User:CyberAnth/AfD/Original Research of Wanker and non Verfiability of claims

This references Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Wanker_(2nd_nomination)

Wanker violates WP:WINAD, WP:OR, and WP:V

Non-verifiability of article claims from references cited

Everything in Wanker beyond a dictionary definition in its sources is Original Research.

Cheshire book

Jenny Cheshire, 1991, English Around the World: sociolinguistic perspectives, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521395658.

The reference verifies nothing in the article beyond a dictionary definition. Following is the entire use of wanker in the book:

A number of the formulae ["you wanker" and "fuck off, wanker" (from page 205)] use as a form of address the word wanker. Literally, the word wanker in New Zealand English denotes a male who masturbates. But it is also used as a general term of abuse among New Zealand males. Masturbation is popularly regarded as a sign of sexual inadequacy. Therefore a wanker is one is sexually inadequate (page 206).

Source here.

The source supports only a dictionary definition but is used as padding in an article to make it appear as a cover for OR.

McEnery book

Anthony McEnery and Tony McEnery, 2005, Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity and Power from 1586 to the Present. Published by Routledge, ISBN 0415258375.

Just as with the above book, I searched its entire digitized contents for the term Wanker.

The word appears once in the book, on page 36, within a table that categorizes British "swear" words from "Very mild" to "Very strong". There under the "Moderate" section we find the word Wanker in its sole entry in the book.

The mention was so minor that Wanker does not appear in the book's Index on page 275, where it would appear otherwise between "VALA" and "warrants". In contrast, the word fuck (for which we have a pretty good article Fuck, based much upon a book The F Word), is discussed in some depth in the book, and appears in its Index as such, on 40 of the book's pages.

Page 36 of the book, other pages, as well as the book's entire index can be viewed at here.

The reference verifies nothing in the article beyond what a dictionary does.

"Maven's Word for the Day"

The Maven's Word of the Day reference in the article is a trivial source and does not give anything beyond a good dictionary definition. If Maven's Word of the Day is a non-trivial source, then it follows it must be acceptable for someone to go through the entire archive of Maven's Word of the Day and start creating articles about each word entry.

U.S. Census reference

The Wanker article claims, "According to the 1990 Census, 'Wanker' is the 53,492nd most common surname in the United States", and then cites the census reference at [1].

The bit of trivia is irrelevant to the article and does nothing to establish notability. We might as well ensure that Gay contains a similar reference about persons with the last name "Gay".

Also, these are living persons we are speaking of.

"Eytmology online"

Actually, the reference is called The Online Etymology Dictionary.

The entire reference is a mere dictionary definition, see it here, and is replicated below:

1940s, "masturbator," British slang, from wank "to masturbate," of unknown origin. General sense of "contemptible person" is attested from 1972. Cf. sense evolution of jerk (n.).

A picture-and-a-thousand-words

Wanker's photo and its caption is worth special note, see the photo here. It depicts in a thousand words this article's Original Research. Per the above evaluation of the cited sources, it is utterly clear that not one of them describes or depicts the gesture.

Do some people use the gesture for wanker? Yes, of course!

Verifiability, not truth.

What the references support is a dictionary definition

After I removed all of Wanker's unverifiable claims and Original Research, I created a version of the article that was supported from only what was verifiable from the references, see the article version here. Only a dictionary definition was supportable.

What currently existing reliable sources do NOT support

Wanker has existed since 17 March 2004 and has been subject to nearly 1000 edits since then, over 500 since August 2006.

None of the article's OR and V changed, even after surviving its prior Afd.

I use the full resources of a major University's library. Reliable sources are not currently in existence to justify Wanker's claims beyond a dictionary definition.

WP's standard is verifiability, not truth.

Conclusion

Wanker violates WP:OR and WP:V.

Once the cited sources are evaluated for verifiability of the article's claims, and all claims removed beyond what is verifiable thereby, only a dictionary definition is left. The article thus violates WP:WINAD.

I can find no non-trivial reliable sources that can be used to improve the article, as discussed above.

Therefore, Wanker needs to be deleted and relegated to Wiktionary and a one or sentence explanation in, for example, masturbation.

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. - Jimbo Wales