Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Retrospective diagnoses of autism (2nd nomination)


 * 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.

In terms of Wikipedia's deletion debate closing guidelines, the technical outcome of this AfD is no consensus. There is little real agreement about what to do with this content. I note the substantial support for outright deletion early in the debate. Later, I see well-argued support for a merge or redirect. Editors do not agree, so we say "no consensus": what this debate has established is that Retrospective diagnoses of autism should not become a redlink. However, after a full debate there is no support whatsoever for retaining this article in its current form, so I think it would be wrong of me to close this discussion leaving the article intact. For the time being I will redirect it to autism. This redirection does not preclude a selective merge of content to autism at a later date and I suggest interested editors may wish to continue that discussion on the talk page.— S Marshall T/C 18:45, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Retrospective diagnoses of autism
AfDs for this article: 

Related AfDs:
 * WP:Articles for deletion/List of people with autism spectrum disorders Result 2016→Delete
 * WP:Articles for deletion/List of people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (hyphenated) Result 2013→Delete
 * WP:Articles for deletion/List of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (not hyphenated) Result 2016→Delete


 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

This list is literally impossible to source appropriately. What sources could possibly be reliable for a speculative, retrospective diagnosis of ASD in historical figures, a condition that hadn't been identified or defined while the majority of them were alive? Definitely not the ones that were cited in this article prior to recent edits. It's a reverse WP:CRYSTALBALL that contains no encyclopedic value. It's an arbitrary list that's misleading as to the nature of the disorder and the world would be better if this list didn't exist. —PermStrump ( talk )  00:55, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  —PermStrump  ( talk )  01:16, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions.  —PermStrump  ( talk )  01:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Disability-related deletion discussions.  —PermStrump  ( talk )  01:22, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions.  —PermStrump  ( talk )  01:24, 11 June 2016 (UTC)


 * delete and salt yeah who ever that IP address is was doing WP a big favor. Any of these retrospective diagnoses are Daily Mail stuff or advocacy, trying to claim famous people for the neurodiversity cause, and both are speculative...   see  WP:NOTGOSSIP and WP:NOTSOAPBOX. Jytdog (talk) 04:03, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I've been following this article for a few weeks with the intention of verifying the sources and looking into it more to see if I wanted to nominate it for deletion. I was very grateful to the IP editor and I wish they had an account, so I could show my appreciation. —PermStrump  ( talk )  04:49, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll note that the non-admin SNOW close of the previous AfD was likely improper, as SNOW is traditionally not called unless something has at least six keep opinions, with no one supporting deletion except the nominator. Jclemens (talk) 05:41, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize that was what happened. —PermStrump  ( talk )  04:49, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete as noted, sourcing on such a thing is virtually impossible. Dbrodbeck (talk) 12:17, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. I'm beginning to wonder how closely the !voters above have looked at this because their descriptions seem inaccurate or at least superficial, possibly confused by concern that the diagnoses this article is about are not "true". This article really seems to be about the topic of such retrospective diagnoses, not claiming to be a factual list of people who "did" have autism, and that topic does appear notable given that notable writers have made these diagnoses and other notable writers have commented on that. To the extent it does give examples of such diagnoses, these are attributed to, e.g., a notable psychiatrist and citing to academic publications (not "the Daily Mail"). Every example is also deceased, so there is no BLP issue if the examples are kept constrained in that manner. Even if aptly characterized as speculation, whether that's appropriate for an article to describe does depend on who is doing the speculating; the problem is when we as WP editors are speculating, not when we are reporting on notable speculation. This may ultimately be better off as a paragraph merged into the broader topic of retrospective diagnosis or Autism spectrum, but it shouldn't be facilely dismissed as "gossip". postdlf (talk) 16:59, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you probably overlooked my link to the older version of the article. An IP editor went through all of the names and all of the sources and ended up removing the whole list because all of the sources were bogus. Then the IP editor fixed up the narrative to make it more in line with the mainstream academic view. I think the existing 2 paragraphs could go under psychohistory, psychobiography, retrospective diagnosis, or Autism. Where do they fit best? I don't know.  —PermStrump  ( talk )  04:49, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * We judge articles by their potential at AFD, not their worst states, so whether there is/was content that should have been/was removed is irrelevant to whether we delete or merge now...and that list was already gone when you nominated this anyway. postdlf (talk) 15:09, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Merge in reduced form to Autism. This is not in fact a list, but a minor aspect of that topic.  Sandstein   20:18, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect as this seems sufficient, the article is imaginably best connected to that and I'm not sure how this can at all be better improved for its own article at this time. SwisterTwister   talk  18:15, 21 June 2016 (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.