Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Al Zaghab


 * 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 all.  Majorly   (hot!)  20:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Al Zaghab

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Unreferenced articles about a Palestinian tribe and its clans. Given the low number of Google hits, there doesn't seem to be sufficient notability given the lack of any sources whatsoever. YechielMan 04:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Relevant for anyone interested in Palestinians and their ethno-political dynamics, quite a hot topic these days. It should be  better referenced, although sources in Arabic may be all one can find. Still, it provides apparently credible and quite significant contextual information. WP:BIAS may be an issue here. Stammer 05:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep as per Stammer. Because English articles are not forthcoming doesn't mean notability isn't established - There's possibly 1000s of articles in Arabic! --Richhoncho 08:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, only reason for deletion given is a lack of Google hits, which is a very poor criterion. The articles cover historical clans, some of which date back a long time. References should be not hard to find for people who have knowledge of and access to Arabic or Hebrew sources. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 11:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment We are discussing the nomination and not the nominator here. The distinction may be subtle sometimes, but for civilised debate it is an essential one. Stammer 12:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, changed my remark slightly. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 12:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ravenswing ''']] 16:24, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Conditional Keep assuming they can be referenced. Lack of ghits alone is not a qualifier for deletion, but if it cannot be verified at all then it fails WP:ATT.  Hesitant to !vote delete since i am unfamiliar with the subject and sources may be found in non-english languages, but it's also no excuse for having articles with nothing to back up their claims of existence, let alone importance.  Ar ky an  • (talk) 15:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete All: I'll give a good reason for deletion: these articles completely fail WP:ATT. They were created in November of 2006, unimproved since, and there is no reason to presume that they will be improved now.  Assertions that people should just go and research references are in direct contradiction to the requirements of WP:ATT -- to quote, "The burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to add or retain the material. If an article topic has no reliable sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."  I suggest that the the Keep !voters not just presume (in the face of a complete lack of evidence) that these subjects are notable; rather that they demonstrate it. [[User:Ravenswing|'''
 * WP:ATT is a proposed guideline, hence not a requirement. Still, lack of any sourcing here is a problem. Stammer 17:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * ... and stems directly from WP:V, which is copper-bottomed official policy, so let's not be needlessly pedantic. To quote Jimbo in this official policy, "I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced."   Ravenswing  17:54, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete All If we don't give WP:ATT any credence than how about WP:V. What ever the case may be with policy shifting the fundamentals stay the same: No sources then no article. --Daniel J. Leivick 17:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Can't agree that the solution for lack of sourcing is immediate deletion; however, the author has stated a lot of rather trivial facts without an assertion of notability. --Kevin Murray 21:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Conditional Keep I'd like to see two things established in each article: (1) definition that demonstrates that the "tribes" are of significant size, prominnence, and durability as to be more than extended familes, and (2) some assertion that there is notability in this series collectively and individually. Could this be better handled in a single collective article?  Achieving my wish list should be accompanied by some reasonable assurance that sources can be obtained per WP:N. --Kevin Murray 21:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, assuming sources can be found.--Kathy A. 22:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, probably as one merged article, but  apparently the relationship between them is complex, and I leave this to the experts.--Assuming sources., which seems reasonable. DGG 00:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Palestine-related deletion discussions.  cab 00:29, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment (edit conflict) There are a number of steps that could have been taken with these articles that would be far more appropriate and useful than merely tagging with unreferenced and expecting that someone would magically come along and clean it up, then bringing it to AfD to be hurriedly looked over by a bunch of people who can't speak Arabic. One obvious thing would be to bring it to the attention of WikiProject Palestine or other Arabic speakers. In practise, Pages needing translation into English is also sometimes used to request verification by a foreign-language speaker for articles which can't be sourced in English. On the other hand, countering systemic bias is not a reason to keep non-notable or non-verifiable material, though it may be a reason to allow people more time to get sources, or to give more weight to GHits from countries with little Internet presence, or to recuse yourself from voting either Keep or Delete if you can't contribute usefully to the process of figuring out whether something is notable or not. cab 00:29, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment cab's argument is valid, but I see another side of the issue . I will give with an example first. Wikipedia provides a substantial amount of information about the Somali Civil War, the clans and the personalities involved and various aspects of Somali history and culture. Much of that is unsourced. Still, on the whole, the information available conveys a vivid and complex picture, where a discerning eye can at least try to separate the wheat from the chaff. I regard that as a truly remarkable Wikipedia achievement. While I think that a strict application of WP:V is essential for "mature" topics (such as, say, Physiocrats or Foucault pendulum), its indiscriminate application to borderline situations would simply destroy value. Palestinian clans are, IMO, a notable topic. I agree that sourcing is a serious problem here, but dubious information is better than nothing. Stammer 16:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I mostly agree, but I don't see sourcing as the immediate problem. I just don't see the assertion of notability at most of the pages.  Why the topic is notable should be apparent to the reader.  --Kevin Murray 16:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment: I am increasingly uneasy here. These articles represent the sole contribution to Wikipedia of User:Phsychyzed, of which he says of himself on his talk page "Phsychyzed is a nickname created by child and has now risen to be one of the most famous "nicknames" in use on the internet.Nobody really knows what the nickname resembles but ofcourse many have given the simplest of guess where phsychy means crazy and zed just being the alphabet letter."  The earliest of these articles is over a year old now, and at no point has any attempt to improve most of them been made.  Right now the only info I'm seeing on the web refers to (a) these articles and their mirrors, (b) repeated blogging by a Jordanian teenagers named Al Zeitawi looking for pen pals; and (c) a business by that name in Abu Dhabi.  There are no verifiable sources for this info, not a single one.  I understand that people want to bend over backwards to be Arab-friendly here, but I strongly suspect WP:HOAX at this point.    Ravenswing  17:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete All I was going to vote "Keep", but I get very uneasy as I look at the evidence per Ravenswing. If I was documenting local tribes in my neighbourhood, I'd have gone back and added further details, not simply created more and more new pages, none of them with significant details. Tribes cluster round rivers or quarries or sacred sites, I see no evidence of that here. It could be ethno-prejudicial to delete simply because we don't have anything in the way of English references - but I think it's probably justified in this case. PalestineRemembered 21:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete all per WP:RS--Sefringle 22:08, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment In the Arabic Wikipedia there is a very strict rule about clans and family names. They are not allowed.  While I know a few people with some of these last names, I don't know the history of the tribes, and cannot verify them.  There seems to be somewhat different guidelines here, and the issue seems whether it's verifiable or not.  I disagree with PalestineRemembered that we should remove them all because they're written by the same person.  He/she could be an expert on the history of Jammain.  I agree with Kevin Murray that we need to establish the significance of these tribes.  I'm leaning more towards a delete all at this point, or possibly merging all the info into an article about Jammain. I will do a Google search in Arabic on these family names, and see what I get, and update this page accordingly.  --Fjmustak 22:41, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Update: I did a quick search, Jammain is a village of about 6500 (according to the municipality website. Another website http://www.zaghab.com/ mentions in the "Family History" section that "Zaghab زغب ( Al-zaghabالزغب) is a family lives in the village of Jammaeen, a suburb of the city of Nablus in Palestine. It is a branch of  Zitawi زيتاوي ( Al-Zitawi الزيتاوي ) clan.Zitawi زيتاوي ( Al-Zitawi الزيتاوي ) clan is an Arab Clan that migrated from Jerusalem to settle in the village of Jammaeen. Zitawi زيتاوي ( Al-Zitawi الزيتاوي ) clan consists of 8 smaller branches Zaghab زغب ( Al-zaghab الزغب), Al Hamad, Al Sharei, Al Khalil, Al Sheikh Saleh, Abdul Jaleel, Al Sheikh Ahmed, and Al Eisa. In total the Zitawi زيتاوي ( Al-Zitawi الزيتاوي ) clan form a population of around 2500."  Therefore IFF one article is to be kept it should be Zitawi, since it is the "parent" clan.  --Fjmustak 22:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Fjmustak, could you explain to us the rationale by which articles on family and clan names are excluded from the Arabic WP? It seems from my (ignorant) perspective an unusual restriction, so I'd like to find out something about the reasons. DGG 04:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * An article on Jammain, into which this info can be merged, would make some sense. But c'mon, folks, what if this was a bunch of articles based around a small village in Ireland?  "The O'Traynors are an old family and some people say they've been around since the time of the Milesians."  That's not remotely notable, however much Irish family conflicts might be abstractly considered important, and so far there's no evidence that these are either.   Ravenswing  14:26, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete all Notability not established, combined with the editorial history of User:Phsychyzed. Also fails on WP:RS. Fishhead64 18:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Unreferenced. Could conceivably be merged into one article with a great deal of work, but unacceptable as is. Salad Days 19:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep information in one whole, new page. AW 22:27, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep I added the relevant references for the articles.Also i would like to like to mention that the article is going to be part of a larger more notable article which i am intending to write soon.As for the username I am using my sons wikipedia account and I really have no idea what he edits and posts . — Preceding unsigned comment added by Phsychyzed (talk • contribs) 00:29, 17 April 2007
 * Keep per the previous comments by User:Phsychyzed, who wrote the articles. I believe they should be merged because the content and references overlap, but that's a separate issue.  I can read Arabic well enough to affirm that the references appear to be legitimate.  Note that I nominated the articles for deletion; from my point of view, it's only a question of "no consensus" versus "keep" (or "merge"). YechielMan 01:26, 17 April 2007 (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.