I believes the closer of the AfD discussion interpreted the consensus incorrectly. Although the delete/keep ratio was 2:1, a rough consensus, not enough weight was given by the closer to the arguments on policy from the keep editors. Of the stated arguments the closer cited as being convincing, WP:LISTN was refuted in argument, including citing sources that discuss the defined membership of the list. In the other argument, the closer reworded the definition of the list to create a different basis for the decision than the actual definition of the list. Thank you for your consideration on this. Mark Ironie (talk) 02:55, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The result should have been no consensus. The editors who actually contribute to Native American topics on Wikipedia all voted to keep, and the many delete votes came from individuals who had never previously been involved with Native American topics. Yuchitown (talk) 03:33, 2 January 2019 (UTC)Yuchitown[reply]
Comments from closing admin - I'm not sure I understand exactly how I "reworded the definition of the list", and would appreciate clarification of that. Here's my take on the definition / inclusion criteria for this list:
Before the AfD started, the article's first sentence stated:
This list of self-identified people of Cherokee ancestry includes notable people who claimed Cherokee ancestry but are not enrolled citizens of any of the three Cherokee tribes.
By the end of the AfD, the first sentence had been slightly tweaked to
This list of self-identified people of Cherokee ancestry includes notable people who have stated that they have some Cherokee ancestry but are not enrolled citizens of any of the three Cherokee tribes.
In my closure of the AfD, I wrote:
The introductory sentence of this article implies that the article is intended to be a list of people who have falsely claimed Cherokee ancestry.
I believe that all three of these statements are essentially identical, and therefore I didn't change the definition of anything. Furthermore, in an attempt to prove the notability of the list, Mark Ironie pointed out some sources that discuss the phenomenon of people who falsely claim Cherokee ancestry, clearly implying that he believes this to be the inclusion criteria for this list. If I'm mistaken and that's not the inclusion criteria for this list, please enlighten us as to the correct definition.
Assuming that I'm not mistaken and the intent is that this list includes only notable people who have falsely claimed Cherokee status, then I still believe that there is a compelling argument for the inclusion criteria and the overall concept of this list to be fundamentally flawed. As many people have already pointed out, it is possible for a person to have Cherokee ancestry while not being enrolled citizens of a Cherokee tribe. Therefore, basing the criteria of this list on citizenship within a Cherokee tribe is inherently problematic, as we could be mistakenly including people in this list who legitimately have Cherokee ancestry but are not an enrolled citizen (inviting BLP problems). If you remove the citizenship criteria, it becomes even more problematic, because proving someone's ancestry is hard enough, but disproving their ancestry claim is nearly impossible.
I admit that I may have missed some of the sources that demonstrated the notability of the list. Some of the ones given in the AfD were not necessarily from reliable sources, but I have since seen some sources that are, so I'm willing to lower the impact of that argument. However, the arguments given in this AfD about problematic inclusion criteria are still strong enough (along with a 2-to-1 ratio of delete votes) for me to call this AfD as a clear Delete. Thanks to Mark Ironie for keeping this civil, I know that emotions can run high when an AfD doesn't go the way you want it to. ‑Scottywong| gab _ 04:08, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is not in any position to declare some people to be falsely claiming to be of Cherokee descent and others to be accurately claiming Cherokee descent (without being enrolled); that would require forbidden original research. The list simply was for people who have stated that they are of Cherokee descent (i.e. exactly how the list was defined), which would be an umbrella for both groups. Probably the most thorough academic investigation of this topic (including actual and perceived descendants) would be Circe Sturm's Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-first Century (School for Advanced Research, 2011), the result of 14-years+ of ethnographic research. Yuchitown (talk) 04:18, 2 January 2019 (UTC)Yuchitown[reply]
The introductory sentence of this article has always stated that the list contains people who have self-identified as Cherokee but are not enrolled citizens of a Cherokee tribe. It's not simply a list of notable people who have publicly self-identified as Cherokee. Yes, it's true that the article doesn't come out and explicitly say that it's "a list of people who have falsely claimed to have Cherokee ancestry" or "a list of people whose claims of Cherokee ancestry cannot be verified", but that's obviously what the intent is. However, if you wanted to change the intent of the list to simply be people who have said that they have Cherokee ancestry, then I think you'd run into legitimate notability problems, because the simple act of claiming ancestry is not notable enough for a list. This is why we don't have articles like List of people of self-identified Italian ancestry. ‑Scottywong| talk _ 00:34, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep deleted - The closing admin correctly interpreted both the clear consensus of !votes and the policy-based arguments. There are no other "List of people of self-identified XXX ancestry" articles on Wikipedia. Where we have ethnicity lists, such as List of African Americans, they do not contain an implicitly-skeptical question in the title ("self-identified") and are instead simply and solely based on reliable sources. We do not say that someone is a "self-identified" African American, if reliable sources state that they are African American, and no justification has been made as to why we would treat people of Cherokee ancestry any differently. The clear intent of the list's authors, as expressed on the article talk page, deletion discussion, and a WikiProject thread, is to "name and shame" people who they believe are "falsely claiming" to be of Cherokee ancestry. A List of people who have falsely claimed Cherokee ancestry would be a createable article, if properly sourced. But that's not the article which was deleted. It's incumbent on us to remember that foundational policy requires us to treat living people with sensitivity, and treating people's statements of their ancestry with a "default skepticism" is simply not how we should be writing articles.
The problem in question is clearly displayed by the deletion review initiator, in this talk page post in which they declare that Being Cherokee, both historically and currently, is a matter of sovereign tribal definition. If someone claims to have Cherokee ancestors, then they should be able to name the specific ancestor(s). Constructed identity is not the same as genealogical fact or proof. That is the whole point of the list. In the case of biography of notable people in particular, it seems rare that the official, self-written bio information appended to their work is questioned. Claiming Cherokee ancestry is not some black box, unverifiable or unknowable. It is knowable and verifiable.
There are a multitude of problems with this concept of an article which Mark Ironie wishes to create. For starters, it is not up to us to declare or enforce the idea that being Cherokee is a matter of sovereign tribal definition. Certainly Cherokee citizenship is definable by the tribe, but Cherokee ancestry is a much murkier concept — the tribe has no special control or knowledge of a person's ethnic background, and if the tribe has a POV on someone's ancestry, that might be useful to include but it certainly is not entitled to any special privilege or status here. A tribe cannot tell someone what their ancestry is.
Secondly, the statement that If someone claims to have Cherokee ancestors, then they should be able to name the specific ancestor(s) is a textbook definition of what Wikipedia is not. We are here to write an encyclopedia article based on reliable sources, not make demands of biographical subjects. It is absolutely never our role to decide what level of evidence someone needs before stating their own ancestry. That's what reliable sources are for. If reliable sources say someone has Cherokee ancestry, that is, as far as we are concerned, the end of the story.
Thirdly, constructed identity is not the same as genealogical fact or proof is a great argument as to why we should not have a List of people of self-identified Cherokee ancestry. Again, we are not here to ask for "genealogical fact or proof." We are here to write articles based on reliable sources. If reliable sources say someone is of Cherokee ancestry, we should say that. If they don't, we shouldn't say that.
Fourthly, In the case of biography of notable people in particular, it seems rare that the official, self-written bio information appended to their work is questioned is another clear demonstration of the idea that this list is supposed to right great wrongs which are found in reliable sources. It may well be unfortunate that such biographical information is rarely questioned, but we are not here to question it. That's not our role as Wikipedians.
Lastly, Claiming Cherokee ancestry is not some black box, unverifiable or unknowable. It is knowable and verifiable again suggests that the article is intended for us to step beyond our role as Wikipedians and declare ourselves the arbiter of such claims. It is not our job to verify a person's statements of their own ancestry. Once again, if reliable sources say someone is of Cherokee ancestry, we have no grounds to declare, by fiat, that they are merely "self-identifying" as having Cherokee ancestry. And if reliable sources don't say that someone is of Cherokee ancestry, then that person shouldn't be on a list of people of Cherokee ancestry!
The evidence is clear: this list was intended to right great wrongs and present people who say they have Cherokee ancestry in a skeptical light, in essence declaring them to be liars unless proven otherwise. That's entirely backward and upside down from how we're supposed to write articles, and the deletion was proper. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 08:27, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion - The closing statement shows that the closer did indeed evaluate arguments from both sides instead of simply counting votes, and I don't see where the WP:LISTN argument was "refuted". This list had foundational sourcing issues that were not addressed by "keep" !votes: Although reliable sources do discuss the overall issue of people falsely claiming Cherokee ancestry, very few of the entries actually had sources that discussed this for these particular individuals. There is also a dearth of sources that discuss ancestry vs. citizenship: Most sources are satisfied with the fact that an individual has Cherokee ancestors, regardless of whether or not they have registered as tribal members. Wikipedia is limited by what has already been published by reliable sources which means that we cannot be on the forefront of "naming and shaming". –dlthewave☎ 16:46, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse a good close of a difficult AfD, and one in which I think consensus was accurately read. I agree with the closer's detailed summary of the close and remarks above. SportingFlyertalk 22:44, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse I think the closing admin's summary of the issue above is a good one, and there are substantial problems about the scope of the list. The topic of people claiming to be Native American who don't meet requirements for being considered Native American (and Cherokee specifically) does appear to be notable. However the list focused on people who are not enrolled members of the recognised Cherokee tribes. Not being an enrolled member doesn't prove that someone doesn't have Cherokee ancestry, as the requirements for enrollment in many tribes are a lot stronger than that. It doesn't even prove that the person wouldn't qualify for membership of the tribe. On the other hand a list of people who are falsely claiming Cherokee ancestry would have very serious problems, as it is extremely difficult to disprove an ancestry claim. I do think that both types of list also run into serious BLP issues, as they essentially accuse the subject of lying. Given this argument and the numerical majority for deletion the closure was reasonable. I would suggest that people here refrain from ad hominem arguments. What counts here is the quality of the argument, not the person making it. Hut 8.5 08:06, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse, close was good and no process failures have been identified. Stifle (talk) 09:33, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion - no procedural or substantive issue with close. Neutralitytalk 03:14, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
