Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Archdiocese of the Goths

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. In closing, I'd like to remind everyone that worries of synthesis is not a valid reason to call for an article's deletion, since we can always edit an article to remove irrelevant or unsourced sections. m.o.p 04:54, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Archdiocese of the Goths[edit]

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At a first glance this is an article about an Archdiocese of the Russian Orthodox Church but it actually seems to be a non-notable offshoot of the Russian True Orthodox Church, which is itself a smallish schismatic offshoot group. The organisation was apparently established (allegedly re-established) in 1994. There is no evidence of organisational continuity with, or affiliation to, the Russian Orthodox Church, which would confer notability. In fact, I see no evidence for the claimed historic Archdiocese going back to 1283 under this name. Notability can not be established by Googling the name in either English, Swedish or Russian (See links above). I would expect to see it in both Books and Scholar if it was notable. If the historic organisation claimed did exist, possibly under a different name, then it would seem to belong in Gothic Christianity. DanielRigal (talk) 11:02, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. DanielRigal (talk) 11:22, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Please see the article's talk page where the author has given his comments on my concerns. --DanielRigal (talk) 12:57, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Question to nominator: how do you explain the 42 references in the article? Do these 42 sources satisfy our notability guidelines? Why, given our WP:ATD policy on alternatives to deletion, should all of this material, and the topic itself, be hidden from public view? Unscintillating (talk) 03:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Admittedly, I do not have access to all the books but in so far as I could access the references I did not see them has having any bearing on the notability of the current organisation, which seemed to me to be the primary subject of the article at the time of nomination. You will notice that a Google Books search on the subject of the article (in all three languages) comes up blank. Possibly the article is misnamed and I am failing to grasp what the subject really is but I have done my best not to fall into that trap. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Here is an English translation of www.gotark.org. Unscintillating (talk) 03:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: the article seems to mix up the historic entity (which is no doubt notable, although some very dubious statements are being backed up by poor references, but which may belong in Gothic Christianity) and the modern entity (which may or may not be notable, depending on whether reliable references can be found for it). The relationship between the two entities is presumably controversial, as the nom notes. -- 202.124.72.140 (talk) 09:00, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Potential keep or merge with Gothic Christianity-- The article seems to have been purged of the 1994 reincarnation. I am not qualified to speak to the accuracy of the material, but I cannot see much that is obviously wrong. Language might be calmed down, for example by changing a reference to "Muslim barbarians" to something else. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:52, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Potential keep or merge with Gothic Christianity-- I agree--C. Nüssli (talk) 10:20, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: the article has quite a few sources, but some seem a little dubious. There is a great deal of WP:SYNTH from primary sources, and a rather unencyclopedic tone. Any merge should be done with caution, and it might be better just to delete. -- 202.124.75.50 (talk) 08:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The real Orthodox church in Sweden should be mentioned: http://sweden.orthodoxy.ru/old/ --C. Nüssli (talk) 11:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

--ThomasSutter (talk) 07:30, 14 November 2011 (UTC)The Archdiocese of Goths is also known as the Metropolitanate of Gothia and Kaphas, and Kaphas have different spelling in all western languages (Kafa/Kafe/Kaphas a.s.o), with late medieval jurisdiction in the Principate of Theodoro - also known as Gothia. That this parish existed in the late 18th century is supported by the Ukaz of Catherine the Great, incorporating the diocese into the historical Russian Orthodox Church. Soon after the remaining Goths vanished. The 1994 organisation is not a continual entity from the 1779 Archdiocese and hasn't been claimed by me nor the 1994 organization. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is something entirely different though, and the canonical church with apostolic succession and continual traditional existence can appoint bishops to vacant seats, that is dioceses which aren't abolished, whenever they want. In no Ecclesiastical verdict of the Russian Orthodox Church have the Archdiocese / Metropolitanate been abolished, only vacant and de facto evaporated. Regarding canonicity I cannot see why a reference to the 'official' Russian Orthodox Church (established by the Soviets in 1946) would matter, when the True Orthodox have apostolic succession unbroken to the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox Church, just as the now defunct Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The subject of the Archdiocese is mostly unnoticed historically, which is not the same as non-existing, and because of the Soviet period it has been locked in the peculiar history of Eastern Europe. There's much research to be made, and new primary sources to be published. The Ukaz of Catherine the Great on gotark.org is actual proof of the existence of the Church of the Goths in post-Tatar Russian Crimea, for instance. If the issue is too vague for the English-speaking world, I suggest it should be merged with Gothic Christianity to counter-balance the historically vague and generally unsubstantiated Arianism of the historical Gothic peoples. The source links can also be deleted or edited for better perception. An almost identical article exist on Swedish Wikipedia.[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, v/r - T P 02:31, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. This article is somewhat difficult to follow. It may be better to strip down the article to make it clearer for readers who may be unfamiliar with the topic. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:20, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, BusterD (talk) 13:25, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Fails notability for GNG. --Cox wasan (talk) 21:20, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A deletion analysis with only the four words "fails notability for GNG" doesn't make sense, at least to me, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the essay, Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions. For example, what evidence is provided that would separate this !vote from a WP:IDONTLIKEIT opinion? WP:N notability only has one requirement, that the topic be "worthy of notice". For this topic we'd want to see either WP:GNG or WP:ORG satisfied, or the failure of both. Even given a viewpoint that a topic is non-notable, such does not equate to a delete conclusion; which would also require an argument that all of the reliable material in the article, if any, is objectionable; and that using the title of the article as a redirect is objectionable. Regarding the WP:ATD-policy alternatives to deletion, in this case there have been several editors weighing in regarding the possibility of merging some or all of the material, and these arguments have not been weighed. Then, this is a particularly difficult article to digest, and given the extensive number of references, I'd expect a delete !vote that has worked through and rejected all of those references has done a fair amount of work, work that should be mentioned in the analysis. Unscintillating (talk) 22:54, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I checked your contribution history, Cox wasan, and then your AfD history. Using User:Snottywong's tool, you have !voted delete in 97 out of 100 AfD discussions. I also spot checked some of your AfD contributions, and found multiple cases like the current one that provide no supporting evidence. Do you have any explanation? `Unscintillating (talk) 04:05, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep the objection seems to be that it's a splinter church, but I don't see how that matters.Some of the long comments here about details should be incorporated into the appropriate articles. There are clearly enough references to support the content DGG ( talk ) 20:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC) .[reply]

I don't think that is the real substance of the objection to the modern "splinter church". The objection is that the current organisation is not notable and seems not to be directly connected (even by splintering) with the older organisation, which also may also not be notable, at least not under this name. Splinter groups certainly can be notable in their own right but they can't inherit notability from something else, even less so when it is not clear if they have any real connection to it beyond adopting a defunct name. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Userfy I'm confused and I think the author is considerate of the problems and is willing to improve the encyclopedia. The discussion on the talk page has several useful points, including the connection to (http://www.katakomb.ru/), and "There's a Diocese of Goths within official Orthodoxy of Ukraine, with a Metropolit Damian II. Maybe the article should only reflect the historical Archdiocese, not the different organisations claiming to represent it today." The material has multiple possible merge targets, renaming, and reorganization to consider. My main reason for Userfy rather than keep is that I'm not convinced, as per the objection on the Talk page, that there is any such thing in the English language as the title of the article, about which I could easily be wrong. So I think the redirect should be deleted after preserving the article somewhere. Unscintillating (talk) 02:30, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:03, 1 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or Merge It should be kept because it's about the historical Gothic people which there is alot of mystery shrouding about. Some information should be weeded out because it's not notable, but it's important because it has links to Arianism, maybe not notable at the present time, just a brief mention about Gothic people, possibly merge with Gothic Christianity or Goths in general. Apparently at the start we are seeing two different views among post-polytheist goths , saying Goths were Arianists or Trinitarian Orthodox Christians. The article sais Trinitarian Orthodoxy overruled Arianism and became the official faith (yet we can see Visigoths were Arians), but the author tends to be biased and support Orthodoxy creating a non-neutral point of view and ridicules Islam in the latter part of the Article saying Crimean Tatars enslaved Crimean Goths. In can be clear that in the latter, this article could mainly deal with Crimean goths. The references i found from Gotark.org out are written Swedish, dont know any significant minority of Swedish Orthodox people except Serbs who migrated to Sweden, and possibly East Slavic people, (remember when Russia had Finland). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.159.2.59 (talk) 00:45, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This has been worrying me through most of the AfD period. While the quality of information in the article is widely variable, some of it does seem to be well-sourced and not otherwise covered on Wikipedia. However, I am not convinced that the article avoids synthesis - it reads too much to me like an article on Burgundy where the article creator has assumed that all the historic states of that name are the same. Which leaves me feeling that none of the possible conclusions to this AfD are going to be really satisfactory. PWilkinson (talk) 22:19, 4 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Userify It seems to me that there are sources and there are editors willing to work on the topic. The current article, however, is worrying because it's unclear that all the institutions are what they appear. The article as it stands may be actively misleading. Stuartyeates (talk) 06:44, 8 December 2011 (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.