Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Roman Plague of 590


 * 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. No prejudice against a future merge.   A rbitrarily 0   ( talk ) 15:59, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Roman Plague of 590

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The topic is potentially notable - several books mention this plague, but I'm not sure that there's enough sourcing to sustain a whole article. It might be better covered in an article about the history of Rome, or the church, or Pope Gregory.

As it is, the article is not actually about the plague, but about religious rituals undertaken against it. The sourcing is inadequate, apart from a LA Times article about another plague: We have a dead link, a book (without page number), and a self-published religious website. I believe these cannot be accepted as sources given the identity of the creator: I noted in an AfD I closed that the creator,, lacks the skills required to research and write articles about scholarly topics (cf. Deletion review/Log/2020 May 10). These contents may be entirely made up or based on faith rather than any sources. If the topic is notable, the article would need a rewrite from scratch.  Sandstein  19:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.   Sandstein   19:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions.   Sandstein   19:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Medicine-related deletion discussions.   Sandstein   19:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep: This user is attempting to delete lots of articles I wrote after I put a started a deletion review for a page that he deleted. I didn't mean anything personally against him when I started the deletion review and I hope he can see it like that. If there is a concern here that there is specific content that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia, I think the proper process to follow is that it should be specifically mentioned on the talk page and removed if it is challenged and sources cannot be found for it. I absolutely guarantee that the information written here is found in those sources at the bottom of the article. I didn't realize that not including a page reference means that the article can be deleted. Reesorville (talk) 21:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: Per Sandstein. Andrew nyr (talk, contribs) 22:02, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep The nomination makes no case for deletion. It says that the topic is covered in books.  It is indeed easy to find an entry about it in an encyclopedia and this demonstrates that an encyclopedic article can be written.  The nomination then degenerates into WP:ADHOM.  Tsk.  Andrew🐉(talk) 09:31, 11 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete This is an article about Roman history and voters should've some understanding of the subject before commenting and voting. The Plague of Justinian was not a single event, rather a long term pandemic that had many recurances. Academics tend to talk about them together instead of making separate entries. Usually, they discuss them as waves, under the same heading. So there is the first wave, secondwave, third wave....so on and so forth. This article is about the fifth wave of the pandemic, that the creator has incorrectly labelled as plague of 590, whereas the true date is 588-591. This corpus from the University of California, will make it easier to understand for those who do not have the time to trawl the net. Just because editors find this mentioned in books is not the grounds for keeping, strictly speaking there was no plague of 590. If you want me to quote policy, then this should be deleted as it duplicates a page that already exists. MistyGraceWhite (talk) 14:57, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The article is not about the fifth wave of this plague in general, but it is about the part of this plague that was specifically in the city of Rome in this year. It is a notable event because it 1) killed a Pope, 2) was a key event preceding Gregory the Great's election as pope later in the year 3) was remembered for a long time, depicted in art and gave the name to a notable landmark in Rome. These attributes are specifically dealing with Rome itself and not other regions. Even the covid-19 pandemic currently going on has plenty of localized articles about the pandemic within different countries or regions. Wiki policy doesn't say that if something can be merged into a larger topic that it necessarily has to be.
 * However, the point that you are making has validity in it, because you could certainly add more context to the article by placing it giving background to the waves of plague following from 541. Reesorville (talk) 20:28, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
 * @User:Reesorville My opinion still remains the same. That the article should not have been created. If you can come up with academic sources that talk about this plague as an exclusive pandemic, I will be willing to change my vote. A short entry in an encyclopedia is not an academic source for such a matter. MistyGraceWhite (talk) 01:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know if there is an entire book anywhere written about this if that is what you require to be convinced. You can find academic sources that mention this event by this name or similar names in reference to the religious dimensions of it specifically referenced in the article: "Sheila Barker’s essay takes abroad historical view of processional images and the plagues of Italy, opening with an examination of competing claims about the icon that Gregory the Great supposedly carried during a procession to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in an effort to alleviate the Roman populace from the Roman Plague of 590."(https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/saints-miracles-and-the-image-healing-saints-and-miraculous-images-in-the-renaissance-sandra-cardarelli-and-laura-fenelli-eds-turnhout-brepols-2017-iv-318-pp-120/0CAF7BE22A1526E0B2D53CDE8AEC00EF)


 * Keep or merge to Plague of Justinian, which is quite inadequate for the whole pandemic. We have precedent for a separate article: Plague of Mohill and Plague of Amwas. I'm not sure what means by "sources that talk about this plague as an exclusive pandemic". This article is about an outbreak or epidemic, not the pandemic itself. For referencing, see Plague and the End of Antiquity. Srnec (talk) 03:00, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Plague of Justinian is indeed inadequate for the whole first pandemic, because that is not its subject, although some bits try to stretch it to cover the whole pandemic. We need a proper article on that. Johnbod (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I would argue against merging it because if the two were combined this would turn into a big chunk of that article, since it is already so short. If the plague of Justinian article was much longer and contained more sub-topics, I think turning this into a sub-section would be less out of place in a merger. Reesorville (talk) 09:49, 14 May 2020 (UTC)


 * merge to Plague of Justinian. This is simply a wave of the Plague of Justinian, I think including it in that article will help people understand the religious component of the plague. I also think that the Plague of Justinian RJHSLatinteacher (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep As per the discussion at Talk:Black_Death, where separation between the 1340s pandemic and the Second plague pandemic, the this article is proposed as just the first wave with an new article in talks on the subject of First plague pandemic, currently a redirect to the inadequate Plague of Justinian. GPinkerton (talk) 02:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep Certainly notable. When we get the proper article we need on the First plague pandemic, this might be merged there, but not to the Plague of Justinian. Johnbod (talk) 03:30, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Outbreaks of disease are notable in their own right and should have their own articles, even if some scholars regard them as part of a pandemic. They are far more notable than minor skirmishes in wars, which often pass FA without any suggestion of merging or deletion. There is also no agreement among scholars about the name and dates of the pandemic. This article regards the 590 outbreak in Rome as part of the Justinianic Plague of 541 to 600. Dudley Miles (talk) 06:22, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That article says very clearly that the Justinianic plague lasted until "around 750". (It discusses a plague in Theophanes's Chronicle year 747.) The "541 to 600" dates you quote are mentioned in a quite different context! GPinkerton (talk) 08:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes apologies but it does not affect my comments. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:27, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Comment The name First plague pandemic is no longer a redirect to Plague of Justinian and has the beginnings of a proper article. There are 18 or 15 epidemics to include there (depending on how they're counted) so a good deal of editing is needed to bring it to the status it deserves! GPinkerton (talk) 06:09, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep but tag for improvement. Even if this is only one outbreak of a long-running Plague of Justinian, I see no reason to delete it.  The sources used are rather too much hagiographies, rather than secular history (such as chronicles), but that is a matter where the article should be improved, not deleted.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep but tag for improvement. Same reasons as given by Peterkingiron, Andrew (Davidson) and Dudley Miles above.Yadsalohcin (talk) 08:45, 17 May 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.