Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/G-flat (musical note): Difference between revisions

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I. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. II. This article consists of a series of unacceptable content forks in an attempt to define the term G-flat as a musical note. It collates information from several different articles: Scientific pitch notation, Helmholtz pitch notation, and several articles about scales.

III. It fails the basic test of “significant coverage in reliable sources“, because it is not trying to be a Wikipedia article. Instead, it is trying to define the note G-flat, which is not the point of this website. In its defense, the article only offers one measly source: an archived copy of a deceased professor’s personal webpage at Michigan Technological Universtiy [Suits, B. H. (1998). “Physics of Music Notes – Scales: Just vs Equal Temperament”. MTU.edu. Michigan Technological University. Archived from the original on 27 November 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2024.].

The article was created 17 years ago by User:Torc2. User:Spesh531 made the biggest contribution to its size. Neither editor created content that follows Wikipedia requirements to support text with reliable sources.

This article clearly does not belong on Wikipedia. As per the guidelines, I redirected the page to where it belongs: Musical note. User:Chorchapu disagreed with that action and restored the page. After consulting Chorchapu and other editors, I am following their advice and nominating this page for deletion.

For these three reasons, I am also nominating the following related pages:

The articles are all copies of each other. Most of these articles only cite Suits’ webpage. Notes like C and B-flat have a few other unserious sources to support trivial material.
Trumpetrep (talk) 03:36, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I think that these could be better sourced, so I’m not going to !vote until I’ve had the chance to do a proper WP:BEFORE search. But I would note that just because it has one measly source: an archived copy of a deceased professor’s personal webpage doesn’t make that source an unreliable one; it also doesn’t appear to be a personal webpage, but rather one published by MTU’s physics department.

I also disagree with the WP:NOTDICTIONARY argument, as they all go beyond definitions and they delve into the physics of the note, and some into their histories (such as at C (musical note) & G (musical note)). Nil🥝 05:22, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The physics of the note are part of its definition, and that material is already covered in other articles, which is why these are content forks. Trumpetrep (talk) 06:21, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Given the inherent similarity of all of these articles, could it be appropriate to redirect and/or merge them all to a single target, e.g. Diatonic scale or Musical note? I agree that there probably isn’t a lot that can usefully be said about individual notes; information like frequencies would be better presented as a single table than splitting it across 12+ articles. Omphalographer (talk) 18:10, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

That was precisely my sense of it when I found these articles, Omphalographer. There is a table for all of these pitch frequencies at Scientific pitch notation. Trumpetrep (talk) 19:57, 28 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

1) Wikipedia is an encyclopædia and this is clearly encyclopaedic material, not ”dictionary” content 2) presented as lists that are wp:OKFORK of other pages. So that none of the first two reasons advanced for deletion convinces me that this should be merged back into the mentioned articles (let alone deleted). Keep all. As for sourcing, sure, it can be done, wherever it’s needed but deletion is not cleanup.–~2026-66550-6 (talk) 00:40, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The “lists” link you cited concludes, “Too much statistical data is against policy.” That’s precisely what’s going on here with these vacuous subpages for individual notes. Trumpetrep (talk) 03:59, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No, quite the opposite; that’s why it is better to split data into various list pages. ~2026-66550-6 (talk) 09:46, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The bulk of these pages are lists of scales, clearly a violation of policy and not enough material to justify an article. There’s no meat on the bone here. Trumpetrep (talk) 16:12, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I vote to keep all. Having separate pages allows more flexibility in editing in case the scopes ever change. Also, the other language versions of Wikipedia generally have separate pages for each of these notes, and it would be odd if English Wikipedia is the odd one out and didn’t have these pages. Royal Cannon 2630 (talk) 07:49, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Keeping the pages in the hopes they’ll get better is not in line with Wikipedia’s policy. These pages have been around for 17 years and no one has bothered to improve them. The non-English versions of these pages are simply copies of these. Some are even more vacuous, without even bothering to cite a single source.

We should set an example for those sites by removing content that obviously violates policy.Trumpetrep (talk) 16:16, 31 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

These are fixed concepts (and have been so for some time), and I don’t think the scope is likely to change, especially as it hasn’t much since the articles were created Two pieces of toast (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
~~Delete~~ – The article imparts little to no information which is not already mentioned in other articles. In addition it references only one source. Redirect all – as per below. Could be helpful to have a redirect to a page which contains most of the same info in an acceptable & sourced manner. Two pieces of toast (talk) 18:00, 1 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect all to Musical note. ApexParagon (talk) 02:00, 3 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all for now. I think this deserves a wider discussion among editors at music wikiprojects rather than an AFD. There needs to be some sort of discussion among editors who write in this content area regularly about how to best present the material. I’m not convinced we need a page on each pitch either, but I am loathe to remove these pages without talking about it somewhere like WP:WikiProject Classical Music which tends to take on music theory stuff more than the other music projects. I note that this page does have some unique scale content. For example if you go to Jazz minor scale you won’t find the pitch series beginning with G flat as tonic, you have to go to the G flat musical note page to get the content. The scale comparisons are highly useful, and I personally wouldn’t want to see them chopped entirely from the encyclopedia. Obviously they might need to be housed in a different article, but again this is where talking about where to move content and how to organize it outside of AFD would be helpful. I don’t think taking these here was the best editorial choice.4meter4 (talk) 05:42, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Do you really think Wikipedia should have a dictionary of scales? Isn’t it sufficient to say what a Jazz minor scale is? It seems far outside the bounds of Wikipedia’s policies to include all the permutations of every scale. Trumpetrep (talk) 18:24, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: This doesn’t seem to be headed towards consensus, but it will be useful to get feedback to 4meter4‘s idea. Please ping me to close if this is indeed taken to a discussion at a relevant wikiproject, which is likely the best way forward.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Owen× ☎ 08:28, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all – seems to me that by conventional ways to assess notability, including coverage in reliable source, the topic is clearly notable. So then the problems identified are about editorial decisions on how to present the information. I agree with others that I can’t really make a comment on how that should be best addressed but AfD surely isn’t that venue. JMWt (talk) 10:56, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all. Some editorial decisions need to be taken and AFD is the wrong venue for this. Thincat (talk) 11:37, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

What is the right venue? Trumpetrep (talk) 18:25, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Discussing how to provide this information somewhere is a good idea. These articles are a disaster. They manage to make something very simple look extraordinarily complicated while simultaneously drastically oversimplifying something very complicated. Basically they spend a lot of time giving no further information than the frequency of the note if you happen to be equally-tempered and starting from A=440Hz, while lazily sweeping the whole business of non-equal temperaments and situations where “enharmonic” notes aren’t enharmonic and G# actually differs from Ab under the carpet. The scales-starting-on section could be displayed in many much more helpful ways and I’m far from clear whether it’s wise to include the modal scales given that there are multiple different definitions of what “Phrygian” is, depending on whether you’re Greek, Medieval, or modern, and unless you’re modern, you wouldn’t have started on A-flat anyway, and your A-flat would have been somewhere different to where it is today. Elemimele (talk) 12:40, 5 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 60: / Line 60: @@
 * ”’Keep all”’. Some editorial decisions need to be taken and AFD is the wrong venue for this. [[User:Thincat|Thincat]] ([[User talk:Thincat|talk]]) 11:37, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
+*:What is the right venue? [[User:Trumpetrep|Trumpetrep]] ([[User talk:Trumpetrep|talk]]) 18:25, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
 *”’Comment”’ Discussing how to provide this information somewhere is a good idea. These articles are a disaster. They manage to make something very simple look extraordinarily complicated while simultaneously drastically oversimplifying something very complicated. Basically they spend a lot of time giving no further information than the frequency of the note if you happen to be equally-tempered and starting from A=440Hz, while lazily sweeping the whole business of non-equal temperaments and situations where “enharmonic” notes aren’t enharmonic and G# actually differs from Ab under the carpet. The scales-starting-on section could be displayed in many much more helpful ways and I’m far from clear whether it’s wise to include the modal scales given that there are multiple different definitions of what “Phrygian” is, depending on whether you’re Greek, Medieval, or modern, and unless you’re modern, you wouldn’t have started on A-flat anyway, and your A-flat would have been somewhere different to where it is today. [[User:Elemimele|Elemimele]] ([[User talk:Elemimele|talk]]) 12:40, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 18:25, 5 February 2026

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