Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rice Hooe


 * 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. Lankiveil (speak to me) 11:29, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Rice Hooe

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Lacks evidence of notability, fails WP:V. Almost all WP:OR from WP:PRIMARY sources. The only secondary source cited is self-published and only makes passing mention. Agricolae (talk) 03:55, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 10:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 10:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions.  MT Train Talk 10:45, 28 March 2018 (UTC)


 *  Weak Delete Weak Keep - Fails no original research and verifiability (also, without reliable sources, represents a non-neutral POV)). The subject may be encyclopedic, I find some results on google books, but I don't find this article to make for a foundation of an encyclopedia article. I'd be willing to change my !vote if someone cleaned out the OR and found some reliable sources. Smmurphy(Talk) 18:11, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've struck/changed my !vote. I've stubbified the article along the lines of the suggestion of the IP (24.151.116.12). Smmurphy(Talk) 17:24, 2 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment -- I do not know enough to vote, but there is enough biographical detail to suggest this is not invention, which is what OR often implies. "Naval Officer" was a colonial customs official.  I suspect that this does have adequate sources.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:16, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
 * My concern is that this is 'just some guy' and the creator has dug through the primary record to write an essay on the man, taking every passing reference and blowing it all out of proportion - it is the kind of personal compilation that a genealogist or local historian puts together on their favorite ancestor, who has not received any actual coverage in secondary sources beyond the occasional mention of their name.  Let's take a look at three of the footnotes:
 * Ref.4 is to "Capt John Rice Hooe - Navel Officer and Trader Patent to Ocaneechi signed his name as Rice Hooe. Citing "Index: H." Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies". This is almost verbatim from a blog, and is 'through-citing' - not citing the blog itself, but pretending to have consulted the blog's source.  I say 'pretending' because the named source is actually the part of a book's index that covers the letter H!  Further, if you look in the book, it says nothing in either the index nor the pages it indexes about Capt. John Rice Hooe - that 'Capt. John' bit is only found on the blog and appears to be totally without foundation (though Rice had a son[?] of this name).  Ref 4 is used to document the subject's association with Edward Bland and Dinwiddie county but the actual text of the named book names neither Bland nor Dinwiddie County.
 * Ref. 3 is used to support the same text, the association with Bland and Dinwiddie. This source seems an improvement because the cited page is about Dinwiddie County, and it mentions both Bland and Rice Hooe.  However, all it says of Hooe is that he and several other men, including Walter Chiles who later settled in Dinwiddie County "contemplated in 1642 the discovery of 'a new river or unknowne land, bearing southerly from the Appomattox River'" - it was Chiles, not Hooe, who was associated with Dinwiddie County, and Bland was likewise associated with Dinwiddie County  but I don't even find it saying that Bland and Chiles interacted, let alone that Bland and Hooe did.
 * Ref. 1 cites the same source, to say that Hooe was a licensed trade patent holder, but I don't know how you get that from them having contemplated an undiscovered river or country, which is all the cited source says. Here I suspect there is some other document that provides additional details, but you wouldn't know it from the citation.
 * Ref. 2 has the same citation as Ref. 4 with three additional references copied verbatim from the same blog page, "HENING, 4:93; Va. Gaz., R, 24 Mar. 1768; NICKLIN [1], 368". This paragraph in the blog is in turn taken verbatim, refs and all, from a National Archives web site and is text the NA is reproducing with permission from the printed volumes of the Diaries of George Washington produced by the U of Va, and still under copyright - it's use by the blog is a blatant COPYVIO.  Ref. 2 is used to document the following: "Rice Hooe/Hughes of New Kent, the Burgess and Licensed Trader also had nobility status, officially. According to His Majesty's Stationery Office, Captain, Trader, and Burgess Rice Hughes, of New Kent also the same as Capt John Rice Hooe/Hughes and he was added the roles of the licensed "Brotherhood of Traders" to the Eastern Siouan of the Ocaneechi starting in 1656 and before dying the following year, delegated his role out to others in this Early British American Colonial period in the 17th century." However, the only thing His Majesty's Stationary Office says on the cited pages (the Index again) relevant to the subject is "Hooe, Rice, 739 X. I . . . . . ., . . . . . ., document signed by, 681 n. (10)," and if you look at the actual corresponding text (links above), none of it has anything to do with the material it is cited to document.  As to the other supposed sources, their identify can be determined with a little digging.  Hening contains a one-sentence report from the subject's grandson giving the local cost of slaves and horses. Va Gaz is a historical newspaper, which contains on the relevant date an advertisement for the Potomac River ferry of a Gerard Hooe, presumably a descendant (paywalled).  The Nicklin source is an article in the Virginia Historical Magazine with the tombstone transcripts of a cemetery that on the page cited includes that of Col Rice Hooe, the grandson of our subject, and stating that the Col. came to the area a century after our subject lived, so none of these three additional sources say squat about our subject.  The NA site itself only mentions him in passing when referring to Col. Rice as  "grandson of Rice (Rhuys) Hooe, a seventeenth-century immigrant from Wales."  It is clear that our editor's true source was the blog, and that they never looked at the sources they cite.
 * Ref. 5 again copies the same three sources from the Washington diaries (without citing the Diaries, only referring to them in the text), and spins a whole tale about Washington's association with the descendants of the immigrant that is entirely unsupported by the cited material, none saying anything about either Washington or our subject.
 * This took me long enough to dig out that I am not going to go through the rest, but these references are not being used to document the text, just to decorate it. Who knows, maybe I just picked the worst of the footnotes to track down, but if this isn't invention it is so sloppy as to be indistinguishable from invention.  This is more than just a page in need of cleaning up, it needs to be blown up.  I don't doubt that the person existed, but I am not finding anywhere near the coverage that would constitute notability. Agricolae (talk) 22:08, 1 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment It appears that this Rice Hooe was a member of the House of Burgesses from Shirley Hundred Island and Charles City county for 1642, 1644, 1645 and 1646, which would satisfy WP:POLITICIAN #1. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Volume 4 and Virginia Genealogies. My view of the current state of the article is in agreement with that expressed above. If it is deemed worthwhile stubbing this down and keeping it, I could support that. 24.151.116.12 (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I will just comment that POLITICIAN #1 doesn't override the need for substantial coverage in reliable secondary sources. "Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included." It all hinges on how 'substantial' substantial coverage needs to be to meet GNG.  My general benchmark is that if all we are ever going to be able to write is a stub, that is apparently not a notable person, independent of more specialized criteria such as POLITICIAN #1 that do not take coverage into account. To me, with these new sources, Hooe is borderline at best but there may be more out there, its existence obscured by all the nonsense that now, thanks to Smmurphy, has been removed. Agricolae (talk) 18:00, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Weak keep I appreciate all the research that other editors have performed on this subject. I would agree with stubbing the article (it gave me a headache reading it) - however, am reluctant to delete it. Rogermx (talk) 19:07, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, J04n(talk page) 13:13, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep, per recent article improvements. An acceptable stub at this point and sourcing seems reasonable. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:07, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep I had meant to update my comment above after Smmurphy's WP:HEY work. 24.151.116.12 (talk) 15:44, 7 April 2018 (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.