Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wrong number

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. Somehow, when originally closing, I missed half the discussion. Sorry about that. More sources and ideas have come up within the latter few days, so some time should be given for the article to expand before this article is renominated. NW (Talk) 00:42, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Wrong number

Wrong number (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

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I actually reprieved this article last year when someone blanked-and-redirected it, but a year on nothing has improved and, realistically, I can't seen any way this will ever become a viable article. Other than a single inbound link from List of Rescue 911 episodes the article is entirely orphaned. The majority is a simple dictionary definition (indeed, the only source is yourdictionary.com), and the remainder is a mix of truisms ("Some common ways in which a wrong number is dialed include pressing one or more wrong keys on the keypad of the phone") and personal opinions masquerading as fact ("Proper telephone etiquette requires that the wrongly dialed party politely inform the caller of that fact, and also that the caller apologize rather than simply hanging up").  – iridescent 10:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

• I find this nomination deeply perplexing. Per WP:BEFORE, alternatives to deletion should be exhausted before bringing a matter here, and I am amazed that Iridescent seems to have rejected the idea of redirecting this to Wrong number (disambiguation). Why is that, Iridescent?—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 12:03, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Because that would direct it to a page reading "A wrong number is a telephone numbered dialed incorrectly by mistake.", sending it on a circular loop. If anything, the article should be deleted and that disambiguation page moved over this page. – iridescent 12:11, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
    • Hmm, I see. You could always unlink the "wrong number" part, though.

      Whichever way this goes, "Wrong number" should not be a redlink on Wikipedia, so the outcome should be some variant of "keep". Precisely how to do that can be solved through ordinary editing and does not require administrative tools, so I move for a speedy keep under WP:SK ground 1, to be followed by discussion on the article's talk page about how the redirect should be managed.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 12:29, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

      • According to the naming conventions, Wrong number shouldn't redirect to Wrong number (disambiguation), the redirect should be reversed so the page would have to be deleted or moved (and I don't think it would be eligible for CSD G6 because of the page history). One solution that wouldn't involve deletion: move Wrong number (disambiguation) to Wrong Number (which currently redirects to it), redirect Wrong number to it, and remove the link (there is already a Wiktionary link on the disambiguation page). snigbrook (talk) 13:12, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

• Delete If kept, this belongs in Category: DUH!. Evidently, someone decided that this should be a topic for an article, and then struggled to write as much as they could think of about the topic, drawing from the original research of their own experience. Like one time, I asked "is this 555-0212", and they said, "no, it's 555-0221", how did that happen, I realized my finger slipped; and another time I said "that's what I was dialing" and it turned out I wrote down the number wrong, etc. ; and one time I didn't recognize the voice and I said "who is this?" and they responded "I give up, who is this", etc. etc. Sometimes wrong numbers can be a problem-- just ask Caryl Chessman! But this article is apparently intended for those persons who have the internet, but have never before used a telephone. Mandsford (talk) 12:54, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

• Soft redirect to wikt:wrong number. Unreferenced original research of questionable value. — Rankiri (talk) 12:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

• Delete. Somewhere in-between a belabored dictionary definition and a piece of uninformative newpaper filler. —SlamDiego_←T 13:39, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
• Probably keep, if this can be expanded - there are clearly non-dictionary items that should go here. Here are a couple of ideas some ideas for what else could/should be included here, but currently aren't or are not sourced(don't judge the article by its current state!):
  • Etiquette - plenty of RS document the correct etiquette for dealing with wrong numbers, and some explanations of them (e.g. the "don't give your own number, ask them which number they intended to dial", "the recipient of the call shouldn't self-identify" etc). I have such a source in my hand and could easily find others. Right this moment I can't be bothered to incorporate it into the article if everyone here is so dead keen to delete. I might later. Either way, RS exist.
  • Types of misdial - I would be surprised if no research has been done on which kind of misdial are most common (compare to ISBN: they have a base 11 check digit to validate the number against the two most common ways of misreading an ISBN). There are more ways to misdial than you might think: keying errors (transposed digits, digits off by one, extra repeated digits) immediately spring to mind. But there are other sources of wrong number as well, for instance a number now assigned to a new customer. One you might not have thought of is the fact that the letters Q and Z moved key about 10 years ago (so quoting the number "1-800 QUALITY" is likely to produce misdials for customers with old handsets and the Q on the wrong button). This is a commercial website and not something I'd claim as a RS, but take a look at [1].
  • Commercial value and cost of misdials - the same link affirms some business practices related to misdials (I can't find an obvious RS; my guess would be a book about business communication). Misdials to a company cost money (time to answer non-valuable calls). There are some ways to screen them out (e.g. screening out-of-area calls) but that may result in lost sales. On the other hand, traffic to numbers that are likely misdials may have commercial value. A company may seek to acquire numbers that are likely misdials of its own, or to steal traffic from competitors. There are communications companies that sell "misdial solutions" such as at the link above.
  • Prank calls - there is a genre of "wrong number" prank calls. This is a common product of prank call companies (I won't give a link here, but stick "wrong number prank call" into your search engine of choice and you'll get enough hits to indicate this) - not certain how to find reliable sources for that fact (am guessing a news or magazine article about pranks calls) but it is is basically uncontentious. The flip side are acts like Touch-Tone Terrorists who purchased likely common misdials to particular services (e.g. a psychic line) and took incoming calls to them, in a kind of reverse prank call. There are CDs published that are devoted to the genre. It may be worth investigating celebrity prank callers on radio, to see if either kind of wrong number prank has been widely reported in their repertory. (Tommy & Rumble perhaps?)
  • Miscellaneous - I strongly suspect that the incidence of misdialled numbers has fallen since the rise of the cellphone, an interesting possible factoid that wouldn't belong in a dictionary. However I haven't yet dug up a RS for this. Do major phone companies issue advice to their subscribers about what to do when you receive a wrong number call? (I suspect so, would have to look about.) Are wrong number calls a common plot device in literature and drama? Google turned up a Japanese comic series in which a wrong number call leads to the protagonist becoming involved with the caller, but I am unable to ascertain the notability of that series. I would be astonished if that is the only incidence of missed numbers in fiction. There are also presumably some notable instances of misdialled numbers in real life: e.g. Caryl Chessman's stay of execution was telephoned in, but allegedly it was initially misdialled so the execution took place anyway. (I didn't spot a RS for the misdial claim in our article on Chessman, but it seems to commonly made).
  • In summary of this brainstorming, I do believe there is enough for a decent article if this one is extended. The fact that a lot of it seems "obvious" is besides the point. However digging up reliable sources will be a little work; a particular problem is that "misdial" and "wrong number" are often used as incredibly witty puns by writers and scholars, so as search terms they produce a lot of false positives. TheGrappler (talk) 04:01, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
• Redirect to Wrong number (disambiguation), however, I would not oppose re-creation of the article if it was built in accordance with WP:V in line with TheGrappler's suggestions. Location (talk) 03:03, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Keep The nominator asserts that the article is not capable of improvement but I see no evidence that this has been tried. There was not, for example, a talk page for this article until I created one just now. A brief perusal of the sources indicates that there is an extensive literature on the wrong number technique which has been used in numerous experiments studying behaviour when persons suppose that they are anonymous. This alone makes the topic of considerable relevance to Wikipedia. I suppose that there is coverage of other aspects of the topic too and there are so many thousands of sources to sift through that we have barely scratched the surface. Wikipedia does not have a deadline and our editing policy is to tolerate poor articles rather than to delete them out of sheer impatience. Colonel Warden (talk) 17:23, 27 August 2009 (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.