Talk:Captaincy Colonies of Brazil

Delete, redirect, or keep
I'd like to open the discussion of the destiny of this page. The information here is replicated at Captaincies of Brazil, or if any is overlooked, it can easily be added there. If this article is replaced with a redirect to Captaincies of Brazil, or to an appropriate section there (such as Captaincies of Brazil#Captaincy Colonies of Brazil), the information is just as accessible to those who are searching for it. Maybe we don't even need a redirect - search should pick up the section name 'Captaincy Colonies of Brazil' in the article Captaincies of Brazil.

I'd also like to point out, that the nature of the article is more like a definition than an encyclopedia article - what might be here, but isn't is information like: i) what happened in the colonies; ii) where exactly were they located; iii) who owned them; iv) who donated them; v) how were their boundaries defined; v) what were their charters; vi) why did they fail; vii) what were the local forms of government; viii) info about population, demographics, local natural resources, etc. If this article is to be kept, that's the info that would justify keeping it.

The wikilinks for each of the Captaincy names (except two) are just superfluous, inviting someone to create more pages with nothing on them but a name and definition. Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Sbalfour (talk) 23:28, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

In accordance with WP:ATD-M: "If two pages are duplicates or otherwise redundant, one should be merged and redirected to the other, using the most common, or more general page name. This does not require process or formal debate beforehand.", I'm merging this article into Captaincies of Brazil. I've followed a process here: 1) tag the article for merging and add a reason section to the talk page; 2)notify interested parties and projects on their talk pages; 3) wait some amount of time for reply/consensus(a week in this case); 4)merge the article - in this case replace the article with a redirect. A slight rewording on the merged-to article page may be necessary.

Note: 1) the only cited reference is not an acceptable source (somebody's website says?), therefore the article is unsourced WP:"A citation is any description of a reliable source"; 2) the article completely duplicates (i.e. cut and pasted text and image) the merged-to article - not one word will be lost from the encyclopedia by so merging; 3) the substance of the article is an out-of-context fragment, and not likely to ever be enlarged- it isn't enough to sustain separate article status; 5) as a usage issue, two articles with semantically indistinguishable names and duplicate content are confusing to readers, and should be combined and clarified.

I've received no response either from interested parties directly, or on the talk page here. An administrator I consulted didn't see any issue with my merge proposal, or the process I'm following. So I don't know how to get a consensus - if no one is interested enough in this article to respond on its talk page, I'm going to exercise my best judgement. I will say, that I won't permit this article to be reverted without proper sourcing: WP:"unsourced material may be challenged and removed". The cited website can't be reused as a source, and neither can the supposed document cited there, unless someone can actually obtain, read, translate, and properly cite (i.e. page number) the document. Somebody says that some document says is hearsay.Sbalfour (talk) 18:58, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Unreliable source
The entire content of this article was essentially created by transliteration of text from a single website, whose veracity is unknown. The website in turn cites a single reference, whose complete citation should look something like this:

Joaquim Romero Magalhães, Tomé de Souza e a instituição do governo geral. Documentos, Lisboa/Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, Mare Liberum (separata), n. 17, 1999.

Of course, that document can't be located. Sbalfour (talk) 20:03, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Image (map) dated 1574 incorrect - deleting
The image of the map is from 1574, at a time when Captainicies were no longer colonies, but under a governorate general. Furthermore, the Captaincies were structurally different in 1574 (some were merged, others were split off), so the map is not an accurate depiction of the Colonies prior to 1549. The image was cut/pasted erroneously from Captaincies of Brazil or elsewhere.Sbalfour (talk) 19:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)