Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pavel Agafonov


 * 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 is general consensus that, while this subject has reasonable claims to notability, those claims are not necessarily reliable, and are not backed up by the better sources available. ~ mazca  talk 20:03, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Pavel Agafonov

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NOT AN ACE. No reliable list of aces include him. No meaningful/useful coverage in RS. Not even a Russian Wikipedia article. Very little known about him (year of death unknown). Soviet pilots often inflated tallies during Spanish civil war (claiming collective victories of regiment or squadron as their tally since individual victories not officially listed), accuracy of information in whole article is very questionable. Given that he was not listed anywhere in the respected complete encyclopedia of Soviet aces (Bykov, Mikhail (2014). Все асы Сталина. 1936 - 1953 гг. Moscow: Yauza. ISBN 978-5-9955-0712-3). (recent a book which tends to have lower tallies than pre-2010's publications which heavily inflated aerial victory claims) or the soviet-aces-1936-53.ru website (the reliable sources on the subject), he certainly was NOT an ace (plus the fact that even Mikhail Maslov credits him with only two shootdowns). Only sources claiming ace status are not trusted biographical encyclopedias and lists but merely highly unreliable sources that should not be used in Wikipedia. PlanespotterA320 (talk) 14:18, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. PlanespotterA320 (talk) 14:18, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 14:58, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions. Lightburst (talk) 15:12, 23 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete fails WP:SOLDIER and lacks WP:SIGCOV in multiple WP:RS to meet WP:GNG. Mztourist (talk) 02:55, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Actually appears to pass WP:SOLDIER #1, as he received the Order of the Red Banner, which appears to have been the second-highest Soviet award for gallantry at the time, twice. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:18, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is a wide consensus that two Orders of the Red Banner (unlike other countries high awards) does not equal notable on Wikipedia due to how frequently it was awarded and the terms of the award (it was frequently awarded for birthdays and long service not just combat). Not even two Order of Lenin is a "slam dunk" for notability due to the same problems with the award system (only "litmus test" is really the Gold star, the highest, but even then, that one was awarded very frequently too and arguable some recipients of it fail GNG). Having two Order of Red Banner certainly does not override the GNG here.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 13:48, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Although note that he appears to have been awarded both of his for combat service during the Spanish Civil War. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:12, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Still doesn't change the fact that getting two Order of the Red Banner isn't a litmus test for notability since it was awarded so much to non-notable people who can't pass GNG. Also, the Order of Lenin, which is higher, could be awarded for galantry in combat, but he did not receive two (or even one) of them. And he's not an HSU either. If we at Wikipedia decided that two Order of the Red Banner alone were enough for inclusion in Wikipedia (which isn't), Wikipedia would overflow with biographies of little-known people whose only bibliography in the article is their award citations.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 13:42, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Being a fighter ace in the Spanish Civil war seems fairly notable to me. Has WP:SIGCOV  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  02:48, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * But he WASN'T an ace in the Spanish Civil War. He is not listed anywhere in Bykov's 2014 complete encyclopedia of Soviet aces (which includes Spanish Civil War), the most reliable source on the subject of Soviet pilot tallies. It is possible that he did not have a single personal aerial victory. Remember that in the Spanish Civil War, overclaiming was PROLIFIC, hence the 20th century sources contain heavily inflated and outright wrong tallies that have been repeatedly debunked by modern historians (since it was common for every pilot to say that the number of shootdown's their squadron had was their tally). With no fundamentally reliable sources on the person in question (all we know is that he certainly had less than 5 solo shootdowns required for inclusion in the encyclopedia), it is difficult to have an article about him with any accurate information. We should not spread misinformation about pilots and their claimed tallies on Wikipedia. Minor coverage in highly unreliable sources like airaces.ru and the book by Polak (that I personally have recived a barnstar for pointing out just a few of the many blatant errors in) doesn't cut it here. We need coverage of Agafonov in a RELIABLE (not over-dramatized/glorifying) source. And I can't find anything useful.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 13:23, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Certainly a credible claim of notability. Overclaiming by fighter pilots was common, and airman were invariably permitted to keep awards for claims that later proved exaggerated. All I did was a WP:BEFORE and a plethora of references came up. My high school Russian lets me read them, but I lack the background to evaluate them. I am extremely sceptical of claims that sources are unreliable, as it has become something of a tactic lately, but in this case I am deferring to your knowledge of the subject and cancelling my !vote.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  23:40, 28 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for withdrawing your keep vote in light of the facts. I too think that Wikipedia has depreceated too many sources, but the fact remains that sources of tallies of pilots are highly contradictory, and one pilot can't have a different number of total shootdowns, so we have to rely on the more credible annotated lists (composed in the 2010's by modern historians like Bykov who consult loss records, official documents, award lists, and crash records, instead of just memiors and as a result generally have lower tallies) that are much more trustworthy. The airaces website (as opposed to the new and improved sovietaces version) is rather old an has not been updated to reflect the fact the modern historians have evaluated and re-calculated tallies (taking in to account aircraft loss reports by the other side) instead of the 20th-century-early 2000's "tallies" based heavily on hearsay. There is hardly a "plethora" of sources on Agafonov - google books doesn't yeild anything in Russian, and the only sources that aren't brief mentions of his name or scans of award documents (ie, primary sources and things that can't be used to establish notability) are airaces.narod.ru (a problematic one) a personal blog (also problematic), machine-translations of Wikipedia (problematic AF), and one-sentence machine-generated biographies on various websites literally just saying that he was a pilot (not defining of notability). I can't even find an obituary, gravestone photo, list of each shootdown he had (what dates? aircraft types?) or anything crucial for a biography of a pilot like this. And that's a problem because it relinquishes this article, if it were to remain, to forever being a stub/start class, with no way to ever truly expand upon it by adding information translated from other sources (given the severe shortage of basic information available). This guy is no more notable than most other Spanish civil war "aces" like Leonid Kalchenko. After all - it was an SOP to only officially document collective squadron victories (and then collectively award members of the squadron based on the collective victories, of which every pilot would individually indicate as their tally - the system resulted in highly inflated scores not caused by individual pilot overclaiming but rather attribution of victories to people who didn't have them) in the Spanish Civil war. That is why there is so much dispute over how many shootdowns Sergey Gritsevets had. Anyway, my point is, being in a squadron that tallied 8 victories may legitimately get you two orders of the red banner in the Soviet Union at the time, which wasn't by any means unusual, but it surely doesn't make you notable for Wikipedia per say, and there isn't anything we can do to improve this guy's article given the state of information avialable. If kept this article will be stuck with a better-sources-needed tag forever.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 02:03, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: Fails SOLDIER, certainly, and no evidence of significant coverage that would meet the GNG.   Ravenswing     03:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per PlanespotterA320, deferring to their knowledge wrt russian sourcing, doesn't clearly meet SOLDIER and definitely not GNG. Eddie891 Talk Work 12:06, 3 September 2020 (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.