Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery


 * 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. (non-admin closure) -- Dane 2007  talk 18:40, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Non-notable heavy artillery regiment. Unreferenced since November 2015. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 17:04, 1 August 2016 (UTC)


 * See also related Articles for deletion/Battery A, 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery which calls for deletion of separate articles on Battery A, Battery B, Battery C, etc. -- do ncr  am  23:54, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. It is referenced. Premise of AFD is wrong.
 * By the way, it was a US Civil War regiment, so it was no doubt covered in other military reports of the time. The war was very well documented. I think a regiment is large enough to ensure, like a secondary school, that there will be notable alumni, published letters home, etc., but not online because it has been 161 years. -- do ncr  am  21:01, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually some of the [available] sources are online, in the Google books results. Officer Horatio Rogers lived to 1904. Photos. Memoir of a chaplain. New York Times coverage. Etc. -- do ncr  am  21:09, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
 * To respond to several digs below: the article was created in this initial edit complete with all or almost all info in the article when the AFD started, with SOURCE clearly given in its own section (the 1865 Report of the Adjutant General of Rhode Island).  That is evidence that the editor User:Jmgould meant that all of the info was sourced from that report.  There's mention further below of a compendium by author Dyer (thank you to User:AustralianRupert for your attention here).  Maybe Dyer and the R.I. Adjutant General both compended from the same military source, or Dyer compended from the R.I. Adjutant General.  I personally imagine that the same information appears in more than one source, because it is a factual list of places where the regiment went, and it probably would not have been a copyright violation back then, even using today's copyright standards, to copy it.  It's also possible the editor completely made up all of the information in the article out of thin air, but I doubt that. :) -- do  ncr  am  22:51, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment - It's referenced? What exact piece of information in the article is stated to have come from the "reference" given?  "Sources" aren't just "I put some text in there that looks right, so it's sourced now."  That "reference", by the way, is available online, is over 750 pages long, and is a primary source not suitable for establishing notability.  Therefore, an incomplete citation isn't going to be sufficient here.  This has got to meet WP:MILUNIT. MSJapan (talk) 05:49, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:NUKEANDPAVE. Let a conscientious editor write this article properly. While the unit meets MILUNIT and there are sources out there I see no point in keeping this mess. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 07:34, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 09:10, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions.  Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 09:10, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Rhode Island-related deletion discussions.  Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 09:10, 2 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. Battalion- and regiment-size units are generally notable. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:47, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep - regiments are notable for the ACW, this specific one will be much more linked if the individual companies will get deleted (as is in discussion, too) and those who don´t like the article are free to improve it ...GELongstreet (talk) 16:21, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete - Necrothesp is correct, but so is Christroutman, and I believe the need to write an encyclopedia article that clearly indicates where its material is sourced from (WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT) is much more important to encyclopedic integrity than having a cut-and-paste job to show that "some sort of information exists in some fashion someplace" (which is about as specific as it can get at present). As far as I am concerned, this article is unsourced - without specific pages given, I have no empirical proof that the information in the article as presented exists in the source. MSJapan (talk) 16:24, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep: I'm pretty certain that the majority of the info was taken by the original editor from Dyer's Compendium, which can be found here in various formats: I'm having serious trouble downloading it, so I will ping  who I believe has a copy of the work (per this: User:Adamdaley/Personal Library). Adam, are you able to check your copy of Dyer's work and confirm whether the information in the article currently presented comes from that source? Beyond that, it seems to me that the topic passes the WP:GNG, although the article is most certainly in need of being rewritten. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 13:56, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your effort. I found my way to a browsable version of the Emory.Edu version of Dyer.  I first saw the source in a page where there was what looked like a shrunk-down image of the book.  I had to zoom in somehow (there are + and - magnification buttons at lower right) and then it is fine...it is the book itself. This is page 39 of the document, where Rhode Island's 41 separate units are listed (including, separately, Battery A,B,...M of the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery.  The document is displayed "2-up", and I can page left or right, and using a slider along the bottom I can go anywhere from beginning to end (page 1810).  It is organized into three parts, with the unit-by-unit histories listed by state alphabetically in the third part.  I just browsed until i get to Rhode Island's start.  The Rhode Island units' histories begin at page 1633 of the document (page with printed number 1627).  The compendium doesn't begin the section by saying where the Rhode Island info comes from, but I presume it is a full copy of the Rhode Island Adjutant-General's 1865 report.  This is surely in the public domain and it is fine by me if the initial version of the article was cut and pasted from there.  It seems to have been slightly reworded here and there.  Oh, now I see that User:Anotherclown has this Dyer source all figured out and has already put in some specific page references, e.g. page 1634, into the article.  Hopefully this comment still helps. -- do  ncr  am  23:27, 3 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep - from a fairly brief interweb search I found a few books (Cox, Dyer, and Grandchamp) that include quite a bit of coverage (multiple pages in each), whilst the regiment also seems to receive some passing mention in many more (9,000 + hits in Google books). There also seems to be quite a few websites of varying quality. Whilst I agree that the article has numerous issues I'm not sure WP:TNT is the way to go. I admit to having little knowledge of researching American Civil War units but I did uncover some promising sources so I'd imagine a specialist would be able to find many others. This leads me to believe that the assumption of the general notability of units of this size in WP:MILUNIT is a reasonable one and that there is likely to be significant coverage per the requirements of WP:GNG. I'd suggest merging all the subunit articles into the regimental article as this should easily allow a fairly decent article to be written to cover the activities of them all (whilst individual sub-unit articles would probably be difficult to sustain). I've now made some changes to the article in an attempt to clean it up a bit and add what referenced information I found that seemed relevant. In doing so I removed a chunk of unreferenced material but of cse would be quite happy for it to be worked back in by other editors if they are able to provide the appropriate references. Anotherclown (talk) 00:30, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep -- The statement on "the largest unit fielded by Rhode Island during the war, with more than 2,000 men" makes it a notable unit. The article appears to be reasonably well sourced at the moment. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:15, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep -- Even though it maybe unreferenced it still has and is a Regiment in Rhode Island Civil War for the Union. It only needs to be referenced. Adamdaley (talk) 08:01, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep - Per all the above.VictoriaGraysonTalk 02:18, 8 August 2016 (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.