Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Literary sources for the origin of the Romanians


 * 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. There appears to be sufficient evidence that this article is a copyvio of translations and commentary that have been recently published. That, and there is also some agreement that this topic is not appropriate for a non-list article on Wikipedia. -Scottywong | confabulate _ 17:06, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Literary sources for the origin of the Romanians

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I came across this when I was cleaning up Good articles and after a talk with delisted it. It has since been flagged as a copyright violation and needs to be re-written completely from scratch. The more I think about, the less value I see with having this article. Pre-blanking it was basically just a list of quotes from different literary sources. It was really just a large footnote section in the form of an article. Any information here would be much more use in expanding the origin of the Romanians (unfortunately also blanked due to copyright violations). AIR corn (talk) 06:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Pre-blanking version here. Voceditenore (talk) 09:13, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. This may become moot. If the article isn't rewritten, it will be deleted 6 days from now. But it's probably worthwhile to register a consensus about keeping it as a suitable topic. My main reason for deletion is that the subject "Literary sources for the origin of the Romanians" does not appear to be a topic of independent study. Various authors refer at times to the interpretation of literary sources in the context of dealing with larger issues, but that's not the same thing. This article is full of synthesis and original research, both in terms of what quotes to select and the interpretation of their significance. Also, many of these quotes have interjected interpretations of what they are referring to, which isn't necessarily in the source. Frankly, I don't see how such a topic could be anything but original research and synthesis unless the quotes were simply presented with a minimum of commentary, in which case the article is just a a quote farm. Note also that many of the quotes are in English translations that are still in copyright. Others are from such old translations that their accuracy is subject to challenge. This makes the quote farm approach even less viable. Voceditenore (talk) 08:48, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "does not appear to be a topic of independent study"? You are mistaken. Google Book search for "origin of the Romanians". The article can be elaborated from those sources and comply with all WP rules. I strongly object to the blanking of the page and any deletion under erroneous grounds of copyvio, see below. Anarchangel (talk) 20:49, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Quotations shows rationales for using quoted material in articles, just as QUOTEFARM is a link to rationales against. As late as 2011, WP:LONGQUOTE said, "Using too many quotes may detract from the encyclopedic of Wikipedia.", which I think exemplifies perfectly this rule's status as a purely stylistic preference, and not to be taken seriously as a guideline, however cleverly it was reworded. Anarchangel (talk) 03:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * No one here is saying that the topic "origin of the Romanians" is not a legitimate topic. However, we are questioning the validity of "Literary sources for the origin of the Romanians" as one. The copy-violations and blanking are separate to this afd, and would need to be argued at a different venue (WP:CCI I would think). AIR corn (talk) 22:46, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Fakirbakir has already shown that lists of sources are a common focus of articles; returning to an already resolved issue instead of answering the issue of scholarship on this topic really just seems to me a lot like moving the goalposts. It would be better practice to use the phrase "alleged copy-violations", or as the notice says, "potential copyright violations". Origin of the Romanians is currently blanked. The claims of copyvio on that article are stronger in that they are quotes from the scholarship of secondary sources, but considerably weaker in that there are comparatively very few of them. Anarchangel (talk) 03:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose In this case please delete pages like "List of sources for the Crusades" or "List of sources of Korean culinary history" or "List of sources of law in the United States" or "List of sources for Disney theatrical animated features" etc..... This article is about historical sources (mainly primary sources). It is very useful for Romanian historical researches and helps to avoid POV. Wiki contains lots of fringle theory and if you do not know history you will accept those false/nationalist views easily. Fakirbakir (talk) 10:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that all those articles are merely lists of works, not a series of cherry picked quotes from them. If this article were rewritten in a similar format simply to list the sources, it might be worthwhile. But that would be a completely different article. You could try starting something like that at this temporary page. Voceditenore (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * These are not the same as the current article, with the last three using a completely different definition of source. WP:Otherstuffexists is never a strong argument, but it is better to compare like with like. AIR corn (talk) 23:04, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
 * These replies attempt to show that differences between this article and Fakirbakir's examples, namely, this article's extensive commentary and sourced examples for each entry, are reasons why it is irrelevant to compare them. In fact t Those differences are testimony to this article's superiority to the examples Fakirbakir chose, under WP:PROSE. Anarchangel (talk) 20:49, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * No, the difference is (apart form the crusades one) that those articles are showing the origin of the different topics. For example, that the snow white film was derived from the Brothers Grimm story of the same name. This article is compiling literary references and quotes relating to the origin of the Romanians. Those are quite different topics. AIR corn (talk) 22:40, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I totally agree (and I struck from my previous comment an unnecessarily argumentative phrase, accordingly). But is that difference really of the uppermost importance, when there is this elephant in the room labelled, "the similarity is that they are all lists of sources"? Anarchangel (talk) 03:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think nobody can explain me that why we have to delete substantial knowledge from Wikipedia.Fakirbakir (talk) 09:47, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
 * "Knowledge" which is the product of original research and synthesis is always to be deleted from Wikipedia. It's one of the Five Pillars and is non-negotiable. The question here is whether or not this topic can be construed as inherently original research and synthesis. Voceditenore (talk) 05:24, 13 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. Borsoka (talk) 04:09, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep Sure, copyvio. I get it. Stealing the words of Runestone G 134 and Anonymous, a Florentine author of the 14th century. But perhaps I am exaggerating. After all, there are some quotes from named people in the 12th and previous centuries, and even...well, no, actually no authors of any centuries after the 14th. But lots of quotes.
 * Which leads me to what I believe is the misapprehension here. Copyvio is any single instance of substantial copying of a single work. Not tiny snippets from lots of works, each one of which is not a copyvio. Especially when they are hundreds of years old and therefore eligible for public domain legislation.
 * Another courtesy link to the pre-blanked page. Anarchangel (talk) 02:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Voc has not responded to argument that I contend refutes his central premise, so I will elaborate up here. Every single quote in the article is from sources written before the year 1400, and thus falls under WP:PD by at least 523 years, according to US law (WP servers being in the US). Scholars have written their informed opinion about all manner of aspects of these quotes, I am sure, and they should quite rightly receive the benefits of their expertise. But those are not in the article; the scholars did not actually write the quoted material, and copyright law does not affect WP using those quotes anymore than it does the scholars using them. Anarchangel (talk) 20:49, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The copyright issue is entirely separate from the discussion here as to whether this is a viable article at all, regardless of copyright violations. Please see Talk:Literary sources for the origin of the Romanians. If the copyright problems in this article are not addressed in 7 days from the blanking of the article, it will be deleted, regardless of the decision here. It's not a question of the quotes, it's the verbatim copying of the commentary on those quotes from Curta (2006), Curta (2007), and Pohl (1998) which is pervasive and foundational to the article. You are welcome to rewrite a copyvio-free article at this temporary page. Incidentally, several of those quotes from ancient authors use modern (post-1923) translations which are indeed copyright. At most, a few of them can be used under Wikipedia's Non-free content criteria. But again, that is a separate issue from this deletion discussion. Voceditenore (talk) 05:17, 13 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Note I would like to draw attention to both statements, that 'copyvio is not at issue here', (not a direct quote) and that "No one here is saying that the topic "origin of the Romanians" is not a legitimate topic" (direct quote). I contend that these are perhaps grounds for a Speedy Keep. If things do not improve, they are most certainly grounds for a No Consensus close. Arguments against these primary points of both the nominator and the sole Delete voter have thusly been avoided, leaving no grounds other than waffling for the nomination, and making it impossible to gain a consensus. Anarchangel (talk) 03:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. All versions of the article consist mostly of a collation of translated quotations from various historical sources. While the sources themselves are in the public domain, copyright still subsists in the translations, insofar as the translators have not been dead for 70 years, which is very unlikely because the citations are to works that appear to be of relatively recent date. This amount of quotation clearly exceeds what is permissible under fair use. The article is therefore a copyright violation and must be deleted. (If one were to just delete the quotations, the remainder would not make much sense and would be duplicative to Origin of the Romanians in scope).  Sandstein   06:42, 18 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, the main copyvio problem with the article is the commentary, not the quotes themselves. Many of the quotes are from pre-1923 translations and therefore public domain, although certainly not all of them. However, virtually all of the commentary is verbatim from books in copyright. Because this copyvio is pervasive and foundational (i.e. no clean version to revert to), the article will be deleted, regardless of the outcome of this AfD, unless a clean version is written on a temp page. The AfD was brought as a separate issue, i.e. whether even a copyvio-free article like this is appropiate. Voceditenore (talk) 07:53, 18 July 2012 (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.