Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skaramuca


 * 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. Considering the problematic on-wiki history of the whole topic area, it appears reasonable to require particularly good sourcing for contentious material, and consensus here is that this is not the case in this instance.  Sandstein  19:11, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Skaramuca

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I've already tried two other avenues to address the major faults of this article, RSN and RFC, to no avail. This is an article about a reasonably unknown surname which makes a variety of claims that weave a kind of an origin myth that one could find in a Serbian nationalist forum post - it focuses on a purported Serbian nature of the carriers, who are described in a manner similar to a Serb clan, yet who today by and large seem to be Croatian and there's no corroboration in reliable sources that there was ever such a clan anyway. (Not to mention that those people are reasonably few - the 2011 Croatian Census recorded just 81 people with the surname.) The whole innuendo depends on Jevto Dedijer's 1909 book, which seems far from perfectly reliable with modern-day standards. As a whole, this article is a WP:COATRACK violation that is a net negative for the encyclopedia. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 20:28, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Croatia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:07, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Serbia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:07, 1 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:07, 1 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose deletion but support a major rewrite of the article. I looked at the previous discussion at Talk:Skaramuca, and my impression is that there isn't enough of a consensus to make any definite conclusion. We should present Dedijer's claim, along with info on the other supporting claims, and then that Muhamed Filipović and Hivzija Hasandedić expressed doubts in 1996-97. That would be the most NPOV way at the moment. I don't know why you said that the links by User:Antidiskriminator didn't work, just search for Скарамуце on the book description pages, it worked for me at least. - Anonimski (talk) 09:15, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Why should we present Dedijer's claim, when nothing apparently backs it up? Adding the other works to this article would just compound the problem, because that would definitely stray off topic. Articles should be backed up from claims from reliable sources. If we can't verify that a source is reliable, everything regarding that sole source should go out and stay out. The other way lies madness.
 * I tried clicking those links again and they still show me no content. I did those searches, and in two out of three instances they showed me incomplete snippets of Cyrillic text. What do these sources actually say and which exact part of the article do they verify? Do they make the same far-reaching conclusions as this article, implying that everyone with the surname "Skaramuca" as well as "Skaramuča" is descended from the same clan? Or do they just mention a family from somewhere that had that as slava? Do you see the difference? --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 11:57, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Still, I think that creating an AfD as a part of a content dispute is to go too far, especially for an admin who is supposed to know better. The available information on this topic can be presented without far-fetched conclusions, but the current situation discourages most people to edit the article since there's an apparent risk that the work they put down will be gone. - Anonimski (talk) 12:51, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Again, this isn't a content dispute about one particular aspect of an article - the whole article is a coat-rack. At this point I can't help but think that you're concern-trolling me here. Hundreds of articles go through the AfD process daily, and a fair few of them are 'rescued' during that time. There's nothing stopping anyone from trying to rescue this article. Will anyone actually try? It has sat largely unchanged since January. That's a pretty good indicator that there's nobody actually interested in fixing it, because there's very little encyclopedic value there to be worth the effort. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 11:05, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In fact, now that I look at it, the only significant change was again by the original author (Zoupan) adding a citation to a 1993 book by one Mile Nedeljković. When I googled that, I found a forum translation of a Strategic Studies Institute scholar Norman Cigar's 1994/95 writings where he basically denounced the whole book as a biased historical forgery. Why are we even still discussing this kind of tendentious stuff in the context of an encyclopedia? --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 11:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What we have is an outside-of-Wikipedia fact dispute, and that should be presented IMO. Just because a source of criticism originates from a US Army dept. doesn't mean that it should override other statements. It shouldn't be impossible to have a surname page that presents the fact that there are multiple views on its origin. So far we only have opposing statements from the 90's, a politically tense period for the region, which is another reason that a more cautious approach should be selected. Further, we also have a source that connects the surname to a concentration camp during the Holocaust, an encyclopedically notable topic, which is another reason why we shouldn't remove the article completely.
 * Also, it's a bit misleading to say that it's about something from 1993, a quick Google Books search shows that it was the originally stated in 1908: http://books.google.se/books?id=Px0JAAAAIAAJ&q=%22%D1%81%D1%83+%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC+%D0%B8%D0%B7+%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3+%28%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE+%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%99%D0%B5%29%22&dq=%22%D1%81%D1%83+%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC+%D0%B8%D0%B7+%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3+%28%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE+%D0%9F%D0%BE%D1%99%D0%B5%29%22&hl=sv&sa=X&ei=gRNlU8y-E6T-4QSGpoH4Bw&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ
 * It is however very misquoted in the Wikipedia article, since the original statement mentions the surname Žuštra, not the ones mentioned now.- Anonimski (talk) 16:14, 3 May 2014 (UTC)


 * *sigh* If I had a nickel for every talking point from ex-yu 1990s that could have a coat-rack encyclopedia article, I'd be a rich man. Just because someone somewhere said something tendentious, that does not in any way mean that Wikipedia must cover it. All in all, the list of content policies violated by this article is almost exhaustive: WP:V, WP:NOT, WP:NOR, WP:POV, WP:BLP. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 18:37, 3 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose - Deletion is not a way to resolve the dispute. This deletion proposal looks like "either my way or no way" disruptive attempt of the nominator. Dispute whether Skaramucas are connected with Serbs or not is irrelevant for this discussion. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 09:30, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * You're framing this as a content dispute about a very specific issue (whether they are "connected with Serbs"). The article doesn't merely include something about such an issue, it revolves around it. If we remove that part, what remains is meaningless didascalia and there's nothing left that even purports to be encyclopedic. Hence, there is no article to be saved from deletion (and any potential can be explored without this baggage). --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 11:57, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Antidiskriminator, your description of the problem seems quite different from what the article history says. Why do you call this AfD "disruptive"? bobrayner (talk) 21:43, 24 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica1000 07:33, 8 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete; the article is inherently WP:COATRACK. bobrayner (talk) 12:55, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Note to closing admin: A thing that could be worth mentioning here, is that this user most likely doesn't represent an "outside-of-the-Balkans input" to topics relating to the area (and neither does everyone else here, including me, we all have some type of connection to the region). The userpage gives a very neutral impression, but I've noticed some problematic behavior such as this incident: Talk:North Kosovska Mitrovica. Since it's not the first time I see this "dismiss without elaboration" attitude on historical topics that relate to Serbs, I feel that it would be good for the NPOV here to present this issue. - Anonimski (talk) 12:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * OTOH maybe he dismissed it without elaboration because we've already had all the elaboration a wiki page can take. There's only so many ways you can call a spade a spade. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 07:24, 17 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete Weird, implausible claims made in article. It should go. --Mr. Guye (talk) 21:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete, this is an Italian surname. Presumably the handful of people in the former Yugoslavia who have it are of Italian descent. The article (or the sources it draws upon) is a WP:SYNTHESIS. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:13, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Lankiveil (speak to me) 10:02, 21 May 2014 (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.