Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Silver age

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 redirect‎ to Ages of Man. Content can be merged at editorial discretion. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 14:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Silver age[edit]

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Article is slightly incoherent, completely unsourced, and much of the text is a rather non-encyclopedic summary of a Greek Myth where the phrase "silver age" is used offhandedly.

I'm open if other users with more expertise feel that there is indeed enough material out there for this page to exist on it's own, but I'd like to propose deletion and/or for the article to be merged as a blurb on the Golden Age article. A MINOTAUR (talk) 14:44, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: History, Mythology, and Greece. NotAGenious (talk) 16:13, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Convert to a dab page and delete the Greek mythological details. Clarityfiend (talk) 16:52, 13 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or merge to Ages of Man. There already exists a page Silver age (disambiguation), so changing this here into a disambiguation page does not make sense. Removal of the Greek mythological details would be a disservice to the interested reader, as in my view these are the basis for all other uses of the metaphor. I also don't think the summary is of any instance where the term is used offhandedly, but rather this goes back to Hesiod's story and what others wrote in the same vein. Sources are sadly missing, but these are easy to find in the respective Google Books and Google Scholar searches. I am not sure how much discussion there is of the silver age beyond recounting the story as in Greek sources, providing a basis for treating this separately from the overall topic, which in my view, is the Ages of Man story. But I did find some discussion in the papers "Archaeology and Hesiod's Five Ages" and "Lucretius and Progress". I would be happy to hear from those deeper into the matter. Daranios (talk) 15:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Oh dear, what a mess. There is obviously an encyclopaedic topic here, but the article is equally obviously not in a satisfactory state. The article Golden Age isn't in great shape either, and I can't help but notice that the capitalization of the titles is not consistent which isn't exactly a good sign. Our best option at the moment might be to redirect (perhaps both articles) to Ages of Man and expand there with proper sources, splitting the article in the future if it gets expanded to the point where it would make sense to do so. I'm not convinced that this is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, so it might make sense to move this to something like Silver age (mythology) and moving the disambiguation page to this title. At any rate: if this is not kept as a stand-alone page, the disambiguation page should include a link to Ages of Man. I'm open to suggestions. TompaDompa (talk) 22:19, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Turns out we also have a Golden age (metaphor) article, which is likewise a mess. Looks like this area needs a major overhaul. TompaDompa (talk) 22:25, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, there is a topic worthy of encyclopedic coverage here. The Hesiodic silver age might even be notable enough for an article on its own (as there are numerous sources which discuss the five ages), but it isn't necessary to question this, as what is found in Hesiod is far from an isolated example; see, for example, Dwayne Meisner's Orphic Tradition and the Birth of Gods, p. 270, which states that Hesiod operated within a wider context of myths of the ages and reinterpreted them to fit his own objectives, pointing to [e]vidence for earlier myths of the ages [which] has been found in Persian, Hebrew, and Vedic sources. Meisner gives several examples, citing these to West's The East Face of Helicon; looking at West, he appears to devote pp. 312–9 to this topic, which includes discussion of the silver age on its own. Meisner's book is on the topic of Orphic literature, and so discusses this in the context of the three races (gold, silver, Titanic) in the Orphic Rhapsodic Theogony, recorded by the Neoplatonist Proclus; the fragment of Proclus in question is a highly significant one, and Meisner devotes a fair portion of his discussion to the silver race, pointing out another two fragments (one from Proclus, one from Plutarch) which talk about the silver race specifically, as well as quoting West's The Orphic Poems, which talks about how the role of Cronus is altered from the Hesiodic narrative (i.e. he is demoted from gold to silver). To this can be added the interpretation of the ages by Proclus (in terms of his Neoplatonic schema), the interpretations of Hesiod's five ages by modern scholars, and, in Meisner's words, the ancient authors from Plato to Juvenal [who] engaged with the Hesiodic myth of the ages, reworking the myth in their own ways that reflected their own interests, all the while making “implicit evaluations and creative interpretations” of Hesiod; Meisner points out Aratus as one significant example. I think there is definitely an article worth having here, and I think there is enough to be said about the silver age specifically to keep this separate from Ages of Man; I would be very much opposed to any suggestion that the Greek mythological details should simply be deleted. – Michael Aurel (talk) 05:58, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've just remembered Van Noorden's 2015 study of the Hesiodic races (cited by Meisner), Playing Hesiod: The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity, which would be particularly helpful for interpretations of the silver age by both ancient authors and modern scholars; Ctrl+F gives a total of 169 mentions of "silver" in the book, and there appears to be at least one discussion of 3 or 4 pages devoted to the silver race. – Michael Aurel (talk) 06:32, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Thoughts on redirecting to Ages of Man?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dusti ^{*Let's talk!*} 00:37, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Ages of Man per TompaDompa. That is the primary topic of the main topic of this page, and the remainder of this page is disambiguation, which exists. In considering where the reader will find the best information, they will do so on a single page on the primary topic, rather than on a page that pulls out one of the ages from the primary topic. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:32, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting. But I'm leaning towards a Merge to Ages of Man.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:45, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I will agree with the suggested merge to Ages of Man. Both articles need improvement, and most(?) of what Michael Aurel found could be used there. It may be that we could someday either split that out or even have a WP:BCA here, even soon, so I'm not opposed to a keep, but merge is fine for the time being. AfD is not cleanup, but I'm not opposed to cleaning up when the opportunity presents itself —siro χ o 06:42, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, most of the sources I gave could also be used at Ages of Man. While I do think there is enough for a separate article, most of those in favour of a merge here seem to be suggesting that it is probably the best short-term solution, and that, in future, a separate article could be created again; I wouldn't say I'm necessarily opposed to that course of action. – Michael Aurel (talk) 23:04, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting discussion. Although I was nudging towards a Merge, the comments made to that suggestion were that this was obvious the 2nd choice for editors arguing to Keep this article. I didn't appreciate the strong sentiments of those editors so I'm relisting this discussion, with the knowledge that there is also support for a Merge.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:25, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Ages of Man, at least an appropriate title and a suitable redirect target. There seems to be little or nothing to merge, really. It is quite possible that the scholarly sources would enable at least the parent article to be much improved with cited analysis; it might even be that there is enough scholarly analysis that we could have a separate article for each age, but that is at the moment very far from proven, so a redirect is all we need at the moment. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:20, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Liz - dumb question: when the decision is made to merge, who actually does the work? Does the closing admin do it? Does it always get done? What if it doesn’t?

I can see that in some cases this might involve adding a sentence to the target article. In other cases, there might be a fair amount of effort required to thread content into multiple places in the target.

—A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 16:13, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Merges rely on volunteer editors, like everything else. If the work doesn't get done in reasonable time, the matter can be revisited. Of course if all we need, as I suppose, is a redirect, there's almost nothing to do. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:32, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we rely on other editors to handle the Merges. Often a Merge is done by an editor who participated in the AFD discussion and is familiar with the content of both articles. Originally, when I first started closing AFD discussions, I thought that the closer was responsible for doing the Merge so I left those discussions to other admins to close. I soon learned that this was not the case. I don't know for sure but I guess we have editors who focus on Merges just like we have editors who specialize in Page Moves or responding to certain article tags. But it's best when it's an editor who really knows the material well. I've seen sloppy Merges and when this happens, it's no better than just Redirecting the article to the target page. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:20, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Ages of Man per CC above. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:11, 10 September 2023 (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.