Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dropidas

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 merge to Critias. And leave a redirect behind. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:07, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Dropidas[edit]

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This was a redirect to Plato when discovered and was immediately sent to RfD. The result was "restore article without prejudice against sending to AfD". Therefore, I am now committing it to your hands. The Traditionalist (talk) 21:52, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

RfD closer here. ~~I recommend keep.~~ I was personally persuaded by Legacypac's argument that "Anyone we know something about that lived that long ago deserves at least a stub." Because he's closely related to three people for which we have articles - Critias, Solon, and Plato - there isn't a single sensible place to merge this. The mention by Critias, the cited 1892 book,[1] and these modern sources ~~[2]~~[3] add up to "persistent coverage" (over 1500 years!) in "independent reliable sources". So I recommend keeping this article despite the likelihood of WP:Permastub. Der yck C. 14:45, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Closely related" is a bit strong: Critias was his great grandson, Plato cannot have been more closely related than great great grandson, and ~~we have no idea how Solon was related to Dropidas, except that Critias asserts that he was.~~[See below] As for your modern sources, one is the cited 1892 book in question, which is simply a translation of Plato's dialogues; the modern book mentions Dropidas once and gives us nothing new; and the website gives us something new ("Dropidas was mentioned in the poems of Solon."), but doesn't identify the poem, which makes finding it to confirm more difficult, and at any rate is part of a website arguing among other things that Atlantis was real: hardly a reliable source!

That said, it does seem to be WP practice to keep articles on pretty much every attested ancient Greek person ever mentioned in any source, no matter how permastubby they are. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:52, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it turns out that Diogenes Laertius tells us that "Dropides" [sic] was Solon's brother. Given that he was writing 700+ years after Solon, however, I'm not sure how accurate that is likely to be... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:57, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Deryck Chan: There actually is a single sensible place to merge this into: Timaeus (dialogue).--The Traditionalist (talk) 13:39, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@The Traditionalist: I'm not so sure. Timaeus is a large text and the mention of Dropidas is too little a portion of it to warrant a detailed mention there. Besides, the discussion below seems to have established that Timaeus wasn't the only ancient Greek text that mentioned the Dropidas who is the subject of this article. Der yck C. 22:20, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is a problem with the translations. See here.--The Traditionalist (talk) 13:55, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Caeciliusinhorto: The bit about the poems is most likely a misreading of the ancient text. The text says: “[...] ὡς ὁ τῶν ἑπτὰ σοφώτατος Σόλων ποτ᾽ ἔφη. ἦν μὲν οὖν οἰκεῖος καὶ σφόδρα φίλος ἡμῖν Δρωπίδου τοῦ προπάππου, καθάπερ λέγει πολλαχοῦ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν τῇ ποιήσει” which I quickly translate as: “[...] as the wisest of the seven, Solon, once said. he, then, was a friend and very much beloved of Dropides, great-grandfather to us, exactly in the fashion he himself (i.e. Dropides!) says many times in his poetry”. The text says that Solon is mentioned in the poems of Dropides. ~~Solon, after all, did not write poetry.~~ As if Atlantis was not enough, the source has confirmed its complete unreliability.--The Traditionalist (talk) 14:15, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@The Traditionalist: My Greek isn't good enough to tell whether the poems in the text refer to Solon's or Dropidas', but it's certainly not true that Solon didn't write poetry: indeed, poetry attributed to Solon survives, though only in fragmentary form. You'll find it in the Loeb Classical Library's volume on Greek Elegiac poetry. (And it gets an entire subsection at Solon#Poetry) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:07, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Caeciliusinhorto: Ouch, I suppose I did not know that. Still, it is rather obvious from the Greek text that the speaker refers to the poetry of Dropides.--The Traditionalist (talk) 21:54, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:14, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philosophy-related deletion discussions. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spirit of Eagle (talk) 05:41, 7 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Merge and Redirect to Critias. I agree that it's worth keeping this information, but don't see what disservice it does to the reader to take what scant content we have about the subject and merge it into the subject through which most of that content relates. Certainly no objection to recreating at some point if we have more to go by. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:52, 8 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Merge into Critias, per Rhododendrites. Being related to a notable person does not confer notability, per Wikipedia policy. I'm sympathetic to the argument that anyone who lived that long ago must be notable; but there ought to be some kind of facts other than how he's related to another person. Relationships can be summed up on the pages of notable persons to whom he's related, with no loss of content. P Aculeius (talk) 07:42, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to the biography of Critias per above. There seems to be enough space in Critias for more information about Critias's ancestry, and the entirety of this article can be merged there. Deryck C. 11:34, 19 June 2016 (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.