Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Western Frontier

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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 Indian Wars of the Great Plains, and Redirect of The Western Frontier. A Train take the 16:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Western Frontier

The Western Frontier (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) - (View log)

The article is a short story, entertainment, fiction, anything, but it's not an encyclopedic article. AecisBravado 18:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

  • It isn't fiction. If you think that it is, then you need to brush up on your history. 71.29.202.210 16:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Please note the use of the word anything in the nomination. AecisBrievenbus 18:05, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete I think it's a paper by some junior high student. Fan-1967 18:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete insufficiently contextualized mishmash Aaronbrick 18:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete redundant and inferior to many existing articles Rklawton 19:01, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete as an essay duplicating subjects covered more effectively at Western United States, Plains Indians, North American Desert, Sioux, etc. -FisherQueen (Talk) 19:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Do Not Delete because this article is meant for any student that wants an uncomplicated history of the Great Plains and the West of the U.S. My friend's daughter read those other articles that were mentioned, and she said that she wanted something less complicated. And it isn't finished yet.A*star actress 19:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete besides my personal diagreements on it's writing style, it is an essay, not an encyclopedia entry. --Tainter 19:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep It furnishes an integration of information not found in the other articles. American Old West comes closest, but does not even mention the 1862 Sioux uprising which is in this article, and is full of {fact} tags. Western United States leaves out a lot of info in this article and includes a lot about the present day, and covers geographically all the way to Hawaii. There was far more to the Western Frontier than the North American Desert. A reader might not want to plow through Sioux and Sioux Uprising to get the info included succinctly here. The "Western Frontier" deserves an article, and the need for coverage of it as an integral subject is not met by the other articles mentioned, since they are only in small part about the Western Frontier and include much that is not about it. If this one reads like written by a junior high student, so do half the other articles on Wikipedia, so it will fit right in, and benefit from collaborative editing as do other articles. I would only caution the authors to add inline references as they go in addition to the Wikilinks to other articles. Edison 19:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep but rewrite - the title and topic are valid, but the current content all fails WP:NOR and WP:CITE. Still, shouldn't be deleted altogether. Walton monarchist89 20:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • You're saying we should keep the title, but delete the article? Fan-1967 20:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • No, I'm saying we should stubify the article, deleting all content which fails WP:NOR, and leave it to be rewritten. The 'Western Frontier' is a major topic that belongs on Wikipedia. Walton monarchist89 20:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete and salt. First off, the title is horrible. If nothing else, it should be retitled as "The American Western Frontier", but that doesn't get rid of the other problems with the title. Depending upon which time frame you choose in American history, the "Western Frontier" could be anything from what is now West Virginia to frontier Alaska. Then on to the article itself, which is just a bunch of vague assertions and rather random events. There should probably be a good basic overview on this part of American history, but it should be titled something like Post-Civil War expansion of the United States, which would gives a brief overview on each topic, and would then link to the main articles on the Mexican American War, the Mormon Pioneers, the California Gold Rush, etc. BlankVerse 04:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I was just about to post something similar - there might be a case for something like a timeline or a very broad synopsis, but it would have to be very heavily wiki-linked and let the individual articles speak for themselves. Even then it would be very difficult to keep the scope limited and the POV neutral, since there are thousands of articles about the American West during this period, many of which are unflattering to at least one of the primary parties. Whatever the result might be, its not this article which has no citations, is full of OR and many parts fail WP:NPOV. Delete this version, and see if anybody is brave enough to try again. - CosmicPenguin (Talk) 06:00, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Changed to Neutral. With a much better title at The Indian Wars of the Great Plains, that solves only one of my complaints about the article. Still, I'm going to assume good faith that A*star actress will work to improve the article, changing the tone of the article to a less 'breezy', more encyclopedic version, plus adding more details and more dates. The other serious problem is the complete lack of any references, but hopefully she will also take care of that as well. BlankVerse 05:16, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge/Delete an overview article already exists at Western United States and the sub article American Old West. Any verifiable content could be merged over into these. The problem with the article name is enough reason for it to be deleted at its current location. Ultimately Wikipedia is not a textbook, its an encyclopaedia so summary articles should only exist where they link to main articles. Madmedea 11:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep I've done what was suggested and changed the name to Post-Civil War Expansion of the United States. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by A*star actress (talk • contribs) 19:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC).
  • You didn't change any of the content though - and the name remains as misleading as ever, since it doesn't even begin to touch on expansion in the West, post Civil War or otherwise. I re-iterate my position. Wikipedia is not a textbook. - CosmicPenguin (Talk) 22:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I know it's not a textbook. But this article does provide some useful information. Like someone else said, some people might not want to plow through other articles looking for information tha tis supplied in this article. And I've also started my own page, if anyone wants to talk trash about that. A*star actress 01:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

*Keep but rename This article is not about the Western Frontier or else it would discuss the westward expansion of pioneers in prairie schooners, the Mormons, cattlemen vs. sheepherders, railroads, gold rushes and other mining, etc. etc. etc. This article as it now stands is about the American wars against the Indians. Fine, name it accordingly. BTW, I looked at the Western United States article and that article needs work. How can you hope to dump all of those states in a single "region"? California is different from the Pacific Northwest which is different from the Southwest and the other Western states are different from those regions. I also looked at the American Old West and it's got problems too. For now, let's keep all the articles but there needs to be some serious re-organization to rationalize all these articles. --Richard 01:49, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)
Changed my mind. (Helps if you actually read the article in question. Ouch!)
Merge any verifiable NPOV content to Plains Indians. Then Redirect this title to American Old West. Delete Post-Civil War Expansion of the United States but do not salt it. There is potential for a great overview article by that title as described by User:BlankVerse and myself above. --Richard 02:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I know that I need to rename it, but I don't know what to call it. What about 'Indian Wars of the Great Plains' until I finish it? A*star actress 02:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • All right. I think that I have it now. It is called The Indian Wars of the Great Plains until furthur notice.
  • That's also a possibility. You could merge the existing content into Plains Indians or you could create a new article Indian Wars of the Great Plains and put just a summary into Plains Indians. The key issue though is that you need to drop the flowery, romantic prose and use a more encyclopedic tone. Also add citations and sources post-haste. --Richard 02:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • But wouldn't primary sources such as journals written at the time and secondary sources like word of mouth be more reliable than text and video?A*star actress 15:43, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Not in the slightest. First of all, handed-down word-of-mouth is worthless. How many people may have misremembered or misconveyed something in intervening generations? Secondly, we have no ability for any independent third-party to verify the content of the journals, or what you remember some old relative telling you. No. Absolutely, totally unacceptable. Independent verifiability is the absolute core principle at Wikipedia, above all others. Fan-1967 15:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • What do you mean, "verify the content of the journals"? Isn't it enough that these things are written in there? And it wasn't some old relative. The word of mouth was passed on, in each generation, from mother or father to daughter or son. No old relative, no foggy memory. In my opinion, those are acceptable, and they were acceptable where I went to high school. Could you give me an example of a cited acceptable source?
  • I'm sorry if this is difficult for you to understand. Let's put it as simply as possible: An acceptable source is one that other people besides you can check. Fan-1967 16:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
In other words, if the authenticity of the journal in your possession was verified by an expert in culture of the Old American West and the contents of the journal were published for the world to see, then it would qualify as a reliable source. Otherwise, nobody else can verify that this journal really exists, that it is authentically of the period in question and not a 20th century forgery and that it is not the fictional product of from the imagination of some Easterner imagination who never set foot west of the Mississippi. Sorry, I don't mean to malign your integrity but these kinds of issues are what are behind the Wikipedia standards for verifiability and reliable sources. --Richard 03:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • What about my boyfriend, my parents, my grandparents, my brothers, my sisters, my jr. high and high school teachers, the people that live in the apartment building I do, the other students here at MIT, my boyfriend's best friend, my group of friends, college professors, my aunts, uncles, couisins, etc. Don't they count? Because they are other people besides me.
  • We can't verify any of them, either, can we? If it isn't published somewhere that we can see, we can't verify it. No, we will not take your word for it. Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources are the policies, and they are not changing. Fan-1967 16:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Fan-1967 is right, Actress. Anything on Wikipedia has to be verifiable, we can't just take your word for it. From a student in Vladivostok to an amateur historian in Nairobi to a businessman in Dubai, all should be in a position to access the information. AecisBravado 18:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
First of all, many journals are published, and a large collection is available on line as "Womens diaries of the western journey". Manuscript sources are problematic, and work with them would normally be considered OR here. But I do not see how the article depends on any of this,for everything described is well-known history, and any 2 good american history textbooks would do as the sources. One is already given. Many individual parts could also be sourced, & for Chief Josephs famous speech not to be given a specific reference is not careful work.
  • It is only a fairly good high school essay, and that it is better than the material in WP says something about us. It could be turned into an article, with help. Most good WP articles have not been written by a single person, as this is. DGG 00:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, and I do from time to time jump in and improve an article to save it from deletion. I have done this successfully on more than one occasion (e.g. Crime in Mexico,Poverty in India. In this case, however, I think I will wait until this AFD closes as I would like to see how the consensus turns out before putting in a lot of effort. Can we agree to my recommendation above? That is, we will redirect this title to American Old West, delete Post-Civil War Expansion of the United States and defer a decision on The Indian Wars of the Great Plains for a couple of weeks to see if it is improved to Wikipedia's standards of quality. --Richard 03:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I can agree with that proposal. AecisBravado 10:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Reasoning per above, Addhoc 13:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

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.
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