Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 69

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. Stifle (talk) 09:49, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 69[edit]

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So, an old text was found among hundreds of other papyri. The find in toto is of course notable, and some (or many) of the individual papyri are notable. But this one? I can't find any evidence that anyone apart from the discoverers have ever paid any significant attention to this (and the discovery was more than 100 years ago, it's not as if there hasn't been enough time yet). It's one of many remaining Ancient Greek texts, and one of the less interesting ones. Serves little purpose as a redirect, so deletion seems to be the best option. Fram (talk) 15:29, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Egypt-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:13, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:13, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 19:13, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or merge This item was picked for an exhibition (and virtual exhibition) in the Eric North Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in 1998. While the main find was over 100 years ago, the suggestion that the scholarship on these papyri is anything other than half-begun would be over-stating the case. William A. Johnson's Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus was only published in 2004. And the main resource The Oxyrhynchus Papyri is an ongoing work, it recently published volume 79 The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume LXXIX, Egypt Exploration Society, London, 2014. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:54, 27 November 2014 (UTC).
Keep. "P. Oxy. 69" produces more than twenty results in GBooks. I was under the impression there was a paucity of sources from the ancient world. Common sense suggests that this should be kept. Satisfies OLDBOOK. James500 (talk) 09:53, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- @James500: At least some (most? all?) of these Google Books hits are for The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 69, e.g. the first, the second and the third hit. Can you please reconsider your !vote (or at least your argument for it), as it seems to be incorrect (though understandably so). The AfD is for the individual papyrus fragment 69, not the 69th volume of the books about this hoard of papyri (both confusingly referred to as P.Oxy). Your Google Books results are (mainly) for the second one, which isn't the subject of this AfD. Fram (talk) 10:19, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - I will examine the results more closely. This may take some time. James500 (talk) 10:51, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I will report my findings as I progress (expect this post to be updated as I find sources; and not necessarily in the same order as GBooks). This calls it "perhaps the most colourful case" and "neat detective work". Footnote 35 on page 11 of MacMullen's book might be citing it as evidence. A number of the results are in French, German and Italian. Unless I am mistaken, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume LXIX was published in 2005, so it may be that in all earlier sources "P Oxy 69" does indeed refer to the papyrus and not the book. James500 (talk) 11:46, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly most of them are, but e.g. this one from 1994 uses P Oxy 69 as a typo of P Oxy 59, sadly. With a source like this[1] from 1969, I can't seem to match the source with the actual text of the papyrus, so I suppose something else is being referenced. And this a well seems to be about another text. (Sorry to nitpick, you are doing a great job in getting this kept and proving my AfD to be in error). Fram (talk) 13:20, 28 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Searching instead for "P. Oxy. I 69" will bring some nice hits. I like the sentence "das Durchbrechen ganzer Wände mit Hilfe von Rammböcken". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:39, 29 November 2014 (UTC).

Delete -- Some of the Oxyrhynchus papyri are highly important, but this one is clearly rather mundane. The fact that it was a sample chosen for an exhibition hardly changes that. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:20, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - the nomination - "the discovery was more than 100 years ago, it's not as if there hasn't been enough time yet" - misunderstands the context of the discovery, subsequent analysis and the associated time-lines. There has been nowhere near enough time, such is the nature of the find. It the context of what has been published to date, I think being chosen from among the thousands of fragments for an exhibition absolutely differentiates this from other samples in the collection. As is the nature of such things, the subject matter (mundane or not) isn't necessarily the deciding factor (preservation, quality, size, clarity, etc are). St★lwart¹¹¹ 08:49, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep – According to the {{Oxyrhynchus Papyri}} navbox at the bottom of the page, there is a project underway to write an article for every one of these papyri. This is one of 207 papyri in Vol. I, all with articles or mentions in group articles. Before we do anything with this, we had better hear from the author of the template and Leszek Jańczuk, the creator of the article. He's one of Wikipedia's most prolific editors. I don't know why he hasn't commented here, but we better ask. – Margin1522 (talk) 22:06, 5 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
First of all I should help for the nominator, because his job is incomplete:

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It was an agreement between several users that every ancient manuscript deserves for wikipedia article. Every one papyrus is very important for science and I beleive it is also important enough for wikipedia. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 15:34, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An agreement between several editors has no value here, actually, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. This papyrus may or may not be important enough for Wikipedia, but claiming that all papyri are important enough seems overkill. I suppose that at least not all stone tablets from Mesopotamia are considered Wikipedia-worthy as well... Fram (talk) 09:15, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OLDBOOK is not a local consensus, and there can be a rough consensus that these papyri generally satisfy it. James500 (talk) 18:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- If WP:OLDBOOK is the "agreement between several users" mentioned above, then it simplu isn't applicable, as this paragraph-long fragment can ntot by any stretch be called a book. OLDBOOKS is about books that have been published in the past and were notable in their own time. This text was not notable at all in ancient times. Fram (talk) 18:57, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - OLDBOOK says no such thing. There is no requirement that the document be famous in its own time, nor should there be. The original version of the proposal said that all books written before 1750 were ipso facto notable, so it can't have been exclusively about past fame. James500 (talk) 19:12, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Whether they all are seems beyond the scope of this discussion. Since this project is so extensive and well underway, I think we'd have to take it to a wider forum. With respect to this particular article, the alternate source names provided by Leszek turn up 153 cites on Google Books and 21 on Google Scholar, mainly from historians. So I would say that it passes. – Margin1522 (talk) 21:33, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Please read the above discussion completely. I have already countered the same argument: most of these hits are not about this document at all, but about the 69th volume of the P. Oxy collection (certainly from the first and third new link, less so from the middle one). Google searches are useful, but please discuss individual sources, not Gogle hits were most are not about the subject up for deletion. Fram (talk) 21:53, 8 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - It is cited by scholars studying the criminal justice system – Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt (here p. 79), "Many texts speak of the arrival of thieves, or describe acts of robbery and intrusion in the house." (here), and Apuleius und die Räuber: ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung (here p. 291). Then there are the philologists – American Journal of Philology "so that I may be able to recover the barley" (here), and a number of Greek New Testament scholars who were interested in the everyday meaning of the Greek expression for "break down the door". – Margin1522 (talk) 08:54, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - Fram, in English literature numbers of volums are written in Roman numerals. In French literature they are written in Arabic numerals (and in several other languages), but in French literature almost everything is different (abbreviations, references, etc.). Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 18:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - Interesting, but hardly relevant as an answer to my post. Most of the hits in those Google results are not about this papyrus, and most of the others are truly passing mentions (being one of many fragments mentioned in a footnote, as in multiple examples linked by Margin1522, is hardly significant or adding to the notability; we could just as well start writing articles about individual letters written by notable authors, as they will be mentioned / cited in biographies, publisher histories, and so on). Fram (talk) 08:13, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - I don't think it is clear that most of the search results refer the printed volume rather than the papyri. So far, you have only given six examples, which is not a majority, even if we agree with all of them. Calling the sources "passing mentions" isn't a valid criticism, because the relevant guideline, OLDBOOK says, in express words, that the number of bare citations is a criteria for notability, which is sensible because this correlates with historical value. This should not be suprising because we have adopted a similar approach with PROF and NJOURNALS. It would be helpful to stop using the word "most", since that is disputed, and start giving specific numbers and examples. James500 (talk) 18:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      - "We could just as well start writing articles about individual letters written by notable authors, as they will be mentioned" There is no such publications. No one will publish for you. Irrelevant. If you do not believe, try. Just try. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 13:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Speaking of ignorance... You have never heard of "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", "The Letters of Vincent van Gogh", "The Letters of Oscar Wilde" and so on? These are notable books with letters by notable authors or artists. Many of these letters are then referenced in other works, like their biographies or the biographies of other artists, authors, publishers, ... That does not mean that these individual letters are notable enough to have an article (with very few exceptions, obviously some letters are individually notable, but not e.g. all 928 letters in the Van Gogh book are... But e.g. this book quotes from Van Gogh Letter 152. Fram (talk) 13:53, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        I hope we are still talking about paleography. In some cases initials deserve for individual articles if they are used in numerus manuscripts and they will published by scientific editors, but not for individual scribe. Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 15:45, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        
        Like I just said above, when you read WP:OLDBOOK it becomes very obvious that it doesn't apply to this paragraph-long scrap of text at all. This was not a "book" by any stretch of the imagination, not a published work or work by a notable author (in its time), just a random scrap of papyrus that has happened to survive the ages. it may or may not be notable, but this should be argues with sources adressing it in detail, and applicable policies and guidelines, not by number of Google hits when many of these are not about this subject, and guidelines which don't apply. Fram (talk) 19:13, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        In my view the reasoning behind OLDBOOK is applicable to this document which obviously possesses the sort of historical value with which OLDBOOK is concerned. Even if we decide it isn't technically a "book" (not obvious), "Coverage notes" says the guideline "may be instructive by analogy" for other documents, so we can still apply it. James500 (talk) 19:29, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        Let's agree to strongly disagree then, if you can't even agree that this isn't obviously a book at all. The "analogy" section you quote lists a long series of similar things to books. Scraps of paper don't appear in it, nor does anything remotely similar. You can use OLDBOOK to your hearts delight here, but I'll have to ignore any argument derived from it, and hope the closing admin has the same sense. Fram (talk) 19:41, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        
        Even if I was to accept that NBOOK does not apply to letters or manuscripts (and I don't see why it shouldn't), the extant part of this letter was republished in 1897 in something that was definitely a book, so OLDBOOK must apply. Since part of the letter isn't extant, we don't know that it was a paragraph long, and I don't see its brevity as a significant issue, it being no shorter than many poems. James500 (talk) 23:14, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        OLDBOOK doesn't mean that every part of an old book is notable, only that the whole book may be notable. Please stop grasping at straws and focus on the sources that actually discuss this papyrus, if you want to show that it is notable. Fram (talk) 06:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -- Vote as above -- I really do not think we can have an artiel on every single scrap of paper in this enormous collection. If the Ms is really as much cited as others suggest, the article ought to have some discussion of the significance applied to be by scholars. If the article is suitably expanded to explain how important it is, notify me and I will reconsider my vote, but at present none of that is there. I therefore must regard it as an article on a NN scrap of paper. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We can easily have articles on all of them because we are NOTPAPER. Calling the papyri mundane or a scrap of paper is an IDONTLIKEIT argument. The collection is not enormous. The number of these papyri published is a few thousand, which is a very small number. NRVE requires only the existence of sources. It does not require that they be cited in the article, or that the article be more than a stub, which are not valid arguments for deletion. James500 (talk) 18:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We don't have articles on all of them. Some are grouped in tables and get only a line or two of description. I'm not comfortable with calling any of them a "scrap of paper". To me this one is far more interesting than yet another fragment of the Gospels. A scholar studying the New Testament might disagree. This shouldn't depend on the opinions of Wikipedia editors regarding the notability of the topic. It should depend on the cites. Also, why do we have rules about notability in the first place? It's because less notable means fewer eyes on it, greater likelihood of mistakes going uncorrected, etc. Are there any concerns that the information in the article is incorrect? – Margin1522 (talk) 04:12, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

ITSTRUE and ILIKEIT are not accepted reasons to keep it. Like you say, we should focus on the cites, which show notability (or not). Which of the cites, in your opinion, show significant attention from reliable sources? Fram (talk) 06:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IDONTLIKEIT is also not an argument and "scrap of paper" - it is an ignorance. Every this "scrap" cost 100-500 thousand dollars. Margin1522 gave several examples of its notability (duff). Leszek Jańczuk (talk) 13:37, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Source for price of this papyrus? As for Margin1522, have you really checked these sources. this is a prime example of a passing mention, being listed among a bunch of others in a footnote is not significant attention; this pdf equally gives it in a footnote list stating "see for example" as one of ten examples, no further elaboration; and surprise, in the third one, [2], it is also used as a passing example but not given any significant attention. Hence my question, which sources give significant attention to this papyrus, thereby establishing its notability. Simply give me the three most significant ones, the three ones that in your opinion undoubtedly show that it is a notable subject. Again pointing to the same very minor passing mentions only undermines your own position though. Fram (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

True, they are all passing mentions. But I thought the page in the Räuber book was pretty interesting, and the author needed all of the sources in the footnotes to arrive at the picture he paints. Take some other examples that I didn't list, the New Testament scholars. Say the phrase "breaks through the door" occurs in the NT. It's a metaphor comparing a spiritual event to something in the real world. You read the English and think you understand it, but what did it mean in the original Greek? Here is a real world example, with no need to worry about scribal errors or what it may have meant in later times because it's the original, from the very time when the Greek NT was being written. We can tell that this was quite a violent event, involving a battering ram. To a translator or scholar studying the text, this is priceless. I think the same goes for all of them. They are significant because they are so old and so rare. – Margin1522 (talk) 14:19, 11 December 2014 (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.