Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sexuality of Emily Dickinson

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 merge. It's clear nobody wants this kept as it is; it's either 'get rid of it altogether', or 'merge it into Emily Dickinson. There's not section on this topic in the main article, so it's a valid merge candidate. I'll close this as a merge, and let the Dickinson experts decide how much or how little of this article they wish to retain. Proto::► 10:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sexuality of Emily Dickinson[edit]

POV essay. Original text contained great claims of or, such as in this line:

'The last editor of this article who wrote much of this and who was quoted as saying evidence of Emily's possible romantic involvement with women is "scant and highly ambiguous" also included this note: "However, even radical literary critics such as Camille Paglia, who wrote extensively about masochism and violence in Dickinson's poetry, emphatically deny that Dickinson's relationship with Susan was physical."'.

It's clear that this article shouldn't exist, or at least be rewritten without POV or OR. Also, sourceless. -- Chris is me 14:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. It's clear that this article shouldn't exist. --- RockMFR 14:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Unsourced and unsourceable. She was such a recluse that, lacking any actual evidence, any opinion on her sexuality is speculative. Fan-1967 14:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Would this fall under CSD G10? Shin'ou's TTV (Futaba|Masago|Kotobuki) 14:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- No. It's not an attack, even on the people who speculate. -- Chris is me 14:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cite or Delete The article as it currently exists at least refers to Dickinson biographers who have brought up the issue, which would place this article under the general guidelines of a tertiary guide to an existing scholarly debate. The problem of course is the lack of verifiable footnoting and references beyond the comment that two scholars have discussed this. If this article could be cleaned up and cited appropriately, I can't see any reason it couldn't be kept (or at least merged back into the main Emily Dickinson article). However, lacking that citation this article has to be considered original research per nom. -Markeer 15:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Merge. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The references are mentioned in the article's text; if we just contact the author and get him to use Wikipedia style to reference them then I think a shortened version of this would make a good addition to the Emily Dickinson article. Recury 16:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Emily Dickinson. The main article is not too long, and doesn't require sub-pages. The editors of the main page can then decide how to handle the merged material. DrKiernan 18:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep or merge. The article, or at least the version I read, does in fact cite sources in-text; the format of those citations is an editing rather than a deleting matter. The truth of these speculations is beyond our jurisdiction. But with some editing, this probably could fit in the article without giving undue weight to them. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
POV fork. Delete. B.Wind 01:07, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Fan-1967. meshach 01:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Obvious POV fork because it is obvious that the content would not be able to stay in the main article without someone raising an issue with it. The content here should be on the main Emily Dickinson page or off of wikipedia. Delete (if the content is merged then someone should be sure to source the claims made because of the difficulty of distinguishing gossip from fact in the area of sex lives of famous people). Allon Fambrizzi 06:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)Allon Fambrizzi[reply]
Delete Even though I am the user who published this article I only moved it here to a separate article because the entire main article was almost entirely only about Emily Dickinson's sexuality in spite of its complete lack of credible sources. What I did was to simply cut and paste all that material that can be seen on the original publishing of this article to here, and link this article to the main page. I did this so the main Emily Dickinson article would not be filled with the POV content you see here (Which no one would allow me to delete.) In retrospect this may have been a poor decision for which I apologize. I agree that if the content is merged then someone should source the claims to credible sources. Cyberrex7891 01:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
keep and merge There are oodles of academic sources--every biography or printed encyc. talks about it. It is mainly speculation, but thee are texts to base it on, and its speculation about an imortant aspect of the life of an extremely important author--and is relevant to her work.DGG 01:23, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
keep and merge— goethean ॐ 23:28, 6 December 2006 (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.