifically in search of a description of the Dan Quayle incident. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:10, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Potatoe is a misspelling of the word potato. It is associated with an June 15, 1992 incident which was national news in the U. S. involving then-vice-President Dan Quayle. For details, see: Dan Quayle.

Redirect to Potato. Megan1967 01:13, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep as disambig per Dpbsmith's version. Kappa 01:43, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep as disambig per Dpbsmith. I've reverted Potatoe to that version because some well-meaning soul has changed it to a straight redirect to Potato and stripped the VfD tag. --TenOfAllTrades 02:50, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
My major concern is preventing (poor) duplication. As long as any article expansion or hyperlinking from other articles on the two subjects is clearly directed toward either Dan Quayle or potato, I'm happy with a disambiguation instead of a redirect. It's a pity that {{disambig}} doesn't really fit this page, as that would help. Uncle G 03:43, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
Redirect to Potato. Jonathunder 04:14, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
Redirect to Potato. Potato now includes a bit about the Dan Quayle incident. -- SGBailey 09:31, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
Redirect to Potato. The Quayle incident is mentioned there, which is the correct place for it. One could also refer to it at spelling bee? Cal T 13:57, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I see problems with redirecting to Potato in its present state. Two classes of users might look up potatoe: A) those who are simply making the same mistake Dan Quail made, and B) those who are using it as an entry point for the Dan Quaille incident, perhaps because they can remember how Dan Quale spelled "potato" better than they can remember the correct spelling of his name.

Currently, the way the Potato article is structured, the class B user redirected to Potato might well be baffled. It's not obvious at a glance that the page really will lead them to what they seek. If they don't give up right away, and can't guess that Miscellany is the right subtopic, they will need to scroll down and skim past six screensful of Burbank russets and shepherd's pie before reaching the link to Dan Quayl.

We could solve this by moving the brief Dann Quail note-and-link to the top of the Potato page, but we then annoy class C—the users interested in potatoes, who are now confronted by a crumb of J. Dan Quayle-cruft in the article's place of honor.

My feeling is that potatoe is truly ambiguous in that it can be either a simple misspelling or a reference to a famous news item, and therefore a disambiguation-like page is appropriate. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:00, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

On reflection, I'm going to reverse myself and go with a keep the disambig per Dpbsmith (and, pretty much, the originally VfD'd article). Who knows, someone who clicks on a mislinked potatoe and gets this might go back and actually fix it. —Korath (Talk) 02:59, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
Redirect to potato. Wile E. Heresiarch 04:51, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep, list on Wikipedia:Unusual articles. Neutrality^talk 03:05, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Keep and disambig as suggested above. Do not delete, do not merely redirect. GRider\^talk 18:45, 11 Feb 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.

When I was in school, potatoe (with an E) was the spelling that was taught. It was not just a local spelling; I moved often as a child and attended several schools, yet potatoe with an E was the spelling taught in many of them.