Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nose grease

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. I would say there isn't agreement on whether to keep or merge the article, and the merge camp doesn't seem to have a unified voice on where to merge that would be appropriate. The best solution is to keep for now; merging can be done through {{mergeto}} (or just done boldly). Mangojuice^talk 13:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Nose grease

PROD removed by author. Unencyclopedic, joke/trivia article with a single reference (which pertains to something appropriate for a trivia book), otherwise unverifiable folklore and college drinking humor. Delete. MCB 05:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• College drinking yes, humor no -- nose grease really can be used as a defoaming agent and really does reduce head on beer; it is verifiable to anyone with access to both a nose and beer. Nose grease as an antireflective coating was a major step forward in optics design -- Lyot's coronagraph was astounding in its day and led (indirectly) to the development of antireflective interference coatings. keep. zowie 05:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• "Verifiable to anyone with access to a nose and beer" is (1) not what Wikipedia means by verifiable, and is a cute drinking trick that might belong in a trivia book, not an encyclopedia. Same with the reference to the optical use, which is clearly some sort of science humor, unless there was something alleged to be unique about the properties of this material, which has not been shown. And "can be used as a light-duty lubricant (for example to stop door hinges from creaking)"? Come on. That's completely unremarkable. What's next, toe-jam as insulation? --MCB 05:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I wrote the original stub but did not add the beer reference. It is indeed quite remarkable that the human body yields small quantities of durable lubricant. zowie 05:28, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. Seems to me that I've heard of this before (though using a different name than "nose grease", involving the syllable "septa-") and Google Scholar actually yields a few related hits under that name:

• Various methods are suggested by electron microscopists such as buying only one brand of glass slides, rubbing the slides with nose grease prior to dipping... (from Biological Electron Microscopy: Theory, Techniques, and Troubleshooting, (Page 243) by Michael J Dykstra & Laura E Reuss.
• Clean the collet with steel wool, and add a dab of nose grease (body oil from your face) to keep the shank from freezing up again. (from Trim Carpentry Techniques: Installing Doors, Windows, Base, and Crown (Page 35) by Craig Savage

--Calton | Talk 06:06, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Merge and Redirect sebum unless and until something more coherent develops that makes it worth a separate article. The stuff appears to be also known as "nose oil" or "squalene", and is useful for lubricating watches (THAT'S where I heard of it). Looks real. --Calton | Talk 06:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
  • We have articles on squalene and sebum. Uncle G 11:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Redirect? -- saberwyn 11:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and WP:V. Zunaid 09:20, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, it does offer what appears to be a journal reference, that's um, nothing to sneeze at. (Ba-Dum-Bump!) Seriously though, Redirect to squalene seems to be in order. --Roninbk _{t c e #} 13:47, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment The journal reference is bogus. I looked and so did the article author and we both agree that the reference to nose grease isn't actually there. But even if it was, is it actually encyclopedic? I think it's borderline at best. IMO, if you take out the folksy 'uses' for nose grease, you get a stub that's no different from a stub called 'Forehead grease' or 'Chin grease' or (my favourite) 'Chest grease'. If anything, I think the items on beer and lenses (if they can be sourced) should be in a section on sebum. Anchoress 19:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - In five minutes, I'm finding references to nose grease in photography, in coin collecting, and in beer drinking. Seems like a notable, if weird, topic. I don't think sebum really covers the uses people have found for nose grease, and I don't think that a section about that would be appropriate for that article. --Hyperbole 20:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• MergeNose grease from one particular workman was used to lubricate leaf shutters of cameras being refurbished at a factory where I once worked. Chin grease or forehead grease were not used.Merge this somewhere under body fluids or lubricants.Edison 20:18, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. There seem to be some real-world references beyond the novelty character of this article. LHOON 14:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
• Merge verifiable [against all odds], Tewfik^Talk 03:51, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
• Further comment. My issue with the article is not so much the verifiability (which remains somewhat sketchy in any case) of the individual factoids, but that they are more suited to something like 1000 Fun Facts About the Human Body than an encyclopedia. As trivia items, the strongly sourced ones deserve at most perhaps a sentence in the sebum or squalene articles. --MCB 17:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• Hmmm... Using other articles as benchmarks, one might certainly speculate that teabagging is no more notable than nose grease, except for its gross-out value. Some of the other applications probably need to be added (such as the counterfeiting etc. that can be found with Google), if the article be kept. I have not been editing it so as to allow the debate to proceed.

For what it's worth, I did hear back from Hal Zirin about his (attempted) use of nose oil at the Climax solar observatory. He certainly tried it, following in Lyot's footsteps. He wrote that he can't remember where he learned about it, but that it was certainly common knowledge in the solar observing community in the 1970s. (Hal never met Lyot directly, though they worked with many of the same people). zowie 18:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment The point is, if the unsubstantiated items are removed, all that remains is a stub saying that nose grease comes from the nose. Is that encyclopedic? Anchoress 18:26, 11 October 2006 (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.