Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gheba

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 delete. Based on the discussion below, I am afraid, at this point we do not have reliable sources which establish existence of the subject of the article. When/if these sources are found the article can be restored/recreated.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:45, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Gheba[edit]

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No reliable third party source can be found. No scope for improvement. Benedictdilton (talk) 17:58, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Pakistan-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article is referenced and more references can be found (I added another, using a Google Books search). I can see on the article Talk page that there has been som controversy about its content over the years, but that is a matter for normal editing. AllyD (talk) 19:12, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

None of the sources were reliable and I have removed them. The Brits of the Raj period didn't have a clue what they were recording most of the time and those sources are routinely removed from Indian caste articles, quite often with the express agreement of contributors who claim to be members of those communities. - Sitush (talk) 20:16, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have no faith in the research methods or anything else practiced under the Raj, but the wholesale removal of material and references during an AfD as in this edit doesn't seem appropriate, unless possibly by quoting some published research that decisively counters the references removed and proves their falsity? AllyD (talk) 20:32, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Published rubbish based on principles of scientific racism is not published research in the sense that we would use in an article about a group of people. It is entirely justifiable to remove it. It is not my burden to provide alternate sources but, believe me, I have a lot of experience in this subject area. - Sitush (talk) 20:42, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Noting a large number of nominations of articles all claiming "No scope for improvement" submitted at 1 minute intervals, I am wondering if the nominator has followed WP:BEFORE on each in that space of time? AllyD (talk) 19:14, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it is not difficult to fathom. One user created them ages ago using a single unreliable source - go through that contributor's list of created articles, see if they are sourced now and if not then nominate for deletion per WP:BURDEN, WP:GNG and WP:V/WP:RS. I've been tempted to nominate quite a few of them myself in the past. - Sitush (talk) 20:16, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That isn't the case, though. The original article creators of Gheba (nominated 17:58) and Indian Liberal Party (nominated 18:01) were not the same editors; nor are these articles sourced to the same source, unreliable or not. AllyD (talk) 20:32, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking of Mangat clan, actually. In any event, if you have a problem with the nominator's behaviour then the correct venue is WP:ANI, not here. - Sitush (talk) 20:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I've had a considerable involvement in numerous Indian caste/community articles. One issue that arises with articles that are suggested to be "clans" (or "gotras", or several other variant names for roughly the same thing) is the endogamous nature of the Indian caste system. Finding passing references to - in this instance - Gheba as what would be called a surname in the west is easy, but it does not verify clan or caste status in a manner that en-Wikipedia's policies generally accept. To take a different caste, there are plenty of people around the world whose last name is Nair but who have no connection at all to the Nair people of India. Basically, making such a connection without decent sourcing is original research. Of course, there is nothing to stop us turning this into an article purely of the Category:Surname variety, if it has notability in that context. Which seems unlikely.
There are passing references to the Gheba as a community; for example, here. But they are so fleeting that they fail the notability test. There are sometimes more detailed mentions of them in the works of the Raj so-called ethnologists etc but, as I've said in a comment above, those sources are dreadfully poor - take a look at James Tod and H. H. Risley for a couple of well-worked examples of why this is so. And Denzil Ibbetson even went so far as to acknowledge that he and his colleagues were more or less writing "blind". Recognised societal processes such as sanskritisation have further complicated the situation and, for example, the number of documented castes has risen from around 1000 in 1900 to in excess of 4500 in the 1990s because of such factors. Basically, we have an awful lot of stub-type articles that are likely neither useful in the Surname category nor in Category:Indian castes or similar, simply because the information is often not out there in any reliable, meaningful detail. A very few, however, have been accorded substantial coverage in the post-Raj era and really do deserve their place.
I'm going to do one last trawl for sourcing the Gheba stuff before !voting. My gut feeling, based on past efforts, is that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of clan/gotra articles that really have no place here. - Sitush (talk) 23:46, 3 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - per reasoning above. It doesn't meet N, GNG or V. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 02:33, 8 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, L Faraone 01:54, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, czar · · 05:40, 18 June 2013 (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.