Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Crisis of the Roman Republic

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. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:22, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Crisis of the Roman Republic

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I'm proposing the deletion of this article because It's impossible to verify its factual accuracy as it lacks any sources whatsoever. The historical development described is this article is unverifiable (one cannot verify if what is written here is true or not). Every person (and institution) mentioned in this article has a proper article (with verifiable sources) making this article (in its present state) simply superfluous. Flamarande (talk) 21:57, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Our AfD policy at WP:BEFORE describes the steps to take before nominating an article for deletion. Among these is to look for reliable sources. My search shows that this topic is discussed widely in academic sources and in university courses under this exact terminology. Add the best of those sources and improve the article through normal editing. That's always preferable to deleting an article about a notable topic. Cullen328 (talk) 22:39, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 16:25, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as totally unsourced and unreliable. Our policy, and the number one rule on Wikipedia is that the information has to be backed by reliable and verifiable sources. Insistence on quality has taken Wikipedia from being considered a joke, to being the number one place that people turn to for quick info. Even in the "anything goes" days of 2006, there was never an excuse for an unsourced article. If a person can't source a single statement, how do we know whether all of it, or any of it, is true? There's no need for the nominator to do someone else's homework for them. Certainly, anyone who thinks that this is worthy of rescue is welcome to do the "look for reliable sources" and then "add the best of these sources" themselves. But it's not 2006 anymore, and deleting an article is preferable to keeping something that nobody cares about enough to report accurately. The days of "take my word for it" are long gone. This has no business being included with the many excellent articles that we do have about the Roman Republic. Thank you, nominator, for identifying this piece of garbage that has been on here far too long. Mandsford 21:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Incubate or keep - what an ugly mess. I'll try to add external sources for now. Bearian (talk) 23:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I completely understand Mandford's frustration, but I think this can be rescued. I found 194,000 Ghits, including many textbooks and course syllabii on the topic. Bearian (talk) 00:23, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: unsourced and questionable WP:CFORK of Roman Republic, claiming a 3 century-long 'crisis' (over half of the republic's history). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 11:00, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Suggestion I appreciate that Bearian posted a viewable link (page from a history professor at Washington State) and some bibliography, pending more of a rescue. I agree with Hrafn that the article creator's opinion is questionable. The first sentence is "The Crisis of the Roman Republic began in the late 3rd century BC", and then it skips about 80 years or so to the election of Gracchus in 133 BC, which is when other histories identify as the date of beginning of a crisis (The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic, for instance). Rather than reinventing the wheel, perhaps the better approach is to discuss spinning out the section of History of the Constitution of the Roman Republic#From the Gracchi to Caesar (133–49 BC) whose authors believed in things like footnotes-- I estimate about 35 of them. Until there is a spinout, then the phrase "Crisis of the Roman Republic" should be a redirect there. Mandsford 18:50, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've being very bold now. I removed the whole nonsense about the 4th century B.C.E. and Hannibal, as unverifiable and opinion. However, I think the rest of the article can be a perfectly good content fork from Roman Republic. recall that not all forks are bad; the main article is ghetting too long. I've asked my sister, who actually teaches this material, for assistance. I am also going to read a hard copy of Flower's treatise that I'm borrowing from my library (already noted in the article). Bearian (talk) 19:23, 4 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The article under discussion here has been flagged for {{rescue}} by the Article Rescue Squadron. SnottyWong ^soliloquize 00:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Withholding judgment until Bearian's modifications are complete. I would suggest moving the article to a better name if sources cannot be located which actually describe this phenomenon as the "Crisis of the Roman Republic". I see there is one book whose title is Crisis of the Roman Republic: Studies in political and social history, but unless this is a standard term for this period in Roman history (i.e. if this book is the only source which calls it by this name), a rename may still be required. Note that I haven't actually looked at any sources yet, so it could very well be that this is the common term for it. SnottyWong ^communicate 00:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This is a very disjointed article, focusing on a few short periods. "Crisis" may be a good title for a book or academic article, but I would have thought that "End of ..." or "collapse of ..." would be better. If retained, this article needs to become a "main" article to a section of an article on the history of the Roman Republic. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep User:Bearian has addressed the problems that I had with this article. As with everyone else here, he was under no obligation to fix it, but anytime someone does it rather than talking about it, that's to be encouraged. I disagree with Mr. Kingiron on the title, since the end and the collapse didn't come until more than a century later. I'm not too thrilled about the concept of a 100+ year long "crisis" either, although Homeland Security went back and forth between "yellow" and "orange" threat levels for years before someone figured out that the other five colors weren't likely to ever be used. If it's good enough for Cambridge U., however, I guess it's good enough for me. Mandsford 21:39, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Click on the Google book search at the top of the AFD. It has over a thousand results. A lot of books call it this, so it must be an official name. [1] Anyone have an actual history book where it was called this? Dream Focus 11:10, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Article that is a needless fork from the Roman Empire and POV attempts to describe a major chunk of it as a crisis. While the term has been used in multiple texts, its use is inconsistent and in no way always refers to how it's being applied on this page.--Yaksar (let's chat) 12:30, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep open debate -- I asked my sister, a Roman Empire expert, about this. She replied that (1) most modern scholars don't use the term anymore to include such a long time period, and (2) the article as written has a reactionary POV because it implies that expanding the franchise of citizenship caused the Republic its troubles, while the people, publica, was its essence, its res. She promised to get me some additional resources to use, but also advised deleting it and starting from scratch. In the meanwhile, I ask my fellow admins to keep open the debate while we try to fix it. I don't want you to close the debate before the controversy is decided clearly. Bearian (talk) 15:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should we consider "spinning out the section of History of the Constitution of the Roman Republic#From the Gracchi to Caesar (133–49 BC) whose authors believed in things like footnotes" as Mandsford suggested, or redirect/smerge at this point? Bearian (talk) 16:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While I'm currently a delete vote, I also would support keeping the debate open to give your sister time. There certainly does seem to be potential that she'll be able to help to clear everything up and answer lots of questions.--Yaksar (let's chat) 05:00, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Notable. - Ret.Prof (talk) 22:46, 7 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Bearian deserves an extra stripe on his medals for his work on the article. I suggest that the history of the term is itself of interest; evidence of growing lack of favor among historians would itself be a useful addition to the article, rather than a reason for deletion. Should historians be using different terms now, a new title may be difficult to choose and citations for it may be difficult to establish, especially if they use a variety of terms (I refer specifically to B's sister's reservations, rather than the choice of 'crisis', for which 'end of', or 'collapse of', are perfectly reasonable synonyms). If scholarship on this topic is in a period of transition, then WP should wait to remake. Keeping the old name may be preferable for now. Anarchangel (talk) 04:54, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Crisis of the Roman Republic

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