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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 keep‎. — Red-tailed hawk  (nest) 00:12, 20 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Auto dialer

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Auto dialer (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log | edits since nomination)
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Contested WP:BLAR. Article has had lack of citation warnings on it since 2011 yet remains practically unsourced. Only section of article that is sourced relates to telemarketing regulations. Given that there exists a well-sourced article on telemarketing that makes reference to automatic dialing, seek to get agreement to redirect to that article. Rambling Rambler ( talk) 18:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

  • Comment @ Rambling Rambler: You removed a section which was referenced to "Popular Mechanics" which is massively popular and one of the industry standards for those types of mags. I rememeber reading it, in the 1980's and 1990's. It seems to be a valid secondary source. The subject seems to notable and I think with a bit of work it could be a good article. scope_creep Talk 18:24, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
    Yes, they've removed it twice now, and it was one of the things that inspired my objection to the BLAR. Sergecross73 msg me 18:31, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
    @ Scope creep: I removed it, as explained in the change notes, because the source was only used to support the following claim:
    "A semi-automatic dialer is a human-controlled dialer. All actions, such as dialing, playing the audio messages, recording, are initiated by a human, normally by the press of a key. It is a productivity tool for telemarketing agents. The first semi-automatic dialer was offered on the commercial market in 1942. It was manually operated and came in two models; one that stored 12 numbers and a second which could store up to 52 numbers."
    • However if you read the source itself it only actually supports the lines I've put in bold in the above quote. It doesn't support the claim it was the first offered on the market, nor does it support the definition of a "semi-automatic dialer". Rambling Rambler ( talk) 18:35, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
      • Rambling Rambler, that's not good practice. What you could have done is put a cn-tag after the unverified bit, for instance. However, that article is talking about an auto-dialer of the mechanical kind, which isn't what the article is about, allegedly. Drmies ( talk) 18:41, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
        • @ Drmies if it was an article that was otherwise citation heavy and showed signs of active improvement I'd probably have done so. Here however it's an article with warnings going back a decade regarding a lack of verifiability, so when a quick google only shows marketing companies wanting to sell you stuff and seem to have just taken their content straight from this article (" In those days, auto dialers were semi-automatic dialers, and they were limited to storing between 12 and 52 numbers. Employees had to press a key to initiate the features") I thought best to go on the side of caution by removing the section given it couldn't support the notable information of the subsection. Rambling Rambler ( talk) 18:58, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
          • Wait, Rambling Rambler--so you were trying to improve an underreferenced article by removing the one secondary source it had? Drmies ( talk) 00:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply
            @ Drmies, no, as previously said I was removing a source that was being used to back up claims the source doesn't corroborate. Nowhere does the source state that it's a "semi-automatic dialer" (a term and definition that is uncited itself) nor that, whatever the device in popular mechanics could be defined as, it's the first one on the market.
            In fact it's hard to consider the device in question an "automatic dialer" as described by the article lede; that being an electronic device or program that automatically dials a large amount of telephone numbers and either plays a pre-recorded message or connects to a human callhandler.
            Instead the device in the popular mechanics source is anything but that. In fact its implementation is really akin to an early version of the contact list on mobile phones, where the phone number is saved against another identifier (usually a name) and selecting that identifier is enough for the phone to dial the specific number associated. Rambling Rambler ( talk) 00:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I am the one who objected to the BLAR. I understand that the article is in terrible shape. But AFD is not cleanup and I'm not seeing any actual argument for deletion besides that. It simply struck me as a lazy solution to a concept that is almost certainly notable, and not particularly urgent or sensitive that we needed an instant fix. It's not a concept I particularly edit or care about, merely a random move I stumbled upon and didn't agree with. Sergecross73 msg me 18:31, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
Yip. I agree totally. scope_creep Talk 18:36, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
"It simply struck me as a lazy solution to a concept that is almost certainly notable"
It wasn't "lazy" at all. I read through the actually cited content in the autodialer article, noted the bottom contained a "see also" for the telemarketing article, and noticed that the article's content is effectively duplicated in that second article. Telemarketing details both the concept of automatic dialing and regulations on its use, both of the leftover thrusts of the auto dialer article after removing the unsourced content. Rambling Rambler ( talk) 18:40, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
Then replace "lazy" with "not the best approach to the situation". Sergecross73 msg me 18:43, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
It's probably not a perfect solution but so far no one else has offered up any others to the situation other than just leaving it with zero applicable citations beyond duplicating content on the article I redirected it too.
And frankly I find it most irritating when you've stated it's "not a concept I particularly edit or care about" and only seem to want to almost insultingly criticise what I did without offering any solutions yourself. Rambling Rambler ( talk) 18:54, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
The intention of that comment was simply to show I have no biases for or against auto dialers. I primarily work in music and video games, areas where there are constantly "fanboys/fangirls" trying to protect what they like or erase what they don't. " Swifties", "K-pop Stans", people all caught up in the " console wars", etc etc. I was merely saying I have no bias of that sort. Sergecross73 msg me 19:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Redirect to Robocall: and do the same with the the alternate spelling, Autodialer. The Telemarketing article is well written and sourced, but it covers much more than just the topic of the equipment used to generate the telephone calls, a subject that is clearly notable enough for a standalone article such as we have with Robocall and with Dialer. Even redirecting to Dialer would be preferable to redirecting to Telemarketing. Owen× ☎ 19:52, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 12:24, 5 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Herald (Benison) ( talk) 03:03, 13 February 2024 (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.
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