Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wolf of Soissons

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. All editors here, apart from the PROD nominator, agree that the article should be kept. Sources have also been provided. (non-admin closure) SST flyer 05:55, 19 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wolf of Soissons[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Prodded for more than 10 days. I am not 100% sure it has to be deleted or merged with some other article. Pred prod reason "This article (and several others created by User:Bearerofthecup) entirely rely (or almost entirely rely) on a single book from Edwin Mellen Press, a vanity publisher. The article discusses an apocryphal story as if it were true. Not only are there no reliable sources backing up the truth of these subjects there is little, if any, sources discussing the subjects as literature.". Magioladitis (talk) 21:06, 11 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative search:

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL) --Sam Sailor ^Talk! 13:07, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. It's another one of these common cases where we don't get a lot of sources if we restrict ourselves to searching for English language sources using the phrase Wolf of Soissons. Use the above alternative search, and we see that there are plenty of sources. The incident got press coverage from as early as March 1765 shortly after it happened; Pierre Rousseau includes it in the April 1765 edition of Journal encyclopédique, historian Henri Martin in his 1837 book History of Soissons, and it continues to be mentioned in the literature up until this century:

Henri Martin (1837). Histoire de Soissons, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours: d'après les sources originales (in French). Arnould. pp. 649–.
Journal historique et littéraire (in French). chez François Cavelier, et se trouve à. 1765. pp. 283–.
Pierre Rousseau (1765). Journal encyclopédique... [Ed. Pierre Rousseau] (in French). De l'Imprimerie du Journal. pp. 173–.
Jacques-André Millot (1801). L'art de procréer les sexes à volonté: ou, Systême complet de génération (in French). Millot. pp. 209–.
Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale (in French). 1846. pp. 453–.
Pierre Jean Corneille Debreyne (1847). Mœchialogie: Traité des péchés contre les sixième et neuvième commandements du décalogue et de toutes les questions matrimoniales ... suivi d'un abrégé pratique d'embryologie sacrée (in French). Poussielgue-Rusand. pp. 450–.
Archives départementales de l'Aisne (1906). Inventaire sommaire des Archives départementales antérieures à 1790: Archives civiles. Série E supplément (in French). Impr. H. Jacob. pp. 137–.
Société historique et scientifique de Soissons (1937). Bulletin (in French). pp. 4–.
Dr. André Pecker; Dr. Henri Roulland (1958). L'Accouchement au cours des siécles (in French). Éditions R. Dacosta. pp. 110–.
Mercure de France (reprint) (in French). Slatkine Reprints. 1970. pp. 327–.
Richard H. Thompson (1 January 1991). Wolf-hunting in France in the Reign of Louis XV: The Beast of the Gévaudan. E. Mellen Press. pp. 238–. ISBN 978-0-88946-746-0.
Henri Duranton; Pierre Rétat; Université de Lyon II. Centre d'études du XVIIIe siècle (1992). Gazettes européennes de langue française (in French). PU Saint-Etienne. pp. 150–. ISBN 978-2-86272-025-8.<
Jean-Marc Moriceau (2007). Histoire du méchant loup: 3000 attaques sur l'homme en France (XVe-XXe siècle) (in French). Fayard. pp. 463–.
Mario Ludwig (12 November 2012). Faszination Menschenfresser: Erstaunliche Geschichten über die gefährlichsten Tiere der Welt (in German). Heyne Verlag. pp. 17–. ISBN 978-3-641-08403-5.

Subject meets WP:GNG. Sam Sailor ^Talk! 13:07, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. Sam Sailor ^Talk! 13:08, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I was the editor that PROD'd it. I don't speak or read French. Those that do are welcome to fix it themselves. As for me, sources I can neither evaluate nor use are not sources at all, to my mind. Furthermore, the charge remains that the article discusses as real a fictional character. This is more or less a hoax unless corrected. Anyone supporting keeping this nonsense is therefore responsible for correcting it. I'm doing the right thing and pushing for deletion. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:21, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. How could anyone favor deleting in the face of all those sources listed above? Everyking (talk) 06:34, 14 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Everking. The article's not perfect, but I'm sure it could be cleaned. I'm really quite puzzled by Chris Troutman's claims; this is not a fictional character, and the fact that some of us can't read French doesn't invalidate French-language sources. Josh Milburn (talk) 11:51, 14 June 2016 (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.