Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lost Colony DNA Project


 * 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 merge to Roanoke Colony. (Non-administrator closure.) Northamerica1000(talk) 11:30, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Lost Colony DNA Project

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Project of little notability and highly questionable scientific merit. Seems they released a press release that got tons of coverage in 2007 but nothing since then. The group seems the total definition of WP:FRINGE they don't even have a domain name they simply host two very messy sites on free hosts. Ridernyc (talk) 20:35, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Further digging revels that the majority of links on the groups site are broken. Not only are they broken they never worked, the URLs point to folders in a local user folder on a windows PC. The links that do work all lead to various other DNA projects all linked to FamilyTreeDNA who will gladly include you in the DNA project of your choice if you purchase a very costly kit from them.   There were a ton of these DNA project pages all started by the same editor, most of which have been deleted long ago.  Ridernyc (talk) 23:47, 14 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Previous AFD where 3 of these DNA projects were deleted. All of them created. by the same editor that created this article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Harris_Surname_DNA_Project]Ridernyc (talk) 23:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:30, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:30, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:31, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:31, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 14:31, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

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 * Merge to Roanoke Colony as a short final section. The colony had settlers, who just disappeared; no one knows where or why.  The project was initiated in 2007, and the lack of anything on its results makes me believe that there have been none, because the research.  Some projects based on a surname produce spectacular results, implying a common ancestor.  Others (dealing with common names, such as Harris; similarly Jones and Smith) are doomed to failure, becasue there will be too many people called Harry at the period when surnames were becoming fixed.  I have a volume inot which somone transcribed numerous parish register entries concerning people with the surname King, but most are unrelated.  The theory is that the settlers were captured by (and perhaps intermarried with) native Americans is an intriguing one, but the possibilities of (a) finding collateral descendants of colonists and (b) of local indians and (c) of picking out matching DNA characteristics, from a mass of "noise" from perhaps 15 generations of subsequent breeding must be vanishingly small.   Peterkingiron (talk) 16:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Especially given that the men were probably killed along with their Y-chromosomes. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:09, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge to Roanoke Colony I agree that this should indeed be a section there, and, if more information comes to public domain and raises notability, then it may qualify for a stand alone reference. I agree that it is important, but right now believe it would be better served to have this merged into a more thorough and complete parent piece.
 * Ridernyc, the project is volunteer-run group funded by meager donations. Its website is amateurish and on a free host, but I don't see this as pertinent to an AfD nomination, which is based on notability. (This page has working links; this is their facebook page). I haven't seen any published criticism of their research, so I'm not sure what you're criticizing as fringe science. The group's newsletter articles on genetics seem well-grounded, and their genealogy research seems predictably tedious. Some members of the group have different and controversial theories about what became of the Roanoke colony, and an article in The Scientist quotes an anthropology professor who works with the group as disagreeing with Estes' (one of the group's founders) hypothesis about the colony's native assimilation, but hypotheses are not claims of fact.


 * Peterkington, I don't see the group's lack of a substantive or conclusive discovery as being pertinent to the AfD nomination. Research like this is a slow, ongoing process.


 * “A press release in 2007 and nothing since then.” From what I could find, there's been limited book, magazine and newspaper coverage, and Estes published a 35-page journal article on the topic. The differing names involved may have thwarted your research; the project seems to be informally called the "Lost Colony DNA project", or more formally the "Lost Colony of Roanoke DNA Project", and is run by a group informally called the "Lost Colony Research Group", but also called the "The Lost Colony Genealogy and DNA Research Group", and more recently the "Lost Colony Genealogy DNA and Archaeology Research Group" (they've been involved in several archaeological digs as their scope expanded). Some references (some detailed, some incidental):


 * (Mostly BS but some basic info).
 * (Mostly BS but some basic info).


 * ––Agyle (talk) 11:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Northamerica1000(talk) 21:48, 24 January 2014 (UTC)



Good research. Instead of deleting, why not add the comments here as a note to the article. Folks would be forewarned before considering paying money for anything, but the article would remain as a point of excellent information. The plan to use DNA would go a long way toward resolving a long-time and intriguing mystery about early colonization. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pi4911 (talk • contribs) 02:25, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge or Delete, promotional. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:08, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Merge to Roanoke Colony. At the moment not enough to warrant it's own article, but definitely beneficial to the main Roanoke article in a smaller condensed version.  Erebus Morgaine  (Talk) 06:52, 5 February 2014 (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.