Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lluvia de Peces


 * 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. The useful arguments in this debate were about whether the supposed phenomenon is notable, not whether it actually happens. The consensus seems to be that the sources provided establish that the phenomena is notable, regardless of whether or not it actually happens. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 15:22, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Lluvia de Peces

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A miracle story or a bit of Forteana; either way, the sources are scanty to non-existent. Notability is also extremely iffy. Mangoe (talk) 21:35, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep :Sources are scanty, but a legend that is the subject of a local festival is notable. K e rowyn Leave a note 22:52, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If there is a local festival. The sources for one are the sources for the other. Mangoe (talk) 23:49, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Sources added. K e rowyn Leave a note 01:32, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I see no reason why a local festival would show notability. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:59, 21 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Latin America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 20 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep, sourced/sourceable, covered in multiple books. Cavarrone (talk) 07:26, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete: No reliable sources, and I couldn't find any with Google searches. The sources used are blogs and tourist guides of extremely dubious reliability. Classic case of WP:LOTSOFSOURCES, none of which, however, meet our reliability and notability policies and guidelines. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 19:56, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * How (the hell) do you make your Google search?! Google Books gives tons of sources, such as Frommer's Honduras by Nicholas Gill, La Sirena de Fiji y Otros Ensayos Sobre Historia Natural y No Natural by Jan Bondeson, Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary by Steve Norwood, Portentos y prodigios del Siglo de Oro by Luciano López Gutiérrez, Tradiciones y leyendas de Honduras by Jesús Aguilar Paz, "Caras y caretas: Volume 29", "Centroamericana: revista cultural del istmo: Volume 1, Issue 1", "Revista de la Academia Hondureña de Geografía e Historia" (1958), Tierras de pan llevar by Rafael Heliodoro Valle, Esta es mi tierra: lecturas centroamericanas by Saúl Flores, La Mosquitia and Olancho, Honduras: Frommer's Shortcuts, "Revista de montes: Volume 38", "Sectante: Issue 2; Issue 4" and many more (I can post here additional titles, if necessary). Google News has also dozens of reliable sources, as newspapers and printed magazines. Definitely tons of reliable sources, and surely more than "blogs and tourist guides of extremely dubious reliability"... --Cavarrone (talk) 20:55, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * None of those sources are explicitly about the topic; can you highlight which you have confirmed haev significant coverage? I'm not sure of the reliability of this text . IRWolfie- (talk) 20:38, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Basically all of these sources are significant coverage, Centromericana has a chapter about it, the highly reliable Revista de la Academia Hondureña de Geografía e Historia 1968 issue has two pages about it, six pages on Tradiciones y leyendas de Honduras, a chapter on Conozca Honduras, a whole article on Caras y caretas, Volume 29, two pages on Frommer's Honduras, an entry on the Atlas geográfico de Honduras and so on. You can verify it by yourself, Google Books turns back several hundreds of results, and a very few of them are false positive. Cavarrone (talk) 21:36, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment There weren't many English language sources, but there are many Spanish ones. K e rowyn Leave a note


 * Keep - Cavarrone convinced me. --E4024 (talk) 21:40, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep Per Cavarrone's rationale. FurrySings (talk) 03:31, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete - There are sources - but most of them are extremely unreliable. There is little or no fact-checking going on.  For example, many of the sources in Spanish (and all of the English language ones) talk about a 1970's National Geographic expedition to investigate the phenomenon.  This seemed like a good source of information on the topic, so I fact-checked it very carefully.  I discovered that there was no such expedition - although there was a 1974 Nat Geo expedition to Australia to investigate a rain of fishes there.  The original error comes from a field report by some student out on an internship in the area who had vaguely (and, as it turns out, incorrectly) recalled a TV documentary from the "Wild Case Files" series about a Nat Geo expedition to investigate.  This one error has propagated into most of the reports on this subject.  We must conclude, therefore that every single one of the sources that reported the Nat Geo expedition picked up on the words from that field report and not one of them actually checked that the expedition ever happened (it took me all of five minutes to figure out what happened).  Not one of them was curious enough about the supposed Nat Geo findings to dig out the (non-existent) report from this expedition!?!  So how can we take any of those sources as "reliable" per WP:RS?   Bottom line for me is that there is almost zero reliable information out there and a lot of re-re-re-reported hearsay.  Take for example, the crucial detail of whether the fish blind or not?  This is a critical factor because blind cave fish being brought up from underground water courses during flooding is the most likely explanation...and that's what the real Nat Geo expedition found to have happened in the Australian "rain of fishes" event.  Some reports say "Yes" and some are indecisive - none contain first person reports from people who examined the fish.  It's all hearsay and rumor.  These are not secondary or even tertiary sources - they are worn out by repetition.  How can Wikipedia talk intelligently about what happened without any sources that we can actually trust?  All of this information is from tourist guides and slow-news-day items in dubious online magazines and travel guides.  It will be hard to make an objective article here - so it should be deleted rather than allowing it to peddle information that we cannot rely upon. SteveBaker (talk) 19:17, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent piece of lawyerly rhetoric (I'm saying it in a positive way) but this is not an article about the claimed National Geographic expedition that is not not even mentioned in the article. Is "lluvia de peces" a hoax? maybe. Is this a supernatural phenomenon? surely not. That said, like it or not, it appears as a quite notable event in history of Honduras, as much as to inspire works of poetry and prose (eg see Páginas hondureñas: selección de prosa y poesía, Invocación a Centroamérica: poesía or Estudios de Literatura Hondureña) and it was reported, with different tones, by a large number of newspapers, books (even textbooks, see Geografía de Centroamérica: para los institutos y escuelas normales) and printed magazines in a time-span that comes from 1910s till nowadays. And the claim that all the sources are "dubious online magazines and travel guides" appears inconsistent, except you are arguing that sources as Geografía de Honduras, Atlas geográfico de Honduras or the Revista de la Academia Hondureña de Geografía e Historia are sources of this sort. Cavarrone (talk) 20:30, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, the Nat Geo expedition was mentioned in the article. I deleted it myself when I figured out what happened.  I strongly suspect that other claims can be similarly tracked back to the same erroneous field report - the language used is strikingly similar in so many of these 'reliable' sources.  SteveBaker (talk) 13:16, 25 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment:I've taken a few days to sift through the Spanish sources, and have to concur with SteveBaker that, though numerous, they are all of extremely dubious quality. I also had no luck verifying information about the supposed National Geographic expedition, and came to the same conclusion that the sources mentioning it misinterpreted a report about an expedition to Australia. As I said before, this is a classic cases of WP:LOTSOFSOURCES, none of which contributes anything to the notability of the topic, and even taken together do not represent enough material on which to base a WP article. Still think the article should be deleted. Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 20:15, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * With respect, as I wrote above, I doubt you have a decent skill in finding sources (or maybe in translating Spanish)... I have already listed a number of reliable sources that does not mention the supposed National Geographic expedition, sources such as Geografía de la América Central, Geografía de Honduras, Atlas geográfico de Honduras, Revista de la Academia Hondureña de Geografía e Historia, Geografía de Centroamérica: para los institutos y escuelas normales. Have you checked them? Are you arguing they all are unreliable? Cavarrone (talk) 20:52, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The sources I've seen are all quite old. I checked . It contains text which google translate gives as "This is where you check the 'rain of fish', at certain times of year, this is not simply a consequence of groundwater of regal rainy season. The high Aguán has an elevation of 620 m". Since you have access to the source, what does it say next about the topic on page 64? IRWolfie- (talk) 21:50, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I have just said it does not mention the National Geographic expedition ... never said that I have more access than you (or anyone else) to the sources... sorry (I too would like to know what it says) :( Cavarrone (talk) 06:15, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, then out of the sources available, can you please list the ones you do have access to which you have checked has significant coverage? IRWolfie- (talk)


 * Comment I'm basing my keep vote largely on the fact that there is a local festival based on the legend. I would be extremely surprised if we found a reliable source confirming a rain of fish. Would merging the article about the legend with the article about the town be a good compromise? The town's existence, at least, is not in doubt and towns are, I believe, notable by definition. K e rowyn Leave a note 05:38, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I would support a careful merge into the article about the town. So long as we say "It is claimed that fish rain from the sky"...and not "Fish rain from the sky".  It's pretty clear from the description of how the fish are found (in temporary pools and streams) and the occasional reports that the fish are blind and white - that they are some variety of cave fish washing up from some underground source.  A freakish one-off rain of fish might be credible (after all, there are fairly well-reported claims of other animals raining from the skies elsewhere) - but this is claimed to happen several times a year whenever there is a lot of rain and localized flooding!!  It's just not credible that waterspouts somewhere a long way away transport fish over that long distance and drop them PRECISELY here an nowhere nearby!  Everyone says that the fish are totally unlike those they find in rivers and lakes that they fish locally.  Why are the fish only found on flat fields outside the town?  If they came in rain - why are they not found on rooftops?  We can't prove that the fish wash up from underground (although we have a solid reference from the 1974 Australian Nat Geo expedition that says that this is how the almost identical incident in the outback occurred)...but the odds are so overwhelmingly high that this is not really "raining fish" that we must to be super-careful not to propagate the claim that this is true without impeccable mainstream scientific proof (per WP:FRINGE).  It's a quaint local custom and nothing more.  Let's not inflate it to a full-blown mystery.  SteveBaker (talk) 13:11, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Steve, I could agree with your concerns but here we have not to prove anything nor to investigate, I doubt that Bigfoot exists or that Marian apparitions in Fatima never occurred, but this does not change the fact they are indeed notable. We are judging if the legend is notable or not, not if it is a miracle or a paranormal phenomenon. Your concerns are easily fixable, just rewriting some sentences of the article in a more dubitative way and, if possible, introducing sources that question the effectiveness of the story. Cavarrone (talk) 06:15, 26 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - I found one source in English Sunday Observer Sri Lanka December 27, 2009. Others in spanish: September 12, 2003September 12, 2003, April 5, 2010April 5, 2010, . There's probably more information in non English sources to meet WP:GNG. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 03:50, 26 September 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.