Talk:Pauli exclusion principle

Pauli exclusion principle
A tentative RFD. It's inherently encyclopaedic, but a good entry. I don't know whether or not it's in Wiktionary's purview (if we decide to delete it, though, we should soft-redirect to WP). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 03:10, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It is at least brief. It is a good tes case IMO. We could put in trreqs for the 30-40 top languages and see:
 * how many bother to provide translations and
 * how many of the translations are themselves SoP.
 * Running a few such experiments would tell us a lot about whether we should just have an entry for every article in WP. DCDuring TALK 11:17, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The WP article exists in numerous languages. A quick skim revealed that the major Western languages call it the "Pauli Principle" or the "Pauli [something] Principle". Choor monster (talk) 15:07, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I would keep this entry. You can't deduce the definition from those of its constituent words. SemperBlotto (talk) 11:30, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * The same is true of the title of any novel, song, many newspaper stories, and proper nouns generally. It seems to me the question is why we should keep some classes and exclude others.
 * DCDuring, I'd imagine you don't see it that way, but your comments seem to be off topic griping about the general state of Wiktionary and nothing to do with this entry. May I suggest this sort of debate should not be on this page but on WT:BP as it's policy discussion not discussion of this entry. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:54, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * So, on the the entry. What reason is there to delete this? Even the nominator can't think of one, and neither can I. Keep. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:54, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, what about the other side: what reason is there to keep this? It is clearly encyclopedic by nature (a proper noun, not a noun), and it is also a simple sum of parts like said above. There are millions of phrases like that (=almost every article in Wikipedia), why keep this one? Dakdada (talk) 13:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * AFAIK we have no applicable principle to apply to justify keeping or deleting the entry, ever since the sole previously applicable principle (reL names of specific entities) was voted out, making every such RfD an opportunity for debate on whimsical criteria or without any principles at all except our slogan, which is contradicted by our actual practice. The closest analogy is the title of literary works, which we do not keep, though "their meaning is not deducible from their content".
 * The sole stated reason to keep would apply to all proper nouns. The entry is encyclopedic. It might be OK as a translation target, though that rationale could also be deemed to apply to all proper nouns. In addition we don't have evidence that there is any translation that is anything other than an SoP translation of the English (or whatever the original language of coinage was) component terms.
 * Our actual practice seems to be to keep certain classes of proper nouns without careful regard to any principles. So, is the class of uniquely named scientific, professional, occupational, and practical laws, principles, theorems etc one that we want to keep?
 * Otherwise, it is most like a title of a literary work. DeleteDCDuring TALK 15:15, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Re: "The closest analogy is the title of literary works, which we do not keep": I do not know of any consensus to exclude all titles of literary works. WT:CFI does not say that we do exclude them all. Some titles of literary works that we currently keep include Bible, Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, Book of Mormon (do we need this?), Decameron, Ivanhoe, Mahabharata, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Waverley, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (do we need this?), Odyssey, Iliad, Lebor Gabála Érenn (do we need this?), and Edda. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:41, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It's really not like the title of a literary work. Pauli exclusion principle might be analogous to *Dickens novel or *Shakespeare play, but not to David Copperfield or Twelfth Night. (And, of course, P.e.principle is one specific thing, whereas "Dickens novel" can refer to many.) Do you object to the entries for the other named-after-people examples, like Van de Graaff generator? Equinox ◑ 20:54, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That it is associated with the name of a person is immaterial to my point. If it were named the quantum exclusion principle it would be the same thing, it would still be a proper noun designating a specific entity, very like the titles of literary works, such as both Twelfth Night and Aesop's Fables. DCDuring TALK 21:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Proper noun: that is not so clear. Some of the items listed by me below are ranked in the mainspace as nouns. Furthermore, the terms are not capitalized as proper nouns--that would have to be "Pauli Exclusion Principle" with capital E and capital P. Finally, names of abstract objects are usually not considered proper nouns, including names of numbers (AKA number words); if laws and principles are considered abstract objects, then their names are not considered proper nouns. --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep. Not sum of parts. Possibly regulated by WT:CFI, although I do not know whether laws, principles, conjectures and the like are considered "specific entities". Other entries for laws, principles, conjectures and theorems: Bragg's law, Kepler's laws, Metcalfe's law, Coulomb's law, Murphy's law, Boyle's law, Charles's law, Hooke's law, Hubble's law, Kirchhoff's current law, Kirchhoff's voltage law, Newton's first law, Newton's second law, Newton's third law, Ohm's law; Poincaré conjecture; Pythagorean theorem, Chebyshev's theorem, binomial theorem, virial theorem, hairy ball theorem, Green's theorem, mean value theorem; Bernoulli's principle, Mach's principle, Huygens' principle, Le Chatelier's principle, Matthew principle, Pareto principle, Mitchell principle, Peter principle, Goldilocks principle, etc. See also Talk:law of diminishing marginal utility. On another note, an a surprising one to me too, "Pauli exclusion principle" is present in AHD, Collins and MWO: . --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:53, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Also Bergmann's rule, Dühring's rule, Markovnikov's rule, Mull of Kintyre rule, Gunter's scale, and Bechdel test (a proper noun unlike Kesternich test, Mantoux test, Pap test, and Turing test). Keep. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 15:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. And to Dan's list I would add other things named after people, like Very light and Van de Graaff generator. Equinox ◑ 14:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Delete without leaving a soft link to Wikipedia. Otherwise we will have to create an entry for every Wikipedia article. The only way we can keep such things is if we demonstrate that they developed a broader meaning, or are used figuratively, or in any way that does not actually refer to the principal itself. For example, if we can cite something similar to the following: Buses exhibit the Pauli exclusion principle, as two people can't sit in the same seat. --WikiTiki89 20:15, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Re: "Otherwise we will have to create an entry for every Wikipedia article.": That is demonstrably incorrect: many Wikipedia articles have sum-of-parts titles, such as Government of the United Kingdom, and these get excluded as being sum-of-parts. Furthermore, the community may decide to keep names of laws and principles while excluding multi-word names of literary works. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:24, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per Dan Polansky's argument above. We've dozens of these entries, and a quick glance through the first handful does not show any other usage other than the scientific definition. No valid reason to delete. Not sum of parts as meaningless without prior knowledge.--Dmol (talk) 20:41, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * @Darkdadaah well our criteria for inclusion, it seems to meet them. "An expression is “idiomatic” if its full meaning cannot be easily derived from the meaning of its separate components." And it's definitely attested, so it's both attested and idiomatic. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:40, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep, non-parseable word used to identify a specific thing, as with Grévy's zebra and Bose-Einstein condensate. bd2412 T 12:57, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep &mdash; Saltmarshαπάντηση 14:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Kept. bd2412 T 16:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC)