Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darbari 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. JohnCD (talk) 11:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Darbari family[edit]

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Article referred to AfD from here. Although offline sources have been given in the article, none is verifiable wrt the claims within the article - the sole author (with possible CoI) has ignored various requests to add verifiable sources. AfD requested for lack of reliable sources. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 09:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. -- -SpacemanSpiff 15:37, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - As it stands, there's no indication where in the sources cited any particular detail comes from, which makes it equally impossible to tell if original research is involved. Trouble is, I've seen articles of this style before: with all due consideration of the risk of systemic bias, this is a very recognisable style of aggrandizing pseudohistory that rambles through sources (typically ones with anecdotal genealogy) to prove noble origins to some family or caste. And furthermore, the whole thing is just a dump of the text at these self-published pages. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 20:27, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete-As per norm.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Linguisticgeek (talk • contribs) 18:03, 17 January 2010 (UTC) [reply]
~~Delete~~ Keep - I've been looking around for some online copies of some of these documents and have had some limited success. Page 126 of Chiefs and families of note in the Delhi, Jalandhar, Peshawar and Derajat divisions of the Panjab by Charles Francis Massy, which is listed as a reference in the article, seems to contain references to this family (see here, source can be downloaded as a (very large) PDF here). However, I have some concerns about some of the other sources. The Journal of Historical Research, which is listed as a reference on the article, appears to be completely unreachable on the internet (although it is mentioned on the Ranchi University website here, so we know it exists). Furthermore, The People of India, which is also listed as a reference, (viewable and downloadable here), contains only one reference to the Darbari Family, and that's in the index (here).
For these reasons, I believe this article is not a hoax, and the existance (if nothing else) of the Darbari family can probably be established. I would also note that ease of access to references does not affect verifiability (see WP:SOURCEACCESS). However, the extraordinary difficulty in finding these resources suggests, to me anyway, that the subject of this article does not meet the significant coverage criterion for notability (see WP:SIGCOV)I didn't read WP:SIGCOV properly. Accordingly, I suggest that the following action be taken: (1) The hoax template be removed from the article. (2) The article be deleted on lack of notability grounds, and not on the grounds that the subject is not verifiable. (3) This article be userfied so that if sufficent sources are found for it to satisfy WP:SIGCOV, it may be re-added to the mainspace at a later date. -- Lear's Fool (talk | contribs) 04:56, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed my mind. Bearing in mind that ease of access does not affect the verifiablity standard (again, see WP:SOURCEACCESS), I feel that this article contains verifiable references. Furthermore, upon a rereading of WP:GNG (I think I misunderstood WP:SIGCOV), I feel that this subject meets the notability requirements, if just barely. The article needs a lot of work, but conflicts of interest are not grounds for deletion. I am still not entirely convinced that this needs it's own article, so perhaps a merge may be appropriate, but I do not think that deletion is warranted. -- Lear's Fool (talk | contribs) 05:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think it certainly needs weeding-out of all the honorifics to see whether there is actually verifiable historical continuity. Without solid genealogy, it's rather like an English article saying "King X granted Sir Y the title of Knight, therefore everyone with the surname Knight is from the noble dynasty of Sir Y". Fabulated histories are endemic in this territory, rather in the way people in the Greek city-states always managed to trace their ancestry back to their founding hero. Another problem is that there's a certain amount of unreliability to histories produced under the Raj, that fostered dynastic stories in ways that slotted the Indian caste system into the British power structure. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 14:20, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment The existence of one source which talks about a Darbari Family, is not enough at all to even qualify for basic notability criteria. I had put an AfD for this article not because of CoI, but because of lack of sources. And I maintain that unless clear reliable sources can be provided that are linked directly to claims (especially royal embellishments), the claims within the article would qualify to be hoaxes. I maintain my Delete vote. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 10:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A hoax is defined at WP:HOAX as "an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real". While I think there are valid concerns about the verifiability and notability of the subject here, I think there needs to be some evidence of foul play before this can be labelled as a hoax, especially when we know the subject exists.

With regards to the one source, I appreciate that the source I linked to above does not, by itself, mean that the subject meets the significant coverage part of the notability criteria. However, the article itself lists three sources that appear to be third party sources:

Journal of historical research, Volume 33‎, (1993), Ranchi University. Dept. of History (see link in my first post)
Journal of religious studies, Volumes 19-20 By Punjabi University. Dept. of Royal Families Studies (see page 14 of this)
A.K. Warder, An Introduction to Indian Historiography (1972), Popular Prakashan.

Assuming (and I realise this may be a big assumption) that these sources do deal, in some significant way, with the Darbari Family, then this satisfies the significant coverage part of the notability requirement. These sources are not online, but I would reiterate that WP:SOURCEACCESS points out that just because a source is available only on from a University Library (for example), does not mean that it fails verifiability.

No-one can deny that this article is not particularly well written. As Gordonofcartoon pointed out above, it appears to be a text dump from here. What makes this particularly difficult is the lack of inline references, meaning that we do not know which parts have reliable sources, which parts constitute a synthesis of sources, and which parts are completely unverifiable. However, this subject appears to have significant coverage in three reliable sources, and thus at least some parts of it satisfy notability and verifiability criteria. It may, in the end, turn out that not enough of this article is cited by the three sources above, and in this case the content should be merged into another article. -- Lear's Fool (talk | contribs) 02:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete the article as it stands, with no prejudice to recreating a correct article. The article confuses the concept of Darbari with a clan system. The term means "of the court" and was issued as a title to provincial rulers and local chieftains who had acceded to the supremacy of the Mughal empire. So in reality, there isn't a "Darbari family" but a "Darbari" title issued to people within the main empire, akin to the Peerage system, albeit, less structured and more liberal. Likewise, one of the reference provided above by User:Lear's Fool on the Darbari Jats, refers to the group that allowed their women to get married to Emperor Jahangir, so the title again reflects that they were amenable to the court of Jahangir. The article as it stands confuses and intermixes a lot of these things and is pushing a theory that is not present in individual sources. Can an article be written on the concept, yes? However, nothing except for articles, prepositions, and conjunctions can really be transferred to a new article on the Darbari system. -SpacemanSpiff 06:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as pseudo-scholarship with no encyclopedic value. --208.59.93.238 (talk) 14:38, 22 January 2010 (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.