Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nomadic empire

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. (non-admin closure) NuclearWarfare ^{contact me}_{My work} 01:13, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nomadic empire[edit]

The unique content of this article boils down to "Nomadic empires were empires created by nomads". Everything else is redundant duplication (most of it copied verbatim) from about half a dozen other articles about individual empires. I don't quite understand the purpose of this duplication, and I see no potential value in the title beyond the self-explanatory dictionary entry. The basics of the nomadic lifestyle are much more suitably (although with potential for improvment) explained in Eurasian nomads. --Latebird (talk) 00:33, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. -- VG ☎ 01:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Asia-related deletion discussions. -- VG ☎ 01:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While this is true, there is currently no better article for the recurring phenomena of conquerors from the Eurasian Steppe. John Keegan has shown this to be of profpund implications on human history.
This article must be thoroughly rewriten, but not deleted. 79.182.137.40 (talk) 00:55, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Are you volunteering? "No better article exists" is no justification for anything. In fact, the current text rather stands in the way of someone writing a better one. --Latebird (talk) 08:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - The proposed preservation of this article would probably violate WP:SYN. See below. AlexTiefling (talk) 11:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a novel synthesis. A quick bit of research, before even reading the article, turned up a whole load of sources that talk about the concept of nomadic empires, contrasting them with (variously) "sedentary states" or "settled states", addressing what makes the former different from the latter, the economic, cultural, and governmental mechanisms of nomadic empires, and how it is (in the views of some) incorrect to conflate a nomadic empire and a nomadic tribal confederation. I found four books discussing this in just 5 minutes. Then I looked at the article and found a lengthy bibliography. It appears that historians and others, from Omeljan Pritsak (whose book, The origin of Rus, has an explanation of what a nomadic empire is on page 11) through Richard Nelson Frye (whose discussion of some economic aspects of nomadic empires can be found on page 44 of ISBN 0521522919) to Mark Edward Lewis (who argues, in ISBN 067402477X, that the Xiongnu formed a nomadic empire after Qin unification), have written about this subject.
Not only is there plentious source material for an article on this subject, but we appear to already have a lengthy article on this subject, with an extensive bibliography that isn't even exhaustive. Any problems with verifiability or original research can be fixed by editing the article in the ordinary manner with some of the copious sources that exist in hand. Thinking that we shouldn't have an article on a subject that clearly is discussed, in detail and by this very name, by many experts in the field is completely wrongheaded, and not what Wikipedia is about at all. There's no reason, under any Wikipedia policy, that deletion is the answer to any problem with this article. AFD is not Wikipedia:Cleanup. Keep. Uncle G (talk) 13:23, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep... the mind simply boggles. I tend to err on the side of deletionism, but one single look at this article asserts its notability on WP. Perhaps it would benefit from a bit of tending-to, there are many other avenues to go down in this instance, and AFD is not one of them. OBM | ^{blah blah blah} 14:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep That looks better. I concede I was wrong before. AlexTiefling (talk) 15:13, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I can't quite understand why this article has been nominated for deletion! It is notable and it has reliable sources. AdjustShift (talk) 17:30, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The article speaks for itself!--Mike Cline (talk) 19:24, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Did anyone of you guys actually read and understand the rationale given for this deletion request? Notability and sourcing are non-issues here. The problem is a much different one: As it stands there is no unique content in this article. All it contains is duplication from other articles. Actually, in terms of the GDFL, it most likely is just one big copyvio. If someone is interested to write an article about nomadic empires and what makes them different from other empires, and all that without being redundant to other parts of Wikipedia, please be my guest! But that is decidedly not what the current article does. Or can any of the happy keep voters point me to significant content in there that isn't duplicated from elsewhere? --Latebird (talk) 22:42, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If we need to be formal, then the relevant reason for deletion according to the deletion policies would be that it is little more than a content fork. It's a somewhat special case in that it wasn't forked from a single article but combined from half a dozen different ones. But it's still a fork with nothing unique to it. --Latebird (talk) 23:07, 7 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep yes, it's a content fork. It's a good one. May we have more of them, if they reach this quality, and start accepting that it may be more practical to have more than one article on a subject that to bicker incessantly about content. Given that we don't attempt to reach the Definitive Truth, there can be multiple good ways to write encyclopedia articles. The arrangement of material in the encyclopedia can be guided by being useful. DGG (talk) 03:14, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A "good content fork"? That's a novel concept to me. Thinking about it, I could probably understand a "List of nomadic empires", with the name of each and a sentence or two explaining their respective context. But just duplicating pages over pages of existing text still doesn't seem to make sense (even without the GDFL issues). --Latebird (talk) 09:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment This article is really a Summary Style article (highly desirable IMHO) that was arrived at 180 degrees from the typical approach. Instead of breaking out articles from an overly large article, this editor just compiled the appropriate articles into a very nice summary. Indeed, it might be improved through some parring down of content, but there is absolutely no policy or guideline rationale for deletion.--Mike Cline (talk) 13:51, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I find it interesting how everybody here defends an article that theoretically could be there, but in reality isn't. Nothing of the source articles has been "summarized" here. Instead, large parts of them, in some cases the full articles, have simply been cut and pasted. Making the result comply with even the most basic principles of Wikipedia will require a rather massive amount of paring down. The tiny remainder will not look pretty. --Latebird (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2008 (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.