Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shankle and McBride family


 * 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 appears to be a strong consensus founded on WP:PAG favoring deletion. I did consider the possibility of a redirect, though not expressly supported by any participants in the discussion. Ultimately I think the article name is not a sufficiently likely search term for that. Ad Orientem (talk) 00:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Shankle and McBride family

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Fails WP:GNG. Only three of the sources cited mention either of these families, and speak more about Shankleville, Texas. Wikipedia is not a genealogical site or memorial. --Magnolia677 (talk) 23:02, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 02:18, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 02:18, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions. Bakazaka (talk) 02:18, 11 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete -- Almost every place in US is likely to have a known founder. There might be a case for merging a brief summary as to who the original Shankle was into the article Shankleville.  Essentially most such founders are NN, except possibly locally, so that descent from them is also NN.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:31, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep Shankleville is not an "every place in the US," its a freedmen's town, and thus of historical relevance, as such towns were established by people escaping from the terrorism, racism, Jim Crow etc, of the country's history, and thus constitute a very niche and historic place in the country's founding, history and culture, so thus relevant, passing WP:GNG and WP:RS - and thus every founding family of such places are of historic relevance and notability. -LumaNatic (talk) 00:48, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * All towns were formed for a reason and have an extensive history. Not every founder is notable. Natureium (talk) 00:51, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Freedmen's towns are an unique part of history, and so are different from "all towns." Wikipedia has coverage on just about every highway and road in the US - if they are notable, the families behind freedmen's towns are as well, especially due to their unique place in history and the unique set of circumstances behind their coming into being. -LumaNatic (talk) 20:11, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Lack of RS focused on this topic means it does not pass GNG. Natureium (talk) 00:51, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * RS isn't exactly applicable here. The towns themselves have a unique history, so the founding families will. A reliance on "RS" here will only lead to GIGO, where we replicate the systemic issues in the mainstream. -LumaNatic (talk) 20:11, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:RS is applicable everywhere. Natureium (talk) 22:39, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The sources listed pass WP:RS. If your argument is that the article is a stub, and could be built out more, ok. The original issue concerned WP:GNG which by its very nature it passes. -LumaNatic (talk) 14:19, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I didn't mention the word stub or the length of the article at all. Length of an article is very rarely relevant in a deletion discussion. Natureium (talk) 14:58, 16 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi! I'm working with, so I won't make any official argument for or against deletion. However I did want to bring up a few things that I think should be considered.
 * The first is that merging should absolutely be done here, since the information here should be covered to some point in the article for the town. However that said...
 * We should take into account that the coverage of the family is most likely going to include coverage of the town to some extent because they're linked together. So rather than look for coverage that only mentions the family, we should instead look at whether or not the coverage predominantly focuses on the family as opposed to the town and how much coverage predominantly focuses on the family. I will say that there is a lot of coverage that focuses on the family, especially Jim and Winnie Shankle. There are notable members of the family, however given the shared history it makes more sense to have a single article on the family as opposed to multiple smaller articles. When it comes to the town page, we typically don't want articles on populated places to be too much about their inhabitants and there is information here that is well covered enough to warrant mentioning somewhere, but would dominate the town article. As such, it could make sense to have a spinout article. This would also allow the family article to cover the notable family members (those who have an article or have at least received coverage to justify a mention) in a way that the town article couldn't or shouldn't. It's fairly common to have an article for families with multiple notable members or descendants.
 * This scenario kind of reminds me of a past AfD I took part in for Tabitha King, the spouse of famous horror author Stephen King. The argument there was that she wasn't independently notable outside of her husband, as the coverage for her would often mention her husband, even if in passing. However the same argument was applicable there, as it would be very, very difficult to find coverage that didn't pay at least lip service to her famous spouse because he's linked to her life in an integral way and rather than try to find coverage that only mentioned her, we should instead look at how much the coverage focused on her - basically, the depth of coverage on her, even if her husband was mentioned. It ended up that while most of the coverage mentioned her husband to varying degrees, it still covered her in-depth and the amount of coverage would justify a spinout article.
 * Again, not making an official bolded argument either way, but I do think that this should be taken into consideration during the discussion. ReaderofthePack (formerly Tokyogirl79)  (｡◕‿◕｡)  16:06, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Jovanmilic97 (talk) 12:28, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. I feel the sourcing is too weak for this kind of article.  Of the three sources listed in the nomination (presumably, the three best sources) two are to magazines of local electric cooperatives, and one is a forestry magazine.  We also have sources such as a recipe book.  It is fairly clear to me that the story of this family originates from local anectdotes and these magazines are probably swallowing them uncritically.  I have no reason to believe they are untrue, but it is not Wikipedia's place to assess that; we need more scholarly sources to do that and they are entirely missing from this article.
 * Large tracts of the article are entirely unsourced, especially the list of notable descendants, the only thing that really justifies this as a separate article from Shankleville, Texas. Some of those names appear in the Deep East Texas Electric Cooperative source, but it is described as a list of "accomplished Shankleville descendants and residents" without distinguishing which is which.  So some on the list may just be notable residents rather than family members, again indicating the town article is a better home.
 * As well as reliability concerns, I'm concerned that both electric cooperative articles may not be durably archived and accessible in the future. First of all, the convenience links to these pages are to the website of the Shankleville Historical Society with no indication that they have permission to host them, so we may be linking to copyright violations.  More importantly, I cannot find any index of holdings of these magazines.  Following a link from Deep East Texas EC site gets me to a magazine archive, but the February 2014 issue does not contain the relevant article.  So either the article is entirely forged (unlikely) or it is a local mag of a local branch of a cooperative that is simply not held in any accessible archive, either on or off line, thus failing WP:V. SpinningSpark 12:12, 18 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I searched the February 2014 Issue, the website as a whole, and also google, and the only existence I can find of that article is the PDF on shankville.org. Natureium (talk) 18:23, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep The scholarly and other secondary sourcing is there and it passes all guidelines. The family and its notability is well cited, even if some may feel that the article in its stub form hasn't yet reflected it as well as it could. Again, this is an unique subject because the family founded a freedmen's town - so are automatically noteworthy, and thus passing WP:GNG and WP:RS, as such towns and its founders are an unique part of the country's history, particularly when so many of its descendants are notable and are identified as such in media, scholarship and beyond. OAN, this discussion, along with many others on Wikipedia that reflect the larger issues of systemic, institutional and cultural bias in the Western world where such families and places branded "black" and/or "non-white" become under more scrutiny and of being questioned on their noteriety than other such families and places, would make for great research study on how well Wikipedia working on such systemic and institutional bias, and the ability to pinpoint the origin points of such on the platform. Anyone who wants to explore this more, feel free to contact me directly. LumaNatic (talk) 15:30, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You are not permitted to vote! twice. Founding a town does not confer automatic notability (and the town was not founded by the entire family anyway).  Shouting "institutional bias" does nothing to advance your case.  I for one would be delighted if this family could be shown to be notable.  The criterion is to provide ignificant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic.  You would be better advised to point to examples of that rather than accusations of discrimination. SpinningSpark 17:42, 24 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete – this topic does not pass GNG. Keep arguments above seem to focus on the notability of Shankleville, but notability is not inherited. Brad  v  18:27, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Just a question for the delete !voters. I'm not really seeing much argumentation stating the verifiable material in this article would be inappropriate to include in the Shankleville article. To the contrary, there seems to be acknowledgment that much of the sourcing is connected to the bigger subject of Shankleville. If that's the case, and the issue is instead GNG, doesn't it make more sense to merge/redirect? &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 18:36, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It looks to me like most of the relevant well-sourced content is already in Shankleville, Texas, but a redirect makes sense. A merge outcome implies that we would have a whole section in Shankleville about this family, which I don't think is a good idea. Brad  v  18:41, 24 November 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.