Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Triacontatetragon (2nd nomination)

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 redirect to Polygon#Naming. Sandstein 07:40, 21 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Triacontatetragon

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Renominating as per the close of Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Icosidigon. There is not significant coverage about the 34-gon. Most of the mentions of it in reliable sources are commenting on the fact that it is constructible. This follows trivially from the constructibility of the 17-gon, and puts the 34-gon in an infinitude of constructible polygons, such as a 68-gon or an 85-gon. This class is notable, but not the 34-gon itself. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and notability is not inherited. Danstronger (talk) 22:25, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Mathematics-related deletion discussions. Danstronger (talk) 22:38, 13 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Nothing notable about this particular kind of polygon. Minkai^(rawr!)_{(see where I screwed up)} 00:53, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Selective merge The remark by MarkH21 in the last round of discussion leads me to think that there's more that can be said about its constructibility than "34 = 17 × 2". I don't think most of the article content is really warranted as it stands (honestly, some of our pages in this area read like Fandom.com had a Polytopes wiki), but this looks more like a "selective merge" candidate to me. I see that way back in 2017 I suggested a section at heptadecagon as a viable target. XOR'easter (talk) 01:00, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- That is, both the White (1913) and Chepmell (1913) sources construct a regular 34-gon by compass and straightedge without constructing a 17-gon and bisecting its angles. (White actually does it in the opposite order, inscribing a 34-gon in a circle and then joining alternate vertices to make a 17-gon.) It's not what I had expected. XOR'easter (talk) 14:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Polygon#Naming, because there's nothing new to say, and for consistency with the other recently-redirected polygons. It's constructible, but heptadecagon already says so: Based on the construction of the regular 17-gon, one can readily construct n-gons with n being the product of 17 with 3 or 5 (or both) and any power of 2: a regular 51-gon, 85-gon or 255-gon and any regular n-gon with 2^h times as many sides. The details are absolutely trivial (just take the 2 $π$ /17 angle from the heptadecagon and bisect it). The fact that an RS could be found stating the trivially obvious does not make the trivially obvious any more notable, I think. Double sharp (talk) 07:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I forgot to mention it in my nomination, but I agree with redirect to Polygon#Naming, which was the conclusion for the other recently deleted polygons. Danstronger (talk) 11:36, 14 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect. Although the 1913 paper goes into nontrivial depth about this specific shape, it does not justify any of the content of the article, and so cannot be used for notability of the article as it is. I don't think we would want to have the kind of article that could be sourced by that paper, which would be entirely about the details of a compass and straightedge construction. Also it's a very short paper and it's only one source. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:23, 15 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I mentioned in the last AfD that the existence of the standalone Mathematische Annalen article about the regular 34-gon is quite remarkable. That's one of the top journals in mathematics! The article is not just about the 34-gon being constructible (since that was already known at the time) but is rather about a very simple and novel construction that can be used to construct the regular 17-gon in a simple and novel way. The article accepted into Mathematische Annalen suggests that this was quite significant at the time and contributes towards satisfying WP:GNG.
However, the points here about not having an entire article about the explicit construction and its possible suitability elsewhere are also convincing. Based on the Mathematische Annalen paper alone, I am neutral about whether to redirect/merge/keep. However, I would not be surprised if there were other serious articles about properties of the 34-gon. Such coverage might change things (I have not yet attempted this search myself, so this has no weight right now).
@XOR'easter: Sorry for the delay in responding to the other AfD ping!
— MarkH₂₁^talk 11:54, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Polygon#Naming, as most of the sources (bar the Mathematische Annalen article) are not specific to the 34-gon or only describe properties that are "trivial". This is then reflected in the content of article, and the structure could conceivably be used for an article on any arbitrary n-gon. I also conducted several searches and was unable to find other sources that would unambiguously satisfy GNG. Nevertheless, I would also support merging some of the construction-related content to heptadecagon, as it is very relevant there and definitely does not generalize to any n-gon. ComplexRational (talk) 23:07, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment FYI, one more: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Enneadecagon. Danstronger (talk) 18:08, 18 December 2021 (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.