Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Races as described by Megasthenes


 * 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 two "keep" opinions do not adequately address the numerous policy-based problems identified by the strong majority of "delete" opinions. This does not preclude addressing the topic in a non-OR manner, such as in the article about Megasthenes.  Sandstein  13:12, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Races as described by Megasthenes

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Article is barely sourced, has the appearance of being substantially original research and is presented in a manner that makes it impossible to determine the subject matter (despite its title). I may be wrong about this but I cannot make head nor tail of the thing, despite dealing with Megasthenes issues across various India caste articles etc. Sitush (talk) 00:33, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * keep comment&mdash;i don't blame you for not being able to make head nor tail of it.  it had my head spinning for a while.  i've never seen a wp article written like this, but i actually think it's not a bad system now, although it badly needs explaining in the article and possibly doesn't need to be a table.  it's certainly not original research, though.  the article creator took a few sentences out of this fragment of megasthenes's indika, and wikified all the races mentioned, using the third column of the table to preserve some continuity in the sentences.  it's a peculiar way to do things, but i don't think a bad one.  it seems to me to be not that different from importing eb-1911 material.  the translation of megasthenes is pd, so why not import and wikify?  the question of the individual notability of the ancient races is settled by the number of blue links to be found.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 02:29, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Either rewrite and reformat completely or just delete. To make my opinion clearer to the closing admin, my first choice is to delete, unless the article is going to be completely rewritten and reformatted. The information on this page is not well suited for a table and appears to be just quotes or paraphrases from this ancient work without sufficient modern context to make it useful. (Obviously an article such as this will include an ancient perspective, but this article talks about various Indian peoples, without giving clear indication of where they lived in terms of modern geographic names nor what these ethnic groups would be called in their native languages.) --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:37, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * i'm guessing that at this point, such information is lost.  i think that the name of the article makes it clear that this is entirely out of megasthenes, and isn't about actually verifiable ancient races, but about ancient races verifiably mentioned by him.  on the other hand, i completely agree that it's not well suited for a table.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 03:55, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * One problem with Megasthenes' work is that little of it survives and that which does has to be pieced together from quotes made by later writers (Ptolemy, for example, IIRC). A second problem is that there is substantial ambiguity/guesswork involved in interpreting it, eg: some people believe his "Narae" are the Nairs but this is not certain. These points would have to be made and sourced to the academic debates etc. I am not sure whether this is done adequately or not because of the confusing state of the thing, but my gut feeling is that it is not. - Sitush (talk) 08:26, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It was Pliny the Elder, not Ptolemy. D'oh. - Sitush (talk) 15:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * ah, i see the problem then, it's in the wikilinks. the authors of this article do OR every time they link one of Megasthenes's races to an article about a name that sounds similar now, but may or may not be a people megasthenes was talking about.  is this essentially what you mean? i'm striking my keep for now, have to think more.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:07, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, it isn't my entire rationale but it is a part of it. The problem is, this part is based on a limited knowledge gleaned while reading up on more specific items. In my delvings through caste articles I have come across various claims to have been mentioned by Megasthenes which, upon checking, proved not to be necessarily so (or even plain wrong). This applies as much as placenames as people/communities. Being mentioned by Megasthenes appears to be a part of what some people have called the "caste glorification" tendency. I would need to do some very serious digging if it is required that I produce a bundle of evidence for this. There are a lot of "it is thought"s, "it has been suggested"s etc around all of this underlying material (when properly fact-checked) and as such this particular article would need a lot of work. While needing a lot of work is not a reason to delete, the connections are tenuous, the layout is poor, the expertise appears to be non-existent, the sources are not there, etc. It may be an encyclopedic subject but it is unencyclopedic in execution & I suspect needs a great deal of expertise. I'll see what I can dig up but I am no expert on ancient Greeks or the academic debate regarding them. My main point was simply that the thing makes no sense, but apparently it does make sense to you, so that is my fault. User:LRBurdak is the creator and might be best advised to provide the "references to make it more authentic" which they refer to in their comment below. I would be happy to see it improved to the point where it adds to the project in a compliant manner. - Sitush (talk) 16:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I've just taken a look at the second line of the table - "the Chisiotosagi (Type of Sakas), and the Brachmauae", and also at the article linked there (Sakas). Last things first, Sakas is very poor & you will see that I have tagged it for numerous things as well as deleting one or two bits that are most definitely WP:PRIMARY or unreliably sourced. It does mention Megasthenes but I would be wary of attaching too much weight to that, given the general state of the article. As for the table in the article which we are considering here, the term "Chisiotosagi" is not even mentioned in Sakas, and in the last column of the table I have had to add an tag because there appears to be some speculation going on which is not attributed to any source. I can pretty much guarantee that the same sort of issues will arise in the other lines of the table. - Sitush (talk) 18:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * yes, i understand now. the project seems hopeless indeed.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 18:11, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - This article contains very useful information about the ancient races. So it should be kept. It may be provided with references to make it more authentic. burdak (talk) 03:49, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * is the creator of the article.
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge to list of historical races or Megasthenes. Dzlife (talk) 17:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * delete&mdash;per nom and above discussion.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 18:11, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete. The Megasthenes-by-way-of-Pliny text itself is more within the purview of Wikisource (WP:NOTREPOSITORY), and the name equivalencies proposed are largely unsourced, making it impossible to tell whose suggestions they represent. Basically, this is just not an encyclopedia article—I can envision an article on ancient peoples of India that might (judiciously) draw on this material; but a primary source, even presented as a table and annotated, has no place here. Deor (talk) 22:19, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. I have no immediate opinion if this article can be saved or is beyond hope, but if it is kept, it should be moved to a title like Indian ethnic groups described by Megasthenes. Many of the groups described are tribes or clans, and it does not make sense to call these "races". --Lambiam 10:20, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * delete This sort of article should be based on secondary sources. These sources can determine which tribes are pure fantasy and which are based on historic tribes. After removing all the original research, there is nothing usable left, so the article needs to be rewritten from scratch. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:26, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete seems like a WP:COATRACK for some racial POV pushing, but I can't quite be sure which POV... Stuartyeates (talk) 06:18, 11 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep the Article: I believe the article should be kept, as it does contains significant information about the ancient history. After viewing the kind of information the article has, I believe that one should focus on the room for further improvements to the article, rather than considering the deletion. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and We cannot look forward to delete such valuable information, while it could still be there if someone can come-up with a couple more references. -- Abstruce  ( Talk ) 14:04, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There is information that appears to be significant, but it's not sourced to any reliable source. It might be significant, or it might be just something made up by someone, with no relationship to real facts. With no secondary sources, it's impossible to know. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I will strongly suggest to look for making improvements to the article, after going through the information, the article is sharing, rather than deleting it. -- Abstruce ( Talk ) 14:45, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The point is that the current article has no salvageable information. It's all 100% original research. It wouldn't be as much "making improvements" as "writing a new different article from scratch". In those cases, the usual practice is to nuke the whole article. If the topic shows some promise of becoming one day a full sourced article of its own, then a short stub is created, and possibly some reliable sources are listed at its end. If the topic is already covered somewhere else, and the title could be vaguely useful for someone searching for information in the topic, a redirect is created.


 * If the article had even a small amount of good sourced information, it might be merged to Megasthenes and the information moved there (this is called "merge and redirect"), and then the article wouldn't be deleted because of copyright reasons (the history of the article has to show the author of the information, and it can't do that if the article is deleted). But this is not the case. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:10, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And another point that needs to be made. If you know of any secondary RS, history books, etc, that happen to talk about how Megasthenes descriptions corresponded to actual historic tribes, then this would be the moment to say so, and cite them, or at least explain some information about them, so other editors can try to locate them. That would help a lot towards saving this article. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:29, 14 October 2011 (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.