Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Illumina Methylation Assay

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 consensus that the subject was notable, and that the current article is troublesome because of the promotional tone. However, there is no consensus on whether the problems are so serious that deletion is warranted, and as such I will give the "keep" side the benefit of the doubt and hope some rewrite addresses the problems in the article. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Illumina Methylation Assay[edit]

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I declined a speedy deletion nomination on this as spam for Infinium. Promotional tone, and "sourced" to another Wikipedia article (among other things); but may be notable - leaving it to the discretion of others. Orange Mike | Talk 04:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I find it very difficult to evaluate an article if I can't tell what it's about. The lead of this article tells us what Illumina Methylation Assay uses, what it generates, what it doesn't encompass, what it can measure and what it can play a significant role in, but wtf is it? If anyone can tell me that then I'll have a go at checking for notability. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:43, 4 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, JForget 22:39, 9 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Potential Delete as advertising. All this does is describe the methodology (and usage) of a methylation assay produced by Illumina. There's nothing here to suggest that their product is any more notable than their competitors. It might also fall under WP:NOTHOWTO, but I'd have to wait for a colleague in Molecular Biology to tell me how generalizable this procedure would be. Bfigura ^(talk) 04:25, 10 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Provisionally keep. DNA methylation is thought to be very important in affecting how easily a gene is turned on or not. This chip assays, in one hit, the amount of methylation at each of 15,000 genes. So given a bit of tissue - eg from part of a developing embryo of an organism; or part of a cancer growth; or whatever - this chip gives a strong steer as to which of those genes look to be unusually strongly turned on (or unusually strongly turned off). Which could be just what you need to know for cutting edge functional genomics. In response to Bfigura, yes, it would be better if the article did more to establish what the competitive landscape is around Illumina's chip -- ie who else may be making microarray chips, and where the technology fits in with the list of methods at DNA_methylation#Assays_to_Detect_DNA_Methylation. But IMO those are ways in which the article could be improved, not grounds for deleting it. I can't say it's an area I'm an expert in, but my understanding is that this field of microarray assays is pretty much dominated by Affymetrix and Illumina. If I am right in thinking that this is a current state-of-the art tool with very limited competition, then it is something we should certainly keep an article on. "Illumina Methylation" pulls up a lot of hits on Google Scholar, which also suggests notability. Jheald (talk) 18:26, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- response that sounds like an argument for the creation of an article (methlation assays or some such), not for the retention of this article. --Orange Mike | Talk 22:55, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- More or less my point. But what I don't know (and what i think Jheald is getting at) is that it might be easy to convert this article to a more general one on methylation assays. But I don't know if that's true, or if so, how to go about it. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 23:41, 11 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - The two approaches aren't necessarily in conflict. We can have an article for Ford Mondeo as well as one for large family car. Jheald (talk) 15:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - In addition to the ford mondeo however we have several other cars ever the Lada Riva. Here we have a lonely product. I have actually done a methylation assay and you can use any genomic (not transcript) array as the trick is with the bisulfate + enzyme treatment and not with your state of the art platform, so this is blatantly a illumina advert, but it is well written. I have spent ages fighting incorrect edits by what I assume are high school kids/undergrads on DNA microarray so it is a sin deleting something correct. I vote to change into a Methylation assay page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Squidonius (talk • contribs) 05:46, 13 October 2009

I work with the array; it is probably impossible for anyone to judge any information on it without significant background, since it is highly specific matter. Nevertheless, the information here is a more or less copy-paste of promotional materials by the company - my impression is that an employee was assigned with wiki entry (do not want to jump into conclusions though). The overall quality of the entry is rather poor, and I think it requires substantial rewriting in order to make any sense to inexperienced reader (even any reader at all). I suggest not keeping it in this form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.183.11 (talk) 16:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Provisional keep. This article is currently fundamentally an advertisement and only experts can tell whether the sources are about the method generally or the product. ^Bongo_matic 05:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What do you need to accept my point as a point of "expertise?" Will be happy to provide it, since this is an advertisement and it should not be included in its present form here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.37.202.104 (talk) 15:24, 15 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep Big Way (talk) 04:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep but rewrite. There are at least 3 published peer-reviewed articles in good quality reliable journals with very substantial coverage about it specifically as a method: Pfeiffer et al, Gunderson et al, and Staff et al. & that is sufficient for a specific article. I have not yet made a search for articles published using the technique, but if there are many, that would be relevant also. What is not appropriate is the extent of detail on how to use it. We're not a lab manual. What's needed is the informations so that someone can understand it. fig. 2 is unnecessary, as are details like number of repeat cycles, and the proprietary names of all the software. What needs to be added is a clear brief statement of how this is different from other microarray methods. Is this, for example, the only so far developed microarray methylation method? If no one else cuts the article, I'll give a try, but my knowledge is second-hand. DGG ( talk ) 06:41, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

delete or wp:incubate this could serve as a good base for an article on methlation assay or similar UltraMagnus^speak 12:36, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On what basis? Solely because the article is poorly written? I don't think that's a consensus reason for deletion or removal from article space. Can you please clarify? ^Bongo_matic 12:57, 17 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the votes to keep, I think diverting the attention of experts in the subject is wasteful, as there are less specific articles needing attention more (microarray itself). Regarding the fact that a votes from experts are needed, see above: I (aspiring expert) and another expert user have voted delete. Incubate however sound like a nice option. --Squidonius (talk) 17:08, 19 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, but only because it is so promotional. The writing is clearly by someone in the company's employ, and this COI has tainted this article irretrievably. Additionally, once the how-to is stripped from the article, very little remains for an encyclopedic treatment. Q: What information would a user of Wikipedia need to know about this topic? A: Not the company sales pitch, that's for sure. They'd want to know if the system sucks compared to its competitors. Wikipedia exists to tell users the real deal about the topics it covers. Abductive (reasoning) 03:55, 25 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - not a joke, not merely promotional, a real process, which may be notable. This may need expertise to fix up. I can't help, as I haven't done any laboratory work in biology since 1986. Bearian (talk) 02:17, 27 October 2009 (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.