Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Isaac Newton’s apple tree: Difference between revisions

Isaac Newton’s apple tree (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Procedural nomination per this conversation at ANI where evidence has been presented that this article was created (at least in part) using AI software. Even if this subject is notable, the use of AI demands that the article be deleted. Bgsu98 (Talk) 15:30, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – Yes the use of AI is prominent but it is a semi-popular and is an interesting article and keeping it out weighs the deleting it. Killertrant (talk) 11:19, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Sir i think this topic is needed on Wikipedia but needs a a massive improvement. So my reply is to Keep Abdullah1099 (talk) 02:40, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Noting that I have significantly trimmed this to get rid of AI text that is pretty irrelevant to the topic itself and some other unsourced things.) Sophisticatedevening^(talk) 16:54, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Obviously notable topic with pretty good article content and good sourcing. This is not such low-quality LLM content that it would need to be started from scratch. Running your text through Grammarly to check for errors actually seems like a pretty appropriate use of AI, and Copilot for rephrasing is still different than simply asking an LLM to write an article or whole sections for you. Are there actually legitimate sourcing or hallucination concerns here? I don’t think the Clones section should have been removed entirely either. Reywas92^Talk 17:52, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Isaac Newton#Apple incident. Everything that’s not already there is either non-encyclopedic waffling, essay-like assertions in wikivoice, claims not backed up by assertions (e.g., the whole story about King’s School claiming to have the original tree), or trivia. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:25, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  A redirect is a good option, but I see that there has already been edit-warring in that regard too. This AFD could force the issue is consensus ends with a redirect. Bgsu98 (Talk) 18:28, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Unfortunately I disagree with the motivating reason for the AfD. I suggest this AfD be closed as very unlikely to succeed at this point. This would allow merge proposal, backed up by the evidence from @Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction, who has recently carefully reviewed the sources in Isaac Newton#Apple incident. We’ll end up in the same place but we’ll agree on why. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:54, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don’t see a reason to close this discussion just to open another one on a different page talking about the same thing. We might as well arrive at a consensus here and save ourselves the trouble. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:07, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  For another example, take this sentence: “In 1820, part of the blown tree was also cultivated by Lord Brownlow at Belton Park into a tree that came to be known as the Belton tree.” This has three footnotes. One of them is Keeling (1998), which does not say this. Keeling writes that there are “no contemporary records of the propagation of Newton’s apple tree in the records of Lord Brownlow at Belton Park”, and says that the tree could have been grafted from the original at Woolsthorpe before the latter was blown down. The second source is Gould (2002), who says that “one of the Brownlow clan” (not a specific person) “apparently took a cutting from the tree” at an undetermined point before it was blown down. Gould dates the storm that felled the original tree to 1816, not 1820. According to Keeling, the storm happened “some time between 1817 and 1820”. In short, none of the dates are known precisely, and the article text doesn’t accurately summarize the sources attached to it. On the other hand, work has gone into Isaac Newton#Apple incident to fix problems like this. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:38, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Likewise, take this line: “The Flower of Kent is known for its large and flavourful, but mealy green apples, which were used for cooking and baking.” The attached source says, “By today’s standards, the Flower of Kent apples are not particularly tasty.” That’s pretty much the opposite of the claim that they are “flavourful”! The source says nothing about the texture (mealy or otherwise) or the colour. I don’t think “The Treeographer” is WP:RS anyway, since it looks to be one guy’s hobby project on his personal website. The image next to the paragraph shows Flower of Kent apples as being green with red splotches, or red with green splotches.

  Overall, the text needs redoing if it is to exist. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 19:06, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think these problems are fixed, thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:45, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Isaac Newton#Apple incident per SCD. —SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:13, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I have not checked for notability and have no opinion on whether it is better off merged, but AI-generated hallucinations by themselves are a good reason to stubify, not to delete. Rusalkii (talk) 19:44, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Draftify seems better than stubify for that case in my opinion. – Indefensible (talk) 06:32, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. I am bad at usernames (talk | contribs) 23:34, 12 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect solves it all. Not sure it’s notable without a definitive tree. Metallurgist (talk) 02:02, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect: once one removes the heaps of trash, one is left with the following information: “the tree” is a metaphor for Isaac Newton’s thinking — that is, it is a topic best covered at an article about Isaac Newton and his thought — an assortment of mythology on that subject in which the actual tree is unimportant, and some clearly NN details about a real tree that Isaac Newton owned but that is not “the tree” because “the tree” is fictional/metsphorical/mythical only. 173.79.19.248 (talk) 12:01, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to Isaac Newton#Apple incident per SCD. Just a vehicle for a laundry list. —𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:20, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect While there may be a notable topic, the current article seems to mix the topics of at least one individual tree, the purported apple falling story, and the concept of the tree as a metaphor (mentioned by IP above), leaving the resulting text quite muddled. Looking at just the tree itself, the text is unclear. The lead says there was a storm in 1820, the body says there was a storm in 1816. The lead says the current tree is a descendant, the body says at least one tree in the gardens is 400 years old (ie. not a descendant) but leaves it unclear if this is the tree. The lead is actually the only place that uses the words “descendents” and “clones” (the body does touch upon the topic, but “descendants and clones” may be taken directly from a source title). No objection to the article being “stubified” as it does seem there is one particular tree that might meet GNG, but that requires an editor to take the time to look through all the sources for a rewrite. A redirect preserves the history so that can happen. CMD (talk) 17:55, 13 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep while there’s room for improvement, the topic appears to meet GNG. EM (talk) 20:17, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: per above JayCubby 01:28, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, GNG easily met (“Great nature’s gravity!“). The topic covers a historical/fabled occurrence of importance to science and scientific culture, although trim out and deworm the AI. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:04, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That argument does not make a case for free-standing article when the result is achieved by a redirect to Isaac Newton#Apple incident, which is plenty. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:36, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  GNG worthy makes lots of sense. Lots of readers every day come to stand-alone article, hundreds, indicating they know what they’re interested in. The article has been worked on since being nominated, so I must assume many of the concerns have either been addressed or lessened. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:33, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Page counts aren’t a good indicator of article-worthiness. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Well this is a substantial issue, as the current attempts to rewrite the article consider the topic a current tree rather than the historical fable. CMD (talk) 00:19, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  There is almost no solid evidence that this topic is an historical fable. Rather substantive scholarship supports the idea that Newton used the tree as a least post-hoc inspiration. There is also significant documented scholarship that the tree is in Woolsthorpe Manor. The corresponding sources are cited in the article. But if you have other sources let’s discuss them in Talk:Isaac Newton’s apple tree. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:27, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The vague mirroring of Randy Kryn’s slashed options is not really important, it’s the same topic whether a fable or post-hoc inspiration. CMD (talk) 00:35, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I thought I’d check the sources for “Detailed analysis of historical accounts backed up by dendrochronology and DNA analysis indicate that the sole apple tree in garden, having blown over in at storm sometime around 1816, regrew from is roots and continues to live at Woolsthorpe Manor.” The first I can only access the abstract, which does mention one tree but also mentions that there are two sets of Newton’s apple trees (is anyone able to access the source?). The second source does not support the statement at all; instead it is entirely dubious about the claim. My assumption, given the page number, is the llm read “the same old tree that had badly decayed and was torn down in 1820, the same old tree that was “destroyed” by storm winds in 1827 (or perhaps eariler), miraculously is now alive, and is more than 350 years old” and failed to grasp it was an entirely sarcastic statement. The author states explicitly, on page 68, “there is no evidence that that was the tree”. CMD (talk) 03:05, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I wrote that sentence and read both sources. The Keesing source (your “first”) is available online through the Wikipedia library. This is very detailed and through study, considering many possible explanations including alternative trees. The conclusion of the work is that it very likely the same tree. The Martinez source is a kind of myth-busters book. It draws almost all of its content about the tree from Keesing. It then goes off on an unsubstantiated and in my opinion flippant discussion questioning Keesing’s conclusion. The content in Keesing is backed up by other sources. I’m fine with removing Martinez. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:12, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  “wrote that sentence” has a few possible interpretations. You did write the current version, but it was an adaptation of an existing sentence keeping the same topic and roughly the same length that left the sources completely unchanged. As the example shows, that sort of editing doesn’t really fix the issues introduced by the original formulation. CMD (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Says the editor who admits they did not even read the source. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:33, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That’s an odd assertion. As was covered above, I read even beyond the cited page 69, reading as far as I could tell all the pages in the source relating to the tree. It’s how I was aware that it cited the opposite of the cited claim, and even provided a quote from an uncited page. Over the past two days I checked 3 sources and found 3 problems. I don’t have time allocated to rewrite the page to fix the inherent problems, and it’s possible no-one else may either, but that’s why a redirect as an ATD is helpful, as the sources will be here when someone does have the time. CMD (talk) 16:51, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, an article doesn’t read like LLM text; if some parts are questionable then it can be trimmed/rephrased. Artem.G (talk) 07:32, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Isaac Newton#Apple incident already is the trimmed and rephrased version. I suppose we could do something wacky, like copy that text to this article and replace it with a shorter stub section… but is it worth the trouble? Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 15:06, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]