Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lucy (1787 ship)

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 due to lack of significant coverage in secondary sources. RL0919 (talk) 15:13, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lucy (1787 ship)[edit]

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No evidence of any notability, just primary sources, passing mentions, or databases (which aren't significant coverage). Nothing in the article indicates why this would be a notable ship either. Fram (talk) 07:21, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: History, Economics, Transportation, France, and United Kingdom. Fram (talk) 07:21, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Sources are just registries rather than significant coverage, so I'm baffled as to what made the creator think this was a notable ship among the thousands listed in them. "Although by one report Lucy was a whaler in 1793–1794, the ship arrival and departure data in Lloyd's List does not support this. Instead, she made at least one voyage to Barbados, possibly sailing as a government transport." and "Unfortunately, there is too little information to determine whether the captured Lucy was the Lucy of the present article." read as original research, or at the minimum evidence that you shouldn't create prose articles from only database sources! Reywas92^Talk 13:15, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- (edit conflict) Leading off with "Lucy was possibly built in France" is likewise bad, and I'm disturbed by this user's other creations that are similarly based on such primary sources. Wikipedia is not the place to play historian like this, and I guess the answer to my bafflement is that this creator doesn't think GNG applies to them, with pages like Nine Sisters (1785 ship), HMS Olive Branch (1794), and Ann (1801 Fowey ship) among countless others similarly lacking any substantive coverage. Reywas92^Talk 13:32, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Nothing but interpretation of registries. When the article begins "Lucy was possibly built in France." and also says "Unfortunately, there is too little information to determine whether the captured Lucy was the Lucy of the present article." you have to question why we even have an article on the subject. At best this might merit a brief mention in a list article somewhere. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, as there is separate coverage of the 3 whaling voyages. Or at least Redirect to Whaling in the United Kingdom as an alternative to deletion. 𝕱𝖎𝖈𝖆𝖎𝖆 (talk) 20:23, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The subject is not mentioned at the target (nor should it be) and is not a plausible search term. Redirecting would be pointless. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:28, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I would like to make three points concerning databases, categories, and selection bias. I focus my editing on the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, creating articles primarily on unrated Royal Navy vessels, East Indiamen, whalers, slave ships, and convict ships to Australia.

First, the databases I use are all reliable, some online and the older ones in the form of books or appendices in books. In the case of Lucy the coverage is not tangential. Each of her three voyages has its own pop-up window in the database. At its best one of the beauties of WP is that one can often link databases via the vessel histories as the vessels move through roles. In the case of Lucy I can at least shed light on her history after she ceased whaling. I can also supplement the database with material from both primary and secondary sources. Thus the WP article is more comprehensive than the sources that make it up. I am in frequent contact with the person who maintains the whaling database and we maintain a symbiotic relationship, exchanging information. My work has resulted in the addition of voyages to the database, and the removal of others that turned out to be spurious. When I do so, the database references WP as a source.

Second, WP uses categories. My hope is that someone looking up a more famous whaler, or other ship, will explore further by clicking on the category, and then look at a random sample of the histories and so learn more about the topic, or perhaps another topic. (For instance, a reader finding a whaler that had been a warship or a slave ship, perhaps will explore those topics.) If the reader is not interested they will never find the other, related articles; as an economist would put it, disposal is costless. One of the commenters above objected that WP is not the place for history. I would suggest that it is uniquely suited to this sort of history and that we should be encouraging innovative uses. My analogy would be to the IPhone, which originally was an IPod combined with a cell phone, and now does things Steve Jobs never envisioned.

Third, we should try to avoid selection bias, both macro and micro. WP has been, correctly, accused of neglecting many topics, something I would call macro bias. I am not suggesting that this is deliberate, or a conspiracy. It is simply an artifact of editors being volunteers, and following well-trodden paths. I do not write about the Baltic trade, the West Indian trade in sugar, rum, cotton, coffee, etc, or the lumber trade that brought wood from what is now Canada to Great Britain. Though these were important industries, the last being vital to shipbuilding both commercial and military, I have been unable to find databases that could give me a foundation. Micro selection bias is where overemphasizing notability is most distorting. By definition, the notable is egregious, or atypical; man bites dog rather than dog bites man. But many vessels have minimal careers, foundering or being wrecked on their first voyage, or being captured. In some cases apparently owners quickly realized that the trade was not profitable and left it. Lucy's owners stopped after three voyages; clearly they thought that there were other things to do with her that had a higher expected value. If one is interested in getting a sense of the profitability of whaling or slaving, or the careers of mariners and owners, or maritime entrepreneurship, one has to take into account these vessels and their histories. Successful vessels and voyages offset the unsuccessful. By reading about a sample of vessels one can get a sense of the mean and range of outcomes, not just an extreme.Acad Ronin (talk) 01:16, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's nice and all, and I'm glad you're helping a ship database, but much of what you have written here is synthesis or original research. That's fine if you want to run your own blog on ships, but at Wikipedia we expect subjects to show significant coverage in reliable secondary sources. That is still not met here. A database is not a secondary source, nor does it provide significant coverage, and Wikipedia:NOTDATABASE exists for a good reason. The article as it stands now is lots of minutia and irrelevant detail, but there's nothing showing significant coverage or even a reasonable claim to encyclopedic significance as it is defined on Wikipedia. Notability on Wikipedia is not the same as the dictionary definition of notability, do not conflate the two to argue that deleting a database stub on a ship is somehow systemic bias. Especially alarming is When I do so, the database references WP as a source. This is WP:CIRCULAR and means we cannot treat the database as automatically reliable, either. This ship is worth only a namedrop in a list article on Wikipedia, nothing more. The ship still fails GNG and you have not made any arguments otherwise. If you wish to persuade others, you need to explain how policies and guidelines support retention of this article. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:09, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also quite alarmed by the idea that your source database uses WP as a source in turn. If you find something in another primary source that supplements or corrects what the database already has, they should source that, not WP. Otherwise this really is original research and even citogenesis! Moreover it's unclear why it's encylopedically notable to compile these voyages if they're sourced to the Lloyds Register rather than more independent reporting that actually asserts significance with coverage. It may be hard to compare 18th century history to today, but it wouldn't be right to list the voyages of MSC Gülsün because they're in the MarineTraffic database either. Reywas92^Talk 03:05, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ––FormalDude (talk) 08:38, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I have seen much sound, excellent work from Acad Ronin in articles that touch on the British Navy in the Persian Gulf (one of my areas), but can't support using registries, databases and other primary sources to stand up whole dedicated WP articles on ships. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: there's very little information; there's the pollution of the database by WP articles, leading to circular references and citations. I'm not even clear whether it is really known with any level of certainly that the information we have relates to the 1787 or later ships of the same name. JMWt (talk) 15:24, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Whaling ships were a major enterprise, not just a rowboat trying to catch crabfish. SpinningSpark 15:53, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The community has repeatedly rejected the idea of inherent notability, so I hope the closer will give no weight to this drive-by vote. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:02, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I did not claim, nor do I believe, that all ships are inherently notable so that retort is a strawman argument. As for accusing me of a "drive-by vote", since I have more edits in the article than you (exactly none), then your vote is even more drive-by than mine, so yours should also be given no weight. Pot calling the kettle black I think. SpinningSpark 13:31, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't aware that number of edits to the article in question was the only thing that mattered at AfD, as opposed to, say, analysis of the sources or looking for instances of significant coverage, both of which I did, and you did not, in favor of simply saying "it's a whaling ship so we must keep it" with no further thought or explanation. Astounding level of cognitive dissonance on your part. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:50, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Chaps, chaps! Can we please focus on the substantive issue in front of us and stop flicking plasticine at each other? #BlessedAreThePeacemakers Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:13, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

More straw man – I never claimed that number of edits had any bearing on the weight of ones comments at AFD. I assumed that is what you meant by "drive-by" and answered to that point. But apparently you mean it is drive-by because you don't like my rationale because it does not include any analysis of sources. I don't see how that is drive-by, but whatever, your deletion rationale includes no analysis of the sources either (other than the disparaging "just registeries"). It is entirely analysis of the prose of the article. Taking on your points directly, you complain the article says "Lucy was possibly built in France" but the Clayton source says she was built in France without equivocation. The current version of the article now does not equivocate on this point either. That the article points out a discrepancy in the sources (Clayton source vs. Lloyd's Registry) is not an indication of lack of notability. Rather it is an indication of good article writing with WP:NPOV. Coming back to "just registeries", the Clayton source is not a registery. It is true the bulk of the book is a list of ships and their histories, but that is not the same as a registry. There are also lengthy chapters in the book on the industry and ships generally. Similar comments could be made on the Clayton & Clayton source; and the Richards & Pasquier source is a scholarly paper consisting nearly all of prose. SpinningSpark 15:54, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The article still fails GNG, because no significant coverage has been identified. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:04, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clayton is a self-published book though, of very limited impact outside its use in these Wikipedia articles. Fram (talk) 16:07, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clayton wrote her PhD thesis on the same field which gives her a WP:SPS pass as previously published in a reliable source. We mostly accept PhD theses as peer reviewed and therefore reliably published. I don't see any cause for making Swansea University an exception. SpinningSpark 16:26, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

That's hardly "published" though, it was good enough to be awarded the PhD but no one could be bothered to actually publish it. Fram (talk) 16:35, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I thought the key thing here was the peer review that made it reliable. SpinningSpark 16:38, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Limited impact, true, but not totally ignored by academia, her book does have some citations on Scholar. SpinningSpark 16:38, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two points. First, the Wikipedia article being cited in the whaling database is not circular. The database does not cover a vessel's history before and after her whaling voyages. The article does. Often the database voyages mention that the vessel was built in a "King's Yard", i.e., a Royal Navy dockyard. What I have been able to do on a few, too few occasions, is to track down the naval vessel, sometimes through name changes. That has given me the opportunity to combine info from the whaling database to a key database (in book form) on Royal Navy vessels. This enables people interested in either world to learn a little more about the other, and a connection between them. Second point. I am an "Eventualist". In 2021 I put up the article Morning Star. It was even less notable than the Lucy article as Morning Star wasn't a whaler. Today, fortuitously and fortunately, another editor discovered it. He found that it was related to an existing notable article in Wikipedia, and using a book published in 2022, wholly about an incident involving Morning Star in 1828, is adding the information, making Morning Star notable even by the strictest standards of the people voting to delete Lucy. Given that the cost of retaining an article is zero, it would seem to be a shame to impede the possibility of such an occurrence. Acad Ronin (talk)

That's all very nice, but have you identified sources that show this subject meets GNG? I'm assuming no. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:40, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comment -- Material based on contemporary sources is likely to be right, provided it is not conflating detail on different ships of the same name. However there were 1000s of merchant ships in service at any one time. I would question whether most of these were notable. We have a similar issue with local churches (usually deleted) and local high schools (often kept). In this particular case, the primary sources are newspapers and other contemporary material, which have been compiled into database. These are thus RS. The fact that a database also cites WP is not essentially circular. However, should we have an article on every ship? I have material that I extracted from the Port Books of Hull relating to voyages importing iron from Sweden and Russia. This may cover 50 or 100 ships for each year sampled. This of course does not include ships to/from other ports or the trade of other ports. If we have an article on every British merchant ship, of which a record can be found, we could easily end off with 10,000 articles; even 100,000. Is that what we want? Peterkingiron (talk) 13:56, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's a good question, but I don't think an AFD on an individual ship is the place to raise it. I'll respond anyway, but will be happy to have my comment moved if you open a discussion elsewhere. Firstly, Wikipedia has never had a problem with number of pages per se so 100,000 extra pages is not ruled out (although I doubt we are really talking about anywhere near that many, or even 10,000). Coverage of these ships in some form on Wikipedia would be justified, however, I would not be in favour of creating individual articles. Iron ore trips between Britain and Sweden are pretty routine – there would not be much to write about here. A list of ships with their vital statistics in another article is all that is needed. The expeditions of whaling ships, on the other hand, are highly dangerous and anything but routine. SpinningSpark 17:07, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Except that this article is nothing but routine reports and statistics, with the most exciting tidbit happening in, er, Sheerness. Fram (talk) 18:29, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please explain how "The expeditions of whaling ships, on the other hand, are highly dangerous and anything but routine" is consistent with policy and guidelines about notability, rather than I think it's important. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:05, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My basic point is that the voyages of whaling ships to the Southern Ocean are much more likely to be notable (and eventful) than voyages of iron ore ships on a local run in Europe. But as I said above, I was answering to a general point, not to this ship specifically, so no, it is not an ILIKEIT argument. SpinningSpark 14:32, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
But you use that general point as the reason to vote "Keep" here anyway... Fram (talk) 14:52, 24 October 2022 (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.