Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-paganism influenced by Saint Ambrose


 * 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 delete. The articles content is covered in other articles and is in many instances derived from them which renders the need for a merge here as moot. Seddon talk 20:05, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Anti-paganism influenced by Saint Ambrose

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Too specific and brief to deserve a standalone article. The topic should ideally be brought up at Ambrose simply, and is already covered more properly elsewhere, for example at Massacre of Thessalonica. I did a WP:BEFORE (see talk) and found some reliable sources, and these suggest that the limited source material used here (three are simply copied from another's footnote and a fourth is a deadlink) is outdated. I'm not quite on board with merging since there's little of value here is and the current title makes for a strange search term. Avilich (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Avilich (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Avilich (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Avilich (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Paganism-related deletion discussions. Avilich (talk) 18:49, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Initially I proposed to move the article due to the weird title. However, now I realise that most sources don't use the term "antipaganism" and that this topic is better covered in Ambrose article. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  19:53, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. No need for a separate article here. Srnec (talk) 03:07, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. I agree there is no need for a separate article. While I do think a well-sourced discussion of this topic would be a good thing for the encyclopedia to have somewhere, I think I will work on it and add it to the main article on Ambrose. It doesn't deserve to be more than a subsection. Since most of this article is inaccurate, and heavily non-NPOV, I vote to Delete.Jenhawk777 (talk) 04:57, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete "influenced by" is just weasel words. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:30, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete not even worth a redirect, sorry. Richard Keatinge (talk) 09:42, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Merge into Saint Ambrose and other relevant articles. The nominator, Buidhe, Srnec, and Jenhawk all seem to agree that the topic should be covered by Wikipedia, but not as a stand-alone article.  That alone means that merger and not deletion is the correct procedure.  The claim that the sources are all outdated should be treated skeptically, since the field is classics, and most of the sources cited have publication dates from the last forty years (plus one from 1961, and—gasp—one from 1933!  Sacrilege!).  Actually I'm astonished that Gibbon isn't cited here, since he's still an important writer on this period of Roman history, and on this theme in particular.  It doesn't matter if sources from the last twenty years—oh, wait, the last seventeen, so we can exclude the 2003 one—say that Gibbon and everybody else who wrote before them was off their rocker and didn't know what they were talking about, or even if the entire universe of classicists agrees that it's indisputable, scientific fact.  If Saint Ambrose, Theodosius, and Symmachus come back to life and testify before a choir of angels on live network television that everybody before 2004 got it wrong, what was previously believed and written about this topic remains notable and relevant.
 * That doesn't determine the weight that should be accorded it or which sources should be cited (although, as I said, Gibbon at least seems like a given) or what conclusions are drawn from all of the sources put together. You can still say that everybody before 2004 was wrong, you can write it entirely in your own words, and you don't have to keep any particular source just because it's in this article—but you can't wallpaper over the fact that scholarship used to contend something other than what scholarship after 2003 says, and that means you can't delete this article without going through the merger process.
 * TL:DR: even if reliable sources disprove everything the sources cited by this article say, if the topic should be discussed in other articles, then the article has to be merged, not deleted, whether or not you keep any of the text or sources as written. P Aculeius (talk) 11:19, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with this.★Trekker (talk) 11:38, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This post requires a careful rebuttal since its author ignores or misrepresents my points and doesn't seem to have his definitions in order. First of all, I already made a careful case for deletion (WP:BEFORE), with reliable sources, on the article's talk page. P Aculeus shows no awareness of it – though I stated it explicitly in the nomination – else he would've known that I do not, in fact, dismiss most of the sources as simply outdated. I simply note that many of them are not actually fully referenced or even used, and are instead copied from another's footnote; and that another is a deadlink; and I go no further than claiming that the article's single sourced excerpt is incorrect and outdated. Second, 'merging' means copying some content and pasting elsewhere. It's not clear how some editors thinking the topic doesn't deserve a separate page means "that merger and not deletion is the correct procedure". Less clear even is the functional difference between deletion and merging in this article's case in particular, given the paucity of referenced material. The correct thing to ask here is whether there's anything of value in this article worth taking to others. In the talk page WP:BEFORE, I make the specific argument that this isn't the case here, with reliable sources and everything. P Aculeius had several days to go there and prove me wrong; this he did not do, and instead waited for me to open this AfD so he could cast confusion on the issue with an unnecessarily long and misleading rationale. I sincerely doubt Aculeius or Trekker have any interest in improving this category of articles. They had two separate chances to make contributions to this one in particular and they both refused. I (and at least one other editor who voted delete above) have actually gone through the trouble of reading and consulting sources before passing judgement on the nomination. As long as the case for supposed merging remains improperly justified, this is just really a delete vs redirect debate. I ask that the overseeing admin take this into account when closing this discussion. Avilich (talk) 15:25, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think you're reading what I've been saying—I don't have to prove anything, or improve the article in order to prevent its deletion. The difference between merger and deletion is the difference between treating the subject in a more appropriate place and wiping away all trace of it.  You're not satisfied with the content of the article, and that means that this should never have been a deletion discussion.  You don't like the sources, you don't like the citations, you don't like the conclusions—but if the topic still needs to be treated somewhere then this is not a subject for deletion.  You opened this discussion at CGR and I responded there, saying much the same thing as I am here, but you didn't seem to be any more receptive then.  This nomination says, "these suggest that the limited source material used here (three are simply copied from another's footnote and a fourth is a deadlink) is outdated."  That's the opposite of saying "only one source is outdated".  But again, the state of sourcing in an article is a content issue, and deletion is about whether the subject should be treated in Wikipedia at all.  Please stop trying to shift the focus to my supposed ignorance, lack of awareness, desire to misrepresent your position, desire to cast confusion with long and misleading rationales, lack of interest in improving articles, and sundry other accusations.  P Aculeius (talk) 16:11, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * An AfD vote should be straightforward: vote merge if you think something specific in the article needs to go somewhere else; keep if you'd like to keep the article; and delete if you think an article misleads readers, has little of worth, or doesn't otherwise comply with WP policy. It means absolutely nothing that an article's specific issue just happens to be related to content or whatever. Wikipedia policy reasonably expects you to take responsibility for your suggestions to an article, rather than simply sit down and demand other editors do things on your terms while you sit down and do nothing. For example, a keep voter shouldn't declare an article needs to kept while making no suggestion as to how this can happen or expecting other editors to do the work for him. So, I'll ask again, in what way can this article be merged, and how will it be different from deleting or redirecting? Give me a real answer, one that shows that your suggestion is superior and will have a concrete and noticeable impact on Wikipedia, rather than simply weaseling your way out of the argument with nonsense like 'it's content related' without giving any further explanation, and 'I don't have to prove anything'. Avilich (talk) 17:04, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * As the nominator, the burden is on you to show that absolutely nothing in this article is worth saving, including the point of view and any sources already cited, or which could reasonably be found and added (since inadequate sourcing, or even a complete lack of sourcing, is not a reason to delete an article). Several people in this discussion, including you, seem to think that the topic of this article needs to be treated somewhere in Wikipedia—just not as a stand-alone article.  Therefore, the burden is yours to ensure that such treatment exists in one or more appropriate articles, such that the loss of this article doesn't leave readers without any information about the topic.  The mere potential for this topic to be discussed elsewhere at some future point is inadequate, and you cannot insist that somebody else do the job or else agree to the deletion of the article with that job remaining undone.  And what I've just described is the merger process, not deletion.  As the person merging the articles, you have broad discretion to determine what parts of this article goes elsewhere: as I said, no particular text, no particular sources, no particular conclusions are required.  You just have to make sure the topic is covered adequately—not brilliantly, not comprehensively—just not pro forma, but enough so that blanking this article's page doesn't leave readers without the resource provided by this article.  P Aculeius (talk) 17:31, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * How can we show that it needs deleting? I will help, because I 100% know it should not be merged as it currently exists. It needs rewriting from beginning to end to bring it NPOV with good quality RS. I have a suggestion. I will do it. I am happy to. Give me a week and I will rewrite it. You can all check my work - I know U|buidhe will and there is no one better. I will do it in my sandbox and put it on the talk page at Ambrose as "Suggestion for new section". Everyone can see and comment on it there. Then when we have consensus we can publish it as a section on the Ambrose article. Then we can delete this separate article completely. Everyone's needs will be met. How's that? Jenhawk777 (talk) 18:12, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * You're describing merger, not deletion. I don't know why I have to keep saying that.  Nobody is telling you that they don't trust your writing.  Nobody is asking for you to draft it in your sandbox and wait for approval.  Nobody is demanding the right to comment on and approve your work—if anybody doesn't like it, they're free to edit it as needed.  You do not need permission to do what needs to be done, and nobody is asking you to seek it.  This is not about whether your point of view satisfies everyone—it's about making sure that you take steps to incorporate this topic where it needs to go—you do not need to copy and paste the contents anywhere.  This is not about the contents of the discussion—it's about having the discussion where you already agreed it needed to go, and about recognizing that this should never have been a discussion about article deletion—it's always been about merger.  P Aculeius (talk) 19:13, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The Altar of Victory affair is currently treated at better length and with sources in Gratian, Valentinian II, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, and, of course, in Ambrose. Regarding Ambrose's influence on Theodosius, most of the relevant section in the article is copied verbatim from Ambrose, and a better overview is given Massacre of Thessalonica and Theodosius I. This page also gives a better treatment of both topics. This covers the entirety of the article I nominated, and copying the content elsewhere would merely duplicate it or lower the quality of the page onto which this would be merged. Avilich (talk) 19:04, 12 June 2021 (UTC) Of course, if extreme skepticism is the issue, you should've made this clear form the outset. Not to mention how easy it is to access these pages and see for yourself. Avilich (talk) 19:18, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * P Aculeius For things that I believe might be controversial, it has become my habit to write it, post it on talk, ask for discussion, and then publish when there is consensus. I have done it multiple times. It is a consideration that I give, voluntarily, to avoid stepping on people's toes and producing controversy and avoid edit wars. It isn't about obtaining approval. It's about establishing consensus and being considerate of others. It is simply a personal choice and not something I ask of anyone else. I offer it here as a mediating position between the extremes.


 * I do realize I am talking merger now, but this includes the necessary deletion of this particular article in my mind, so that has not changed. I do absolutely disagree that this is not about content. Not only is it ALL about content for me, it really should be for everyone. This article is the definition of Junk. The content, as it is, should not be on WP anywhere. It's bad. It should not be merged as it is. So then, how can the topic be merged into the main article on Ambrose with the entire content deleted? U|Avilich is right on target in saying better material on the topic is already in Wikipedia, however, imo none of them are a full or sufficient discussion. Therefore, I do think a section on this topic should be added to Ambrose, but I do also believe this particular article's content should be gone in its entirety. It should be nowhere on WP. Does that not qualify as deletion? I think we are talking both things here - at least I am. The topic needs merging. The content needs deleting. Do both in whatever order you see fit, and I will support you. Jenhawk777 (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * P Aculeius: U|Avilich's assertion that this is about content deserves a response:  The question is now mine as well. Jenhawk777 (talk) 21:08, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Merger doesn't require you to keep any language, any sources, any opinion—you do not have to copy anything—the deletion process does not involve adding, incorporating, or modifying anything in other articles. You nominate an article for deletion when there is nothing to do anywhere else with any other article—when an article has no merit, no reason to exist either by itself or as part of other articles.  Write whatever needs to be in other articles as it needs to be written, then follow steps 2 and 3 from WP:PROMERGE (if you're rewriting all of the text, bypass step 1; otherwise copy it as is and then edit it to follow step 1).  A deletion ignores all of these steps, and effectively erases the article and all its history, all of its contributions, and all the information about its authorship; that's not how this is supposed to work, even when you're completely overhauling an article.  P Aculeius (talk) 22:12, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * P Aculeius It sounds like what you are most concerned about is that the history of this article not be lost. Okay. We may actually be getting somewhere here. If you can help me wrap my mind around the idea of blanking the article, while somehow also merging it, I will support that. Do I understand you correctly? Is your suggestion that I first write the topic by creating a new section in Ambrose, then go blank this article, and only then merge it with that section?  Would that even work? Jenhawk777 (talk) 22:29, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * That's almost how the merger process is supposed to work—if you just follow the steps in the guide I linked, you'll meet all of the requirements. Step 1 indicates copying the contents first, and then editing them, but if you really don't want to add them to another article as-is, I don't think it'll matter if you write what needs to be written about the topic, then change the existing article into a redirect from merge, using the templates provided in the merger procedure.  Adding what needs to go in other articles is part of merging—not a separate activity.  But it doesn't really have to be the full contents of this article, or any part of it verbatim, at least not for more than a few seconds while you're editing it down to what you want it to be at a bare minimum.  And from there you can expand the section up to what it needs to be.  But none of the existing language needs to stay.  Make it what it needs to be so that people looking for this topic can find what they need to know, and so that this topic continues to exist in some form in some logical place.  P Aculeius (talk) 23:47, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This is a waste of time. People will find what they 'need' to know in those articles I already linked, not here. If Jenhawk wants to write about this, she can go on any of those aside from this one. This article is a useless middle man and you know it. Avilich (talk) 00:06, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * If an article's content is poor, and if an article adds nothing of value that others already do, it automatically qualifies for elimination by the universal laws of common sense. You're not disputing that the entire article either forks content from others or is outright misleading; so, if there's nothing to merge to begin with, your idea of merging is already de facto deletion, and is just pointless, ridiculous prevarication on your part designed (intentionally or not) to cast confusion on an issue – the unsuitability of the article – that you yourself don't even dispute. There's nothing in Wikipedia policy or common sense that requires editors to recycle everything that's ever been written or recorded as history. You're making stuff up. You're just WP:BLUDGEONING and WP:NOTGETTINGIT, and I again ask that the administrator who closes this take this into account. Avilich (talk) 22:33, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

P Aculeius This seems a little like gaming the system and is not how merging is intended to work. By advocating this approach, it seems to me that you have basically agreed that there is nothing in the article worth saving. If this article has nothing of merit that needs to be transferred into another article, shouldn't we get past our emotions, bite the bullet, and delete it? Then I can take my time - or you can - and write something more suitable to an encyclopedia in the main article. I was willing to try your approach, but I am uncomfortable with its backdoor shenanigans. I'm sorry, but it isn't copacetic for you to make this call based on wanting to keep a record of your contributions without regard for what's best for the encyclopedia. It is the merit of the article, and only that, that matters. Don't take it personally. I have journeyed my way through merger and am back to delete. It's the best option for the encyclopedia. Jenhawk777 (talk) 03:22, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * If you've checked the article history, I think you'll find I haven't made any significant contributions to it—I have no attachment to it and am not trying to preserve my own work. I'm saying that this is how Wikipedia policy is supposed to work, and you seem unwilling to follow the correct procedures, even though you have repeatedly stated that the topic of this article needs to be treated in other articles.  I've had enough of being accused of all kinds of underhanded actions and wicked motives for which there is absolutely no evidence—just do what Wikipedia policy clearly and unambiguously says you're supposed to do, or ignore policy and just delete anything that doesn't agree with your point of view.  It would have taken ten minutes to follow the correct procedure, and yet you've spent hours and hours resisting it because you don't see anything of value in sources or scholarship that you feel is outdated or misplaced.  Wikipedia policy is clear: you don't get to delete stuff because you disagree with it.  You don't delete points of view because somebody comes along later and gives an opposing point of view.  Even if you can absolutely prove that something that was widely believed for centuries was wrong it is still relevant, and you do not get to pretend that everybody knew the truth all along—which is what deleting articles because you think they've been proved wrong is doing.  Wikipedia policy tells you to do a very simple thing, and you're refusing to do it because you just want to erase this article from existence without leaving a trace—who's not getting past their emotions?  P Aculeius (talk) 03:48, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Stuff gets deleted all the time because a large enough number of editors don't like it, and there's nothing in wp policy supporting your definition of a merge. Whether an outdated point of view should be deleted or discussed depends on the context and on the POV itself: in this case it's brief and inconsequential, and dealt with elsewhere, so your excessive focus on it is of service to nobody. Avilich (talk) 15:49, 13 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Repurpose -- We do not seem to have a single article on the Christian campaign to eliminate paganism from the Roman Empire. That is an important topic which deserves to have a single overarching article.  The present article is focused on St Ambrose and events of and after 391, but the topic starts with an imperial decree of 380 and ends with the attempt of Julian the Apostate to restore paganism.  It may be that this requires TNT, i.e. delete and start again, but I would hope it is not that bad.  Peterkingiron (talk) 12:28, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * you're mistaken. We do have a single article on the Christian campaign to eliminate paganism from the Roman Empire, and that's persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. It's not that overarching and the relevant information all fits (for the moment) in there. The other articles you refer to are low-quality forks (this one included) copied from somewhere else in 2011 and written in very sloppy fashion. A large-scale reorganization and cleanup of the aforesaid articles is needed, and this includes deleting some. Calling this a TNT is misleading because you wouldn't be blowing it up and starting over: in case you missed it from above, there are already several articles which already fit the purpose you want to repurpose this one into, so this is already started. I ask that you reconsider with this in mind. Avilich (talk) 15:26, 13 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. Good sourced material here that would be lost if we deleted this article and its history... remember our copyleft requirements? Merge, repurpose, rename maybe, but don't delete. Andrewa (talk) 12:42, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The only two pieces of sourced material are already used in those many other articles I linked above. This article's contents were themselves copied over from various other pages, if you look at the edit history. Your concerns are already addressed, please pay attention. Avilich (talk) 15:10, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This does not address the argument at all. The history still needs preserving, and there is no cost involved in preserving it. And adding an insult to your post does not make it any more logical. Andrewa (talk) 19:45, 13 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Merge or redirect into Ambrose. We have a messy cluster of articles and subarticles on the extinction of polytheism in the Roman Empire, and they do need the pruning and cleanup that Jenhawk and Avilich are carrying out. This is one of those articles, and although Ambrose's influence on the opposition to polytheism is often discussed by the sources, I doubt the coverage is enough to justify an article separate from that on Ambrose (Ambrose has plenty of room for expansion).


 * But my understanding of the deletion policy is the same as that of P Aculeius: when the article has RS coverage and a clear target for merging, the article is merged instead of being deleted, unless it's a WP:TNT situation such as copyright infringement. In practice, almost none of the merged article's content may end up in the merge target, and the only difference is that the title of the merged article survives as a redirect. In any case, the difference between deletion and merging-while-preserving-virtually-no-content is mostly semantic and will have virtually no effect on the experience of Wikipedia's readers, so I don't see the point of bickering over it. A. Parrot (talk) 17:25, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * if you acknowledge that merger = de facto delete and redirect, why do you vote so regardless? The practical effect of this is to create an artificial and unnecessary lack of consensus that will cause an admin to relist this for another week(s) over a mere technicality. WP:BURO is applicable here. Avilich (talk) 18:32, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Maybe I should have !voted "redirect", but in cases like these, that's what closing administrators tend to go with. (They "assess consensus" and don't simply count votes.) But technically speaking, leaving a redirect behind isn't deletion—deletion wipes an article from public view, and only administrators are able to see what it once contained. A. Parrot (talk) 18:37, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * To clarify for Avilich and Jenhawk: I don't often participate in AfD discussions and can't claim to be familiar with all the ins, outs, and unwritten norms surrounding deletion, but what usually happens in my experience is that an article like this will end up as a redirect rather than being technically deleted. That means casual readers almost certainly won't see the redirected article, but its history will still be visible to anyone who goes looking for it (i.e., some small subset of experienced editors). Try looking at the article history for Auset; the content of that article was worse than the one we're discussing. There is one argument for deleting anti-paganism influenced by Saint Ambrose that didn't apply to Auset, that it's a title people are unlikely to look for. (Auset is a rare but genuine alternate spelling of Isis's name, whereas the Ambrose article title isn't a construction that readers are likely to come up with on their own.) But this article has existed for a decade, even though it received very little attention in that time, and long-standing articles aren't usually deleted unless there's a stronger reason to do so. A. Parrot (talk) 20:52, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect to the section in Ambrose on attitudes to paganism. Furius (talk) 09:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Merge per P Aculeius and A. Parrott's arguments, which I shall avoid repeating or summarizing for the sake of space. Jclemens (talk) 05:38, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Maintaining my delete !vote above, neither this article nor its history seem to me to be worth archiving, but merge is fine, so if we can come to a consensus to merge, count me as part of it. Richard Keatinge (talk) 08:49, 19 June 2021 (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.