Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Uliger

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The result was speedy keep as a combination of blizzard conditions and withdrawn nomination. Non-admin closure. MuZemike (talk) 21:10, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uliger

This is simply the Mongolian (in the current spelling Buryat) word for "tale" or "fairytale". The article rambles mostly about trivialties that could equally be said about the oral tradition of any other culture of this world. The original source is gone, but still available through archive.org. There almost the same text served as an introduction to a collection of tales, and was clearly not intended to provide scholarly insight. When we take away all the fluff, we're essentially left with a dictionary entry with neither real content nor a reliable source. --Latebird (talk) 23:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mongolia-related deletion discussions. —Latebird (talk) 23:07, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well you're the Mongolian expert so I'll trust your judgement if you think it can't be expanded. Why you didn't speak to me personally about it first beats me. The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, what's wrong with having an article on Mongolian myths and fairytales? at least users might search for this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wronglostboy (talk • contribs) 18:03, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing inherently wrong with having an article about Mongolian myths and fairytales. But first, it would probably rather be called Mongolian mythology (which currently redirects to the also extremely substandard Altaic mythology), and second it must contain non-trivial and sourced information. The current article contains nothing useful besides the dictionary definition. You could rename it to "Märchen" and replace all instances of "Mongolian" with "German", and most of it would still read like it made sense (actually, I just tried that, and there was only one sentence I had to remove). --Latebird (talk) 19:44, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes an overview of mongol myths and legends would be very appropriate but I would suggest a redirect to Mongolian mythology.

Keep. expand, and retitle, using a redirect from this term. The encyclopedia is in English, and we use the english names of things when we can--it aids accessibility; otherwise, how is someone coming upon the title of this article likely to have the least idea what it's about? DGG (talk) 22:24, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Expand" is not a valid keep argument. Or are you volunteering to do the expansion? --Latebird (talk) 23:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a more valid argument might be that Encyclopedia Britannica thinks it notable enough for an article. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:15, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The deletion rationale is not based on a lack of notability, so that is simply off-topic. All the same, note that the Britannica doesn't really have an article about it. That's merely an index entry, pointing to two articles about Mongolian literature which happen to mention the term in passing. --Latebird (talk) 18:58, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Really? I thought deleting or keeping articles was very much based on notability. How you think that considering whether this article is notable and could contain comprehensive information is irrelevant deeply concerns me. The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz ^talk 03:26, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A lack of Notability is by far not the oonly valid reason to delete something, it just happens to be the most common one. --Latebird (talk) 06:52, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep--I don't see what is non-notable or non-encyclopedic about this, or even non-scholarly. It seems to me that all this stub needs is a sympathetic expert. (I'm really sympathetic to this subject, just not an expert.) Why delete this? That it comes from a now questionable source isn't really much of a reason, and the argument about replacing Mongol with German, well, I don't buy that at all, sorry. (And as far as I know, 'expand' IS a valid 'keep' argument.) Drmies (talk) 04:08, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep; I agree with Drmies, this seems notable enough to me, and I'll bet there are similar articles for other aspects on other cultures. I mean, I suppose one could argue that this could be merged into Mongolian culture, but I don't even see that as necessary. My only question is whether or not the information is actually accurate and true, and the more knowledgeable among us don't seem to be questioning that. Un school 04:33, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note--I added a few things I found on the fly via Google books. Now, we have a few references and a small bibliography (granted, two of the books appear to be out of print or self-published). It seems to me that a separate article on this topic is warranted; no doubt a more knowledgeable editor could add more. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 04:50, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Outside of missing some references, in its present state, the article seems reasonable to me.--RandomHumanoid^(⇒) 06:22, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - It starts to look a little better now, thanis Drmies! I just poked around in the related category trees a bit, and found that Mongolian folklore would probably be the best title for the type of information presented here. Any thoughts about that? --Latebird (talk) 07:06, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Academically they're called uligers, and they are well studied and researched in spite of how obscure they may seem to English language speakers. Although an on-line search would have readily shown they are notable. Mongolian folklore comprises the folklore of the many tribes of Mongolia, while uliger are largely Buryat. There is no reason to call them something other than what they are, and certainly a future article on Mongolian folklore should not be limited to the oral epics of only the Buryat. Also, not all of the Buryat uliger are Mongolian. Uliger is the correct name, plus a redirect from a page with the diacritic. --KP Botany (talk) 10:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That seems like a rather artificial distinction and an unnecessary restriction for the article, as probably most of the stories are common to the folklore of all Mongol peoples. Could it be that just the (Russian and/or Western) research has mainly been focused on Buryatia here? We have a similar situation with Overtone singing, which is common to all Mongolic and Turkic cultures of Central Asia, but where western literature has in the past primarily focused on research from Tuva (resulting in a very unbalanced Wikipedia article). Since the Uliger article currently doesn't mention anything that actually *is* specific to Buryatia, I think a more general title would be appropriate. Once the actual content starts to highlight such distinctions, there will still be plenty of time to split it up. But then, an AFD may not be the right place to discuss such content questions, just that we need more of it... --Latebird (talk) 12:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So you agree that throat singing isn't only Tuvan (the best throat singer in the world was Siberian), but want to restrict Uliger to Mongolia? I'm not following. It's not just Russian research, by the way. The best researched uligers are known from Chinese research into a specialized type of uliger by eastern tribes in China (Inner Mongolia), and there is a lot of German research done on uligers. Let's go ahead and call it what it is for now, then expand that for as much as we can, rather than overgeneralizing it into something it isn't. I hate having to write an article about Literature on Wikipedia because someone thinks Ernest Hemingway is too small a subject for his own page. It's significant on its own. --KP Botany (talk) 19:58, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I think it is strong enough and significant enough to constitute its own article The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it has gained a lot over the last few days. There are still a few big question marks about terminology and scope, but at least we have something to work with now. Because of that, I hereby withdraw the nomination. Thanks for the help, everybody! --Latebird (talk) 18:18, 31 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Right on. Happy new year, everybody. Drmies (talk) 18:45, 31 December 2008 (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.