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

Viossa

Viossa (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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Subject does not pass WP:GNG. I was not able to locate any reliable sources covering this topic. ~Liance^talk 22:17, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Language, Social science, and Internet. ~Liance^talk 22:17, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
• Comment: Most of the problem tags on the article (not the potential GNG failure tag that was only placed this month)–the lack of independent sourcing, the apparent reliance on non-RS in general, etc.–have been present since October 2024, the month the current article was created. The first nomination was for an earlier article on this subject that was draftified, and that iteration was subsequently userfied to User:Frzzl/Viossa by its creator to presumably get it out of G13 consideration (note that he has not edited the current article in any capacity, and the current article was created in mainspace from scratch by someone else; the validity of maintaining an article-like page in userspace that is not intended as a draft–and userspace drafts are eligible for G13 as needed–is limited at best, but that would be a matter for MfD). No opinion on the current article. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 02:33, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  Keep: The subject is listed as high-importance in linguistics. It is an emerging subject of research, and while I agree that current sources either fail to qualify as SIGCOV or are sources too close to the subject, there exist independent sources which verify at least in passing that the subject is of interest to some fields. Note: I am a member of the Viossa community. Please consider this a COI declaration (another COI exists in my user page). GreatMageMai (talk) 22:55, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Keep: There is independent, non-trivial coverage sufficient to meet WP:GNG at a basic level, even though the article currently relies too heavily on weak/primary sourcing. Viossa is also mentioned on Asterisk, an independent magazine of the San Francisco Bay Area. The sourcing problems noted in both AfDs (overreliance on self-published/community material) are valid, but remediable. Where independent coverage exists, this is an issue of article quality, not notability. Vydrakk (talk) 23:00, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

That source is possibly reliable, yes. Though there's only a single passing mention of the subject, thus WP:SIGCOV of GNG is not met. None cited in the article at time of nom qualify either unfortunately. Can you provide more? ~Liance^talk 03:43, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

The AISC2025 Book of Abstracts (Italian Association for Cognitive Science) also includes an abstract that uses “-and with experimental languages like Viossa (Baer, 2019; Nichols, 2021).” as a reference point, which modestly supports “attention beyond the immediate community,” even though it is not in itself SIGCOV of Viossa. There is at least some independent coverage beyond the source already identified from the National Museum of Language. The article on Asterisk discusses Viossa as an example of an emergent conlang/conpidgin, the HCC Times piece is weaker, but also independent and directly on topic. I agree that much of the current article sourcing is weak, but the existence of at least a small body of independent discussion suggests this is better treated as a sourcing/quality problem than as a pure “no coverage exists” case. Vydrakk (talk) 10:11, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Well, we need these sources in the article! The Baer, 2019; Nichols, 2021 mentioned by @Vydrakk would be a good place to start CVDX (talk) 05:51, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 04:16, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

• Delete - for lack of significant coverage. This compares to many other articles on constructed languages, which have reliable sources. Bearian (talk) 14:01, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Svartner (talk) 17:33, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

• Comment. Reliable, independent sources should not only serve as evidence that a subject is notable, but also contain enough verifiable information to provide at least a basic framework for an article, which can of course be further enriched with additional information from primary sources. All we can learn from the sources mentioned above is that Viossa is an experimental conlang, created entirely through unplanned, emergent interaction, and that it exhibits rich variation among speakers. What they don't tell us is who created it, when, why, who uses it and what for, how it works, etc. In other words, it is simply impossible at the moment to write an article about Viossa that meets Wikipedia standards. Viossa is an interesting project that definitely has potential. But Wikipedia is there to describe notable subjects, not to make them notable. I would therefore suggest userfying the page to prevent it from being deleted. Once better sources are available, it can serve as a base. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 21:14, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
• Comment - In order to preserve this partially-complete article from deletion, I have now moved the Viossa article out of the main article space as suggested, and into my user space. I am not able to remove the deletion notice on the article until this discussion is closed. Please let me know if I missed a step. JezzaHehn (talk) 03:31, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  Please do not move articles to the User or Draft namespace while a deletion discussion on them is ongoing. ApexParagon (talk) 00:14, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  Apologies for my premature action. Will wait for conclusion of discussion before any other action 💚 JezzaHehn (talk) 13:51, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

• Draftify as in the current state the article is in dire need of better sources with WP:SIGCOV, preferably scholarly, but it could have a future after receiving some care from editors.CVDX (talk) 05:49, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

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.