Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Egerland

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. — TKD::Talk 08:55, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Egerland

Egerland (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article is full of historical nonsenses, it is supported by the map from World War II period (1938-1945) only. There is not any additional reference except that map. I tried to search for references on google but I didn't find any relevant information. I suggest its deletion and merging of some information to Karlovy Vary Region. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 14:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Delete per above. ≈Tulkolahten≈^≈talk≈ 14:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep but source. Egerland, which was an independent fief until the 14th century, gets plenty of results on Google Books (e.g. egerland+region, to avoid the personal name), and lends its name to a particular breed of cattle. If merged to anything it should be Eger aka Cheb. --Dhartung | Talk 16:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Keep There are two inter-wiki links from this page, one to the German wikipedia, and one to the Roumanian one. Checking the edit logs of all three revealed that one editor was active on both the English and German wikis, the Roumanian article being written by anonymous users, however there were a number of other editors who contributed to both the German and English wikis and there appears to be no pattern of collusion to perpetuate a hoax.

We are not meant to set store on a topics notability or veracity on how many hits there are on Google however searching for Egerland on Google 111,000 hits, it has to be conceded that many of these are to individuals surnamed "Egerland" and a band called "Egerland" however prominent among the other google hits were this and this website, the first a Czech and the second a German one. These two websites suggest that a region called 'Egerland' did exist and it is seen as a lost German state by some. Of course this doesn't preclude that these websites are the work of nationalist crackpots with an agenda to follow.

Searching on English Wikipedia for "Egerland" returns mentions in 16 different articles. Mention is made of an "Egerland" dialect, land borders, and a historical Central European region, establishing a pattern that suggests the existence of a historical but now defunct Germanic region. Of course we are not meant to use Wikipedia itself as a source, but this again suggests that "Egerland" existed, or at the very least that "Egerland" in the minds of some individuals.

Given that "Egerland" exists in two other wiki-projects I set about to see if other wikiprojects had "Egerland" articles. A search of French Wikipedia returned an article on the Germanic Bavarii tribe, Egerland being described as part of an historical territory of this tribe from which they were ethnically cleansed in the aftermath of the Second world war (q,v.). Search of the Spanish Wikipedia returned an article on the Vogtland although a redlink the mention of "Egerland" in this article contends that this territory was a Germanic one now incorporated into the Czech republic (q.v.). Egerland also appears in a Polish list and in two Czech Wikipedia articles this one and this one; articles that the nominator is better able to read than me.

A search on Wikicommons found 5 items, one being a photograph of a building clearly showing the word Egerland on its signage. Three of these items were maps, two versions being essentialy the one in the English article of more interest however was the deletion logs of a copyvio map with exactly the same title. From this detail I can surmise that the following happened, an older copyrighted map was used on the German Egerland article, and when this had to be removed a low quality map was created by German Wikipedia editors base on the copyvio one, subsequently an English version of this map was used for English wikipedia (it should be easy to check if this is true by having another look at the article logs). This means that even if the "Egerland" map is a fabrication it is not the fabrication of Wikipedia editors.

From my research I conclude that although archaic and defunct, "Egerland" as a region existed and is still referred to as such by some, I suppose in much the same way that a Brit will refer to Mercia or Wessex though these regions are long dead. I do not believe that deletion is in order.KTo288 17:12, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Czech Republic-related deletions. -- the wub "?!" 18:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per KTo288 and Dhartung. The sources do exist if not always in English. Let's not let systemic bias prevent us from using non-English research tools. --Oakshade 03:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment Its not a scholarly source, just what I had on hand, but my copy of the 1996 edition of The Rough Guide to the Czech and Slovak Republics seems to support most of what is asserted in the article, that Eger is the German name for the city of Cheb, given to it by german colonists in the eleventh century and the Egerland the district around it. That the city and its surrounding lands were essentially independent until the 19th century, that the german populaion were hostile to the formation of a Czech identity, that they supported the Nazis and were driven from the area in the aftermath of WW II —Preceding unsigned comment added by KTo288 (talk • contribs) 11:37, August 28, 2007 (UTC) Sorry forgot signature againKTo288 14:22, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep seems like a good article to me--Zingostar 19:25, 2 September 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.