Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abratacus

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 List of Coptic saints. The gist of this discussion is that this Coptic saint is only mentioned briefly and in passing in a few quite old sources. There is consensus to not keep the article, but there is no consensus between a merger to List of Coptic saints or plain deletion. In such circumstances, I go with redirection as a compromise. Editors can separately decide whether or not to merge content from the history. Sandstein 09:57, 10 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Abratacus[edit]

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Saints are of course notable but this sub-stub may be a hoax or a misspellings. I can't find any sources - Google gives just Wikipedia and its mirrors/forks, GScholar and GBooks have just a few hits and they all point to the cited, no preview Holweck, F. G. A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co. 1924. Which to me suggests a misspellings in a century-old work, because one would expect a saint to be written up in more than just a single work. Ping User:Anarchyte who moved the article from draft space and then prodded it (only for the prod to be removed with no rationale by another editor shortly afterward; let's not add such hoax-possible content to the encyclopedia, people...). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:01, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:01, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree with the above, but it would be good if someone with knowledge of the Coptic language could chime in here as presumably Abratacus is a translation from that and sources could exist in Coptic. SmartSE (talk) 11:31, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Article creator is known to have crated hundreds of stubs of fictitious places based on completely unreliable single sources that are more than a century old. This seems like the same thing, only this time it's apparently a fictitious person. Softlavender (talk) 12:17, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep/merge I had no difficulty finding another source. If there's not much known about this saint then perhaps we might merge to List of Coptic saints per WP:ATD-M. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:32, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Is that 1844 source reliable? I have doubts about this and would like the existence of this saint confirmed by something from the last half a century or so, post-WWII at least. 19th century did not have peer review or such, you know. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:26, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep/merge if there are other source(s) confirming this person's existence. Balle010 (talk) 15:55, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Here's the 1924 work with a full preview. It's not much more than a sentence and is very old. Best, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 16:22, 17 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to List of Coptic saints. Of the cited sources, The Highlands of Aethiopia says only that his feast day is April 16. A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints has as its complete entry the following: "*Abratacus, a Coptic saint. F. 16 April. Cal. Copt." The asterisk means that he wasn't a Catholic saint; the "F." means "feast"; and "Cal. Copt." means that the cited source is "Several Coptic and Abyssinian Calendars, published by C. Harris in the 'Highlands of Ethiopia,' III ...." -- in other words, the previously cited source. Clearly neither author had any biographical information about Abratacus, nor did any of the editors who have edited this article over the last 13 years. If we add "Abratacus (feast day April 16)", with a citation, to List of Coptic saints, the encyclopedia will not lose any information. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:45, 18 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep this source lists him in the saints' calendar, not fictitious.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 00:16, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Is the source from 1899 reliable, in light of the issues raised such as possible misspellings or errors in the old sources? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:43, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- That's not really an additional source, as it was written by William Cornwallis Harris, the same person who published the calendar of saints which is already used as the main source in this article; it just means he published the same information in two different books. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:28, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Good catch. This further reinforces the possibility that he is the source of a possible error (misspellings, etc.). On that note, I looked at the List of Coptic saints and it has a lot of non-linked, non-referenced entries. I wonder how many errors it contains :( --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:02, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Abratacus is almost certainly a Latinized form of his name. What other names does he have, if any?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 18:42, 21 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Egypt-related deletion discussions. Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:42, 22 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Well, I was all ready to write this off as a figment of Harris’s imagination when I stumbled upon the “Biblioteca universale sacro-profana, antico-moderna...“, (pub. 1701, author Vincenzo Coronelli), in which is the text (numbered 1859): “ABRATLO, Lat. Abrataus, i, Santo dello chiefa etiopica, si cui di celebra la festa il de 2 I del Mese 8 che corresponde 16 d. Aprile.”, which roughly translates as “ABRATLO, Lat. Abrataus, Saint of the Ethiopian church, whose feast is celebrated on the 2nd of the 8th month which corresponds to the 16th d. April.” Possibly the saint is also mentioned in “Lexicon Æthiopico-Latinum” (pub. 1699, author Hiob Ludolf) but I struggle to read the Latin text. Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de France (pub. 1856, author J. Renouard) mentions “Ethiopie.... S. Abratée (Abrateus)” in a liste genéralé des saints for 16 Avril. I am rather doubtful though that we can use these ancient texts to write an encyclopaedic article, I would prefer something much more recent. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 06:52, 24 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Fascinating, really. I'd like to see this rescued, but if all we have is a name, affiliation (Ethiopian Saint) and information on his 'saint day', I think this would be better of as part of a list. Eternal WP:SUBSTUBs are not ideal articles. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:49, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - I asked one user for help: User_talk:Lothar_von_Richthofen#Coptic_vetting. He is the only active wikipedia user with the Copt-3 box on his userpage, and there are no active users with any higher levels for Coptic. If he does not respond, maybe start contacting churches and scholars for help on this, at least to see if there is a non-Latinized version of his name (besides Italian) that we should be looking for.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 16:06, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Awaiting further input.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Atlantic306 (talk) 21:26, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Today I pinged two more editors with knowledge of Coptic.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 20:29, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Epiphyllumlover Thank you for asking for my comment on this, I have checked the Coptic Synaxarium. According to Coptic Calendar 16 April should be in Bermouda. I can't find this name or one similar in month of Bermouda. The only name that is remotely related is St. Agabus, and Acacius but I have doubts that this is relevant. --Ghaly (talk) 09:17, 27 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to List of Coptic saints per Metropolitan90, with a note about the thin sourcing. --Lockley (talk) 17:59, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete After not finding refernces for these information , i would vote for delete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ghaly (talk • contribs) 11:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC) --Ghaly (talk) 17:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 18:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I do not believe these old books to be reliable sources but what is more telling is that this saint does not appear to have been covered in modern literature. Fails GNG. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:16, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete this person has barely been talked about in texts from his time period, let alone in modern ones. There definitely doesn't seem to be any in-depth coverage of them anywhere. Therefore, I think deleting the article is the right thing to do. Normally, I'd go with merge when that's an option, but I don't think it's best choice here since there isn't really anything well sourced or meaningful beyond the basic "this guy exists" information to merge. So, merging is unnecessary. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:18, 10 August 2020 (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.