Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John de Drury

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. postdlf (talk) 06:56, 23 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

John de Drury

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The subject of this orphan looks to be, at best, a non-notable ancestor of just another English family, and at worst an invention of later antiquarians to give the family a more glorious past. The first three sentences are unsupportable. The next is deceptive in that the Battle Abbey Roll is not considered to be an authentic historical record. The only reference is a non-reliable personal web page. There is nothing here worth reporting in Wikipedia, and nothing worth merging anywhere. Agricolae (talk) 16:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Agricolae (talk) 16:45, 10 December 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Keep If they have no modern coverage, I tend to consider historical characters to be notable if they have at least some coverage in military/heraldic/etc literature; a Google books search shows a fair number of mentions. So among the several dozen billion people who have lived in the past 10,000 years, at least this guy rated a mention in a few books. This is an encyclopedia, after all. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 20:21, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that if a companion of William the Conqueror has no modern coverage they were probably made up, in this case by a Tudor-era person who couldn't stomach the fact that his neighbors could trace their trees earlier than he could. So, out of several dozen billion people who have lived in the past 10,000 years, this guy didn't. And before anybody goes there, he isn't notable as a fiction either. Genealogy during that era was an arms race, with every noble family inventing or having invented for them a line that could be traced back to the Holy Grail of Tudor genealogy, a 'companion of the Conqueror'. The Battle Abbey Roll, if it ever was a serious attempt at enumerating real people had so many names added to it to glorify families of the later periods by giving them such an ancestor that there is no particular reason to believe anyone in it is authentic (unless they are known from elsewhere, in which case it is superfluous). There is nothing notable about any of these invented ancestors. This one certainly hasn't received the significant coverage that is the basis for biographical notability. Agricolae (talk) 00:45, 11 December 2012 (UTC)'[reply]

Fair enough, I'm not going to argue with someone who seems so knowledgeable about the topic. Changing !vote to Delete, per nominator. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 00:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak keep~~ Comment-- I am not sure that we can have an article on every knight present at Hastings, whther the Battle Abbey Roll is reliable or not. The source cited may be non-RS, but I would guess that RS lies behind it and could be cited if some one would take the trouble to find it. Whether the Battle Abbey Roll is considered reliable by historians, it is clearly reliable as to its own contents. My reaction to an article like this is that it is probably best merged into something else, but I cannot suggest where. Peterkingiron (talk) 23:00, 10 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Let me disabuse you of this. The cited web page does not have a RS behind it. It is based on the ruminations of a 17th century self-promoter, as well as a completely ridiculous just-so story about the origin of the name. It quotes someone who is described as a New York City nerve specialist, as if that was a qualification for historical expertise. I have no doubt that Thomas Drury of the time of James I wrote such a document, but that doesn't mean a modern scholar wouldn't bust a gut laughing at it. Scholarly genealogists have spent the past 150 years trying to purge this nonsense from historical sources, but it just keeps getting regurgitated by people with more enthusiasm than competence when it comes to family history. Agricolae (talk) 00:45, 11 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed my vote, but I would still have perferred a merge target to deletion if one could be found. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:29, 12 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:21, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:21, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —Theo polisme 13:54, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as unverifiable. There seem to be some 19th century sources on heraldry and genealogy mentioning John de Drury, but they don't provide significant coverage, and I have no idea whether they are reliable in the first place. In particular, this source says John de Drury was the "son and heir of one of the companions in arms of the Conqueror" - if that's our John and the source is correct, the article's content would be flat-out wrong. I don't think these genealogical entries establish John de Drury's notability either way. Huon (talk) 15:33, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Fails WP:GNG without references, what choice do we have. If they are found, the article can easily come back.--Nixie9 (talk) 04:29, 19 December 2012 (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.