Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pederastic relationships in classical antiquity

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. The consensus below is that this page as it currently stands is a POV fork of such legitimate articles as Pederasty in ancient Greece and Homosexuality in Ancient Rome. As such it is appropriately deleted. Eluchil404 (talk) 18:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pederastic relationships in classical antiquity[edit]

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This article claims to be about "pederastic relationships" but in fact is filled with original research involving adult gay relationships, the ass-raping of slave boys, poets who wrote admiringly about the beauty of boys, etc... It's largely unsupported by the claimed sources. It was created by a now-banned editor who had a pretty obvious pro-pedophila agenda (they like to call themselves "pederasts") who has been shown, time and again, to be lying and distorting sources. It's also a fork from Pederasty in ancient Greece. It's embarrassing that it took six years for wikipedia to start to grapple with the falsehoods liberally distributed throughout the encyclopedia by an editor with a rather creepy agenda. Bali ultimate (talk) 15:51, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per the arguments at Historical pederastic relationships (3rd nomination): I am satisified the main contributor cannot be relied upon to have edited this article from a neutral point of view. Yes, it could be fixed by editing, but there are so many references that would need checking in hard copy that I feel the encyclopedia would best be improved by deletion, followed by possibly starting again if there is found to be enough genuine content that can't fit in one of the many other pederasty articles. --Pontificalibus (talk) 21:02, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep this is useful information. If there's stuff that doesn't belong remove it. This is a well-documented and discrete subject. I voted delete on the "historical" POV because it was a mishmash with an agenda, this isn't (Well there may be an agenda in the creator's fancy, but the topic can be delt with neutraly. Pedophillia is repulsive - but antiquite (and Greece in particular) was more ambivillent about it. We don't want to go too far in censoring because of modern sentiments.--Scott Mac (Doc) 23:42, 5 February 2010 (UTC) Delete as unsalvegable.--Scott Mac (Doc) 04:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What is the working definition of "pederast" and "relationship" for this article that is reflected in an academic/historical consensus? Who do you propose fix this?Bali ultimate (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the concern is that this article doesn't use a consistent, accepted definition of pederasty, I'd suggest looking up the entry on pederasty in the Oxford Classical Dictionary and modifying this article according to whatever it describes as the scholarly consensus (I assume you're aware that there is, in fact, a ton of respectable scholarship on this topic). I'd work on it myself but I don't currently have access to the OCD or other reliable sources. As for Pontificalibus' comment on the difficulty of checking hard-copy references, I see a lot of primary sources in that reference list, most of which are probably available online; more importantly, "it's hard to check references that aren't online" seems like a pretty questionable basis for deleting an article.

Ideally, we could move this article's content to the talk pages of other articles (e.g., Pederasty in ancient Greece) for consideration and possible inclusion, but I'm not aware of any other articles that would cover the stuff on Rome. Jd4v15 (talk) 07:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

On further investigation, delete as failing WP:OR and/or WP:NPOV. I looked into a few of the sources for the "Roman Empire" section, and while I didn't find anything as egregious as what Jack-a-Roe mentions below, they all seemed to be "X was fond of a particular young male slave." Making the leap from that to actual pederasty isn't necessarily wrong, but to make it over and over again on the flimsiest of evidence with little or no support from scholarship amounts to agenda-driven original research. Jd4v15 (talk) 19:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Original research. Fails WP:V. There are lots of footnotes, but the problem is that the person who added most of them is known to have misrepresented sources repeatedly. That means that for any of the sources to be used, they have to be checked. To leave those footnotes in place without verifying them is to present a false impression that the sources support the text, and there is no basis for that in this situation.

Here is one example that I found just now -- the text from the article reads:

The "Capernaum centurion" and the "Beloved pais" -- The couple entered history as a result of the Centurion's request, around 27 CE, to Jesus to heal his beloved, who was close to death. As the story goes, Jesus complied and the boy was healed. Loving relationships between Roman soldiers and their camp boys were common.

Here is one of the footnotes used to support that text: The Bible, Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. The Bible is easy to verify, here are links to those two sections: [1] [2]. Those passages are the well-known story of the Centurian with great faith whose servent is healed by Jesus. Neither of those passages says anything about the servent being a "beloved" of the Centurian or about relationships of Roman soldiers and camp boys.

That's just one example. There are 217 footnotes, many to vaguely identified sources often with no page numbers or publishers listed. It's possible that an article on this topic could be useful, but because the main author of the article is known to misquote sources, without verification, the sources can not be considered reliable. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete If anybody feels the subject matter deserves a separate article, it should be recreated from scratch. The present article is the brainchild of the banned user Haiduc who routinely misrepresented sources - sometimes due to flagrant dishonesty, sometimes out of stupidity, sometimes out of careless diregard for accuracy. If the present article is retained, somebody needs to check each of Haiduc's citations for accuracy. Not me! Amphitryoniades (talk) 02:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. -- Pcap ping 12:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. -- Pcap ping 12:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- Pcap ping 12:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. While the topic may be notable, this article is dubious in a number of ways. First, the Ancient Greece section has as {{main}} Pederasty in ancient Greece, a well known topic. But, the structure and possibly the contents of the WP:SUMMARY section appears entirely different from that of the "sub-article." This mirrors the issue we have with Pederastic couples in Japan vs. shudō, although technically there was no main tag there. Second, the "Ancient Rome" section lacks an article as far as I can tell. This may be an encyclopedic topic as well [3] [4] [5] [6] [7], although more complex to describe because sexual customs varied across the vast Roman empire [8], but having a list without an article for the context is odd. I'll look around see if any of is covered in other articles. Pcap ping 13:15, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as hagiographic POV fork. We have enough coverage of the matter in dedicated articles on Greece (see comment above), and Homosexuality in Ancient Rome covers the second half of this article. Pcap ping 14:48, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Merge. It seems to be a fork of both Historical pederastic relationships and Pederasty in ancient Greece. It shouldn't be. Newman Luke (talk) 23:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as a content fork of better articles that don't blatantly misrepresent the sources. Edward321 (talk) 00:41, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Copy of several other small articles from a member with a pederast agenda and has been permanently banned. No redeeming qualities.--Amadscientist (talk) 09:51, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as yet another fork. What we need here is a knife. JBsupreme (talk) 08:18, 12 February 2010 (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.